This page on Punishing Extreme Behavior is part of the Auxiliary
Section of the Beginners Course of the D. S. Dog Training Workshop
Page One of a three-page article:
How to Punish Your Dog for Engaging in Potentially Catastrophic Behavior
Go to the index for this article
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.