Last week, I posted about socialisation, habituation and the difference between them. This is in response to a particularly ‘contagious’ post doing the rounds about why you don’t need to socialise your dog. I think she meant why you shouldn’t flood your young puppy and overwhelm it with stimuli – which I agree with – but I’m very much in the ‘yes you do need to both socialise and habituate your dog’ camp – because I work with problem dogs who haven’t had the basics they needed, and because I know what has gone awry.

When you hang around animals, you can see those who aren’t used to other dogs, those who haven’t been socialised with other dogs, those who are not used to humans and those who have been accidentally sensitised rather than getting used to it.

Breed is a factor in that. It’s the basic ingredients that your dog comes with. What you do with those ingredients depends on what you get as a ‘finished product’. That’s the socialisation, habituation and training bit. They’re the recipe and the cooking.

I also wrote about my own dog, Heston, who I raised as a gundog and who turned out to be a shepherd mix with a little bit of gundog, rather than a retriever/collie mix with no shepherd. When I got his DNA test back, it explained some of his worst habits, things that ‘shepherds gone wrong’ are likely to show, as well as ‘shepherds gone right’.  I wrote about how training had turned him into a pretty great gundog. What I didn’t write about was how his lack of appropriate socialisation and habituation had turned him into a pretty bad shepherd.

What does that mean?

I mean, I’ve worked with my fair share of shepherds gone wrong.

What you find are what I’d call excessive breed tendencies.

What that means are all the behaviours that prize-winning shepherds have a little bit, that you can refine and shape, and that haven’t been shaped in others who end up on my books, or on my couch.

If you look at dog competitions like mondioring, French ring, Schutzhund, IPO etc, you see shepherds with these breed tendencies on cue. I’m not talking about the tracking, trailing or jumps. Those are things that other dogs do too. I’m talking about the things that make these competitions almost exclusively dominated by one breed or one group of breeds. I’m talking about behaviours which are more instinctive to your average shepherd than they are to your average spaniel. That’s to say they are doing what they usually do, just it’s under control. Those excessive breed tendencies show up, under control, in chasing a fleeing stranger, facing down an aggressive stranger, defending the handler, taking down someone who is running away and guarding an object. That’s to say more likely than a foxhound, for instance, to be territorial, to confront strangers, to be wary of new stuff, to be unfriendly around other predators (including dogs and humans) and to be capable of protecting something they consider as ‘theirs’. You’ll see these show up on reviews of James Serpell’s CBARQ assessment, which compares breed tendencies. I’m always a little cautious because surveys such as CBARQ do play into the owner biases, but I think there is enough work to show that those biases have a basis in the behaviour we see. Just as an example: the problems we get with the hounds in the shelter are different than the problems we get with terriers or shepherds. So be super cautious of breed stereotypes, but know that there’s something to bear in mind… it’s why dogs do different jobs and why they excel in different competitions. Who wins field trials? I’ll give you a clue. It’s never been a Jack Russell.

Those shepherd breed tendencies seen in ring competitions also show up, not under control, in dogs who chase or ‘intercept’ joggers or cyclists, dogs who will charge up to a stranger, circling them and barking, biting if they make any movement, dogs who won’t tolerate a stranger coming into the perimeter of the owner or home, dogs who bite you as you’re moving away and dogs who are excessively territorial or have excessive resource guarding habits.

The difference between those who have the behaviours under control and those who don’t depends on a lot of things.

It depends on the emotion. Heston running up to and cornering a guy who’d come onto my property ‘to look for scrap metal’ had the emotional intensity that some top competitions look for. He didn’t look like an R+ trained dog playing a find-the-intruder game. Dogs on cue probably won’t do it with the same emotion. He did everything that competition dogs do – just without me asking unfortunately. He ran up, he held the guy in position, he barked fiercely and angrily. When the guy tried to move, he circled him. When the guy yelled at him, Heston barked more intensely. There was no contact. He did everything a mondioring dog does – without training. Now, I’m not proud of this and it’s not a “whoo, look at my untrained dog’s skills”. I am just saying that in competitions, you see the same behaviours, just without the self-employment bit. A trained dog does it as a simulation. An untrained dog does it for real.

What’s the difference between this:

And Heston finding a stranger in the garden?

Control. Training. Teaching. Cues. Handling. Management of emotion. Impulse control.

I am in no way condoning these behaviours. He could well have done them with a person who had every right to be on the property. I had to go over and physically restrain my own dog. I don’t think it is in any way an acceptable behaviour, and once I’d seen it, I manage the situation much more carefully and we’ve done a lot of training around strangers – though less than I’d like about ones who come on to the property, just because of the nature of my lifestyle. One self-employed moment was more than enough. I had no way of knowing he would do this with a stranger on my property. I hated that moment. I looked back on how it had come about and how I could prevent it. Just because I have no doubt that the man was scoping my property for whatever he could take doesn’t make it acceptable. It is the worst side of my dog – the one that brings me the most heartache. But he is just doing the same behaviours as a great, well-trained shepherd – just in an entirely real scenario – luckily without the biting and sadly without the impulse control.

The difference between good and bad is whether the behaviour is under stimulus control or not. By which I mean you have to give permission for it to start and you have to tell the dog to stop and they do. A ‘good’ shepherd will win competitions. A ‘bad’ shepherd will end up with a euthanasia order for biting a passing jogger who got in range.

A lot goes into ‘good’ dogs vs ‘bad’ dogs. There are so many factors that influenced that moment with Heston that is impossible to extrapolate a single cause.

Is it the ingredients?

Is it because he came from a line of ‘off the book’ Groenendael Belgian shepherds whose owners probably didn’t care much about pedigree, history and temperament?

Is it parental?

Since I don’t know his history, I don’t know for sure. I do know there aren’t any groenendael breeders in the area he was found. There aren’t even any registered single dogs. That means ‘off the books’. I have the same small feeling of anxiety with every malinois, every GSD who comes in without ID. No ID means no traceable pedigree. No traceable pedigree means no predictable behaviour from family lines.

Since I don’t know his lines and I don’t know his parents, I can’t say. They could be practically feral and foaming at the mouth. They could be really sweet. I don’t know and will never know.

Is it the early mixing of those ingredients?

Is it his birth order or pre-natal experiences? Dogs’ positions in utero can affect testosterone levels. In utero stress can also lead to fearfulness. Is that aggression rooted in fear?

Is it because he is male? Testosterone and aggression have links that science is only just beginning to get in to.

Is it because he is entire? But being castrated can also increase aggression rooted in fear.

Is it in the recipe that’s made him into the dog he is?

Was it being hand-raised with only one of his siblings?

Was it the time at 9 weeks when one of my neighbours walked in when he was eating? He barked and barked at her and it was definitely his first ‘stranger danger’ moment. Before that, he had been great with strangers.

Was it the fence-running GSD of my neighbour who I had to get past to take him on a walk, and who barked every time any time anyone moved in my garden?

Was it the time I took him to a festival and it overwhelmed him?

Was it the time he was subject to a very threatening welcome by a number of other dogs at a barbecue?

Is it the fact I live alone and he just doesn’t experience other humans than me often enough?

Is it the fact that he really only met about ten dogs in his first six months?

Did he pick it up off Tilly, my other dog, who is reactive and fearful of strangers, who barks when people come on the property and who is also nervous with other dogs?

Is he just doing a self-employed version of the beautiful Dubion Ebony?

The fact is there are so many factors that could have contributed to that moment of excessive breed tendencies. As with all behavioural issues, a post-mortem of their cause is not particularly useful. We can pontificate all day on the whys. What matters is the what we do with what we actually have in front of us.

No good shutting the door after the Groenendael has pinned a stranger, so to speak.

That said, if you can reduce the whys, you’re going to find you can moderate what you end up with.

You can counteract excessive breed tendencies. And you should.

When you know that you have a dog of a particular breed, then it is your job when you raise it to make sure the socialisation and habituation meets the needs of the dog and prepares the puppy for situations in which you are likely to see those excessive breed tendencies. This is as true for my American cocker spaniel Tilly as it is for Heston. She came to me aged five with a handful of wholly predictable behaviours that could have been counteracted through living in the appropriate home and with the appropriate socialisation and habituation as a youngster.

It wasn’t a surprise that Tilly would urinate submissively on greetings. My grandparents had had an American cocker spaniel almost thirty years before who had done the same. It also wasn’t a surprise that she would steal food. Sunny had done the same. If you have a breed of dog who can be excessively fearful around strangers, then that’s something  a good programme of socialisation can help the dog with. If you have a dog who is nervous with strangers, that is something they can learn not to be. If you have a dog from a breed known for resource-guarding, then teaching ‘trade’ and ‘give’ is fundamental. Sadly, Tilly’s early vet notes show she had already developed these habits by the time she was 6 months old and had seen a specialist already about them. It wasn’t a surprise to see them re-emerge under stress when she moved house and family.

When you get those early experiences right, instead of having those heart-stopping moments where your dog does something horrible, you end up with dogs who buck the trend. Flika, my current Malinois foster, and Tobby, my old Mali guy who died in 2016 are a case in point. They are both super-social, really friendly and would never, ever exhibit the kind of behaviours that I have seen in Heston. They are how shepherds should be. Heston doesn’t like people. He moves away from strangers and comes back to me when he is feeling nervous. He is super-friendly with his ‘inner circle’ – people who he’s known for more than 24 hours on home territory – but he is visibly uncomfortable and stressed where Tobby wasn’t and Flika never is. All shepherds. All with the same basic ingredients and the same behaviours.

They pop out in ways that you don’t expect. Like Effel with his lawnmower chasing, and his Heston chasing…

Or Tobby with his obsession over a hound

And Flika when she saw a car moving in the distance and belted off to go and investigate.

How do you get away from these inbuilt behaviours? You habituate your shepherd to unfamiliar moving things. You take your young beauceron and you teach him impulse control around moving stuff. You take your Belgian shepherd and you get him used to seeing all kinds of running dogs. A clear, sensible programme of gradual and systematic habituation nips problems in the bud better than just saying, “Naughty dog!” after they’ve done nothing more than the behaviours they were born with.

It’s not just about chasing moving objects or whether or not they are social towards unfamiliar humans. And it’s not just about herding breeds or livestock guardians.

It’s not just about the predatory motor sequence either. Flika and Tobby aren’t just super social. Tobby formed an easy attachment to me, just as the beauceron Effel did, and just as Flika has. That’s another thing about shepherds. Loyal. They are your shadow. Our shelter boss always says it’s the beauceron shepherds who find it hardest at the shelter. She says they cry for days when abandoned. Until they find a new owner, sure. I think it took Effel a couple of days to shift to his new owner. Flika, well, within a week she was watching for me out of the window. Excessive breed tendencies aren’t always about aggression. They can also be other known behaviours which can be problematic: restless Brittany spaniels, excessively vocal terriers, predation in hunting breeds, hyperactivity in springers, aloofness in Akitas, guarding in some terriers or spaniels.

Sadly, once that socialisation and habituation window closes around three months of age, you are left with a dog who will always be ‘remedial’, who will always be playing catch up. Not impossible, but not so easy. Those early patterns become ‘myelinised’ and the brain starts laying down strong pathways for some behavioural patterns, whilst ‘pruning’ others. It’s not just about the more a behaviour is practised or not: it’s about the brain setting some of those patterns in cement. Yes, cement can be broken. You can dismantle a reinforced concrete wall with a lot of effort. But it’s much nicer if it’s a plywood partition wall. It’s even better if there’s no wall there in the first place and you can build behaviours how you want.

This was patently clear last night when I watched a video on Facebook that a trainer had posted. It was her lovely cockers doing their cocker thing and minding their own business. They were then ambushed by a West Highland Terrier who charged up and bit one of them as he left. The westie had been on lead and I’m not sure what had happened to cause the dog to get away, but that right there – biting the rear end of a retreating creature – is one excessive breed tendency that could have caused a lot of heartache. If you have a terrier and you know they can be difficult around other dogs, that they need plenty of positive habituation to dogs passing, dogs moving and dogs doing their doggy business, then it is your absolute duty to teach them that when it is young enough to become instinct. Otherwise, you are left managing your dog’s behaviour and never truly overcoming their worst, most anti-social habits. You end up with a dog permanently on lead, muzzled, who doesn’t enjoy walks in the park.

So how would my ideal S&H programme have differed for Tilly, Heston and Flika?

For Heston, my ‘stranger danger’ shepherd… He would have had lots more dog experience – all planned, careful and under threshold. I would have had a happy and steady stream of planned visitors to my property every single day being careful never to overwhelm him. I would have conditioned him not to be afraid of the GSD in the garden next door. He would have met many more dogs and I would have taught him how to respond to seeing strangers or strange dogs by coming back to me. I would have been all about impulse control and looking to me for leadership. I managed the bite inhibition fairly well (well, you do a lot of retrieves when you think you have a retriever!) and he had at least some positive experiences with strangers and other dogs, but not enough. I do wonder to myself if he doesn’t bite – and he never has, not even when faced by curious would-be thieves – because Groenendaels are not so good at the biting bit (and why Malis and Dutch shepherds rule at ring sports) and whether even the fact he doesn’t bite under attack is just the luck of the draw.

For Tilly, my guardy, grumbly cocker… she needed a proper programme to habituate her to handling, to husbandry, to ear checks and grooming. She needed to be taught ‘trade’ over and over. She needed to have a very gradual, gentle programme by which she learned not to be afraid of strangers. She needed confidence and to be taught how to make space if she is feeling nervous. She needed a secure base. Sadly, rehoming and bootcamps are not conducive to secure bases, and grabby children taking your toys are not conducive to feeling safe with your stuff.

For Flika, my separation-anxiety Mali… she needed (as now) to be habituated to time without her owner. She needed to be taught some independence and strategies for being on her own. She needed to be taught that absence is nothing to be worried about and that escape to find your owner is not necessary. Sadly, for dogs who can’t cope without their owner, they often end up being rehomed – which gives them a real event to add to their anxiety. Flika is on her sixth home that we know of. Do you think that, at 13 years old, those rehomings have made her feel any less anxious about being left by her family group?

We fail our dogs every day by not understanding their innate behaviours, their strengths and their weaknesses. It is never an excuse that a terrier bites the rump of a retreating cocker, that a spaniel guards a mouldy bread roll, that a shepherd corners a stranger and barks at them. We know very well that these behaviours exist in our dogs and which traits are more likely or less likely. Good breeders are taking these things seriously, and you won’t find nervous or highly-strung American cockers being bred by one of my friends, or guardy, grumbly English cockers being bred by another. When we get a puppy, it’s our absolute duty to use those early weeks to balance out what Mother Nature has given us, rather than saying “Oops, Sorry!” when it is far too late to effectively address that behaviour.

I did so well by Heston in so many respects. He is independent without being destructive. He handles absence. He is easy for me to handle. He loves being groomed and handled. He has appropriate ways to expend his energies that don’t involve chewing, digging or escaping. But in others, I let him down. It’s all very well to look back and understand why I let him down – and now it’s very much a management of behaviours rather than anything else – but we can’t keep making mistakes by not socialising or habituating our dogs properly.

I’ll finish by referring to John Rogerson. He is not a trainer I refer to often. But I believe one thing he said is true… that we should be running breed-specific puppy classes by experts in those breeds. Or at least, group-specific classes. One size does not fit all where socialisation and habituation is concerned. Honestly, I’d go a bit further and say it should be personalised to the home and the environment too – since adult dogs are as much a product of those factors as they are of their breed. I don’t believe breed is everything. I don’t believe that once you get a GSP that you are setting yourself up for hyperactivity or separation anxiety, or if you get a Westie, you are setting yourself up for life on the lead in case they grab a retreating animal. I know plenty of dogs who buck the trend.

Why is it that they buck the trend?

That is due to great breeding programmes and careful socialisation/habituation in their early weeks.

The ingredients that you get don’t come with one single recipe that you have to make.

All the same, if we want to eradicate those excessive breed tendencies, we need a careful stewardship of breeding AND a carefully-constructed programme that teaches our puppies how to behave when interacting with familiar and unfamiliar humans, as well as familiar and unfamiliar dogs. Not only that, we also need to habituate them to the life they will lead and make sure they don’t accidentally end up chasing the first bike they see, aged six, or biting the lawnmower aged seven.

When we address genetic history, individual history and early learning together, we have a powerful way to get dogs who won’t find living in the human world to be quite so difficult.

That’s our responsibility in our stewardship of dogs. It’s our responsibility as a breeder. It’s our responsibility as an owner. We owe it to our dogs to understand them and to help them adjust to the world in which we ask them to live.

If we did these things, we’d have far fewer moments where dogs struggle to meet our expectations.

A lot to ask for, I know.

A few weeks ago, I did a post about the importance of understanding bias and purpose for social media posts. Mostly, that was focused on the ways we take physical care of our dogs and being careful about where we seek veterinary information. I planned to write a similar post about getting to the bottom of bias and purpose in dog training, but since my gripe was really about two particular posts from one specific trainer, I thought I’d be more precise, rather than just bemoaning the state the internet.

One of the posts was a particularly click-baity one about why some trainer ‘doesn’t socialise’ her dogs. I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons. Gripes about her ethics, her marketing and her training methods aside, posts like that make my blood boil. It makes me cross that people who won’t bother getting beyond the headline will then think they too don’t need to socialise their puppies. They weren’t my main gripes though. My main gripe was with the premise of her article: that dogs don’t need early developmental experiences.

But let’s just clarify the mixed-up terms she used. Socialisation and habituation are very different things, as are gradual desensitisation and accidental sensitisation. I appreciate they are all lumped under the banner of ‘socialisation’ where puppies are concerned. But there is a difference.

Some people said that this didn’t matter.

I beg to differ.

If you don’t have a grasp of what you are talking about, how can you profess to be an expert?

That’s like me saying I don’t believe in using eggs in soufflé and then going on to talk quite clearly about something that is plainly scrambled eggs.

Am I an expert in cooking if I mix up my soufflé and my scrambled eggs?

Not really.

So, my first gripe was with the mixed-up terms she was using.

First, she mixed up socialisation and habituation, desensitisation, sensitisation and flooding. Now that’s not a crime. I’ve got a degree in psychology and I don’t expect everyone to know their Harlow’s Monkeys from their Skinner’s Rats. But for me, if your post is doing the rounds on social media, it’s kind of important to be a bit right.

I don’t take my advice on psychology from people who don’t understand the basics.

I don’t listen to people about social media who don’t understand what the difference is between Twitter and Instagram.

And I won’t be taking my advice about puppy training from someone who doesn’t understand the difference between socialisation and sensitisation.

So… with that in mind, let’s sort out that psychology nonsense.

Socialisation is the process by which we become social. It is about our interactions. That can be with your own species or with others, but the crucial thing is that it involves interaction. It is how you learn how to become a functioning member of society. For dogs, this is how they interact with us, with other dogs and with other species with which they have interactions, like cats. We don’t interact with egg boxes (or rather they don’t interact back) and so how we behave around egg boxes, metal surfaces, icecubes or sports stadium bleachers is not socialisation. Even if that’s what many people call it.

Habituation is the process by which we get used to the world around us. It is about how our reactions to the stimuli in the world around us diminish through repetition. It is about reducing the startle reflex. If you imagine hearing a loud exhaust bang outside your house, that would startle you. If you heard it all the time and you got used to it, you would become habituated. Habituation is a fairly normal process and can happen naturally. It’s how we move from conscious awareness of new stuff around us to it becoming subconscious. Like the smell at the shelter. I don’t imagine it’s any less foul than it was when I first started, but I don’t smell it any more. If you want to habituate your dog to the world around it, then your dog would be out in the world getting used to stuff. You can also habituate them to people, dogs, cats, sheep etc when your aim is not that your puppy will socialise or interact with it. I don’t want my dog to socialise with sheep. I want him to become used to the movement and presence of sheep to such an extent that they are no more interesting than a bush or a tree. But I don’t want him to interact with them. That’s habituation, not socialisation. I like French for this – ‘getting used to something’ is s’habituer. It’s easier for me to remember what it means. In French, socialiser or even sociabiliser means to make sociable, to socialise. They don’t get mixed up so easily. It’s definitely an English language thing to mix up those two very different experiences.

However, if you didn’t get used to the world around you, you might become sensitised to it. In other words, you’d never get used to it and your startle response would remain constant or even get worse. You may become anxious or fearful, living on your nerves. You might notice it and be unable ‘not’ to notice it. This usually happens with fear, but it can happen with other negative emotions too. For instance, I may mean to habituate my dog to the car but accidentally sensitise him to it. He might start panicking or vomiting. This is closely tied with flooding where we are exposed – either accidentally or purposely – and we become hyper-sensitive to something in particular. Flooding often leads to a panic state, and to panicked aggression, but it can also lead to being completely shut down.

You may then start a process of desensitisation which is a deliberate process by which you try to make something less powerful. Usually, this is done in a careful and gradual way through repeated exposure at limits that are not horrible and terrifying. Sometimes, we call this systematic desensitisation to make it clear that it’s gradual and planned.

So, now that’s cleared up, it was obvious in the post that what the trainer was actually advising was not to accidentally sensitise your dog to the world around them. So she wasn’t actually saying she didn’t help her dog learn how to interact with humans and other dogs, but that she didn’t make her dog panic about things like steps and being overwhelmed by strangers. Now I agree with her on that.

But the rest of her article was equally dubious, not least the lack of understanding of basic canine development.

She went on to say that genetics are the “major” factor in what our dogs become and that socialisation destroys the relationship you have with your dog (because hey, that world is INTERESTING and according to her, you don’t want your dog to realise that!). Now whilst I agree that it has to be a balance in that relationship between owner-environment-dog and I accept that, I want to get into a bit of discussion about genetics and the dog we have in front of us. Because it’s not as clear cut as ‘it’s either in the genes or it’s not’.

Let me give you an example.

I will show you the results of a lack of socialisation. I would share a photo but we don’t share information on social media about the dogs at our shelter who live ‘in sanctuary’.

This is a true story, though, about a real dog. He’s not that different from many of our other ‘hard to home’ dogs.

He’s a breed well-known for being suspicious of strangers and other animals. He came from a long line in that breed who had been purposely bred to be more suspicious than others. If you think these behaviours can’t be inherited, they absolutely can: aggression, neuroticism and fear of new things have a genetic quality to them. So you take a dog who already has the ‘right’ genetic building blocks. Let’s add being male to that mix as well. Then you remove him from his mother and his litter-mates at two weeks. Whether you do this on purpose to imprint him more on his owner or through some accident of rearing, the consequence is the same. You fail to socialise him with his litter-mates or his mother, and only socialise him with his owner. He is never socialised with other humans or with other dogs. What you get is a dog who cannot be around other dogs, who is selective about humans he likes or doesn’t and who will no doubt live out his days in a very limited fashion.

Don’t believe me about the genes being only the building blocks, and socialisation being the process by which they are assembled?

The breeder came to see if he could pick the dog up. He brought with him another dog from the same litter. Same breed. Same mother. Same father. Male. And that dog was the soppiest, friendliest dog ever. The breeder said he’d have liked to have taken our dog back, but there was no way he could keep him in the safety and security that he needed as an absolute guarantee.

Now you tell me what the difference is?

Life experience. Aka. Socialisation and habituation.

Socialisation matters hugely. And habituation. But socialisation is an integral part of the adult dog that you get.

For that, I’m going to be referring a lot to Matt Ridley’s excellent ‘Nature via Nurture’, and to the works of Robert Sapolsky, among others. And, of course, the enormous and epic works about socialisation from Bar Harbor in the 1950s and 1960s, which focused on dogs, among other species.

Sure, breed is important.

Of course it is.

If breed wasn’t important, you’d have beagles as police attack dogs and Jack Russells as sniffer dogs. If breed wasn’t important, people would be using bichon frise to flush out pheasant, not cockers.

Let’s step back a bit. Let’s just talk ‘Dog’.

Dogs have what is called an ‘ethogram’… a list of behaviours that they are physically capable of performing, along with their function. These behaviours are typical for that species. Different species have different ethograms. For instance, ‘climbing’ is part of the spectacled bear ethogram, by which they mean ‘locomotion on structures/trees, not at ground level’. Now dogs can climb. But do they climb trees like bears do? Do they use their tail to hook around the branch like a spider monkey? Do they grasp a branch with their paw and swing from tree to tree?

Not possible.

The canine ethogram is shared across the canine species. There are things that are very similar across all canids, and things that are different. There are things dogs do that wolves don’t – dogs are much more vocal than wolves in general – and behaviour, like a physical trait, is also subject to evolution. So all dogs have a basic repertoire of behaviours and functions. For some, those are elongated – like terriers, who have virtually every behaviour in the canine repertoire – and for some that is truncated. We focus much on the predatory patterns and how dogs have elongated or truncated patterns of predation, but this forgets that dogs do a lot of other stuff as well, and a lot of that is the same as every other breed of dog. Predatory motor patterns are not the be-all and end-all of a dog.

But yes, in terms of certain traits, it’s a law of averages thing. You’d expect to find fewer Basenjis who vocalise. Fewer salukis with a kill-bite-dissect. More terriers who’ll go from orienting on a target to the final dissection. More cockers who are interested in going into bushes and sending up birds. Fewer beagles interested in disinterring your moles. More poodles who find it easier to walk on two legs than Leonbergers.

It’s not just the predatory motor behaviours or physical behaviours that dog breeds may differ in.

It can be emotional and behavioural too.

I firmly believe – and James Serpell’s work on CBARQ will no doubt be the basis of further work on this – that breeds are more likely or less likely to exhibit other behaviours outside the predatory motor patterns of orient-stalk-chase-grab/bite-kill/bite-dissect. That might include the ‘Big Five’ of aggression, neuroticism, openness to novelty etc for instance. As an example, if you compare your average Anglo-Français hound, they certainly seem to be less aggressive, less neurotic, less afraid of novelty than your average German Shepherd. There are other things too that behaviourists and trainers will become more in tune with, anecdotally, that no doubt Serpell’s work will clarify through time.

That’s really evident in my work.

Not a surprise if someone rings me up and says they have a resource guarder. My money is on spaniel or daxie. Dog who runs off with their stuff and tears it apart? My money is on terrier. Dog who has compulsive behaviours and/or anorexic? Dollars to donuts it’s a setter. Dog compulsively licking feet?  Pointer or Dally. Dog failing to connect with you? Ancient or Asiatic breed for sure.  Dog chasing tail – could be terrier  – but if self-injuring and stressed, it’ll be a shepherd for sure. We’re beginning to unpick those genetically-based abnormal behaviours – how bull terriers will ‘trance’ and move back and forwards under branches, how Doberman might flank suck, how labradors may eat compulsively – but they tell us such a lot. Breed is important, and we know that.

Although Serpell’s C-BARQ questionnaire is based on people saying what their dog is like – and people tend to agree with breed stereotypes, like their Akita being aloof when really it may be no less friendly than a cocker spaniel – it is interesting to see behaviour patterns across breeds. The work does confirm what we’d say anecdotally about breed behaviours. That could just be evidence that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if you live and work around dogs, you know it’s not just our biases. Your herding breeds ARE more trainable in general, your gundogs ARE less aggressive to unfamiliar dogs in general, and your toy breeds ARE often aggressive towards familiar humans – in general.

You may be forgiven for thinking Serpell’s work tells us nothing we don’t already know.

But it does.

First, they tell us that genetics is absolutely important.

Secondly it tells us that the average across all breeds is more similar than the average within a breed. That’s to say you’ll get dogs within a breed who will massively buck the trend.

You’ll get shepherds who are soppy love buckets with strangers, as Flika my Foster Mali is. You’ll get collies who defy training and seem to have ADHD. You’ll get stranger-aggressive hounds (although I have yet to meet one!)

But just because there is a trend and there are ‘outliers’, does that mean we just accept it?

IF YOU KNOW that your herding breeds are more afraid of the world around them than mastiffs, do we just accept this quirk of genetics?

Heston would say both yes and no.

Just to give you his back story, he was found in a box with his siblings at the age of 1 day, and bottle-reared. Not the ideal, I know. But not to have a lecture about the needs for mothering and puppy socialisation – they may not be perfect, but they turned out not too bad at all. The point of this is not about his early social experiences but is in fact about innate breed tendencies. So, back to the breed.

Anyway, litter of 7. Several short-haired with white toes and chest patches, several fluffs. All of them were black with occasional patches of white on chests or toes.

The vet – as best as any vet can do with tiny pups – said collie x labrador, which made sense given the size, weight, colour and hair. As they grew up, several people who’d had flat-coated retrievers thought the long-haired ones were more like that, but a labrador is not far removed from a golden or a flat-coated retriever, and instead of thinking differences, I thought in terms of the group… retriever! Once or twice, groenendael shepherds were mentioned, mostly because Heston’s brother Charlton was pointier in the nose, but given the ears, the shape, the size, the weight, the popularity of labradors and their crosses, I raised him as a retriever. He didn’t look like a shepherd and given the rarity of Groenendaels and the high frequency of retrievers, it seemed more likely.

Plus, some of his behaviours fitted.

I mean, he loved retrieving.

He learned early on about game and loved to go off and flush out game. His fun ended when the chase ended. He was clearly not a ‘run off and dissect’ terrier of some type, or a ‘kill bite’ kind of dog either. We did collie-style heelwork and stuff, but what floated his boat was gundog stuff. It was his preferences as much as his looks that shouted retriever.

He is an immense dog for scent and chase, loves retrieving… finds me dogs all the time.

His brother looks a lot like him, just more pointy. One of his sisters also did. And a couple looked like fairly standard black labrador hybrids of one form or another. He didn’t have any collie behaviours that I could see. No stalking, herding, eyeing… but lots of retriever stuff. So much so we did lots of gundog stuff. He lives for blind retrieves and quartering, tracking and airscenting.

You know where this is going.

One DNA test later and 50% of those Heston Genes are shepherd. Much of him is groenendael Belgian shepherd. Suddenly, that ‘stranger danger’ barking, that distrust of anyone ‘not Emma’, that ‘love my flock, everything else worries me’ behaviour all made sense. It doesn’t make sense to have a retriever that doesn’t like people. Sure, they exist. But in general, the retriever breeds I meet are all ‘Hail Fellow Well Met’ types, not the ‘Get off My Land!’ types.

Huh, I said as I read the report.

Well, it all made sense!

And yes, there’s a bit of labrador in there, and a bit of cocker spaniel too if you believe it. Enough gundog stuff to make sense. Zero collie.

But what difference do those genes make?

According to Serpell’s research, a stranger-wary dog who is spooked by novel things in the world around him. Fearful of strangers and unfamiliar dogs, highly trainable, higher-than-average levels of energy, lower-than-average aggression to household members.

Which kind of describes Heston.

But a lot of that describes Tilly, who is an American cocker spaniel. And a little of it describes Tobby and Flika, my malinois-mutt pensioners – also both Belgian Shepherds. But they aren’t aggressive to strangers. They are highly social, highly trainable, not aggressive…. and yes, malis – highly energetic even with very genetic crippling degenerative conditions and in their twilight years.

So part of me feels like reading breed characteristics is like reading a horoscope. It hits a big target market if you hedge your bets. I’m happy to write off the heart-breaking behavioural similarities between Tobby and Flika as coincidence. Yes, they both had or have separation anxiety, but he shadowed me and she doesn’t. His was isolation distress rather than anxiety related to me, despite the shadowing. Yes, he was an escape artist and so is she – and so, for that matter, is Belle, the mali x GSD at the refuge. But then so is Shelssie, and she is an American Staffordshire.

So… the deck you are dealt genetically is of course modified by breed and by being a dog, but your dog has more in common with other dogs than they have differences.

How would knowing Heston’s shepherd background have influenced my socialisation, habituation and training?

Well for one thing, I truly believe life can make up for genetic inadequacies, or it can worsen them. If you have behavioural qualities that are less than desirable, I believe a proper programme of socialisation and planned habituation can help overcome those. I think that’s absolutely vital with herding dogs, terriers and toy breeds. If you know your dog is ‘aloof’, then it is your one goal in their development to make sure that you teach them how not to be. Within reason. I’m not saying you turn your Shiba Inu into a setter. But they sure as hell could do with being a little less aloof to get them through life.

Now that’s a fine line, I know, and I know it’s a delicate balance between habituation/socialisation and accidental sensitisation. That’s for another post altogether. How you teach a dog not to be, how you keep those genes from switching on… that is the stuff of books, not internet articles.

But you need to be aware of those breed tendencies, and you need to be aware of the flaws that don’t fit in with our modern society. That’s where habituation can smooth off the rough edges, It’d be nice if more breeders were breeding for temperament, but that’s by the by.

Looking back on two critical moments where I ended up flooding Heston rather than habituating him, I would have been more conscious of that if I thought I was raising a shepherd. There’s no way I would have let him be ambushed by a pack of six unfamiliar dogs and no way I’d have taken him to some of the very busy events I did. One of them, around the 16 week mark, was the first time he was reactive. He got over it – he does. But I took him to a very big event and it was too much. I should have been more careful and I didn’t think I’d have to be.

I’d never have done that to him, knowing what I know now about socialisation, about shepherds, about dogs. I doubt I’d do it to any dog other than a super chilled hound or bombproof gundog.

But I could never say ‘it’s in the genes’, like I would say ‘it’s in the stars’ as if it is pre-ordained, a matter of fate. Neither would I say ‘no point trying’ with any dog who has less than perfect parents. Matt Ridley’s excellent ‘Nature via Nurture’ revisits a lot of ideas I studied as part of Developmental Psychology…

Genes are designed to take their cues from Nurture

In other words, they change and are influenced by what our dogs experience. Not only that, there are cut-off dates for that where pretty much everything you do after is remedial. Our innate behaviours are switched on, or not, by the world we encounter.

Niko Tinbergen, the great ethologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work showed that innate behaviours must be triggered by an external stimulus.

If nurture doesn’t matter, all puppies from one litter would grow up identical in behaviour and appearance. If worldly experiences are so unimportant, our dogs’ behaviour would not only be much more predictable than it is, but it would so be much more fixed than it is. They would be more like their siblings than they are.

The debate is not about Genes Vs Socialisation/Habituation.

It is about how socialisation and habituation affect the genes. It is impossible to say which is the cause and which is the effect. They are so tightly woven into one another that we can’t just dismiss socialisation out of hand. But to say ‘it’s all in the genes’ is a bit of a flat-earth view to be honest. And likewise to say ‘it’s all in the life experiences’. It’s not an argument about to what extent it’s one or the other. It’s both. We know this. It’s about that interplay between both of those things, about how genetic, innate factors are influenced or suppressed by experience.

So, back to the dog I started this piece with. Can he learn to be friendly to people? Sure. He has many more friends than he had when he arrived. And friendly to other dogs? Not so much. Mainly that’s because it’s really, really hard to get those other dog to modify their behaviour in the same way we can.

Would it have been easier when he was 6 weeks old? Sure. By the time myelinisation starts to happen, turning synapses into super-highways or pruning them back, setting habits in cement, we can already have done a lot of work. The extensive work of psychologists in the 50s and 60s on human and animal development shows when those windows open and when they are fairly closed. If you want to know about dogs, read the works of Scott and Fuller, and the lab in Bar Harbor, Maine, where they worked. If you want to know how canine development happens and when it stops, their work is instrumental. What they showed is that breed is part of it: how dogs play, when they bark, when they open their eyes, how they behave with humans and with other dogs. But what they also showed is how vital those early weeks are for teaching puppies how to interact appropriately with other dogs.

But it doesn’t end with puppies.

It’s not a closed door at 12 weeks, although much of what has happened between 4 and 12 weeks will influence the rest of the dog’s life.

Research is showing now that you can take the most genetically impoverished creature – and it doesn’t matter the age – but an enriched environment helps them grow new neurons. Robert Sapolsky refers here to a rat that had been purposely tampered with to have the crappiest biology for learning. Scientists had pinpointed the exact bit of the brain that is responsible for remembering, and they’d switched it off. They’d previously made a Super Learner, and now they did the opposite. And what they showed was that, in an enriched environment, it almost made up for that crappy biological deal. We know this is true for young animals, but enrichment is also a factor in keeping the brain ticking in old age as well.

So what do we know?

It’s ALL important: breed, line, heritage, prenatal experience, early socialisation, habituation, enrichment. It’s a Gordian Knot of infinite complexity. Each experience switches on genes – or not. It lays down patterns – or not. There is a degree of instinct in learning – in why Heston finds it easy to retrieve but also to bark at strangers – but there is a degree of learning in instinct, too. Fear and aggression, in particular, are such a mix of genes and learning that you cannot separate the two. It is easy to get a dog to fear another dog. It is not so easy to get a dog to fear the sound of a fridge opening. Some of those fears will be encoded in their genes: why they find the smell of onions aversive, why electric shock does not need to be taught as painful, but many of those fears are switched on, or not, by learning. A dog has to learn to be afraid of a knock at the door; the approach of strangers, the fear of being alone – they are fears dogs find it easy to learn. Learning is about strengthening connections already in use. Socialisation is about making sure those connections are solid in the first place. Habituation is part of that process.

There is nothing inevitable about innate or instinctive behaviours.

If I believed that, I wouldn’t have the world’s first Gundog Groenendael X.

Life and experience – including socialisation and habituation – flick the switches on behaviours. Some of those switches flick easily: you don’t have to work hard with a spaniel to get it to use its nose. And some of those switches are ones you’d prefer not to flick, like Heston’s fear of strangers.

So there’s no point saying ‘Don’t socialise your dogs’. It is a fallacious argument. Unless your dog grows up in a bubble, it will be socialised to the individuals around it. It will habituate – or not – to the world around it. But if you have a dog with inbuilt switches for certain undesirable behaviours, you want to do your utmost to use socialisation to make sure they are not scared of strangers or unfamiliar dogs, that they are habituated to stimuli in the world around them. Learning can smooth the rough edges of genetics. And habituation means that you don’t end up carrying your 30kg 4-year-old dog down the stairs because it didn’t cross your tiny mind that a dog might not get what stairs are, less when they’re marble and spiral and slippy and steep.

You can see now why I find it dangerous to post articles with headings like “Why I don’t socialise my puppies.”

Firstly, yes you do socialise them. Unless they live in a box, they are learning how to interact with you. Secondly, what you mean is that you don’t accidentally flick on the switches for fears. Thirdly, if everybody believed that early developmental experiences were so unnecessary, we’d have a much larger number of dogs seeking sanctuary. Thank goodness most people value the importance of early experience. I needn’t really add that the writer of the article has shepherds herself. I wonder why she thinks some of our shelter shepherds are such an unholy behavioural mess if it’s all in the genes? Maybe she would like to try and do some remedial desensitisation and socialisation with a 9-year-old mali who never had the benefit of an enriched puppyhood.

From a shelter point of view, a message that suggests you deprive your dog of early social experiences and that “it’s all in the genes”, is a very damaging one for us. Most of our hard-to-rehome dogs are missing in vital experiences: positive experiences with unfamiliar humans, positive experiences with unfamiliar dogs, experience of novelty and how to cope with it. Not exposing dogs to these things is dangerous and costs them lives. I am not saying this for effect. If your dog is so afraid or aggressive towards unfamiliar humans, many shelters will refuse to take that dog on and that leaves owners with only one choice: euthanasia.

We all need to be aware of the factors that influence canine behaviour. To advise people not to do the one thing that can smooth over the cracks is dangerous. To suggest that it is all in the genes is fatalistic. I believe whole-heartedly that the early experiences of dogs help shape who they become as adult animals. It is our job as their care-takers to make sure we get the balance right between socialisation/habituation and accidental flooding or sensitisation. This is especially true when we know the breed characteristics of the dogs we love. It is our job not to blindly accept those glitches as if we can do nothing about them, but to plan a careful and safe environment in which our young puppies can form a secure base.

It is also our job as dog behaviourists and trainers not to put out information as clickbait just to get people to visit our site. I’m sure the trainer in question has profited enormously from the publicity of her post. Good marketing, perhaps, but certainly not good science and definitely not good advice.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at why order is so important in Dog Good Stuff and Dog Bad Stuff.

Seeing a few posts on Facebook reminded me why I needed to do the follow-up post about common training mistakes.

The first was a video of a ‘balanced’ dog trainer showing his dog walking with a muzzle on and finishing with a game of tug. I was laughing because this guy likes to sell himself as tough, the Alpha of his dogs, and there he is using positive reinforcement and a conditioned pairing. Also, using flooding, since the dog was clearly uncomfortable in the muzzle, but hey. Nothing the trainer would have found quite so offensive as being thought of as a positive trainer! Clear case of Dog Bad Stuff followed by Dog Good Stuff meaning the power of the Bad Stuff is not quite so BAD!

The second was a post about a bin-dipping GWP. The owner had been using something called ‘training discs’ (which sounds like another word for dog frisbees but sadly is just a bunch of some horrible noisy little cymbal-type things) and was disappointed because they weren’t working. Clear case of Dog Bad Stuff (noisy metal things supposed to discourage behaviours) followed by Dog Good Stuff (ill-gotten trash). Once again, the Bad Stuff was not quite so BAD (and the dog was photographed in amidst its ill-gotten gains) because it was followed by some major good stuff. The post unravels with various suggestions of other Dog Bad Stuff which are equally doomed to failure, including using mouse-traps, duct tape and pans. There are lots of people saying ‘put your bin away’ too, which gave me some hope for humanity. One person said they should rent their puppy out to potential owners. Now there’s a pairing! Human Good Stuff (cute puppies!) followed by Human Bad Stuff (constant vigilance and cleaning up) which I thought was funny. There’s nothing like a bin-obsessed puppy to take the edge off the ‘Awwww, puppies!’ feeling.

The third post was one sharing the despair of a good trainer that her client had sought out the ‘superior knowledge’ of Facebook for a Magic Bullet for a behavioural complaint and had a long list of painful ways to stop a behaviour that would be doomed to failure too.

And the fourth was a ‘cute’ video of a weeks-old Mali puppy who was not deterred in the slightest from biting her owner, who was telling her off and yelling ‘no!’, trying to shake her off and yelping. Mixed up Dog Good Stuff and Dog Bad Stuff = devalued, meaningless punishers.

As I explained in the previous post, I’m substituting the term Good Stuff for ‘reinforcers’ because it’s just less jargony. Good stuff includes all manner of sensory and behavioural rewards that we might consider icky or annoying, as well as those we’d traditionally think of as good. Dog Good Stuff runs the gamut from rolling in festering wild boar diarrhea (which will pull my cocker from a heel to go and find it, wherever it is) to beef treats. It includes games such as tug, chase, hide-and-seek and fetch, tapping into their natural canine behaviours like searching, chasing, biting and dissecting. It includes behaviours such as moving forwards on a walk, seeking, licking, jumping or barking. Whilst we might give our dogs a lot of Good Stuff, some of that comes from within. Heston, for instance, my Groenendael X, loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice. Like his owner, no doubt. He has such joy in a fanfare of barks, a volley of vibrant shouting. In fact, when one of my friends died recently, and we had a very windy day, I walked Heston to the top of a nearby hill and did a bit of yelling into the wind. Heston looked at me with a look that can only have said, “Now, see how good THAT feels!”

Bad Stuff is things dogs don’t like or may have to be taught to like. That depends on your dog. For my pocket cocker, that is Baths, Haircuts, Nail Clipping, Eye cleaning, Ear cleaning… any kind of husbandry is offensive to her very spirit. What dogs don’t like depends on their experiences but many of those things don’t have to be taught. You don’t have to teach a dog to avoid pain, for instance. You don’t have to teach them to avoid shocks. If I drop an onion on the floor, even the greedy pocket cocker isn’t interested (though it’s different if cooked). Naturally aversive things are equally sensory – smells, tastes, sensations, noises and sights. Sight is a little bit different. I, for instance, think the thought of Naked Donald Trump to be very aversive. If you papered my bedroom with that image, I’d avoid it completely. I don’t think that works in the same way for dogs. That said, the sight of that blessed shouty terrier down the road is aversive to two of my dogs who try to avoid him. Likewise for me, the sight of a police car in my rear view mirror is enough to make me squirmish and evasive.

If you need to recap learning, have a look at this post.

Just to make it clear – I don’t choose to use Bad Stuff in my work. But I get many clients who come having devalued their Bad Stuff and want to know why:

a) spraying a dog in the face isn’t stopping it humping

b) using a citronella collar isn’t stopping them barking

c) why their dog hasn’t learned to walk to heel with a choke collar

d) why they’ve had to turn the bark collar up to full

e) why their very expensive ‘invisible’ electric fence isn’t working

f) why saying ‘no!’ and yanking on a dog’s collar isn’t making them less reactive

And so on.

I don’t think punishers work. I think it’s easier to hype up the value of a reward than it is to maintain the value of a punisher. I think the potential fallout of punishers is too much of a risk. And finally, there are no circumstances in which management or positive reinforcement hasn’t worked for me yet. But that’s not to say I’m advising you on how to keep a range of brutal, deeply unpleasant punishers valuable. In theory, the best way to keep them valuable is to barely use them at all. (I’d say never!) That way, you can keep something mildly aversive (what Ian Dunbar calls ‘ugly face’ or a ‘no!’) and keep the power of it because you use it so infrequently. Then you never need to use the ‘heavy artillery’ of shock, chokes or prongs. The worst thing about punishers is the more you use them, the more you need to use them.

Just so you are clear.

I’m all about turning the bad stuff in dogs’ lives into neutral stuff, or even good stuff.

So last time I was writing about how one of the worst things we can do is accidentally remove the power of the Good Stuff and the Bad Stuff that we can offer our dogs. And also how we can accidentally turn something neutral into something wonderful or something horrible. It’s all about pairings.

Dogs are good at working out the meaning of things when things happen in patterns. And they work out whether that’s a good pattern for them, or a bad one.

Keys >>>>> walk

Boots >>>>> walk

Keys >>>>> you going out and leaving me

Boots >>>>> you going out and leaving me

They are SO smart like that. Can you see how you can take something that is absolutely meaningless to a dog, like a key, and turn into an object that predicts Most Excellent Dog Stuff or Most Bogus Dog Stuff? We do this every day.

We also know that we can remove the power of something that is Most Bogus Dog Stuff… I don’t yell (much!) in the home. So when I stubbed my toe at 4am the other morning when I stumbled, sleep-deprived, out of bed to let out my dog with dementia for a pee… let’s just say all four dogs shot back to bed, including the dementia dog who half the time doesn’t seem to know where he really is. But when you pair yelling with Dog Good Stuff, as I’m doing at the moment to help prepare a young dog for his trials with customs officers, every time someone yells, that dog thinks it is a bonus predictor of a game of ball. Pairings are powerful ways to take the sting out of the bad stuff.

So we know that stuff works backwards.

If Good Stuff comes last, it makes the stuff before it into Good Stuff too. Things that had been meaningless like boots, cars and harnesses now become things that Spark Dog Joy.

If Bad Stuff comes last, it makes the stuff that comes before into Bad Stuff too. Things that had been meaningless like a vet’s room, a travel crate or a car now become things that Crush Dog Spirits.

So if we follow a prong pop (Bad) with continued walk (Good) the prong pop can become a signal that good stuff will happen.

If we follow a ‘Come on! Good Boy!’ for coming back (Good) with being put on the lead (Bad) then ‘Come on!’ can become a signal that bad stuff will happen.

And we use this all the time in counter-conditioning to teach dogs that a horrible, icky thing that they’ve had a bad experience with is not so bad after all…

It’s not so tough.

When neutral stuff is always followed (fairly immediately) by the same good stuff, it becomes good stuff too.

When bad stuff is always followed (fairly immediately) by the same good stuff, it becomes less bad and eventually might become good.

When good stuff is always followed (fairly immediately) by the same bad stuff, it steals the joy from the good stuff.

When neutral stuff is always followed (fairly immediately) by the same bad stuff, it turns the neutral stuff into a sign that bad stuff will happen.

But you want to know how that works in real life.

Today I’ve got ten unexpected pairings that probably won’t work as they mix up rewards and punishments. The first includes my cat, Basil, who taught me a very important message.

Problem #1: aversion to food

Tuna (Good) followed by Pill (Bad) = turning my cat off Cat Good Stuff.

Before I knew about this powerful crazy Pavlovian magic, I only ever broke out the tuna when I wanted to give my cat a pill. At first that worked. Tricked into eating the pill. Then it didn’t. He’d eat round the pill. Then I tried to force the pill down. You know how that went. Scratches, blood, angry cat. It takes a lot to ‘poison’ a primary reinforcer (things you don’t need to teach an animal to like) yet I managed it. Not only that, I managed to take the sound of the tin opener and turn it into a cue for Basil to hide somewhere unreachable. How to turn Cat Good Stuff into a great predictor of something that is Cat Bad Stuff in one fell swoop.

Solution: teach cats about lots of foods as a kitten (since palettes are hard to expand for cats), give tuna lots more so that it is no longer a 100% predictor of ‘The Horrible Pill Experience’, use lots of different foods so that no single food is a 100% predictor of a pill.

Problem #2: pulling despite physical pain

Leash corrections (Bad) followed by continued walk (Good) = making leash corrections pointless.

I see this all the time. People who walk the dog with a Pop-Pop-Pop on the collar. It is their primary reason for spewing that “Prongs/Chokes don’t hurt” crap. “It’s not working, therefore it can’t be painful.” No, they still hurt. You’ve just made it so that you have gradually desensitised your dog to the experience by pairing it always with a reward. In fact, I was smug about the Master Balanced trainer and his muzzle training because he had to pop his GSD five times in 30 seconds when the dog was ‘heeling’. In fact, I shouldn’t have been smug at all. But can you see how that goes? The more you pop, the more you’ll need to, if you pair it with continued Good Stuff. And the more intensity you’ll need. If your leash corrections aren’t working, why use them?

Solution: teach loose-leash walking. Don’t use Dog Bad Stuff on a walk because it will inevitably be followed by Good Stuff (the walk) so there’s no point.

Problem #3: Bin dipping despite noisy Training Discs placed on top

Crashing training discs (Bad) followed by Bin Treasure (Good) = making training discs a necessary nuisance before revelling in discarded trash

So why did those training discs work once or twice and then stop? Because once the noise is predictable – and it’s always predictable on your third or fourth try – if it’s not more aversive than the treasure is rewarding, it’ll stop working. That crash is a predictor that you have completed the challenge of getting to the trash and you can take home your delightful garbage reward to enjoy at your leisure.

Solution: put the bin away. Put safety locks on your cupboards. Be tidy and don’t be cross at a dog for scavenging. They are being very good at Dog Stuff as far as they are concerned, whereas you are being very bad at predicting Dog Stuff. The mess punishes YOU, so YOU need to learn from it – not the dog.

Problem #4: Counter surfing despite sticky tape or tin foil on surface

Sticky tape/tin foil (Bad) followed by Counter-foraged Chicken carcass/Birthday Cake (Good) = making unpleasant experiences a sign that there is something really good up there.

If your dog can get to Counter Swag, your aversive is just a predictable hurdle. If they manage to get the chicken carcass, it’s a hurdle worth overcoming. Don’t forget: jackpot learning, where there is a 1 in a 100 chance of Very Excellent Counter Swag, can be more powerful than 1 to 1 rewards. Tilly my cocker knows this. Last night, she swagged two diet crackers from the table. Do you think despite their disgusting inedible qualities that she will stop hopping onto the table in my absence? Hell no. I have lived with her 7 years and whilst she only gets swag once in a while, it’s more than enough to reinforce the habit.

Solution: Tidy up and restrict access to counters. If there is never anything good on the counter, there is no reason to think it might contain Dog Good Stuff and for your dog to be seeking out some kind of treasure. A dog who never does this behaviour never learns to. Ironic that my only dog who needs a chair to assist her is the only one who does it. Thank God my bigger dogs didn’t. When I had the handsome 45kg shelf-surfing Ralf and he used to get onto the kitchen shelves, I put stuff in sealed boxes.

Problem #5: Getting on the couch despite obstacle course

Obstacle course/falling chairs (Bad) placed on couch followed by 3 hours of lazy afternoon napping on DFS’s finest corduroy couch (Good)

Another one that isn’t technically a devalued punisher (like the one before) since it depends on the fact that you need your aversive to be more powerful than your reward. But if the reward is 3 hours of comfortable napping (or even fairly uncomfortable between the obstacles) then it takes the sting out of the punisher and devalues it. A clatter of falling chairs might be enough to scare the dog a handful of times, but if the incentive is big enough and the punisher is predictable enough, it’ll soon stop being a reason not to get on the couch. Then you’re left with another situation in which you need to up the level of punishment. Mouse-traps, anyone?

Solution: make sure your dog is never allowed on the couch and that they have a very comfy bed/couch of their own. Teach them to get on or off when asked. Or crate train them. Make sure they never learn that couches are for dogs. Take my dining room chairs, for example, my dogs don’t sit on those because they have never been invited to. Or, do as I have done today and foster a very stinky, menacing Yorkshire terrier and put him on the couch in question. Strangely, the couch that he is on is empty (except for him) and the dog beds are all full. Kidding, of course. If your dogs have learned that couches are comfortable, and you have aided and abetted that, be prepared to teach them on/off when asked and allow a bit of couch time, restrict their access to the couch and make their own bed so good that a couch seems redundant.

Problem #6: thinking Ape Good Stuff is Dog Good Stuff

A dog comes to you for contact (Good) and then patting it on the head (Bad)

It wasn’t until I went in for a ‘coochy-coo’ squishy cuddle with Tilly that I realised the lip-licking, the head-turning were evasive movements. She did not like that coochy-cooing. You can use this effectively for a dog who attention-seeks. Amigo, my senile old griffon dude likes to rest his head on my knee. The problem is that he does it ALL the time and he often comes in for it when I’m sitting with my other dogs who then think he isn’t respecting their boundaries which causes grumbles. I do two gentle pats to the head and he goes away. It’s amazing to think that something we think a dog should like – being touched – can be unpleasant enough to send a serial cuddle monster into a dog who goes away. And I’m talking the kind of ‘pat-pat’ that is so gentle most of us would think it a perfectly acceptable greeting for a dog. The trouble is that if your pet arrives for contact and you touch it – completely innocuously! – in what would be the most mild aversive, you may find your dog doesn’t approach you at all for petting.

Solution: teach your dog that petting is followed by good stuff, so that your ape-like neutral/negative handling becomes a positive by association. With Lidy, she likes licking my face, so I let her do that when she has had some Chimp Hugs from me. Those chimp hugs get the backwards buzz of the pleasure of licking as they are a 100% predictor that I will pucker up for a good snog with a toothy mali.

Problem #7: turning neutral stuff into nasty stuff.

Problems getting your dog into the bathroom (neutral) because you always give them a bath (Bad) or problems getting your dog to have its nails clipped (neutral) because you pinched them once (Bad) or turning your dog’s name (neutral/positive) into something bad by always telling them off when you use it. Whether it’s turning car journeys into a nightmare, baths into chaotic maulings, turning dog coats into a wrestling match, you can easily turn neutral stuff into nasty stuff.

Take their name for example.

Now under normal circumstances, if you give your dog the occasional name call to distract them, like I just did with Heston who decided to alarm bark at a lorry for no apparent reason, it’s not a big deal, unless it’s nearing a 1:1 ratio. Now mostly when I say “Heston!” it’s for good stuff. Probably not as frequently as I would think, but if the only time I ever said his name was to tell him off, then expecting it to get his attention and aid a recall is madness. One of my neighbours has a spaniel called Filou. He quite often yells at Filou to stop barking. It’s 100% likely that when he says ‘Filou!’ that it’s supposed to punish him for barking. Doesn’t work, because barking is its own reward and shouting a dog’s name is not enough to distract or punish, but also it’s a 100% prediction of worse stuff to come because Filou has a shock collar and my joyless neighbour gives him a zap with it. When he was trying to shout Filou back to the house an hour ago, do you think it worked?

Some people will tell you that you need to teach a new cue if you’ve poisoned an old one by turning it into Dog Bad Stuff, but that’s not necessary really. All you’ve got to do is break the association. If your dog thinks cheese means a pill, make cheese mean nothing by using it all the time. If you want Come! to regain its value, make it 100% followed by Amazing Dog Stuff once more. I think sometimes we forget the importance of ‘refreshing’ the association between a name and a consequence, or between ‘come!’ and a reward. A bit of a jackpot from time to time will make sure that habit doesn’t fall out of fashion.

The only time I’d advise changing a dog’s name, for instance, is in situations like poor Filou’s. That would take a lot of work to change it back to a positive thing again.

Solution: make sure that it’s not a 1:1 relationship between the neutral stuff and bad consequences. If you need to get your dog in the car for the vet, then you need to know that there is no way your dog can predict that cars = vets. If cars mean five other things, then that association is less likely to form. Better still is to get your dog into pairing the neutral stuff like bathrooms and cars with ‘good stuff’. Do you think you’d have a problem getting your dog into the shower if you fed them in the shower? I groom Tilly in the kitchen. I feed her in the kitchen. We do other things in the kitchen too (otherwise every time I went to the kitchen, she’d think I was going to feed her) but there is no way she could know that if she goes into the kitchen with me, she’s going to get groomed. She does know when the Cupboard of Doom opens, so I put her clippers in the Kong cupboard. Do you think it’s still the Cupboard of Doom? If you want to remove the association between an event and the thing that precedes it, do the thing that precedes it hundreds of times in hundreds of ways until it is absolutely and utterly meaningless. If the event produces a fear reaction, you may need to be careful how you do this, so that it is absolutely nothing horrible and you don’t accidentally flood your dog with horrible emotions, but if it’s just unpleasant, breaking the 1:1 relationship between the two is crucial

It’s not just about following good with bad or bad with good. It can also about how you can take a fairly unpleasant thing and intensify it with Bad Stuff or how you can take a good thing and intensify it with Good Stuff.

Problem #8: Aggression on lead

Seeing another dog (bad if you’re a dog-aggressive dog) and being told ‘No!’ or being popped/jerked/cranked or shocked (Bad +)

This just amps up the bad of the first bit, since it now predicts more bad stuff. If I don’t like Donald Trump, you pinching my ear every time I see him isn’t going to help. Remember too that it’s about that 1:1 relationship. If every time I see Donald Trump it becomes a predictor of an ear pinch, I’m going to end up dreading seeing him more than I already do. If every time my dog-aggressive dog jerks and lunges towards another dog and I pop her choke collar, it is a 100% predictor of some major Bad Stuff happening.

Problem #9: not being able to solve a jumping-up problem

Jumping up (Good) and getting attention by being told off (person thinks it is Bad Dog Stuff, dog thinks it is Good Dog Stuff)

What you are essentially doing here is reinforcing a behaviour that the dog likes doing already. If you join in and shout at them when they bark, then you’re reinforcing the barking. If you have a dog who is doing something perfectly doggie (humping, mouthing, chewing) attention for doing it, you’re reinforcing the behaviour. If you laugh at a humper, you’re more likely to see that behaviour again. If you give attention to a dog who is barking to get your attention, if you pet a dog who nudges you to get attention, you’re heaping good on already good behaviours and you’ll find them hard to break.

Solution: give zero reinforcement for jumping up, teach an alternative behaviour that you can’t do at the same times as jumping up (like a sit or a down-stay) and only reward that.

Problem #10 Accidentally turning a neutral thing like a thunder shirt into a predictor of Bad Stuff.

Amigo doesn’t have very peaceful nights anymore. That’s especially true if there’s a storm or high winds. I put a thunder shirt on him and give him herbal remedies when a storm is forecast. The thunder shirt and the pills become a very good predictor of a storm and make him more anxious not less.

Solution: use thunder shirts and give herbal remedies plenty of other times as well so that it is no longer a reliable predictor of storms.

The same is true of all anti-anxiety things you do with your dog. If you only do them when you can predict your dog will be in an anxious situation, as soon as you reach for the thunder shirt or you stick on the calming music, you are giving your dog a 100% 1:1 predictor that a storm is coming. Or, do it long enough before the storm so that there is no connection between the two events in the dog’s mind. That doesn’t have to be massively long.

So, there you have it… ways that Pavlov can massively interfere with your animal’s life and training, and some quick ideas of how to avoid some common pitfalls.

 

Fostering animals for your local shelter is one of the nicest things you can do, but it can also be one of the most challenging. I say that having had about four hours sleep with a howling cat, a whimpering lost soul of a York and one of my own who has dementia and is up and down all night.

Not that it’s all like this. Some fosters are absolute dreams and fit in immediately. Some are so easy that it’s untrue. Some will become permanent members of your household.

I don’t like to think of myself as a fosterer. If you asked me what I do, I wouldn’t place it high on my list of ways I support our shelter. That said, I’ve had almost fifty dogs and puppies through my doors in the last three years, and almost twice as many kittens. But I know there are people who are much more involved in fostering for other rescues, and I’m sure they’d have plenty of support to offer too.

You aren’t reading this because you have easy fosters. You’re reading this to be prepared if you’re thinking about it and to find some resources if you’re a regular fosterer. In the vast majority of cases, the advice that follows is for the worst-case scenario for dogs who arrive with every single problem on the planet. In reality, very few dogs are like this or need all the precautions, but it’s vital to understand how to prepare for all eventualities.

If you’re thinking of fostering, make sure that you are prepared both practically and emotionally.

The guidance below isn’t an absolute, but you may want to notify the shelter about your own situation and they can do their best to find a dog who suits your own practical situation.

It helps if you’re a couple or you have good friends who live very near. If you’re a single fosterer like me, it can be really hard if you have a dog who has separation anxiety or who needs a permanent presence. It’s no fun having to enlist dogsitters and neighbours to help out, I promise. It’s also really hard if you have to work. If you have a sleepless night for one reason or another, getting up to work is seriously no fun. If you work from home, that is much more practical, since you can be present. If your hours are flexible, that’s also a bonus, as you can catnap if you need to. Believe me, this morning I’m feeling the need for a lie-in! If you have a partner, if you don’t work full-time or you work from home, fostering is much more likely to work for you with a wider range of dogs than if you are single and if you work.

You also find you need the right sort of house. A secure garden is a must. You just don’t know if your new foster is an escape artist or not. When dogs arrive, they can be really disorientated and may try to find shelter. Although you mean well, your new foster may see you as a huge threat. If your garden is not secure, you’ll run into problems. Whilst it may seem achieveable to put them on a lead, it really isn’t a practical or perfect solution. If you don’t have access to a garden or secure space, you are going to find that the number of dogs you may be able to take to be very limited indeed. Younger dogs need the space to let off steam and older dogs’ bladders don’t function as well as they once did. Believe me, it’s little fun to get up three or four times in the night – and less so if you have to get dressed to take the dog out on the lead.

Having sympathetic neighbours is a bonus for barking issues.

If you are very houseproud or garden-proud, being a fosterer may not work for you. Dogs dig, and you may find yourself frustrated if your new foster digs up your newly-planted roses.

Wipe-clean floors and walls will make a difference too, since not all dogs will arrive housetrained. They may well have been house-trained once, but just because they know not to pee in one house doesn’t mean they feel the same about all houses, especially if you have other dogs. You’d be amazed by how high up a dog can aim, believe me. Low-hanging curtains are itching to be marked. Leather couches and metal chair legs are much better to clean than fabric sofas and wood. The more your house has dogs through, the more likely accidents are to happen, I’m afraid. If this bothers you, then you may find there are a smaller number of fosters available coming in from surrenders and are ‘guaranteed’ house-trained. However, with any change in environment, there can be upsets.

If you have a house with stairs or you live in an apartment that is up a flight of stairs, this may also pose problems for dogs. Not all dogs know about stairs, and stairs can be very scary. If you foster youngsters of large breeds or oldies, stairs may not be possible at all. Steps can pose a similar problem. You may find that dogs don’t cope well when they are in one part of the building and they can hear you in another. Although this is something that dogs can learn to cope with, it is not so easy to teach them when they are with you for an indefinite period.

Having indoor doors is also helpful, especially if you have dogs yourself. A makeshift X-pen or puppy pen may help, but not if you foster St Bernards. Remember too that doors pose no obstacle for some dogs, like Flika who is here with me now. Luckily, she is not an escape artist, but having bolts and hooks can also help. Secure, lockable gates can help as well. There will be times you will need to separate your animals or when you will need to have a safe space if your foster dog is upset by arrivals and departures.

Think too about the handles on your doors if you have an escape artist or a jumper. Some handles can be sadly too easy for collars to get hooked on and I’ve known a number of dogs strangled this way. A breakaway collar with your number on it is vital, as is a microchip. Newly found dogs are more likely to be disorientated and wander off, so it’s helpful that people know how to get hold of you. All my fosters get a breakaway collar (which will release if snagged) and have my number on their collar (hoping they don’t lose it!) because if they do get out, your neighbours might not necessarily realise that the dog is staying with you.

If you have a dog who escapes, you may also need good kit to walk them (and maybe to leave on for 48 hours or so). I like the Ruffwear Webmaster harnesses for this, but they are expensive and you can’t always get one quickly. The six buckles and long bodice make it practically inescapable. Greyhound and whippet harnesses may also work. Put a lead on the collar and a lead on the harness and secure both with a carabiner if they pull. Nothing can be worse than a scared foster doing a runner. Do away with walks for a week if you are worried about this. You may also need a special, secure harness if you are fostering a dog-aggressive or person-aggressive dog, as well as a muzzle and the skill on how to train them to wear it. It goes without saying that my foster dogs don’t go off the lead – ever. Not even if I think they won’t toddle off. It doesn’t matter if they are well-balanced and follow you everywhere.

In the home, make sure you have a safe place to contain your dogs away from each other when they are unsupervised. This week brings yet another sad tale of a bigger dog killing a smaller one. 10kg is a big enough difference that a fight can end tragically, and whether it’s a case of predatory drift, where a larger dog attacks a smaller dog, or something completely different, it’s vital you can keep your biggies and your littlies apart. That is especially true in the garden.

Two of my fosters. Effel the Beauceron had some predatory drift, chased small things and nipped. No way I was letting him out in the garden at the same time as Dougie the Minpin. Sadly, Dougie had very severe separation anxiety and since a crate couldn’t contain him, it was not possible for him to stay longer than the few days he did. Sometimes, being a fosterer means admitting that there are problems you aren’t equipped to deal with. Don’t ever take your own dogs’ behaviour as an absolute. My old mali dude Tobby was the most dog-friendly non-aggressive dog there could be, and he still got a case of the chases with a young hound I had here to stay. Not so big a problem when the young hound could easily outrun an ancient old rickety arthritic malinois, but the last thing I wanted was a full-force, full-health 50kg beauceron catching a 4kg minpin.

Flika also has separation anxiety like Dougie did, but she is bigger, it’s less of a problem to leave her unsupervised with my other dogs. But know that it’s not the best of ideas to take a foster if you can’t guarantee they can be supervised a lot of the time. Being inside and dry is not the only reason to take them out of a shelter if they’ve got to spend 10 hours alone whilst you’re at work.

You also have to think about food times and sleep. It’s best to have a range of beds and not to take a dog if your own dogs have resource guarding issues that you can’t manage. Whilst your own dogs may steer clear of your grumpy cocker, your foster dogs have no idea that they’ll unleash seven circles of Hell if they so much as look at your dog. I usually feed fosters separately, and I put their food down first, because my dogs are well-trained and know how to wait. Don’t feed your foster last in some misguided ‘pack rank’ sequence as if they haven’t been trained to have manners around other dogs eating, you may unleash a very nasty fight. When I feel like my fosters are ready to join the ranks, I give them more (sometimes packed out with cooked vegetables) so that I know they aren’t going to finish first and go touring about the other dogs checking out their bowls as they finish. You’ll forget this from time to time – but with a semi-blind foster, a deaf dog, a grumpy cocker of my own who eats slowly and guards her food, a tiny York and a dog of my own who outweighs him ten times, I really don’t want the mother of all scraps in the kitchen.

Get more beds than you can possibly think you need and make sure you’re prepared for a little upheaval at night. The older the dog, the more likely they’ll have quite intractable sleeping patterns that you might need to live with for a while. You might not always know those sleeping patterns, but if they seem agitated at night, you can be sure you’ve not got it quite right. The way Dougie dived on the bed and wriggled down underneath the covers told me everything I needed to know about where he’d been sleeping – or, at least – where he preferred to sleep. I have to be honest, it’s one reason I like the oldies and the biggies – they usually are happy with a basket. Few people have giant dogs sleeping in their bed, and in general, you can go off breed in some way to help you decide. Don’t be surprised if your beagle foster is not used to being indoors, if your husky is hankering for the garden and if your minpin foster sneaks under the covers. I’d say to keep with the rules you intend to follow up on (no couches, no bedroom) or those that will make the dog adoptable (being crate-trained, sleeping quietly alone in the kitchen) but in reality, those first nights for a dog can be so unsettling that now is not the time to get into teaching plans about how you want the dog to be able to sleep. You are a vital stepping stone but there’s no point starting a crate-training programme if you don’t know you don’t have weeks to work it through.

For behavioural problems, you’re managing a triage station. That’s to say you’re there to assess and to manage rather than to treat. Whilst there will be many things that you might be able to teach, you have no idea if the dog will be with you for three days, three weeks or three months, so starting on a programme that may not suit their permanent owner is pointless. My aims are to keep distress to a minimum, not to teach the dog how to fit into my household.

You ask yourself three things: Can I manage the environment to prevent the behaviour? Can I quickly and effectively teach a different behaviour? Is this too big a problem for me to deal with and the dog needs to go to another foster home?

Sometimes you can manage. Sometimes you can treat. Sometimes it needs more help than you can physically provide. Knowing when to manage, when to intervene and when you need to pass is vital.

I think that’s the most important message about the practicalities of fostering: you have to be adaptable, flexible and ready to react. You have to fit around the dog, rather than help the dog adapt to you. Most dogs fit into your patterns very easily, but some will not. If it’s really clear that the dog needs more than you can offer, it’s vital that you get in touch with the rescue that you’re fostering for. It doesn’t preclude the dog from being fostered elsewhere or finding a home. Just because you can’t be there 24/7 for a dog with separation anxiety doesn’t mean the rescue won’t have homes where there is always someone in, or a neighbour to visit. Neither does it mean they won’t find a home. Forewarned is forearmed.

Hygiene is also a practicality I’m going to mention, because it is important. Vaccination of your own dogs is going to be important, but know that if your dog is coming from the pound, you need to be aware of things like kennel cough, dog gastro, giardia, conjunctivitis, canine influenza, skin mites, ear mites, leptospirosis and so on. These are not usually anything that would be a problem – it’s like the risk you take if you run a guest house. But… if you have sick, old or immunosuppressed dogs, you need to make it clear that you can only take surrenders or ones that have had a very thorough health check. If you have a dog with severe flea allergies, you need to make sure your new arrival is treated before they arrive. Keep up to date with wormer treatments, as tapeworm eggs are spread by fleas. Other things that are contagious and can be problematic include mange, ringworm and ear mites. You won’t even think of these things until they matter. One dog through with ear mites, could mean one ear infection for one of your own oldies, one vestibular attack and you’re severely risking the health of your own pets. A thorough check-up is more than enough, and if your dogs are young and robust, you will probably find that things pass them by. But if you have an oldie or a dog who is sick, it may be time to have a rest for a bit. Bear in mind that the risk of these is slightly higher if they have come from ill-kept pounds or have lived in communal conditions, but for a dog who has come from a clean pound or has been in isolation, the risk is no more than it would be in any social setting. If your dogs are healthy, infection may pass them by, but please check with your vet.

The emotional impact of fostering can be hard. You need to be aware of compassion fatigue. I was certainly aware of it this morning between the screaming cat and the whining dog! Sometimes you say yes when you should say no. The longer you have been fostering, the more likely it is you’ll get tired. Turnover is exhausting, for both you and your own pets. Sometimes you need a break, and that is absolutely essential. I needed a break when Effel went – I’d had almost two years of continuous fostering, with numbers ranging from between 4 dogs to 16 dogs. Sometimes it is just too much and you need to have a way to say so. Even if the dogs are really well-behaved, you need to have times when you can say no. The sheer number of kittens I’d had through was just emotionally and physically exhausting. There are times when you feel absolute despair about the way society treats its animals. I don’t need to tell you that I feel a bit like that at the moment, with an exhausted, aged Yorkshire terrier here, and a half-blind, wobbly old ex-guard dog who arrived with cystitis and no doubt had a stroke of some kind at the shelter. Doing it all the time is exhausting, even if it’s all you do. The adoptions and post-adoption stories will remind you often of the good you are doing, but it’s not always enough when you feel like you are fighting a rising tide.

You also need to be aware of the spectrum of emotions you’ll have for your foster. There will be some you will be attached to with your whole heart, who you will wish you could keep. I loved Effel, but it wasn’t practical to keep him. He and one of my own dogs didn’t get on particularly, and neither was truly happy. But I tortured myself over it. When they are easy, you may find yourself advertising them less or being less of a participant in moving them on, but that can have long-term implications for dogs who are then uprooted to go and live in another new home. When they are ‘tough’ adoptions, you may also find yourself feeling guilty for needing them to find their home, especially if they have had a tough life or if they are bonded to you. Sometimes your dogs will fall in love with them and you won’t!

Other times the foster may be really hard and you will be really glad to see them move on. Despite your feelings, you’ve got to be honest about their behaviour. Glossing over it to find them a home will only end up as a failed adoption and the dog possibly being returned. One of my fosters was a barker. Another had springs for legs. One played horribly with my own dog and had to be kept separate most of the time. For problems like these, you may find yourself needing to be honest about whether you can manage it, whether you can treat it or whether the dog requires a different foster home. Don’t feel guilty about those times you’ve felt relief that the dog has found a home.

To be successful at fostering, having a mentor to help can really help. Having someone there to help you through with the common niggles is important… what to do when they don’t eat, when they’re a bit unwell, when they won’t settle, when they’re not house-trained, when they bark for attention…

Being in regular contact with the shelter or rescue is vital too. You can neither be a primadonna nor a pushover. There are times you’ve got to say: “this animal needs a vet, now!” and know it will be taken seriously. You’ve also got to know their protocols and systems. Having a timeline in place is helpful too – in case you need to go on holiday, if you are needed for other activities. This is also useful in case the animal just doesn’t move on or find a home. You’ve got to know how long it is that you would be prepared to foster for. And you need to know who to ask to settle a bill, to cough up for washing powder or specialist food if necessary.

You’ll have to help out with advertising, too. The best fosterers are ones who make a concerted effort to keep photos, videos and information up to date. A dog who is not advertised and regularly updated is a dog who will be with you a long time. Nobody cares if your photos are poor – what matters is that there are lots of them. It matters too that dogs are accurately described.

What will also help is a basic understanding of the animal’s needs too. If you have puppies, a knowledge of canine development is essential. What point is there in ‘housing’ puppies only to turn out dogs who haven’t had the best start in life? It’s not enough to say ‘well, it’s better than they’d get in the shelter.’

Likewise with geriatric dogs. Having a good knowledge of how to cope with declining sight, hearing and bladder control is vital, but it’s also useful to know a bit about various degenerative conditions so you can keep an eye out for them. Having an understanding beyond ‘well, I had an old dog once’ is vital to understand a geriatric dog’s needs.

There are plenty of other things you will benefit from being a bit interested in: nutrition, health, development, life cycles, behaviour. You are in the scary position of acting as a surrogate shelter. Sometimes a dogsitter is more than enough (and there have been times when that is what I have been!) but there are also times when you need to know more than the average person about canine behaviour, training and health if you want to be able to take on more challenging cases. Some dogs are going to need nothing more than a roof over their heads, a bowl of food and a walk now and again. Some will need more than that.

What follows are links to some other articles that you may find helpful. They are written for adopters but work equally well for fosters. For those tackling a behaviour, look for the ‘environmental management’ tips too.

• Kitten fostering
• Introducing a new dog
• The first few days
• Trigger stacking
• Introducing new dogs
• Introducing dogs and cats
• Dog proofing your home
• Puppies
• Fearful dogs
• Resource Guarding
• Advertising shelter animals
• How to take good photos of your foster dog
• How to manage a multi-dog household

Problem behaviours:

• Biting
• Poor Socialisation
• Chewing
• Destruction
• Digging or escaping
• Fearful behaviour
• House-soiling
• Humping and mounting
• Jumping up
• Poor recall
• Teenage dogs
• Escaping (in depth)