Category: Common Problems ¤ Author: Sue Ailsby, Shirley Chong ¤ Title: Fear, Adrenalin and Food (two articles) ¤ From: Sue Ailsby "I've never heard of this paradox between food consumption and adrenaline production.” My husband's a surgeon - input from anyplace we can get it, right ;-) I use Yes instead of the click. One day many years ago, I received a 15 mo dog who had been in a crate for 3 days because "no one could get her out" (Giant Schnauzer, 82 pounds of teeth). The story was that her owners had spent 10 months getting a "friendly" divorce, still living together but picking out furniture for his apartment, etc. This sort of thing makes Giants insane. I put the crate in my living room, got a broom, undid the bolts knocked the top off the crate and sat down on the couch with the broom in front of me. For two hours she satin the crate bottom snapping, snarling, biting at the air, doing the wolf-in-the-underbrush routine and the stop-breathing-or-I'll-kill-you routine while I sat totally still on the couch and didn't look at her. After two hours she started to calm down a little, and I started breaking off bits of weiner, whispering yes and tossing tiny bits of weiner at her. Another two hours, and she finally picked up a piece and ate it. Another hour, she came over and put her head in my lap. For two days she rec'd every kernel of food from my hand with Yes. Then I took her to my training building (OK, I'm stupid, sue me!) and handed the leash to a friend of mine with instructions to say Yes and offer bait every once in a while, but not to look at her or talk to her otherwise, while I worked another dog. Someone came in the door, she jerked the leash away, and was gone (professional trainer, eh? I can kill anything in 2 days or less!). I ran outside, she was in the middle of the street, up on her toenails, with her pupils dilated (light on the door behind me), just daring someone to breathe so she could finish running away. There was no way ANYONE was EVER going to be able to catch that dog! For want of anything better to do, I whispered Yes. Yes. The third time, her pupils constricted, and she came down off her toenails. The fourth time, she shook herself, looked around, and came back, ready to go inside and TALK TO PEOPLE!!! I went home and told my husband how shocked I was. It was like someone shot her with a trank gun! I couldn't believe it! He smiled and said "you really don't know what happened? You built in a button which forced her to think about food. You push the button, and you have her body working FOR you instead of against you, you're actually changing the chemistry of her body. In the old days, you'd take an excited dog, producing adrenalin, and try to get it to calm down by hurting it with the chain, forcing it to produce more adrenalin. You KNOW this works better, because now you're using the dog's body FOR you instead of AGAINST you.” And he was right. I've kept this in mind ever since, deliberately producing adrenalin when I want to, and getting rid of it when it isn't useful. Talk about mind control ;-D ! Sue eh? -------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 15:11:04, -0500 From: M. Shirley Chong Subject: RE: Stairs Ilene (caroom@annap.infi.net) has been asking about teaching Cap, a GSD, to go down the basement steps. He teeters at the top of the steps, whining and trying to stretch his neck out further, but won’t go down them. Ilene has gotten some EXCELLENT suggestions from Lori Rizzo and Dani Weinberg, among others. I know I'm jumping in late, but here's my take on it: the dog is afraid of the steps and/or the basement, for whatever reason (maybe Ilene lets him watch too many late night horror flicks!). Obviously he’s feeling conflicted and wants the reinforcer, otherwise he wouldn’t whine and teeter and stretch his neck, etc, he'd just get bored and walk away. Here is where having two different reinforcers comes in handy. Have a lot of a desirable but not absolutely wonderful reinforcer ready. Have some absolutely wonderful reinforcers ready. Use a lot of the first kind of reinforcer to click/treat any tiny motion forward. Use the second type of reinforcer for significant movements forward. Now, try to create and use extinction bursts. Start out by reinforcing him very very frequently for any movement of any part of his body in the correct direction. At the very least, you should see a lot of little fidgety movements on his part but not necessarily a lot of forward progress. Then up your criteria a bit, which will have the effect of slowing down the reinforcement quite a bit. If you chose the right moment to do this, you should see an INCREASE in his conflicted behaviour (more whining, more teetering, etc). If you’re lucky, he will make a slightly larger movement in the right direction, which you can then reinforce with the more desirable sort of reinforcer. The reason I say do lots of reinforcing initially is because of something I learned in Guelph. It's something that has been mentioned on Click-L before (best explanation was Sue Ailsby and the Giant Schnauzer bitch). And that is this: food (and any conditioned reinforcer attached to it) acts to shut down adrenaline production. I learned it by doing something stupid (Shirley proved that she’s not as fluent with managing diabetes as she thought and gave herself a hypoglycemic episode). I took a tumble, hit my head, and had Chamois with me. Of course, as soon as I keeled over, dozens of worried people rushed over to help. Chamois was terrified! She’d involuntarily urinated and due to her early puppyhood upbringing, she’s terrified of housetraining accidents. And I think she was sure that all these people were diving in to kill her for it. She was trying to bolt, her muscles were rigid, she was trembling, her pupils were dilated, the whole thing. When I got (sort of) squared away, I started clicking her to calm her down. At the time, I hadn't the faintest idea of what I was doing, but now I'll pretend I did by saying I was using differential reinforcement of any other behaviour than bolting(see, terminology can cover a multitude of stupid moments!).The first few times I clicked, she darted a glance at me out of habit, but didn't even try to take the treat. Then, along about the fourth or fifth click, she sniffed the treat. Then she took the treat from me and dropped it. She dropped several. Then she finally ate one! And it was like the lights went back on behind her eyes. She looked around and said "there are COOKIES lying around here!" and promptly hoovered them up. She ended up sitting next to me, her ears relaxed, pupils back to normal size, face relaxed, body relaxed, looking benevolent and a bit sleepy. That moment made a dramatic difference in my understanding. When a dog is frightened, it doesn't matter WHAT you reinforce. The clicker and the food will eventually give you an opportunity to reinforce something worth reinforcing. I've always known that no useful learning takes place when a dog is frightened. So, what does it matter if what I'm clicking is something I normally wouldn't waste a second look on? I'm not really teaching anything, I'm creating the opportunity to learn. So, with Cap, if he's afraid of the situation, use the clicker to reduce his fear level and give you the opportunity to reinforce something really worthwhile. You're not actually teaching him stairs, so you don't need to worry about the mechanics of how he’s going to do this. He has the skills to figure it out, once he’s no longer afraid. M. Shirley Chong