Helping A Rescue Dog Adjust | 5 Tips to Quickly Build a Bond with Your New Dog

bonding with dogs build a bond with your dog dog rescue dog training dog training tips helping a rescue dog adjust

Helping A Rescue Dog Adjust | 5 Tips to Quickly Build a Bond with Your New Dog

Comment  

Sad Lucy on her first day home from the shelter, hiding under the coffee table. Photo by Tim Dawson

Helping Rescue Dogs Adjust to Their New Families

While many rescue and shelter dogs are ready to adjust to their new family lives, others can be anxious or fearful of their new environment and family members. The constant changes in their circumstances leading up to adoption are often bewildering, and can make an otherwise laid-back and eager-to-please dog, cautious or even suspicious of its new surroundings.

These tips from top obedience trainers can help ease your new canine family member's transition into his new lifestyle, and quickly build bonds of trust between you and your new best friend.

How to Approach Your Rescue Dog When Petting Him

Research shows that dogs that are highly stimuli-reactive and those with fear aggression are most likely to bite their owners if startled when they are approached.  Before petting your new dog, first say his name, and be sure you have his attention.  Approach him by petting first under the jaw, then gently stroking the side of his face, gradually moving upwards, until you can pet the top of his head.

Petting by starting on the top of the head is a dominant act.  Until you have established a bond with your dog, you will want approach him from the side in a more deferential manner.

Watch his body language for signs of distress or discomfort.  Are his ears relaxed; is his tail wagging? If his ears are pinned back, if his tail is rigid or if you can see the whites of his eyes and he moves up on his shoulder, it is time for you to back off, and maintain a nonchalant attitude by focusing your attention elsewhere.

Limiting Your New Shelter Dog's Access to Your Home

One obedience trick used by top trainers for quickly building trust and a bond with their new dog is to tie his lead to your belt as you go about simple household chores.  Leave 5-6 feet slack on the lead so he can freely adjust to your movements.

The Hands Free Leash is ideal for keeping your pet close to you while doing household chores or jogging on a trail.

Buy It Now

You don't want to engage in activities that may frighten or over stimulate him, such as vacuuming. Choose chores such as washing dishes, putting away dishes, prepping food in the kitchen or putting away household items. This allows the dog to explore the home with you while he learns to read and adjust to your movements. As you go about your chores, occasionally call him to you and pet and treat him. Then return your focus to the task at hand.

When he is off lead, you will want to limit access to the entire home until you are sure of a good recall as well as his level of potty training.  You don't want to end up trying to corner the dog that won't yet come reliably when called. Child gates work well in traditional home floor plans.

However the recent trend towards open floor plans can present problems in limiting your new dog's freedom. Heavy duty playpens like the one pictured below can also be used as gates or indoor pens to limit access to areas when you can't keep an eye on his activities.

Heavy duty playpens can be used as gates or corals to keep you new dog safe and secure indoors and outdoors.

Quickly Build a Bond With Your Rescue By Hand Feeding

Another obedience trick for quick bond building is hand feeding your dog her meals.  Measure out her meal portion, and offer her a handful of food cupped in your hand.  If she is too nervous to take it from your hand, place the food in front of her a couple of feet away from you.  Place each succeeding handful a little closer to you until she is eating her food near your foot.

Some dogs have never been given treats, so it may take some time to get her to eat out of your hand. Once she does, she will be engaging in an act of high-level trust.  If you are short on time, you can hand feed half of the food, and then give her the rest of her meal in her bowl.

Crate Training Gives Your Rescue Dog His Own "Safe Place"

Most dogs enjoy having an area to call their own, and crates can become a den-like area where they can go to rest or get away from the children. To learn more about creating a den atmosphere for your dog read Crate Training - Easy as 1 2 3. Once your dog is crate trained, you can leave the door to it open, and he will seek it out when he is ready for a nap or in times of stress such as fireworks and thunderstorms.

Learning "Watch Me" helps focus the dog on you in stressful situations.

Basic Obedience To Establish Your Relationship With Your New Adoption

Learning basic obedience commands teaches the dog not only a new trick, but more importantly how to please you.  Knowing how to be "right" with their new owner builds self confidence in rescue dogs. Engage in several 5-10 minute training sessions beginning with "watch me."  Watch me teaches the dog to make and maintain eye contact with you, another high-level trust activity.

Hold a treat in your hand and point to your eye with that hand saying, "Watch me."  Once the dog makes eye contact with you, praise her and treat her. Extend each period of eye contact before treating.  Once you have watch me down, you can move on to sit, down and stay.

Watch me can be used in situations where the dog is reacting negatively to stimuli in the environment. For example, it can be used on walks to distract your dog from another dog you may encounter that elicits a fear or aggression response from your dog.

Every dog is different and will progress and sometimes backslide at his own pace.  Be patient, and watch his body language for signs of joy or discomfort. with these training tips, your new best friend should be bonded to you within the span of a week if not sooner.


Skimlinks Test

Dog Behavior: What's Behind the Guilty Dog Look?

animal behaviorist canine health Dog Research dog training dog training tips dog vocabulary

Dog Behavior: What's Behind the Guilty Dog Look?

Comment  

Did he do it?

Does this dog look guilty to you?

Is it a mistake to confer human emotions and motives on our dogs? Are dogs really more human than some of us are prepared to believe? 

Recently, dogs have become the new darlings of cognitive science, and research exploring the range of canine emotions and cognitive abilities is mounting at an exponential rate.

Among the many human characteristics attributed to dogs is the concept of guilt. It’s not unusual for a dog owner to state, “I knew he had done something; he had that ‘guilty look.’” We all know that doleful, guilty dog expression, but does it really demonstrate that dogs feel shame? If not, what’s behind it? Researchers at University Barnard College in New York set out to answer a few of these questions.

The Guilty Dog Experiement

In a study by Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College, dogs were placed in a controlled environment where they and their owners were setup to make guilty dogs appear innocent and vice versa. Dogs were ordered by their owners to leave a tasty treat alone, then the owner left the room.

After the owners left the room some dogs were offered the forbidden treat by the researchers, which they ate, while others obediently awaited their master’s return. What the researchers told the owners about their pet’s behavior often did not correlate with the events that had transpired in their absence.

Owners who were told truthfully that their dog had disobeyed them by eating the treat, and who then scolded their dogs, received a guilty look from the dog. However, when researchers falsely stated that the dog had eaten the treat in their owner’s absence, the innocent dogs that were scolded for eating a treat they had not consumed, demonstrated the guiltiest look of all dogs in the experiment.

This suggests that the guilty look stems from a reaction to the scolding, and not to the dog’s true guilt or innocence. However, further research indicates there may be more to the guilty look that what we gather from this experiment at first blush. 

So what are the dogs really responding to; what do dogs think and feel with regard to their human caregivers?

The Dog Genius

According to Brian Hare co author of The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter Than You Think, “The genius of dogs is that they use probably the most powerful tool on Earth to solve problems—humans. At one point in wolf evolution, a group of wolves decided to take advantage of humans, and they have been really successful because of it.”

By hitching themselves to humans, dogs have become one of the most successful species on the planet. Dogs domesticated themselves in a process where the most tolerant, attentive and least aggressive dogs did best with their new companions. In an 18,000 year process, the brain and sensitivities of the dog have been refined to better coexist with man. It seems that dogs have developed many of the coping skills that we observe in young human children.

Our Canine "Kids"

The Bassett Hound always wears
 a bit of a remorseful expression.

Many dog owners refer to their dogs as their “canine kids.” But are adult dogs really like human kids? Researchers Lisa Horn, Ludwig Huber, Friederike Range at The Clever Dog Lab sought to determine if dogs, like human children, display a “secure base effect.” Essentially the secure base effect in young children refers to an attachment bond where the child refers back to the caregiver for reassurance while exploring the world. The presence of the caregiver provides a sense of security, the secure base.

In human tests, children perform better on cognitive tests when their caregiver is present in the testing environment. The researchers for this canine experiment set up four conditions using a problem solving dog toy that dispenses treats as the model for the cognitive test. Dogs were left with the toy in one of four scenarios: alone without a human presence, with a stranger, and with their owner actively encouraging the dog to interact with the toy and finally, with their owner in an inattentive state.

Dogs left alone with the toy had minimal interaction with it. Dogs left with strangers interacted slightly more with the toy. And those with their owners present interacted statistically significantly more with the toy whether the owner was attentive to the game or not. This demonstrates a remarkable secure base effect with their caregiver; one that adult dogs retain throughout their lives, yet one which normal human children eventually out grow.

It appears that this parent/child bonding is mutual. Ocytocin is a neurotransmitter that is essential in the bonding process across all mammalian species. It is essential for the development of the parent/child bond as well as paring bond in mating processes.

In an experiment, pet owners were asked to complete a questionnaire that described the bond they felt with their dog. Afterwards they were asked to give a urine sample, and then to play with their dog for 30 minutes. Following their play session, they again provided a urine sample. The analysis of the before and after samples showed that those with strong bonds to their pets also had increased levels of oxytocin in their urine samples following the play session with their dog. The increased levels of ocytocin correlated with their level of attachment they reported experiencing with their pet. It appears we are biologically bonded with our dogs.

Working agility at a distance based on handler' body language.

Source: By Ron Armstrong from Helena, MT, USA (HMKC Spring 2007 Agility Trial) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativeco

Dogs Are More Like Us Than Other Primates Are

Research over the last 10 years is turning up some surprising facts about dogs. Their ability to follow a gesture or a human gaze is unparalleled among other species, including the chimpanzee. If we fix our attention on an object, by pointing or looking at it, the dog will also fix his attention the object. If I point at an object, a cat or primate will look at my finger, however the dog will often follow the gesture to the object I am pointing at.

This unique ability to understand visual and auditory commands and correlate them to our desired actions allows dogs to herd stock, retrieve and run agility courses with split second responses to our commands or, in some instances, simply to our field of focus. Top agility handlers guide their dogs across the course by aiming their body at the next obstacle. Handler error occurs when the handler accidentally pulls the dog off course by aiming his body at the wrong obstacle.

Dogs are also the only species that has demonstrated the ability to learn words on the same level as two year old human children; with the average dog being able to learn between 150-250 words.

Even more remarkable, dogs use an inferential strategy that employs the principle of exclusion. Dogs taught words for specific objects can infer, by excluding the known sound/object associations, that a new sound belongs to a new object that has been added to the mix of objects to be retrieved. Only human children have demonstrated this ability so far.

And beyond that, two border collies have demonstrated the capacity for iconicity. These dogs can be shown a two dimensional representation of an object, and then retrieve that object based on the symbol or icon represented in the image.

Is this puppy laughing?

Source: By Naomi Ibuki 

Do Dogs Have Human Feelings?

Laughter: We know dogs can bark for joy, but can they laugh too? Researcher Patricia Simonet from Sierra Nevada College and her team discovered that “certain breathy, excited exhalations” could be the canine version of laughter. Her team recorded the sounds made by dogs at play at a local park. They discovered a unique exhalation that was different from normal panting. When the team played these sound recordings for other dogs, they began to play too when the “laughing pant” was audible. Additionally, they found that playing recordings of the laughing pant helped to calm shelter dogs under stress.

Do Dogs Grieve?

Researchers have found in multiple experiments, that dogs do experience grief when a member of the household passes away. Dogs experience lethargy, loss of appetite and sleep disturbances, just as people do, for the loss of human or pet family members. Typically these manifestations of grief will last 2 weeks, but may be extended as long as six months.

Canine Jealousy and Their Sense of Fair Play

Dogs taught to shake hands for intermittent rewards will stop shaking hands if they see that another dog is receiving rewards for every hand shake. This demonstrates a sense of fair play, as well as a sense of injustice. Dogs do become jealous and even resentful, when they feel another animal is being treated better than they are.

Dogs can empathize and feel jealousy.

Can Dogs Experience Empathy?

Empathy, the ability to experience the thoughts and feelings of others has long been considered a unique trait among the higher level primates. Can dogs experience our emotions?

Yawning is not only contagious among humans, it is between humans and dogs too. A study by Teresa Romero and colleagues from the University of Tokyo found that dogs yawned when both strangers and their owners yawned. However, they responded with reciprocal yawns more frequently to their owner’s yawns than to those of strangers. The dogs also responded much less frequently to faked yawns.

Yawning is important as it demonstrates the capacity for empathy, and has been shown to correlate with the level of social attachment in several primate species. The fact that dogs differentiate between real and faked yawns and respond accordingly is intriguing. Dogs empathize with the genuine human act, and the faked one is largely ignored.

So, Do Dogs Feel Guilt?

Conventional wisdom says dogs cannot feel higher emotions such as shame or guilt. These guilty expressions are generally attributed to fear or confusion.

However in a survey, 74% of dog owners believed that their dogs experienced guilt when the knew they had transgressed. And 60% of these dog owners said that the guilty expression resulted in less scolding of the dog.

We know from the previous experiment that scolding elicits a guilty expression. Apparently, that guilty expression is useful to dogs to alleviate some of the scolding; it is an adaptive behavior. But do dogs act guilty when they know they have transgressed, yet their owner has not yet discovered the crime?

The full answer to that question has not been proven in an experiment, however one preliminary test shows that there is a guilt response in truly guilty dogs.

In an experiment led by Julie Hecht at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, researchers found again that all dogs act guilty when scolded for stealing forbidden food, regardless of their guilt or innocence. However, when owners left the room and then returned to greet their dogs a second time, only the dogs who were truly guilty of stealing a treat continued to act guilty on their owner's return. The innocent dogs had forgotten the scolding incident, and greeted their owners normally.

It stands to reason that animals so attuned to us, and with such an incredible capacity to learn and desire to please, would be able to anticipate our displeasure upon discovery of their crime. The Hecht Research Group is working on a new experiment to remove some of the confounding variables introduced in the lab setting. We expect that they will find further evidence that dogs do feel guilt, along with the many other human emotions they may experience.

Citations

Horowitz A (2009). Disambiguating the “guilty look”: salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behavioural processes, 81 (3), 447-52 PMID: 19520245

Public Library of Science. "Dogs yawn more often in response to owners' yawns than strangers." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 August 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807204847.htm>.

Citation: Horn L, Huber L, Range F (2013) The Importance of the Secure Base Effect for Domestic Dogs – Evidence from a Manipulative Problem-Solving Task. PLoS ONE 8(5): e65296. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065296

Hecht, J., et al., Behavioral assessment and owner perceptions of behaviors associated with guilt in dogs. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. (2012),doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2012.02.015

Truly Guilty Dogs and Their Crimes