The Animal Behavior Nerd

As we previously shared, Milo is a dog who displays behaviors associated with a heightened state of arousal. If you look at arousal on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest state of arousal, even without any environmental factors, Milo is generally at a 6.

Milo’s level goes up to about an 8 or 9, sometimes 10 when you add people into the equation. Milo adores his people and revels in the joy of being petted but when that petting stops, Milo doesn’t know what to do with himself and will grab onto his person in an attempt to continue the petting.

In this video you’ll see the result of several weeks of training Milo to 1) go to his station, the bed 2) lay on the station with duration 3) the combination of these behaviors equals the human engaging him in a variety of different ways including toys, petting, or treat delivery. The goal of this was to give Milo some control over when he can request interaction from the human rather than attempting to get it on his own by jumping up and grabbing onto the person wherever they may be.

Most normal adopters will engage in petting and sitting with their newly adopted dog so in this video we’re trying to teach Milo the skills needed to exist in these types of situations. Dogs like Milo need almost a constant stream of feedback on the new behaviors they’ve learned to keep them on track. You’ll notice the repeated words and tones I use. I’ve used these tones and words incredibly consistently with Milo so that he can somewhat understand their meeting and associate them with my behaviors and expectations.

I also break up our interactions by tossing the toy away from the station and encouraging him to retrieve it. I do this so that 1) he learns to take breaks on his own 2) it gives him an outlet for that arousal before it boils over and 3) it teaches him an alternate behavior for his mouthing.

For phase two of our resource guarding program for emaciated dogs in shelter, once the dog is reliably checking in with the handler and following a hand lure we begin teaching the dog to go to a station such as a bed or cot. In this video we start reinforcing Benji for getting on the bed. I also started shaping a sit because he was in a good position for it but that’s not something we usually introduce this early on. We mostly focus on marking and reinforcing the dog when they follow the hand onto the bed or choose to go on it on their own. Stationing is such a great behavior that can be used with a variety of species for a variety of things. It’s a foundation behavior that every dog should know.