Dog Psychology
By Martin Bell
Dog psychology is a term we hear in connection with dog training on a daily basis; every ‘expert’ uses the term. What does it mean and how does it relate to dog training in Houston?
The aim of training a dog is to control the dog’s bodily actions; this can only be affected through the dog’s mind. It is therefore the dog’s mind that is our primary concern.
Professor Lloyd Morgan, a forefather of dog psychology, stated: “Under domestication we seek to bring about a new working adjustment to conditions imposed by man. The skilful trainer utilizes instinctive tendencies as a basis, and by a system of rewards and punishments leads the intelligent modification of behavior along the lines directed by his deliberate purpose”. That was in 1910! Dog psychology is not a new concept!
Psychologists draw a sharp distinction between the lower or intelligent stage of mental development and the higher or rational stage. Intelligence is defined as the power to learn by experience. Professor Morgan explains “If to prevent a boy from sucking his thumb we administer bitter aloes, we trust to intelligent control through the immediate effect of experience, but if he is induced to give up the habit because it is babyish he so far exercises rational control”. Dogs are intelligent but they do not possess the power of reason.
Dog Training in Houston – Reason and Repetition
What does this tell us about a dog’s mind? No dog can reason, therefore to effectively train the association in the dog’s mind of satisfaction with the response we desire, we must have at our command the means of applying either satisfaction or discomfort at will. The closeness in point of time and preciseness of the connection between the response and the satisfaction or discomfort is what leads to greater success between dog and trainer. Repetition of the same drills to promote consistency helps in connecting response to command.
Another very important consideration in training dogs is related to the attention of the animal itself. A basic staple of dog training is to never give a lesson until you have your puppy’s complete attention, or to continue training if you have lost that attention. A dog’s capacity for giving attention to the trainer may be impaired by fear, ill health, boredom or exhaustion. Closely allied to attention is interest. For a puppy the mother or dam is the center of interest. In social animals such as dogs, as the pups grow older the interest swings to food, scent of prey animals and to other pack members. A good dog trainer becomes a center of interest to his charges as he is what has been newly dubbed as ‘pack leader’.
Dog training is not a science; it’s an art as each pup provides different challenges. Here at Shelmar Kennels we have trained thousands of dogs, each of them different to the last one. Training must be applied differently to each dog. The range of dog behavior from willful to docile, happy and outgoing to shy and reserved all requires effective use of many training techniques. No good dog trainer would use one method only on all these different animals.
With a sound understanding of the principals of dog psychology, care to asses each animal as an individual and train accordingly and through plenty of repetition, Shelmar Kennels is the obedience school for dog training in Houston.