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How to Punish Your Dog For Engaging in Potentially Catastrophic Behavior
Introduction
Years ago, when a friend and his wife were called out of town on a family emergency, I spent a couple weeks living in their house, to help look after their property and keep their chocolate lab company while they were away.
The woods around my friends semi-rural residence were infested with a prodigious population of notoriously bellicose skunks, who were not in the habit of backing down to any living creature.
My friend warned me that I'd have to watch the dog carefully, because when the skunks were out, which was pretty much any time after dark, I could count on the dog to chase after and get sprayed by any skunk he perceived to be in the area.
I've never actually been through the ordeal myself, but I am told that the only way to get skunk stink off of a dog is to bath the animal continuously in tomato juice. That requires a trip to the supermarket for an enormous amount of tomato juice, and an hour or more of gut churning stench for two people to scrub away what can only be described as one of the most objectionable odors known to mankind. Dogkind too for that matter.
Let's not even think about the fact that a huge proportion of the skunks in this county are rabid, not to mention the mountain lions and coyotes who can still be found in these wooded, volcanic hills in significant numbers, dispite the ever-extending tendrils of civiization.
My friend and his wife warned me that there was no way to stop the dog from going after skunks. They told me they had tried everything, but nothing could dissuade the animal from going into the bushes after every wild animal that stirred. He just did it again and again over the years.
Fido Falls in Love
The dog was accustomed to spending more time than he wanted locked in a wire pen by himself at the side of the house, so he was pleased that I kept him with me full time as I ran errands and went about the business of the day.
A dog's affection for a human is often proportional to the quality of life that that person affords the animal, and when a dog encounters someone who suddenly treats him much better than what he has come to expect, the animal will often shift into worship mode.
I could tell by the way the dog looked at me that he was smitten, which I am sure, was greatly intensified by the fact that I never struck him, spoke down to him, or isolated him in a pen, as I had too often seen his owners do.
There's actually a point that I am trying to make here, which is that this particular dog had come to depend on me, and to care passionately about what I thought, and whether or not I was pleased with his performance.
Fido Strays From the Straight and Narrow
A few nights after I took up residence with the chocolate lab, as an end-of-the-day ritual, I walked outside with the dog to give him a chance to relieve himself before bed, when he apparently got wind of something in the bushes.
I shouted, NO! several times, but the dog ignored me as he charged into the brush to tangle with God knows what. At the time I figured that it was most likely a skunk.
Surely the Wrath of Dog Shall Descend Upon the Wicked
I was exhausted - plenty tired enough to fall asleep the instant my head hit the pillow, and I had to get up early the next day for pressing business, which put me even less in the mood to force myself to wake up and get dressed so I could drive to the supermarket to load up on tomato juice and, then, spend the time I should be sleeping, out in the cold, standing in the biting-bug infested darkess with vegetable juice running down my person and into my shoes as I scrubbed the stink off of somebody else's dog.
When the Lab ignored my no command and dove into the brush, I had immediately returned to the house. In a slightly different circumstance I would have chased after him and done what was necessary to ensure that he found his disobedience to be an instantly upsetting experience. But it was dark and I didn't have a flashlight, so I figured that if the dog was about to get himself sprayed, I didn't want to go charging into the dark scrub just in time to join him for a giant drink of skunk juice.
Every night, the very last thing before the dog went to bed, his owners would give him a large dog biscuit. Because they asked me to continue with the custom, the last thing before we went out the door together, I had placed a large dog biscuit in his bowl, where he would be sure to find it upon reentering.
The dog came back in the house a minute or so after my return, and picked up his dog biscuit just as I entered the room.
Apparently, whatever the dog had charged in the dark was not a skunk, which was so much the better since the absence of an immediate crisis let me get down to the serious task of punishing the animal to ensure that he would never again sprint away into the night, chasing wildlife against an express command to desist.
If you are a long time owner of one of the large breeds, then, you know for yourself how amazingly fast a big dog can slurp down even a humongous dog biscuit. As a rule, from the moment that a large dog first sees a biscuit to the time it enters his digestive tract is less than a millisecond, but not that time. In the instant before I reentered the room, the dog picked up the three-inch-long biscuit and managed to get a good grip on it. But before he could gulp it down, I came in and launched into a temper tantrum so extreme in intensity that it far surpassed any emotional display he had ever witnessed from any living creature.
It was a tantrum a deranged two-year-old could well be ashamed of. It was, on its face, the overblown mother of all hissy fits.
The Criteria for the Dispensation of a Tantrum
By upsetting your dog when he misbehaves, you can pair negative affect with bad behavior, and thereby, bring classical conditioning into play in a way that will eventually cause your dog to dislike misbehaving almost as much as he dislikes being upset.
However, when the animal does something that could get somebody hurt, get him killed, get you sued, force you to severely limit his future movements, or otherwise cause you more grief than your psyche and situation can absorb, then, in that circumstance, you need to make the dog upset at a far greater magnitude than is the case for less extreme transgressions.
There are actually a number of variables that all come together to determine how much a dog will need to be punished before he stops engaging in some particular problematic behavior.
Nonetheless, suffice it to say that the three punishment procedures described elsewhere on this site, the corrective tap, the use of spray mist, and the unsettling voice, when dispensed individually in a moderate fashion, usually have to be applied a number of times before the dog finally gives it up and abandons the target response altogether - never to do it again.
However, there are some things your dog might do that need to be brought to an immediate halt - never again be repeated - at all - ever.
For example, you simply cannot tolerate your off-lead dog running into the roadway. Nor can you let any dog growl, bite, snap at or otherwise threaten any living creature. Especially if you are dealing with a powerfully built animal who has the wherewithal to inflict significant injury.
Some things simply cannot be tolerated, because the consequences are potentially catastrophic.
Dogs believe, or perhaps I should say that they eventually come to understand that the intensity and severity of your punishment is proportional to the dastardliness of their offense. Therefore, when you punish your dog in a way that is ultra-upsetting, you are telling him in no uncertain terms that what he has just done is so extremely perilous that it can never be allowed to ever happen again.
Thus, the very occasional tantrum can serve as a vital component in the process of bestowing upon your companion the gift of socialization, which for a dog is the kindest and most enabling prize he could ever hope to receive.
Therefore, when your goal is to see to it that your dog never again engages in some potentially disastrous response, you may need to ratchet-up the level of your dog's emotional distress by dialing the intensity of your punishment up to soaring levels.
When to Tantrum
As with any punishment procedure, you need to lower the boom either while the target response is being emitted or almost immediately afterward, because your dog needs to understand clearly what he is being punished for. The longer you wait after the transgression before you deliver the aversive, the less chance there is that your dog will make that connection.
It is counterproductive for you to punish the animal if so much time has passed that he no longer knows what he did to prompt you to dispense the aversive. That is especially true of the high intensity tantruming procedure.
Therefore, unless you definitely know that your dog defintely knows what he did to prompt you to dispense the aversive, then, just let it go this time, and resolve to catch him in the act the next time around.
The need to punish immediately can be extremely awkward if your dog's potentially catastrophic transgression occurs in public, because any unitiated spectators will not understand what you are doing or why. And such an intense display is not likely to win you any admirers among those not in the know.
A General Description of How to Stage an Effective Tantrum
The exact form that your tantruming procedure takes is a matter of your individual style. However, as always, your goal is not to inflict either pain or injury on your dog, you just want to make sure that the animal becomes more upset than he ever wants to be again.
The best way to do that is to pretend to be extremely upset yourself, even if you're not. Shout at the dog. Perhaps even scream at him! Get apoplectic. Crowd him. Get in his space. Get in his face. Go ape crazy.
For a procedure this intense, your body language and tone of voice need to convey rage, disappointment, scorn, stunned disbelief, disdain, horror, deep hurt and no small amount of jeez, how could you stab me in the back like this after all I've done for you - you furry little four-footed ingrate.
However, while your tone of voice needs to suggest all of the above, always remember that when punishing your dog, you should never say anything to the animal other than the word no, which you should feel free to repeat any number of times.
Storm around the room as though you are the verge of flipping out altogether as you use your unsettling voice to emphatically spew the word no over and over again.
This is you in a tizzy, making sure that your dog experiences one of the most distressing moments of his life. The like of which he will hope never to see again.
However, with all of that said, you should, nonetheless, exercise great discretion and consider the matter carefully before you employ a nose tap as part of a tantrum, since some dogs may be so severely distressed by the procedure that even a little smack in the context of a total tirade could prove too intense for them.
Proceed with Caution
It seems to be true of all of life that the more extreme your procedure, the more likely it is that something will go seriously wrong, with some damage being done where none was intended. And to be sure, a tantruming procedure is extreme indeed.
In its most drastic form, being the object of a well-staged tantrum will flood your dog's bodily system with stress hormones as he tries to grasp the implication of you seeming to have become so horrifically distraught over his behavior.
That extreme level of upset is, of course, difficult for your furry young student, but it is not going to be any picnic for you, either. If you actually are as upset as you are trying to make your dog think your are, then, as you carry out your tantrum, it is sure to be very hard for you. However, if you are actually calm and detached as you execute your tirade, and you are only pretending to be upset, then, it can be even more difficult for you as you watch your poor dog dissolve into a puddle of despair.
Be assured that your dog's extreme level of emotional upset does, indeed, serve an essential function, since the severe disruption in his homeostatic state will set in motion a paradigm of classical conditioning that will cause your dog to hate doing the wrongful thing he is being punished for almost as much as he hates be horrendously upset.
As your dog watches you blow a gasket and seemingly approach the edge of losing it altogether, he is going to wonder and worry - what next? Where is this all going? Will this person still love me after this? Can I still live here? Will they still feed me now that I have fallen into such severe disfavor?
That is exactly what you want. You are trying to flood the animal with an overwhelming sense of anxiety so that he will come to associate extreme distress with the forbidden, potentially catastrophic behavior in which he just engaged. The whole point is to make him so upset that he can't stand it.
However, an aggressive dog that has been violently abused at some point in the past may perceive your rapidly developing agitation as a prelude to a beating, in which case, he could conceivably attack you in what he might well see as a preemptive strike. Other dogs may soil the carpet on the spot, while others will turn and run away as far and as fast as they can.
Let Your Dog's Reaction Be Your Guide
Obviously, then, before you employ a tantruming procedure with your dog, you need to have some sense of how the animal will react.
Before using the tantruming technique with your dog, you need to first be aware of whether you are working with a hard dog, or a soft dog, or an animal that is somewhere in between. Then, you should make it a point to scale down the intensity of your procedure when working with soft dogs, like the preponderance of Border collies.
Knowing how to upset your dog is a science, but knowing how much to upset him is more of an art. You simply need to watch the animal empathically, and know intuitively when you have made him upset enough to have accomplished your purpose.
Fido Turns Over a New Leaf
I knew that I had made the point with the chocolate lab, because he fell into a thousand mile stare well before my tantrum sputtered to an end. As I fell quiet, the dog studied me in stunned silence, frozen in place by discombobulated bewilderment. Dumbstruck, with one end of the dog biscuit clamped in his mouth and the other protruding straight out ahead a couple inches, he conjured up a hairy, rattled incarnation of Sir Winston Churchill, gripping a cigar between clinched teeth as he puffed on in an agitated dread of darker days to come.
I am very sure that the dog had never seen anything like it. He lay there afraid to move, not knowing what to expect, or what was expected, and clearly not knowing how to react or what to do.
My actions were so totally out of character from anything he had ever seen me do that he seemed almost to go into a state of shock. The effect was driven further by the fact that the dog had been in fine spirits at the moment that the punishment was applied, because punishment is always more effective if the dog was happy at the time that the punishment was dispensed.
A couple minutes after I exited the room, leaving the dog to his thoughts, my wife passed through and found him still staring into empty space in stunned disbelief, his posture unchanged, with his uneaten dog biscuit still jutting cigar-like from his clinched front teeth.
I am told that the dog continued to bolt away from his owners in pursuit of wildlife, but he never did it again when he was with me. But of course, that makes sense, since they either ignored his wildlife-chasing response, or rewarded it with a tomato juice bath in which he received ninety-minutes of nonstop attention from those he loved most. While in contrast, I brought him to an understanding that when he did it with me, it was not going to work out nearly so well.
Use the Tantrum Sparingly
Always remember that a tantrum is not appropriate as a routine training device. For example, when you are in the process of street training your dog, there will be times when he will enter the roadway inappropriately. That is a normal, pre-planned part of the training process.
In the course of his training, you need for your dog to enter the street in a wrongful manner so that you can teach him not to do it any more. You just need to carefully control the conditions in order to make sure that, among other things, he never has the chance to do it when a car is coming.
Obviously, a tantrum staged as part of a regular, preplanned training exercise would be counterproductive, because every training episode with your dog should always end with the animal feeling triumphant over his splendid performance, and you looking and acting very pleased indeed.
A tantrum, on the other hand, ends ugly, with you walking away still looking angry. A tantrum is a crushing defeat. You really don't want any of that at all in your dog's training, if you can avoid it.
Therefore, a tantrum should be reserved for those very rare, extreme instances in which your dog knowingly, intentionally, and perhaps, even defiantly engages in a response he knows to be forbidden - a response so dangerous and/or outrageous by human standards that it can never be allowed to happen again.
If you tantrum once in a blue moon, your dog will passionately want to avoid ever again making the problematic response that got him into trouble. But if you do it too often, your dog will passionately want to avoid you.
To be sure, then, there is a limit to how many times you can resort to a tantrum to make your point, so use that intervention sparingly and employ it judiciously and only when the circumstance dictates that you absolutely must, especially when your are working with a soft dog.
With a little luck and a lot of careful planning, you may never need to punish your dog in that extreme fashion.
Keep Your Dog Out of Situations Where a Catastrophic Response is Possible
Until your dog's skills and sense of right and wrong develop enough to insulate him from life's many dangers, your best bet is to keep him out of situations in which he can make mistakes that carry potentially catastrophic consequences.