“When I’m training a dog I develop a relationship with that dog. He’s my buddy and I want to make training fun,” says Dr. Ian Dunbar. “Training a dog to me is on a par with learning to dance with my wife or teaching my son to ski. These are fun things we do together. If anyone even talks about dominating the dog or hurting him or fighting him or punishing him, don’t go there.”
Dr. Dunbar is perhaps the world’s most respected authority on dog training and behavior, combining sound scientific theory and gentle common sense implementation. He was “dog whispering” long before Cesar Millan.
In part one of this interview, Dr. Dunbar, founder of Sirius Dog Training in the San Francisco Bay Area, talked about the crucial importance of early training and socialization for young puppies. Here in the conclusion, he shares the nuts and bolts of training dogs of all ages, including some counter-intuitive advice about bites.
A disclaimer: Dr. Dunbar is a trained professional with decades of experience, so use caution and common sense when applying any of his methods, especially with a “reactive” dog or a dog you don’t know. When in doubt, consult with a professional trainer. For more information, please refer to Dr. Dunbar’s many books and videos, as well as his information-packed website, DogstarDaily.com
Allen St. John: How did you get your start in animal training?
Ian Dunbar: I grew up on a farm and my grandfather quit school when he was 12, but when it came to common sense and animals, he was the smartest person I’ve ever met, before or since. He taught me that to touch an animal is an earned privilege. It’s not a right.
With every animal you have to build its confidence around people because people do some crazy and stupid things. You don’t want a 1,000 pound horse taking on a person, because the person is going to lose. This is common sense animal handling. This has disappeared from dog ownership and we have to bring it back.
ASJ: Let’s start by defining some terms.
ID: Training is about giving your dog social savvy and confidence so that your dog is cool in your house and you can walk him so that he can greet anyone.
We have three types of problems:
Manners: Come, stay, sit when greeting people. You can teach that in a couple of days.
Behavior: Chewing, digging, barking, house soiling. The longer the dog has been doing it or the older the dog, the longer this is going to take.
Temperament problems. Biting, fighting, fearfulness. Maybe you can’t resolve this at all.
ASJ: Does that depend on the age of the dog?
ID: If a dog is fearful and you pick it up at three months of age, it’ll take a week to resolve this problem. A five-month old dog? It’ll take you three-to-six months. An eight-month old dog? Probably a couple of years. And the dog is never going to be what it would have been in terms of being confident around people
ASJ: Is part of the problem that people let the puppies get away with everything and don’t get serious about training until they’re almost full grown.
ID: I start people out with a visualization process, showing them the cutest puppy.
I know you’re all going to go Awwwwwww. But here’s what I see. Underneath is a bladder and bowels and teeth. He’s deceptively cute, but he’s filling up with urine that needs to be deposited somewhere. And we have these teeth, and this little puppy soon have massive teeth like this. And I show them a picture of an adult dog’s mouth.
Everything your puppy does, I want you to visualize him doing that as an adult animal doing that. If it’s not appropriate simply say, “Puppy, we don’t do that here. We don’t jump on people or grab their trouser leg or bite their hair or growl when they’re taking a bone. Why? Because that would be one hell of a problem if an adult dog did that.
But it is the most difficult thing to sell, that prevention is easier, quicker and safer than cures. My whole life has been about preventing these utterly predictable and all too common problems. But it’s a difficult sell.
ASJ: That’s why you emphasize the importance of early socialization.
ID: This all started when I had a malamute puppy and they told me I had to wait until he was six months to a year old to take him to training class. I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard. I have a malamute and if I wait until then the dog will be completely uncontrollable. So I started my own puppy kindergarten classes and they became instantly successful, and it spread round the world.
This is the last thing I want to do in my career. I want to wind the clock back earlier. I want people to know that puppy class is brilliant, but it’s too little, too late. (For more about the importance of puppy socialization, see part one of this interview with Dr. Dunbar.)
ASJ: When do you want to start looking for a trainer?
ID: It’s very good to look for a trainer as you’re looking for the puppy, to help you choose the puppy, and have an in-home consultation the first day you have the puppy.
ASJ: Where do you look?
ID: The best place to go is the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, they’re the largest pet dog trainer association in the world. They have a trainer search and you can just punch in your zip code.
ASJ: Okay, you’ve got some names. How do you narrow down the selection?
ID: You have a broad spectrum of trainers. You have some brilliant ones and some real dunces. When interviewing a trainer I would start by going to the website. Again, common sense prevails. Are they using methods that seem okay with you? If you like what you see, call them up and see what they’re trying to teach. Don’t be afraid to ask questions: How many dogs have you trained? Can I meet them? Can I meet your dogs? Can I walk with your dogs?
ASJ: So you’re advocating an in-person interview?
ID: I’m always results based, so I would go and audit a puppy class. The very first dog training class I went without my dog. I thought “Some stuff is good, but some stuff I’m just not going to do with my dog.”
I explained that to the trainer, although I let her off the hook by saying I wasn’t feeling well and I might need to sit down.
That was my way of saying I don’t want to pinch my puppy’s ear to get him to retrieve or jerk him or hang him or roll him over on his back.
Allen St. John: You believe that socialization has to be a 24/7 thing.
Ian Dunbar: Training is not one hour a week on Thursday evening. You go to a class so that you can be with a trainer and they can see what you’re doing and if they see if are any problems they can nip them in the bud.
ASJ: There are a lot of gimmicks in pet training, but your methods are quite straightforward.
ID: Training a puppy is like raising a child. Every single interaction is a training opportunity. When they greet people nicely that you say “Good dog, you were very good greeting that elderly gentleman or that little girl.” Or “I like the way you sniffed that dog’s butt.”
ASJ: It’s practical, real world stuff.
ID: You don’t train a dog in a training hall, jerking his neck or even giving him food treats. You train him using life rewards. You ask him to sit and you let him come up on the couch. You ask him to sit and you pet him or give him a tummy scratch.You ask him to sit, you throw a tennis ball. You ask him to sit and you let him get in the car. Before you know it, when you say “Sit” the dog says “Good call. I love it.” When you do this, you end up with a dog that enjoys doing what you what you want him to do.
ASJ: Your methods are all about positive training.
ID: I don’t want to have an argument with a dog. But you do have to get the dog to understand that you can’t run up to people and knock them down. You can’t steal people’s sandwiches. You can’t growl at them and bite them.
But the way we educate is by explaining things to them calmly, and rewarding them. This is what’s really missing: Rewarding them for getting it right. We don’t reward enough when the dog gets it right.
ASJ: If you miss that window of opportunity it can take a long time to train an older dog.
ID: We just adopted a 10-month old Beauceron, a outdoor dog. I told my wife it’s not going to be house trained, not chew-toy trained, it will probably be a deer chaser. It will be crazy. It will have no manners. It may not be socialized.
We found out it was socialized to dogs and people, but all the other stuff was true. How long did it take to house train it? I would say we’ve just about done it. A year. A year of constant work with a ten-month-old dog.
ASJ: But if you’re patient, you can train a dog to do pretty amazing things.
ID: My wife couldn’t believe it, but I have “no pee” zones on the walk. If we’re walking on someone’s lawn I say “no pee.” I don’t want him peeing on the lawn. It’s rude and it destroys the lawn. But as soon as he’s left the lawn I show him he can mark a telegraph post.
ASJ: So how would you deal with a puppy that, say, growls when you take away his bone?
ID: First, Prevention. Second, Short-term action. And third, long-term action.
A smart person, when they get a dog, is going to say, “I’ll bet money that this critter will bark and chew things and protect his bone.” An intelligent person would feed the dog only from chew toys so he’s being continually rewarded for lying down quietly so he doesn’t develop a recreational barking habit, and, of course, understands that you don’t want to steal his bone.
ASJ: Let’s say we missed that step. What’s the short-term action?
ID: If we haven’t done that, and the puppy growls at me I would just say “Give me that bone, you fool.” A four-month old puppy is not going to kill you. I would just let him know that growling is inappropriate, “May I have the bone please?”
I’d say come here, and sit and I’d give him a treat and I’d give him the bone back and I would ask him for the bone again, in exchange for a treat. Now the dog thinks “These people are very interesting. They’re not trying to steal my bone. They’re just very polite. They just want to hold my bone while I eat a tastier treat and then they give it back.”
That’s the short-term approach, which is simple with a small puppy, and not so simple with an older dog.
ASJ: What’s the long-term issue?
ID: But the long term is that this puppy feels the need to growl and snap at you—a person–this puppy feels insecure around you. Oh, my word, You’ve got to do some catch-up. He needs to understand that you’re not going to hurt him, you don’t want to steal his bone. You’ve got to give him some confidence.
Again, prevention is the best approach. If between eight weeks and 12 weeks we had 100 people giving this puppy a bone and taking it away, you’re not going to have this problem with this dog.
ASJ: How do you deal with a dog that bites?
ID: The question is not “Is the dog reactive?” Most dogs, like most people, are reactive.
The question is “When it reacts, does it cause damage?”
If it causes damage you’re pretty much screwed. It means the dog did not develop bite inhibition in puppyhood. And there’s no way to teach the dog bite inhibition safely. And there’s no way to teach the dog bite inhibition toward dogs and other animals at all.
There ain’t no cure. The only thing you can do is manage it, keep him indoors and never let him off leash. Or euthanize him. I grade bites on a scale from one to six and once you move from a three to a four, there’s nothing you can do for this dog. He’s going to die.
ASJ: What exactly do you mean by bite inhibition?
ID: The importance of puppy class is that puppies bite other puppies in play and they learn that their bites hurt because they have needle sharp teeth. So they learn to inhibit the force of their bites before they develop strong jaws. If they don’t learn that, the dog is screwed. There’s no magic here.
ASJ: So the dog doesn’t bite hard enough to do damage?
ID: Right.
ASJ: So biting in and of itself isn’t the problem?
ID: I’ve adopted three dogs in my life, Ashby, Claude and Zou Zou. And all of these dogs did the same thing when I first met them did the same thing: they bit me.
When we were going up to meet Zuzu the Beauceron, we agreed to meet at a dog park. Midway through the visit, I said to my wife, “Just so you know, Zou Zou bit me.” And she said “Ah, thank goodness.”
ASJ: Thank goodness?
ID: The rationale there is that she’s a 10-month old adolescent and she bit me in play. I’m happy about her bite inhibition. If she hadn’t have bitten me I wouldn’t have known. What would she do if she reacts? Would she hurt someone? Would she break the skin?
ASJ: So it’s all about the intensity of the dog’s bite?
ID: It’s the good news and the bad news about bites. It’s bad that it happens, because the dog is upset and stressed and lacks confidence and it felt the need to bite. That’s bad.
But the good news is it didn’t hurt. It has bite inhibition.
ASJ: Most people just don’t want any part of a dog that bites.
ID: When I met Ashby, I fed him some food. He took the food and he bit me.
When I met Claude he was going to be euthanized the next day because he had bitten someone at the San Francisco ASPCA. I looked at the woman’s arm and there wasn’t any damage at all. So I went in to see him and started pushing his buttons, which was pretty easy. Touch his collar, you get bitten. Touch his butt, you get bitten.
He bit me four times. I said “Great, we’ll take him.” Why? The bites don’t hurt. We have a dog who’s scared and reactive, but he’s safe. And he’s proven safe. Four times he’s gone off and he hasn’t caused any damage.
ASJ: But most people don’t even consider these distinctions.
ID: Bite inhibition is the most misunderstood concept in dog training.
Think of a human analogy: Let’s say you go into a biker bar and you insult a guy’s motorcycle. You can have two kinds of reactions. One can be “You’d better not say that again.” That’s cool. The other one is he pulls a knife and stabs you.
In shelters, I’m convinced they kill all the wrong dogs, and adopt out dogs that aren’t tested. If the dog snaps, they’ll euthanize it. I think—he snaps, thank goodness he’s only snapping.
ASJ: What about these trainers that are always talking about “pack order” and “being the alpha dog” even though you’re a person?
ID: Training is training. If you want to train a dog to be friendly with people or sit or shush, let’s do it.
But instead we get into these wooly topics. It’s all sexy psychology. People love to think you have to pretend you’re a wolf to train your dog. Or it’s a pack thing. Or pretend you’re the dog’s mother. It’s like people are scared of common sense.
Aren’t dogs pack animals? Actually no. Domestic dogs live in houses often alone. Shouldn’t we treat them like their mothers or like wolves, and bite them on the neck and wag our tails or lift our legs to pee? This stuff is ridiculous. The dog knows we’re not its mother.
ASJ: So we don’t need to be dominant and have our dog be submissive to us ?
ID: The whole dominance thing is so misunderstood. I spent 10 years researching the development of social hierarchies in domestic dogs. I’m probably the only person in the world who spent 10 years doing this as part of a 30-year study.
Dogs don’t dominate each other physically. Where did this crap come from? Allen, I want to bang my head against a brick wall. It insults the dog. Their social structure is so intricate.
Physical weight is important in puppyhood but after 10 weeks old it has to do with your personality, your confidence, and, yes, your age. That’s how we develop hierarchies. We don’t have an adult dog squishing a puppy. It doesn’t happen.
ASJ: Do you think that dog owners can see through these fads and come back to that kind of common sense animal handling that your grandfather taught you?
ID: I have so much faith in the general public when they’re educated. They control the market. So I ask them common sense questions like “Do your really want to hurt your puppy? Do you really want to hurt your dog?” Armed with that knowledge they ask questions of the professionals—the breeders, trainers, and veterinarians. And bit by bit I think it’s slowly going to change how people think.
