Are You Limiting Adoptions with Labels?
This is my dog Moose. He would likely be labeled as “dog selective,” but what does that really mean??
The longer I’ve been dog training and shelter consulting, the more I’ve begun moving away from labeling dogs as “having” certain behaviors. Humans like labels because it makes it easier to explain nuances to a wide audience in a snapshot.
However, the problem with consistently explaining behavior in generalized terms is that we start to diminish the quality or actuality of the behaviors we are trying to describe, therefore making it more difficult to actually identify individualized reasoning and emotional responses.
Before going further, I’d like to mention that I am not an innocent party. I have myself described dogs as “reactive” or “aggressive.” I used to speak early on in terms of “drives.” But what do these terms actually describe? Well, it depends on who you ask.
From my consulting experience, the term “aggressive,” for instance, can mean a wide variety of behaviors. To some, an “aggressive dog,” may be a dog that growls at their owner for taking a chew toy away, while others may not care if their dog is weary of his toy being taken away. I have met folks who have described their dog as “not aggressive,” but yet the dog has bitten another dog or person multiple times. “He was just being protective…”
Creating labels is a way for us to visualize what something looks like, but when each dog and situation is looked at more closely, labeling behavior actually works against the dog because we as people begin to make assumptions.
How Is This Harmful?
For example, I was told by someone they were okay boarding my dog because they had a lot of experience working with “fearful” dogs. Within a day of being dropped off there was an incident. They had to leave her outside for three hours in the snow and ice at the kennel because they couldn’t get her back inside. To get her back inside, she had to be barricaded by two people using a fencing panel while was growling and lunging at them. Everyone had a very traumatic event and I was states away, unable to help. I realized my experiences working with dogs from cruelty and neglect situations has skewed my idea of what “fearful” meant compared to what the average pet owning public would think (see how labels can be hard?).
Another term, “drive,” is often used in the dog world to describe a wide variety of behaviors. Some examples include, but are not limited to, “prey drive,” “social drive,” or “food drive.” The issues with descriptions such as this are vast. Does the dog like to chase the squirrel or eat it once it’s caught? If the dog has a social drive, does that mean he’s friendly towards other dogs and people all of the time, or under specific circumstances? If a dog is food driven, does that mean he’ll eat anything presented at any cost to him? The focus on “drive” diminishes the idea that a dog’s behavior is fluid. It’s assuming that behaviors can be turned on and off, or switched from one to the other. However, in real life, a dog’s behavior changes due to environmental shifts and anticipation of other reinforces or punishers.
Spark was labelled as “dog aggressive,” and “could not live with other dogs,” holding him back from adoptions. Our assessment revealed he was merely frustrated, and highly dog social.
If we were to describe humans in the same way, it would sound really funny. Honest!
Example: “Hillary was in social drive. She was playing video games with some friends. I wanted to get Hillary into a different state of mind, so I tapped into her food drive by making some nachos for her. Then, the group wanted to go for a run, so we switched into play drive, put on some shoes and took off around the block.” Did Hillary stop wanting to hang out with her friends and only eat Nachos? Could Hillary not eat nachos and also hang out with her friends? Can drives happen simultaneously? Was she playing video games while socializing with her friends?
How Does this Work from a Behavior Perspective?
In order to break down contributing factors that contribute to a dog’s overall temperament, we need to focus on the context of each individual situation. For example, a dog is presented to me from a shelter as “reactive.” Let’s try and define that the dog: could be pulling on leash and barking, could also be barking through a fence barrier, could also be guarding a resource, could also be shaking and cowering in a corner; to be honest, it could mean anything. What is that particular dog doing and when?
The shelters’s response may be, “When he sees another dog on leash he pulls towards it, barks and lunges.” So then we need to know more details. “This happens when we are about 50 feet away from another dog.” More details. “When the other dog moves away, my dog calms down and we continue on our walk.”
So now we know that this dog has a reinforcement history of barking and lunging at other dogs from approximately 50 feet away until they are no longer visually present. This is a real life example of a negative reinforcement learning experience: another dog is presented (antecedent/aversive), gets barked and lunged at by the original dog (behavior), then is moved away by it’s owner (consequence). This reinforces the belief to the original dog that his barking and lunging caused the other dog to no longer be present. The aversive was removed due to the behavior.
Now, what else do we need to know about this dog? History! Is the dog scared of other dogs, or does he want to play with them? Is the leash restricting his ability to move away, forcing him to perform distance decreasing behaviors instead of distance increasing? Is the leash restricting him from getting to something he wants?
Let’s say we find out that this dog was attacked on leash by a dog. When he sees dogs when he’s off leash, he usually moves away from them. We can start to determine that his “reactivity” is fear-induced due to a positive punishment history of being attacked on leash. He’s learned his barking and lunging causes other dogs to move away, and he is continually being reinforced for this naturally through these experiences.
Now I can make a behavior plan to work with respectful/socially appropriate off leash dogs to help reinforce better behavior. We can use praise, food or play to reinforce distance increasing behaviors such as moving away, sniffing, yawning, looking away, etc. We can build a reinforcement history of these alternate behaviors, and then begin adding in a leash (a contributing antecedent) at a level low enough to desensitize and classically counter-condition the initial emotional response around these other dogs.
If I had assumed, that this dog was just “reactive on leash towards other dogs,” I may have focused more on teaching the dog to sit, focus on owners, play find it (all still great DRI and DRA techniques by the way), but I may not have been able to address the actual underlying issue, because I was focused on fixing the perceived behaviors and not the contributing factors.
What should we be doing instead?
We need to give shelter handlers and potential adopters or fosters an idea of what a dog will LOOK LIKE when being handled, walking past other animals, living in a home, etc, etc. Documenting a dog’s interactions around a variety of stimuli and in different contexts is undoubtedly the BEST way to capture the clear identity of that dog. But how do we do that with limited time in a shelter.
I recommend:
Notes from intake (both the history -if available- and behavior in the room)
Notes from medical exam handling
Notes (or check list in high-volume shelter) of every person-to-dog interaction over the first 3 days
Field trip, volunteer, or other outing notes (Google Forms work great for this!)
Playgroup or dog interaction notes
Circling Back
Had I said to the person at the kennel where I boarded my dog that, “she will actively avoid and move away from unfamiliar people, and would become more agitated if chased. She will growl if she feels cornered or threatened,” then both the boarding kennel and my dog could have potentially avoided a traumatic experience. Instead I told them she was a “very fearful from a hoarding case,” and we saw where that left us!
In order to communicate more effectively with each other and potential adopters, the way we are communicating about a dogs personality, temperament and behavior challenges need to be intentional and fact based. We need to be mindful in using labels to assist in describing behaviors, and instead paint a picture of what interacting with this dog LOOKS like in a variety of context and circumstances. We need to actively work against inhibiting a dog’s prognosis by using over-generalizing terms that could work against them both internally at the shelter and on the adoption floor.
