This page on Punishing Extreme Behavior is part of the Auxiliary
Section of the Beginners Course of the D. S. Dog Training Workshop
Page Three of a three-page article:
How to Punish Your Dog for Engaging in Potentially Catastrophic Behavior
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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 must, especially when your are working with a soft dog.
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.