Doin’ the duty…Kenai, 3 yrs

There’s one thing that I’ve noticed about general dog training info. Okay, there’s innumerable things I have noticed…but there’s one thing that maybe could use a little more frequent clarification: the distinction between instinctive behavior and learned behavior.

A learned behavior is pretty easily explained: it’s something the dog has figured out how to do in return for something they want. That can manifest as a lovely sit on command. It can manifest in a less than ideal way too, such as barking at inappropriate times will bring a bone to shush them.

Because a learned behavior is well, learned, it can be encouraged or eradicated with relative ease by what trainers call “operant conditioning”. That’s a fancy way of saying you can teach and un-teach with the use of rewards. Or the lack thereof.

Instinctive behavior is another matter. It can be either a universal “dog thing”, such as being hardwired for social pack life, or it can be a breed specific trait. Either way, instinctive behavior will not be removed (what trainers call extinction) no matter how much you try to “train”.

You may modify or control the behavior but the tendency will always be there. It’s like the difference between software (learned) and the operating system (instinctive).

Since this blog belongs to Kenai, we’ll take a trait that’s common among Danes: intelligent guarding. Danes have an especially well developed ability to discern what is a threat and what isn’t a threat to say, the toddler they live with.

All dogs have this ability, but you wouldn’t expect a happy lab to be as vigilant over the younger or more vulnerable members of their family as a Dane would. Yes that’s a generalization, but a fairly accurate one. Danes, at least the adults, often make excellent babysitters.

You may “train” a Dane to not handle the threat themselves, by modifying their instinctive response to put themselves between your 9 year old and an angry neighbor whose window was broken by a ball. But it will not come naturally to them nor easily to you. And it may fail altogether if your goal is to eliminate the tendency altogether. 

You could teach a Dane to do a specific activity like ring the door bell if the neighborhood “bad dog” is trying to get under the fence after your poodle. You could teach the Dane to press an alarm button if someone’s prowling around peeking in windows while you’re gone.

If your Dane is guarding inappropriately, such as not recognizing the mailman is one of the good guys, you will usually be able to alter that with treats and training. Change the association and the Dane will learn to see the mailman as treat time. 

But he’ll still let you know when the mailman comes.

You will never really train the instinct to discern and heightened willingness to protect out of them. Such traits are built into the breed. Some Danes more, some Danes less. But they are natural protectors, and smart ones.

Any instinctive behavior, whatever it may be in whatever breed you have, must have an outlet. If you don’t provide that outlet in a way that is acceptible to you, the dog will find their own way to satisfy that part of their nature.

Frustration, insecurity, destructiveness, even aggressiveness can result when a hunting dog isn’t ever allowed to sniff a trail or a cattle dog doesn’t have something to herd. You have the opportunity to chose what is sniffed or herded, but not whether there will be sniffing and herding.

I think perhaps some of the difficulties in training a dog come when we don’t consciously recognize the difference and don’t treat differently a learned and an instinctive behavior. 

How many dog owners are frustrated trying to make the terrier not dig anywhere at all?

Most all trainers use operant conditioning to teach learned behaviors or make undesired learned behaviors end. You can teach the terrier not to dig here with operant conditioning, but you will never teach them not to dig period. Easy enough to just give them a sand pile with a bone buried in it to find.

But I’m a dog owner who foolishly tried to train the hunt-n-chase outta Kenai. BB’s no problem, it don’t mean that much to him. Guarding does though. I’d sooner be able to pound down a cinder block wall with my head than make Kenai’s outdoorsman ways go extinct.

So if you’re struggling with a behavior in your pooch, I’d suggest trying to decide if you are fighting an instinct. If you are, you’d probably fare better trying to modify how the instinct is satisfied through operant conditioning training. 

Instincts just really don’t go extinct. You can take a software program off your computer, but the operating system remains.

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A cool thought about dog learning comes from http://www.theotherendoftheleash.com/what-do-words-mean-to-dogs#comment-132321 about how and if dogs understand words, and differentiate between nouns and verbs.

When I tried to teach him [Willie] to touch or pick up a toy based on a different word (“ball” or “rope”), he became hopelessly confused. He became so stressed over the entire operation that I dropped it and went on to teach him other things. My best guess is that he had categorized all signals as requests for action, not as labels of an object.

Well Willie is a highly trained herding dog. His whole life, and probably brain development, has been oriented to actions. I’ve never had a Dane who struggled with at least simple labeling.

Not to sound like arrogant bragging, mind you, but my guys and most of the Danes I know of just don’t have any trouble seperating a noun from a verb. Nearly all have been simple companions. 

I would like to suggest that may be due to how different their lifestyle and training as puppies is from Willies’. When I talked to my guys, I wasn’t neccessarily asking them to do something. I sorta left them to make their own connections between words and things.

And most importantly, I wasn’t frequently asking them for specific actions. The hear-and-do parts of their brains weren’t stimulated as much as Willie’s. The recognize for no particular reason and decide for yourself parts of the brain was more stimulated than Willie’s.

how many Dane owners have seen their dogs check something out and do nothing with the object? Just seeing what’s there?

Could that also be a breed thing? Collies and herding dogs top the list when it comes to operant conditioned learning skills, like agility. All action oriented and human orchestrated activities they excell at and have as instinctive behaviors.

Danes, not so much. They are less driven to cued action if you know what I mean. Can they? Certainly. But they are about halfway down the list of top agility breeds. They are on a bit of a different operating system from collies as a breed (another generalization).

I wonder, and this is just total wondering from an amatuer, if my Danes learned to recognize objects on their own just because they there there, rather than learning an object for what it does or they have to do with it? That made putting a word to it easier?

Noun vs Verb kinda thing, without anywhere near as much formal verb-learning as Willie?

Just a thought.

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Meanwhile in moving land…Robin the realtor/auction gal has offered to help me move boxes and stuff over the weekend! We’ll save the heavy furniture for the remodel guys who offered (Gosh Kenny’s been good to us over the years) but at $50 hr I’ll leave just the big stuff for them.

I hope to get the bulk of the boxed stuff in the new house over the weekend with Robin’s assistance. The muscle tremors are starting up in earnest now, even in the AM, so I’m running out of time to get done, ya know?

Once the muscles give out, they give out for a weeks at a time. I’ll be falling alot, and not be able to stay up long without laying down. In one bad flare I had less than an hour of puttering around the house before I totally had to lay down. Going to the grocery was often impossible for me.

It does go away with a long enough period of “rest” after the extended exertion is over, as CFS is somewhat episodic. But I don’t have a convenient period to rest until we’re moved in. The fibro pain I do okay ignoring for the most part, but there’s just no way around the fatigue when it gets bad. 

 I don’t want to be so wiped out I can’t tend the veggies enough. It’s worrying me now.

Just a few more days…then by heavens I’m getting the world’s greatest and longest massage!

So today’s the day we close on the new house and start shifting! I’ll get an early start–loading the truck with what’s out in the shop about 7 am once the dogs are fed. I have to be at the house at 9 am for the survey, and see do I need to make changes to the fence layout.

Today, Saturday, and Wednesday are looking to be the busiest days. It’s grit my teeth and keep on keepin on time. I’m immensely fortunate to have the help I have, too.

talk at ya’ll later…