The sun finally came out in my part of California, on the northeast edge of the great Sacramento Valley. I had a number of invitations from friends hit the trails and I accepted almost all of them. As a result, I’m stiff and muscle-sore and my dog, Otto, is sleeping like a log.
The most beautiful outing was the hike on Saturday morning alongside the Feather River. Otto and I met my new friend Chris, owner of my recent foster dog, Chaco; Chaco herself; and Chris’ other dog, Indie, a Bloodhound-Border Collie-mix. Otto and Chaco were happy to reunite, chasing each other and wrestling along the way, while Indie – a little older and less athletic – was content to sniff her way along the trail and try to stay out of the youngsters’ way.
Chris and I stopped again and again to admire the view: the sun’s rays sparkling on the river; elegant blue herons wading on the river’s edge; the lush green grass springing up everywhere. The only thing that wasn’t quite perfect (at least from my view) was Chaco’s habit of flinging herself exuberantly onto and rolling around on every type of poop we came across: big gloppy cow patties, smaller but equally gooey wild turkey droppings, and even tiny, dried-up raccoon poop. She was literally green by the end of the walk and I was super-glad she wasn’t getting into MY car at the end of the hike. Chris is a great sport and a great owner, though, and she laughed it off, saying she had a crate in the car and she had already planned to bathe both her dogs later that day, so why worry?
I’m thrilled that yet one more of my foster dogs has found a terrific home, and I have a new friend and hiking partner – whose dogs are pleasant (if not pleasant-smelling!) and reliable off-leash. Talk about win/win/win!
A roomful of dog trainers will never agree on the best equipment for walking, training, or exercising a dog. How do you decide which training equipment is right for you and your dog? First, understand that you, alone, are responsible for choosing appropriate, humane, effective training equipment for your dog – not Whole Dog Journal, your trainer, spouse, your dog’s breeder, or acquaintances from the dog park. It’s your responsibility to make sure that the equipment fits your dog properly, and that it does not hurt or stress your dog. Ask for the opinion of dog- friendly professionals you trust, but don’t be pressured into using any gear that appears to bother your dog if you want him to trust you and enjoy your time together.
For more details and advice on how to select the best collar and leash for you and your dog, purchase Whole Dog Journal’s ebook, Guide to Collars and Leashes.
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How should you select a food for your dog? Over the years, we’ve spoken to literally thousands of owners and industry experts – and they have at least a few hundred different approaches to the task. We’ll briefly discuss some of the most prevalent factors used by owners to support their dog food buying decisions – and then we’ll tell you how we recommend choosing your dogs’ food.
Price – There is a correlation between the price of a dog food and its quality, but it’s most accurate at the low end, and less certain when you get to the upper price points.
What is certain is that inexpensive food is not what’s healthiest for your dog. Think about it: Cheap food is made with cheaper ingredients. We shudder to think of what sort of ingredients go into a product that sells for 25 cents a pound. Think about what is commonly called “4-D” meat: animals that are dead, dying, diseased, or disabled. Think about grain by-products of unknown provenance being shipped all over the planet – rejected for use in human food and languishing in warehouses while ingredient brokers try to find a buyer.
Good- and top-quality ingredients cost more, and the companies that use them have to charge more, so a high price can be an indication of quality. But higher prices can also be indicative of a company’s advertising budget, or the higher costs associated with running an independent pet supply store in a remote area.
At the top of the price range, there’s a bit of wiggle room. We’ve seen hamburger-quality foods that are sold for filet mignon prices. The market tends to correct matters if a company leans out too far, seriously overrepresenting its quality and overpricing its mediocre foods. Such a product can’t perform as well as one that’s really that good. Even just a few dozen owners whose dogs have persistent diarrhea after eating a really expensive food can stir up quite a storm on the Internet.
Ingredients – We hope that you do use the ingredients list to help you choose the food. But there are people who look at ingredients differently than we do.
For example, some owners insist on buying only those products whose manufacturers can provide proof (or at least, allege credibly) that all the food’s ingredients are domestically sourced – no ingredients from China. In the wake of the melamine recalls, I don’t blame those people one bit. There is no doubt that there are some really crummy food ingredients steaming across the oceans heading for American pet food plants.
On the other hand, we’ve also had pet food companies exhaustively describe the quality controls they employ to ensure that their Chinese-grown chicken (as one example) is as safe, wholesome, and less expensive than any fowl grown in North America. As a result, we can’t justify making a blanket recommendation for or against food based on the country of origin of their ingredients alone. In our view, this is a matter that has to be considered case by case. If a company won’t either confirm the origin of its major proteins and grains or explain the quality control processes it employs to guarantee the purity and wholesomeness of its foreign-sourced ingredients, we’d take a pass on its products.
Then there is the concept of “no” – as in “no corn, wheat, or soy…” “No fillers.” Or our personal favorite: “No allergens” (that’s impossible, folks).
There are a few ingredients that are commonly identified as undesirable in dog food: corn, wheat, and soy, most frequently. Some authors (or competing pet food companies) go so far as to allege that dogs can’t digest these ingredients, which is just plain silly; dogs digest these ingredients every day. None of these ingredients is inherently unhealthy for all dogs. Each has some benefit – for some dogs, in moderate amounts, and in the least-processed form possible. A certain percentage of dogs – a minority, for sure – may be allergic to (or more likely, intolerant of) one of the those ingredients. This doesn’t mean the ingredients don’t offer some value for most dogs. That said, we like to see them serve in a supporting, not a leading role. The protein and fat they offer have more nutritionally valuable (and of course, more expensive) counterparts in other ingredients. Their appearance in any of the top few places on an ingredients list signals a less-expensive, poorer-quality food. But their presence in a food lower down on the list doesn’t “kill” that food for us – unless we are feeding a specific dog who doesn’t tolerate one of those ingredients.
We’ve also seen screeds against beet pulp, tomato pomace, alfalfa meal, and other ingredients. Each of these ingredients offers some nutritional or functional benefits, such as helping to regulate the dog’s stool quality. Again, we don’t mind seeing them serve a supportive role in an otherwise healthy food.
Finally, there are a number of other factors having to do with ingredients that some people use to make the buying decision for their dog’s food. Some owners look for food with ingredients that are organic, local, non-GMO, or humanely raised and killed. Each of these can be found in some products; each raises the price of the finished food exponentially.
Our view is that if ingredients of this quality are important to you, you should forget about kibble; you could certainly prepare a more healthful diet for your dog using fresh ingredients. (Installments of Mary Straus’ series of reviews on the best books about various types of home-prepared diets were published in the December 2010 and January 2011 issues of WDJ; the next article will appear in the March issue.)
Past history – This is another place where we may differ with some of our readers. Some people won’t buy any product that has ever been recalled, for any reason. Other people won’t buy foods that are manufactured at a plant that made another food that was once recalled. After all, accidents can be an indication that the company’s quality controls are lax.
We certainly understand the fear that drives the consumers who make buying decisions based on a company’s recall history. And yet, we’re aware that sometimes, it’s the folks who have made a costly mistake who do the best job of ensuring that they won’t ever make another one. Companies tend to make huge investments in training and safety protocols after a recall.
Any company can suffer one manufacturing accident. That said, if accidents or recalls happen more than once . . . well, where there’s smoke, there is often fire.
Size of the company – Some people don’t trust corporate giants like Procter & Gamble (owner of Iams, Eukanuba, and more recently, all of the Natura Pet Products foods) or Colgate-Palmolive (owner of Hill’s Science Diet).
It’s the nature of manufacturing that always seems to pit quality against production efficiencies. We love the care and attention that small pet food companies can put into procuring top-quality, local, organic (or at least sustainably grown) ingredients. We appreciate their relentless drive to innovate healthier foods for dogs. But we worry about the manufacturing irregularities that can result in small plants (which are often running outdated equipment and inadequate quality control tests). We’re also concerned about products that are formulated by amateurs in animal nutrition and marketed without enough feeding trials to determine that the foods will perform as well in the dog as they did in the nutrition software.
In contrast, the giant food companies can put some of the most educated veterinary nutritionists to work in their research and development departments, furthering the industry’s knowledge of animal nutrition. They have the resources to build and maintain glistening state-of-the-art food manufacturing facilities, and hire, train, and retain armies of food production workers that produce consistent, safe products. But they don’t usually develop and support top quality products.
Either way, we consider the size of the company that’s behind each product we buy for our dog and retain the information as background when considering its potential merits or faults. But the company size doesn’t make the buying decision for us.
Company-owned manufacturing plant vs. “contract manufacturer” – As recently as a few years ago, pet food companies who used contract manufacturers (also known as “co-packers”) were often reluctant to admit they didn’t make their own products. But there are some real merits to not owning the plant, especially for small companies – precisely the ones who often bring something new to the industry or who have formulated unique and/or atypically high-quality foods. The costs associated with buying, equipping, and maintaining pet food manufacturing plants are enormous, but paying a co-packer for a bit of time on their machines can benefit both parties.
The challenge, though, is keeping a close enough eye on the co-packer, to make certain it uses your specified ingredients in the specified amounts, keeping accurate batch records, keeping your product separate from the other products in the plant, etc., etc. A pet food company’s reputation is incredibly vulnerable if it fails to monitor and audit its co-packer (though the co-packer will surely be blamed for anything that goes wrong with the food, even if it followed its client’s instructions to the letter).
Is it better, then, if the company owns its plant? In some cases, yes. But only if the company is big enough to maintain the plant well (we’ve seen some incredibly scruffy little manufacturing plants). And as we previously discussed, sometimes the biggest, cleanest plants produce some of the lowest-quality foods around. They do it well, though.
For these reasons, the actual ownership of a pet food’s manufacturing plant isn’t a selection criterion for us, though it is something we want to be aware of.
Method of confirmation of nutritional adequacy – Most veterinarians come out of school promoting the superiority of foods that have undergone Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) -compliant feeding trials (versus those that have been “formulated to meet the nutrient levels” recommended by AAFCO). It’s no wonder; veterinary nutrition textbooks have been written and/or published by the company whose products are all tested in these very expensive trials.
But the fact is, foods should be tested on dogs before they go to market; some products that seem brilliant in theory just don’t perform well in actual dogs.
All foods that purport to be “complete and balanced” (as opposed to “for supplemental of intermittent feeding only) must bear a statement on the label that indicates which method of confirmation was used to support the claim. (The type might be really small; look carefully!)
When buying a food confirmed as “complete and balanced” by the AAFCO “nutrient levels” method, ask the maker of your dog’s food whether and how the product was tested on dogs – for how long, and on how many dogs. Some companies conduct their own (non-AAFCO-compliant) feeding trials on dogs that they maintain in private kennels; others use a network of breeders or shelters who volunteer for these tests (free food!). (For a more complete discussion of the relative merits and faults with the various methods for proving nutritional adequacy, see “Take It With a Block of Salt,” WDJ February 2007.)
Picking a food for your dog
We’ve discussed a lot of factors we don’t necessarily use to choose our dog’s food. So how do we make our selection?
First, we try to shop locally. (This may not be possible for people who live in remote areas, but there is always online shopping and mail order, and fortunately, there are numerous companies with good products that available via direct shipping.) We try to scout out every location that sells pet food in our area, to get a sense of which ones carry which foods. We also talk to the shop owners or staff, in order to get a sense of which stores seem interested in serving our type of dog owner: motivated, educated, and willing to spend more than the average customer for really good food.
Then we look at the product labels, examining the ingredients lists. We use the criteria outlined below (“Hallmarks of Quality” and “Signs of Corners Cut”) to determine which (if any) of the foods carried by the store are in the range of quality we’re willing to pay for.
We note the products that meet our selection criteria, and write down the names of any companies we’re not familiar with, so we can do a little more research on them once we’re back home.
If there are stil several products in the running, we then look for the one that best matches our dog’s needs for protein, fat, and calories, using his body condition (fat, thin, or just right?) and activity level (highly active or couch potato?) to choose a product in the appropriate range. Unless he’s emaciated or obese (and in need of a high-calorie or “light” food, respectively), we look for a product whose calories, fat, and protein levels are in the middle range of the products that are still in the running.
At this point, we’ve decided which brand and variety to buy, but before we grab the bag from the top of the pile, we look for the “best by” date on the bag. Most naturally preserved dry foods are given a “best by” date that is 12 months from the date of manufacture. Try to find a bag that is as fresh as possible, rather than one that is near, at, or past its “best by” date. If every bag of food of the variety you selected is nearing its expiration, we’d recommend choosing another variety, or asking a sales associate when she expects a new shipment to arrive. This stuff is too expensive, and your dog’s health too important, to buy potentially rancid food.
Make a note on your calendar when you start feeding a new product to your dog, and note any changes in his health. Adjust accordingly.
“Approved foods” Click here to see this article in its entirety with Whole Dog Journal’s 2011 list of “approved foods”. Please note that we have listed the foods alphabetically by company; they are not rank-ordered.
Some companies make several product lines. We’ve listed each product line that meets our selection criteria from each manufacturer. We’ve also highlighted one product from each company as a representative, to show what sort of ingredients and macro-nutrient levels (minimum amounts of protein and fat, and maximum amounts of fiber and moisture) are typically found in that maker’s foods. Be aware that some companies offer dozens of different products with varying nutrient levels and ingredients. Check the company’s website or call its toll-free phone number to get information about its other varieties.
We say this every year, but it bears repeating: What if your favorite dog foods don’t meet our selection criteria? It’s up to you. If you have been feeding what we would consider to be low-quality foods to your dog, and she looks and appears to feel great, good for you! She’s one of those genetically lucky animals who can spin straw into gold, digestively speaking. But if she has allergies, chronic diarrhea, recurrent ear infections, or a poor coat, we’d recommend that you upgrade.
The eight products listed in our chart which you will find under Resources for this article (to the right) are intended to appeal to dog owners who are interested in a “holistic” and/or “healthy” food for their dogs. None contains artificial colors or artificial preservatives. But none can hold a candle to the products on our “approved foods list“. Each misses that mark – some miss by just a bit, and some miss by a country mile.
Procter & Gamble Pet Care, owner of Eukanuba and Iams, seems to be making a genuine effort to formulate decent products as their entries in the “natural” or “holistic” category. Their products, the first two products in the chart below, come the closest to meeting WDJ’s selection criteria. If either one had a quality animal protein as the second (or even third) item on the ingredients list – boom, they’d be on our “approved foods” list. They wouldn’t be the best products on our list, but they’d be on the list.
Each of the next two products on the chart has something going for it but not quite enough for us to be enthused about. The Rachel Ray product starts out nicely: a fresh, named animal protein at the top of the list, and a nice, named animal protein meal to bolster the total amount of animal protein in the food. Why, oh why, then did the company dump a really crummy fat (“animal fat”) into the food? “Animal fat” could be anything (and everything), from used fat collected from fast-food restaurants to road kill. The Nature’s Best product also bolsters its fresh animal protein (chicken) with a nice animal protein meal (chicken meal) – but why is that ingredient so far down the ingredients list (sixth)? That product clearly contains a lot more grain than the Rachel Ray food. At least it has a nice (named) fat source.
The next pair of foods, both made by Purina, are more than just one step below the previous products in terms of quality. We suspect that each has a different target buyer; the Chef Michaels packages make the products resemble home-cooked meals; the ONE packages and marketing have a more professional look, as if only experienced dog owners should purchase them. But neither offers anything of value past the good first ingredient.
The Whole Foods store brand (365) dog food surprised us. People who are accustomed to buying healthy (and expensive) foods there might take it for granted that the Whole Foods 365 dog food is also high-quality, and fail to look at the ingredients list. Never fail to look at the ingredients list! Because there is almost nothing good in this food. (And the “lean” formula is even worse; “powdered cellulose” is sixth on its ingredients list!)
What’s the worst food we know that might be mistaken for something healthful? Ah, but that honor always seems to fall to a Beneful product, with its beautiful bags adorned with photos of fresh whole vegetables and glistening chunks of marbled meats. The Healthy Harvest variety is missing the meat, however; its protein comes from corn, corn gluten meal, and soy protein. There is so little fresh food in the product that water is added to the dry food (7th ingredient!). And how about the appearance of sugar in the 10th spot? Wow! Nothing healthy in that harvest.
This has been a rough month or so for my dog-loving friends. Dempsey the Boxer lost his fight with cancer just before Christmas. His owner summoned a veterinarian to put him out of his pain, but said that there was barely a flicker of life left in him by the time the vet arrived.
A couple of weeks later, a friend’s Akita, who had been born with neurological defects that affected his ability to walk and his coordination, began suffering frequent, long seizures. My friend had rescued the dog from euthanasia when he was a puppy, hoping to give him as long a life as his condition would permit. His condition proved to be degenerative, however, and the moments of his life that had any quality were increasingly outnumbered by those that were painful and scary for him, my friend also made that call to a veterinarian.
Most recently, my friend Sarah reached the end of her long road with Lenny, a mixed-breed dog with whom she had shared 15 New Year’s eves. When I first met Lenny almost five years ago, he was starting to decline, but a switch to a high-quality raw diet brought him back to peak health. A couple of years ago, Sarah made the decision to have a large mass surgically removed from Lenny’s abdomen – a tough decision with an old dog, putting him through a long surgery. But Lenny again rebounded and improved after the surgery. He stayed vital and active right until the end, which came last week.
All three of my friends suffered tremendous pain and sadness over the loss of their canine companions. All three have other dogs with whom to continue to share their love and lives, but the memories of losing their special dogs will undoubtedly flavor this season for years to come. I lost my “heart dog,” Rupert, in the darkest depths of winter in 2003, and I think about him and miss him especially at this time every year.
Do we lose more of our canine friends in winter? Or does it just seem like the saddest season?
Fat has more than twice the calories per gram of protein or carbs, so the amount you feed should be limited. Fat, however, is also what satisfies the appetite best. A diet that is too low in fat will leave your dog feeling hungry all the time, making it harder for you to stick to the diet plan and potentially leading to food-stealing or even poop-eating. It’s better to feed a diet with moderate fat and reduce the portion size as needed rather than feeding a low-fat diet.
If you are feeding kibble or other dry food, look for a minimum of 25 percent protein. More is better: generally, the higher the protein, the lower the carbs. There is no harm in feeding high protein diets to puppies, seniors, or healthy adult dogs; there are only a few specific health conditions that require protein to be limited.
For more details and advice on ways to manage your dog’s weight, purchase Whole Dog Journal’s ebook, Weight & Fitness Handbook .
Often, writing something to appear on this page is the last thing I do before shipping the issue to the printer. That’s true tonight, too. Exhausted from making the calls and compiling the information that goes into our annual dry dog food review, I was drawing a blank on an idea for the editorial. So I did what I often do when I’m all wrung out; I took my dog Otto out for a walk.
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It’s crystal clear and freezing tonight, and the stars were shining brightly. Otto trotted ahead of me off-leash, stopping to smell bushes and waiting at the street corners for me to catch up, look both ways, and give him permission to race across the deserted streets. There is a park near our house with a low concrete wall around it, and as he often does, Otto jumped up onto the wall, pranced along it for a ways, and then stopped and looked back at me, a free dog, eyes alight with interest and affection and health. And it struck me how far I have come as a dog owner, thanks to Whole Dog Journal.
Fifteen years ago, I thought that I was an above-average owner because I fed my dog Purina Dog Chow, rather than one of the lower-cost, generic dog foods in the grocery store. I failed to consider that there might be a connection between that diet and my dog’s propensity for breaking out in hot spots and frequent ear infections. I didn’t know anything back then!
Then I was hired to edit this magazine. Previously, I had edited horse magazines, and my most immediate prior experience was editing a holistic horse magazine. I figured that while I had a lot to learn about dogs, I knew a fair amount about holistic healthcare for horses, and how different could it be? I threw myself into the job, buying every book on the subject of holistic canine healthcare (there weren’t many yet) and positive dog training, and signing up for lectures and conferences such as the annual meeting of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers.
I was horrified to learn, pretty much immediately, that all the dog training I had ever done was outdated and nonsensical – and the dog food that I was so proud of buying was far better suited to feeding a chicken or a pig.
This is one of the reasons that I am patient with friends or acquaintances who still use choke chains or feed grocery store foods; I was in their shoes not that long ago. I’ve learned that there are healthier alternatives to both of those things, and moving away from them has led me on a journey that has influenced how I feed myself and my family (including the dog, of course) and even how I raised my son. (It’s a family joke, although one that sometimes startles people who don’t know us well, that I regularly praise my son by saying, “Oh good dog, Eli!”)
When you’ve been immersed in a subject for a long time, it’s easy to forget the period of ignorance that came before. It’s also easy to forget how ashamed you may have felt the first time you realized that some of the training techniques you used on a beloved canine partner in your past bordered on abuse. Or that all those annual vaccinations and poor-quality food may have helped to shorten that dog’s life.
Seeing Otto’s eyes twinkling at me in the starlight as he proudly balanced on the park wall, it just hit me: I deeply love and enjoy the company of my vibrantly healthy and well-behaved dog. I’m grateful that I’ve had an opportunity to spend my professional life learning about something that is fascinating to me personally. I’m also appreciative of the opportunity to promote the power of positive training and holistic healthcare for dogs to other owners. Thanks so much for your support of WDJ.
How should you select a food for your dog? Over the years, we have spoken to literally thousands of owners and industry experts – and they have at least a few hundred different approaches to the task. We’ll briefly discuss some of the most prevalent factors used by owners to support their dog food buying decisions – and then we’ll tell you how we recommend choosing your dogs’ food.
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Price – There is a correlation between the price of a dog food and its quality, but it’s most accurate at the low end, and less certain when you get to the upper price points.
What is certain is that inexpensive food is not what’s healthiest for your dog. Think about it: Cheap food is made with cheaper ingredients. We shudder to think of what sort of ingredients go into a product that sells for 25 cents a pound. Think about what is commonly called “4-D” meat: animals that are dead, dying, diseased, or disabled. Think about grain by-products of unknown provenance being shipped all over the planet – rejected for use in human food and languishing in warehouses while ingredient brokers try to find a buyer.
Good- and top-quality ingredients cost more, and the companies that use them have to charge more, so a high price can be an indication of quality. But higher prices can also be indicative of a company’s advertising budget, or the higher costs associated with running an independent pet supply store in a remote area.
At the top of the price range, there’s a bit of wiggle room. We’ve seen hamburger-quality foods that are sold for filet mignon prices. The market tends to correct matters if a company leans out too far, seriously overrepresenting its quality and overpricing its mediocre foods. Such a product can’t perform as well as one that’s really that good. Even just a few dozen owners whose dogs have persistent diarrhea after eating a really expensive food can stir up quite a storm on the Internet.
Ingredients – We hope that you do use the ingredients list to help you choose the food. But there are people who look at ingredients differently than we do.
For example, some owners insist on buying only those products whose manufacturers can provide proof (or at least, allege credibly) that all the food’s ingredients are domestically sourced – no ingredients from China. In the wake of the melamine recalls, I don’t blame those people one bit. There is no doubt that there are some really crummy food ingredients steaming across the oceans heading for American pet food plants.
On the other hand, we’ve also had pet food companies exhaustively describe the quality controls they employ to ensure that their Chinese-grown chicken (as one example) is as safe, wholesome, and less expensive than any fowl grown in North America. As a result, we can’t justify making a blanket recommendation for or against food based on the country of origin of their ingredients alone. In our view, this is a matter that has to be considered case by case. If a company won’t either confirm the origin of its major proteins and grains or explain the quality control processes it employs to guarantee the purity and wholesomeness of its foreign-sourced ingredients, we’d take a pass on its products.
Then there is the concept of “no” – as in “no corn, wheat, or soy…” “No fillers.” Or our personal favorite: “No allergens” (that’s impossible, folks).
There are a few ingredients that are commonly identified as undesirable in dog food: corn, wheat, and soy, most frequently. Some authors (or competing pet food companies) go so far as to allege that dogs can’t digest these ingredients, which is just plain silly; dogs digest these ingredients every day. None of these ingredients is inherently unhealthy for all dogs. Each has some benefit – for some dogs, in moderate amounts, and in the least-processed form possible. A certain percentage of dogs – a minority, for sure – may be allergic to (or more likely, intolerant of) one of the those ingredients. This doesn’t mean the ingredients don’t offer some value for most dogs. That said, we like to see them serve in a supporting, not a leading role. The protein and fat they offer have more nutritionally valuable (and of course, more expensive) counterparts in other ingredients. Their appearance in any of the top few places on an ingredients list signals a less-expensive, poorer-quality food. But their presence in a food lower down on the list doesn’t “kill” that food for us – unless we are feeding a specific dog who doesn’t tolerate one of those ingredients.
We’ve also seen screeds against beet pulp, tomato pomace, alfalfa meal, and other ingredients. Each of these ingredients offers some nutritional or functional benefits, such as helping to regulate the dog’s stool quality. Again, we don’t mind seeing them serve a supportive role in an otherwise healthy food.
Finally, there are a number of other factors having to do with ingredients that some people use to make the buying decision for their dog’s food. Some owners look for food with ingredients that are organic, local, non-GMO, or humanely raised and killed. Each of these can be found in some products; each raises the price of the finished food exponentially.
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Our view is that if ingredients of this quality are important to you, you should forget about kibble; you could certainly prepare a more healthful diet for your dog using fresh ingredients. (Installments of Mary Straus’ series of reviews on the best books about various types of home-prepared diets were published in the December 2010 and January 2011 issues of WDJ; the next article will appear in the March issue.)
Past history – This is another place where we may differ with some of our readers. Some people won’t buy any product that has ever been recalled, for any reason. Other people won’t buy foods that are manufactured at a plant that made another food that was once recalled. After all, accidents can be an indication that the company’s quality controls are lax.
We certainly understand the fear that drives the consumers who make buying decisions based on a company’s recall history. And yet, we’re aware that sometimes, it’s the folks who have made a costly mistake who do the best job of ensuring that they won’t ever make another one. Companies tend to make huge investments in training and safety protocols after a recall.
Any company can suffer one manufacturing accident. That said, if accidents or recalls happen more than once . . . well, where there’s smoke, there is often fire.
Size of the company – Some people don’t trust corporate giants like Procter & Gamble (owner of Iams, Eukanuba, and more recently, all of the Natura Pet Products foods) or Colgate-Palmolive (owner of Hill’s Science Diet).
It’s the nature of manufacturing that always seems to pit quality against production efficiencies. We love the care and attention that small pet food companies can put into procuring top-quality, local, organic (or at least sustainably grown) ingredients. We appreciate their relentless drive to innovate healthier foods for dogs. But we worry about the manufacturing irregularities that can result in small plants (which are often running outdated equipment and inadequate quality control tests). We’re also concerned about products that are formulated by amateurs in animal nutrition and marketed without enough feeding trials to determine that the foods will perform as well in the dog as they did in the nutrition software.
In contrast, the giant food companies can put some of the most educated veterinary nutritionists to work in their research and development departments, furthering the industry’s knowledge of animal nutrition. They have the resources to build and maintain glistening state-of-the-art food manufacturing facilities, and hire, train, and retain armies of food production workers that produce consistent, safe products. But they don’t usually develop and support top quality products. Either way, we consider the size of the company that’s behind each product we buy for our dog and retain the information as background when considering its potential merits or faults. But the company size doesn’t make the buying decision for us.
Company-owned manufacturing plant vs. “contract manufacturer” – As recently as a few years ago, pet food companies who used contract manufacturers (also known as “co-packers”) were often reluctant to admit they didn’t make their own products. But there are some real merits to not owning the plant, especially for small companies – precisely the ones who often bring something new to the industry or who have formulated unique and/or atypically high-quality foods. The costs associated with buying, equipping, and maintaining pet food manufacturing plants are enormous, but paying a co-packer for a bit of time on their machines can benefit both parties.
The challenge, though, is keeping a close enough eye on the co-packer, to make certain it uses your specified ingredients in the specified amounts, keeping accurate batch records, keeping your product separate from the other products in the plant, etc., etc. A pet food company’s reputation is incredibly vulnerable if it fails to monitor and audit its co-packer (though the co-packer will surely be blamed for anything that goes wrong with the food, even if it followed its client’s instructions to the letter).
Is it better, then, if the company owns its plant? In some cases, yes. But only if the company is big enough to maintain the plant well (we’ve seen some incredibly scruffy little manufacturing plants). And as we previously discussed, sometimes the biggest, cleanest plants produce some of the lowest-quality foods around. They do it well, though.
For these reasons, the actual ownership of a pet food’s manufacturing plant isn’t a selection criterion for us, though it is something we want to be aware of.
Method of confirmation of nutritional adequacy – Most veterinarians come out of school promoting the superiority of foods that have undergone Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) -compliant feeding trials (versus those that have been “formulated to meet the nutrient levels” recommended by AAFCO). It’s no wonder; veterinary nutrition textbooks have been written and/or published by the company whose products are all tested in these very expensive trials.
But the fact is, foods should be tested on dogs before they go to market; some products that seem brilliant in theory just don’t perform well in actual dogs.
All foods that purport to be “complete and balanced” (as opposed to “for supplemental of intermittent feeding only) must bear a statement on the label that indicates which method of confirmation was used to support the claim. (The type might be really small; look carefully!)
When buying a food confirmed as “complete and balanced” by the AAFCO “nutrient levels” method, ask the maker of your dog’s food whether and how the product was tested on dogs – for how long, and on how many dogs. Some companies conduct their own (non-AAFCO-compliant) feeding trials on dogs that they maintain in private kennels; others use a network of breeders or shelters who volunteer for these tests (free food!). (For a more complete discussion of the relative merits and faults with the various methods for proving nutritional adequacy, see “Take It With a Block of Salt,” WDJ February 2007.)
Picking a food for your dog We’ve discussed a lot of factors we don’t necessarily use to choose our dog’s food. So how do we make our selection?
First, we try to shop locally. (This may not be possible for people who live in remote areas, but there is always online shopping and mail order, and fortunately, there are numerous companies with good products that available via direct shipping.) We try to scout out every location that sells pet food in our area, to get a sense of which ones carry which foods. We also talk to the shop owners or staff, in order to get a sense of which stores seem interested in serving our type of dog owner: motivated, educated, and willing to spend more than the average customer for really good food.
Then we look at the product labels, examining the ingredients lists. We use the criteria outlined below (“Hallmarks of Quality” and “Signs of Corners Cut”) to determine which (if any) of the foods carried by the store are in the range of quality we’re willing to pay for.
We note the products that meet our selection criteria, and write down the names of any companies we’re not familiar with, so we can do a little more research on them once we’re back home.
If there are still several products in the running, we then look for the one that best matches our dog’s needs for protein, fat, and calories, using his body condition (fat, thin, or just right?) and activity level (highly active or couch potato?) to choose a product in the appropriate range. Unless he’s emaciated or obese (and in need of a high-calorie or “light” food, respectively), we look for a product whose calories, fat, and protein levels are in the middle range of the products that are still in the running.
At this point, we’ve decided which brand and variety to buy, but before we grab the bag from the top of the pile, we look for the “best by” date on the bag. Most naturally preserved dry foods are given a “best by” date that is 12 months from the date of manufacture. Try to find a bag that is as fresh as possible, rather than one that is near, at, or past its “best by” date. If every bag of food of the variety you selected is nearing its expiration, we’d recommend choosing another variety, or asking a sales associate when she expects a new shipment to arrive. This stuff is too expensive, and your dog’s health too important, to buy potentially rancid food.
Make a note on your calendar when you start feeding a new product to your dog, and note any changes in his health. Adjust accordingly.
“Approved foods” In the box, Also With This Article at the top right hand side of this article you will find our “approved dry foods” list for 2011 (Whole Dog Journal’s Approved Dry Dog Foods of 2011). All these products meet our selection criteria – including our newest criterion, that the company discloses the name and location of its manufacturers.
Note that we’ve listed the foods alphabetically by company; they are not rank-ordered.
Some companies make several product lines. We’ve listed each product line that meets our selection criteria from each manufacturer. We’ve also highlighted one product from each company as a representative, to show what sort of ingredients and macro-nutrient levels (minimum amounts of protein and fat, and maximum amounts of fiber and moisture) are typically found in that maker’s foods. Be aware that some companies offer dozens of different products with varying nutrient levels and ingredients. Check the company’s website or call its toll-free phone number to get information about its other varieties.
We say this every year, but it bears repeating: What if your favorite dog foods don’t meet our selection criteria? It’s up to you. If you have been feeding what we would consider to be low-quality foods to your dog, and she looks and appears to feel great, good for you! She’s one of those genetically lucky animals who can spin straw into gold, digestively speaking. But if she has allergies, chronic diarrhea, recurrent ear infections, or a poor coat, we’d recommend that you upgrade.
Have you ever stopped to think about how many times a day you do something to your dog that involves physical contact? I’m not talking about petting him when he nudges up against your leg; I’m talking about grasping his collar, putting his leash on, picking him up, wiping debris from the corners of his eyes, wiping the mud off his paws, trimming fur somewhere on his body, and many more “husbandry” procedures that require various degrees of restraint and touch. Chances are you really only think about it when your dog protests, but chances are he thinks about it every time you reach for him.
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If you’re lucky, he’s thinking good thoughts. This happens when he has a generally positive association with the outcome of your touch. These are the procedures he loves. Good associations can happen incidentally (Leash = going for a walk – Yay!) and you can create them deliberately (Touch collar, feed a treat; collar = treats – Yay!). If you’re not so fortunate or proactive, your dog may have negative associations with some of your procedures. These are the ones he avoids or actively resists.
Your dog will tell you An owner who is skilled at observing and reading her dog’s body language is usually well aware when a canine pal is even slightly uncomfortable. (See “Say What?” WDJ November 2005). That’s “note to self” time; an opportunity to help change a mildly unhappy association to a very happy one, to avoid trouble down the road. Many owners, however, don’t notice until the dog is putting up major resistance. At that point it’s a much larger project to change the now well-established negative association. Once again, prevention is better than cure.
If you’re working with a pup or a young dog who doesn’t have many associations yet, don’t let him become even slightly uncomfortable. Treat every new procedure as an opportunity to make wonderful associations with all the handling procedures you may perform with him over the years. Procedures
Here are examples of some of the procedures you can help your dog learn to love:
Reaching for the collar: Bet you can’t even count how many times this has happened to your dog, whether it’s reaching to put on a leash, to restrain him as a jogger goes by, to put him in his crate, or to hold him while you do something else to him. Most of the time grabbing for his collar is more reinforcing for you than for your dog, and he learns to shy away when you reach. This can be a serious safety concern, especially for those times when you have to grab him to protect him or prevent him from doing something inappropriate that could get him injured.
We do an exercise in our basic “good manners” classes called “Gotcha!” in which we teach the dogs that someone reaching for the collar consistently means something wonderful is coming. “Wonderful” is most often a tasty treat, but can also be a toy, a ball . . . or a leash and a walk.
The “Gotcha!” exercise is intended to desensitize your dog to having his collar grabbed, and to teach you the correct way to grasp a dog’s collar. This will help him enjoy having you reach for him, and greatly reduce the risk of a bite when you must take hold of your dog in a tense situation, since he will have learned to associate a collar grab with a reward.
Begin with your dog sitting in front of you. Say “Gotcha!” and feed him a treat. Repeat this until he brightens up when he hears the word. Then circle your hand over his head, say “Gotcha!” and feed him a treat. Repeat until he is calm when you do this, and happily anticipating a treat. Then touch his collar under his chin with the “Gotcha!” and treat.
Over several training sessions, gradually increase the intensity of your touches until you are grabbing the collar with the “Gotcha.” If at any time your dog flinches or tries to pull away you have moved forward too quickly. Back up a few steps in the process and start again.
Apply medication: When we found Dubhy, our Scottie, as a stray (some 10-plus years ago), he had badly infected ears and wanted no part of treatment. The dilemma when the ears are already infected is that no matter how much you add treats to the program, there’s still a negative association with the pain the treatment inevitably causes. Fortunately Dubhy is a forgiving soul, and in just two days the treat-association far outweighed the pain for him; the sight of his medication bottle would send him running to his mat in the kitchen to await treats – and treatment.
Most owners wait until ear cleaning or infection time to worry about how the dog will handle it. Wise owners spend a moment or two each day initially touching ears, then feeding a treat. Over time they increase the stimulus to rubbing the inside of the ears, feeding a treat; pressing a finger into the ear canal, feeding a treat; touching the inside of the ear with a moist cloth, feeding a treat; and even doing the same with a medication bottle and some benign liquid or gel, until the dog thinks nothing of having his ears invaded.
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The same holds true for similar procedures: administering eye drops, brushing teeth, removing debris from the corners of your dog’s eyes, applying topical flea and tick preventatives . . . Start small, well before the procedure is actually critically important. Associate your movements and the various tools and accessories with really good treats, and when the day comes that you really do need to treat or clean your dog’s ears, he’ll be happily waiting on his mat for treatment, just like Dubhy.
Lifting: Lots of small dogs get picked up – a lot. Many of them don’t much like it, but are pretty helpless to prevent it, unless they snap and snarl. Just imagine how off-putting it would be to have a creature as much as 10 to 20 times your size (or more) swoop down and snatch you off the ground without warning, whenever it pleased.
When Scooter, our 10-pound Pomeranian, first joined our family two years ago, he was very resistant to being lifted. Even approaching him with lift-intention body language was enough to elicit a snarl. With a gradual association between good stuff and touch, then pressure, then lifting, he began to relax about being picked up. At that point we introduced a “Ready?” cue – in essence giving him notice of the pending lift, and the choice to be picked up.
Now, when I say “Ready?” I can feel him gather himself to be lifted, and when I say “Okay!” and pick him up he gives himself a small boost off the ground, as if to help. If I don’t feel him gather himself but I lift anyway, he will snarl. He still doesn’t appreciate being lifted if he is lying down, and I respect that. If he’s lying down and I need to pick him up I’ll invite him to stand, and if he declines I toss a treat to get him up. Treat consumed, he’s usually more than happy to play the “Ready?” game.
Wiping paws: Many dogs have negative associations with paw handling, in part because paws are most commonly touched and held for nail trimming – a procedure that creates a very negative association for lots of dogs. (See “Do My Nails, Please!” March 2009).
As with the “Gotcha” procedure, begin by just moving your hand near your dog’s paw and feeding a treat. When his eyes brighten and he looks for a treat as your hand moves toward him, add a brief, gentle touch before you treat. Gradually increase the length of time you touch, and then the amount of pressure. As things proceed well, eventually add small movements, working up to vigorous ones that approximate the movements you would use when toweling off his paws.
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Over the same time period but in different sessions, introduce him to the towel. Show him the towel, feed him a treat. Repeat until you can tell by his response that he’s convinced towels make treats happen. Let him sniff the towel, and feed him a treat. Touch him with the towel on other parts of this body (assuming he’s comfortable with that) and feed him treats.
When he’s happy with both parts – the paw touching and the presence of the towel, you can put them together. Start with a brief gentle touch of the towel to his paws, and feed a treat. Gradually work up to a full, vigorous paw-toweling, making sure to keep the positive association as you progress.
Putting on a jacket: This is a complex procedure that may necessitate a considerable amount of canine cooperation. As with “wiping paws,” this one has two parts: the part where you create a positive association with touching the dog’s body parts, and the part where you create a pleasant association with the jacket (or Thundershirt, Anxiety Wrap, or other garment).
Visualize the process of putting on the jacket or other apparel. What parts of your dog must be touched, lifted, or moved in order to get the jacket on? Some have straps, buckles, buttons, zippers, or Velcro that reduce the amount of actual manipulation needed; others require that you pull paws through sleeves and the dog’s head through an opening. Make sure your dog is happy to have you touch, push, and pull on those various parts. Touch, push, and pull = treats!
Then look at the article of apparel itself. Velcro makes a potentially scary ripping noise; be sure your dog thinks Velcro-at-a-distance makes tasty treats happen before you even think of ripping open the straps right next to him. Button fumbling, zippers zipping, snaps snapping, raincoat rustling . . . all need their share of positive association-time to ensure a happy fashion ensemble for your canine pal.
Kind of in this same category is the dreaded Elizabethan collar or “cone.” I had neglected to anticipate the need, and failed to give our Corgi, Lucy, a positive association to one of these before she injured herself. When she had to wear one after her ACL surgery, she hated it. In fact she offered to bite me when I tried to put it on her the first time. We called a truce. In a workable compromise she grudgingly accepted a soft collar instead of the cone.
Grooming: A myriad of procedures fall under the heading of “grooming.” For each one, identify the tools used, and the body parts that need to be touched or held, and give your dog positive associations with all of them. For example, to scissor the long hair over your dog’s eyes, you may need to grasp his muzzle with one hand while you manipulate the scissors with the other. If he’s learned to accept the muzzle grasp (makes treats happen!) and with noise of the scissors, you’ll get a much straighter cut than if he’s flailing around while you try to trim. And you’re much less likely to poke an eye out!
Try an operant approach All of the above procedures rely on classical conditioning – giving your dog a positive association with the pieces of the procedures so that he loves them rather than just tolerating, or even hating them. You can also incorporate “operant conditioning” with your positive associations, where your dog makes deliberate behavior choices in order to get good stuff, thereby reducing the need, in some cases, for annoying procedures.
Take wiping paws, for example. Another way to clean your dog’s muddy paws when he comes in the house could be to teach him to walk through a foot bath of clean water, and wipe his own paws on a mat that you provide for that purpose.
Lifting is another procedure that often suggests an operant solution. Your little dog hates to be lifted, but has to be carried upstairs every night to go to bed? Teach him to hop into his crate on cue, and then carry his crate up the stairs. Mission accomplished!
You can even trim your dog’s nails without ever touching a paw. Trainer Shirley Chong of Grinnell, Iowa, originally came up with the idea of creating a giant nail file for dogs, and the concept has spread like wildfire.
Take a board, 8 to 12 inches wide and 24 to 36 inches long, and cover it securely with coarse sandpaper, or with the slip-proof tape used to provide traction on wooden stairs. Place it flat on the ground or at an angle, depending on your dog’s preference. Then simply teach him to paw at the board with his front paws (easiest with clicker and shaping), kick at it with his hind paws (as if after defecating), and he’ll file his own nails!
According to Chong, dogs tend to get so happy about doing it that you have to put the board away or they’ll file them down to bloody stumps. Apparently dogs don’t mind quicking themselves! (See Chong’s website at ShirleyChong.com for more information about this solution.)
Another way to do a restraint-free nail trim is to teach your dog to stand on a board with his nails extended over the edge. If the board is on a slight incline forward, it works even better. You can clip off the exposed ends of the nails in mid-air, without ever touching the paw. Of course, you still need to give your dog positive associations with standing on the board, the pressure of the clipper on the nail, and the sensation of clipping, so don’t put those treats away yet!
Pat Miller, CPDT-KA, CDBC, is WDJ’s Training Editor. Miller lives in Fairplay, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center. Pat is also author of several books on positive training, including her latest: Do Over Dogs: Give Your Dog a Second Chance for a First Class Life.
In some training circles, it’s still a sacred cow: the idea that the only way to get a dog trained to near perfection and utter reliability is to teach him that he “has to” comply; it doesn’t matter if he “wants to.” Adherents of this school of training believe that in order to create a dog who responds reliably when first “commanded,” force-based training techniques must be used.
Fortunately, more and more trainers are realizing this sacred cow is a bunch of bull.
Positive reinforcement training has made significant inroads among much of the dog-owning population. However, many handlers involved in precision-based sports such as field work, obedience, and Schutzhund, along with many pet owners of “strong” breeds such as Rottweilers, Dobermans, and so-called “bully” breeds, still believe a healthy dose of compulsion is necessary to convince the dog he must perform as “commanded” (as opposed to “cued” or “requested”).
The trainers of working police dogs generally feel that their dogs – and their jobs – also require the use of force-based techniques; a majority of law enforcement dog handlers still rely on compulsion. Fortunately, a growing number are beginning to realize that positive reinforcement not only produces reliable dogs, it also decreases dog-handler conflict and creates stronger working relationships.
Among the “serve and protect” leaders of the movement toward positive training is Seattle-based trainer Steve White. A sergeant with the Seattle Police Department, White has more than 35 years of experience as a canine handler.
White’s early dog training experiences were spent in the U.S. Army as a patrol dog handler at Lackland Air Force Base, a joint forces military installation in San Antonio, Texas. At the time, military dog training methods were based largely on the early work of Col. Konrad Most and William Koehler, and can best be described as a “carrots and sticks” approach.
“They taught us to praise our dogs by making us face and praise a rock,” White says. “They made you stand at your rock, get goofy and excited . . . ‘That’s a good boy, that’s a good dog, that’s a good baby!’ At the same time you were practicing praising your rock, you were practicing leash corrections on a chain link fence. You got both sides of it.”
Most behaviors were taught using negative reinforcement, a technique where the handler applies physical or social pressure in an effort to coerce or force the dog to alter his behavior – for example, pushing on a dog’s backside to elicit a “sit” or using a collar and leash to drag a dog into a “down.” In both cases the dog learns that compliance relieves the pressure; he works to avoid the uncomfortable situation.
Punishment in Dog Training Creates Conflict
For many dogs, especially those who are deliberately selected for their high-drive personalities and strong physical and emotional make-up, these techniques routinely create a conflict between dog and handler that results in a bite.
For White, the bite came after working with “Astro,” his first canine partner. The dog was willing to acquiesce to sit and perform heelwork, but was all too ready to fight back when White attempted to force him into a “down.” In an intense battle of wills, White sustained a bite that sidelined his training for two weeks. He returned to work a different dog and went on to finish the program as a Distinguished Honor Graduate.
“(Getting bitten) was common enough that they taught you how to deal with it,” says White. “They taught you how to protect yourself . . . to string up a dog. If the dog came at you, you lifted up on the leash and kept the pointy end away from you until the dog stopped fighting. It wasn’t an act of training; it was an act of self-defense until the dog could no longer offer an offense.”
One of the dangers of punishment, aside from the potential for physical harm and its ability to erode the dog-handler relationship, is the tendency for the handler to escalate out of frustration or a misguided desire for revenge.
“They taught us how to “airplane” (the dogs) so that you picked them up and started to spin around so they’d be off balance and couldn’t come after you,” White explained. “Some dogs could withstand being suspended by their neck longer than your arms could stand keeping them up there and then what do you do? Some people would walk over to the nearest fence and suspend the leash from that and hold the dog up. That would get carried away because now that you aren’t getting tired, and you’re a little ticked off, some people would succumb to the temptation to keep the dog up there longer.”
Thankfully, according to White, this didn’t happen often at Lackland, but sadly, it does sometimes happen in the name of police canine “training.” In August 2007, then Trooper Sgt. Charles Jones of the North Carolina Highway Patrol was unknowingly videotaped by a fellow trooper as he hung his Belgian Malinois “Ricoh” from a railing and kicked him repeatedly for failure to release a training toy.
Photo by Senior Airman Christopher Griffin.
The video ended up on YouTube, sparking a public outcry that resulted in Jones losing his job. However, in November 2010, North Carolina Superior Court Judge James Hardin Jr. ruled that Jones was improperly fired and should be returned to his position as a canine officer, along with receiving back wages and attorney’s fees. The judge ruled that although Jones’ actions were not specifically part of the agency’s standard techniques, they were no worse than its accepted methods.
A similar video shows a Baltimore Police Department officer repeatedly lifting and throwing his canine partner to the ground in the name of training. For nearly three minutes, the officer battles with his dog while at least one bystander (assumed to be a supervisor or trainer) offers encouragement and instruction on how to show the dog “who’s boss.”
Another media report recounted how, in June 2006, a frustrated Miami-Dade Police Sergeant, Allen Cockfield, delivered a lethal kick to his canine partner, “Duke,” in an ill-fated training session.
A More Reliable Way to Train
Fortunately, early in his career, White realized there were better ways beyond the force- and fear-based methods of his first experience. In the mid 1970s he began exploring the works of Leon Whitney (author of Natural Method of Dog Training), Ray Berwick (How to Train Your Pet Like a Television Star) and Patricia Gail Burnham (Playtraining Your Dog). These three books served as a trilogy of concepts that was later supported by Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot the Dog, and set a path toward a training future based on positive reinforcement.
White’s first post-military canine assignment came with the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office in Washington State, and he later joined the Seattle Police Department. He now also runs i2i K9 Professional Training Services, a consulting and training business operating out of Rivendale Learning Center, a “No Force – No Fear”® training company owned and operated by Steve and his wife, Jennifer.
White learned that one of the problems with negative reinforcement and punishment is the ability to create conflict, as his Army dog, Astro, so aptly demonstrated. He also learned that, conversely, positive reinforcement and negative punishment (removing access to what the dog wants following an incorrect response) are more likely to foster increased cooperation as the dog learns to trust the handler, and the team develops a stronger working relationship.
“With positive reinforcement training, you front load the effort,” White says. “There’s a lot of stuff to get the wheels turning. The curve is really steep in the beginning, but after a while it levels out and the workload is not as high. With negative reinforcement, you get full, finished behaviors quickly, but maintenance work afterward is high because the dog figures out the name of the game is ‘only work as hard as it takes to get this guy to leave me alone.’ With positive reinforcement, especially with substantial amounts of free-shaping, the dog figures the name of the game is ‘work as hard as I can to get this guy to pay off.’ The fundamental paradigm changes in the dog’s mind.”
Bob Eden shares White’s desire to transform police canine training. In 1991 Eden, a retired Delta Police Department (British Columbia, Canada) canine handler, founded the K9 Academy for Law Enforcement and the International Police K9 Conference, dedicated to positive reinforcement education for canine handlers around the world. With a team of 20 positive reinforcement-based instructors (including White), Eden’s organization demonstrates the effectiveness of positive reinforcement training to about 150 police agencies each year. Eden’s mission is inspired by the little-known fact that statistically, canine handlers are involved in more gunfights than any other members of their department as a result of the suspect-oriented work they do.
“My goal as a retired police officer is to make sure that police officers who work with dogs go home to their families at the end of their shifts,” Eden says. “I want to make sure your dog is a precision animal that you, as an officer, don’t have to worry about on the street. If I’ve got my dog in the car and I end up in a confrontation with a suspect, I don’t have to worry about what my dog is doing. My attention is not divided between my dog and the person I’m dealing with. When I’m telling my dog what I need to have done, I know it will happen because my foundation work has been good. A policeman cannot afford to be a dog trainer on the street.”
Train the Positive Police K9 Way
Whether training a strong-willed Shepherd or a creampuff Cavalier, the art and science of learning theory and behavior modification remains the same. White offers the following five tips designed to improve training results:
1. “For big results, you’ve got to think small. Always look for, and reinforce, the littlest increments on your way to the end behavior.”
A finished behavior is the sum of its parts. For example, when training acceptance of nail trimming, remember to start with basic foot handling — without clippers, and at a level your dog can tolerate. That might mean touching one toe, with one finger, for one second. Work up from there.
2. “Street-reliable skill sets are narrow and deep. Concentrate on fluency and generalization of the few behaviors you’ll need on the street.”
Watch out for the “jack of all
trades, master of none” phenomenon, where your dog can sort of do a lot of things, but lacks a solid performance in any of them.
3. “Over-train wisely. Build levels of fluency, generalization, and resistance to distraction beyond what you’ll need on the street.”
ln training classes, we practice stays while remote—controlled cars pulling miniature wagons filled with treats zoom past. If your dog can do that, he’s more likely to successfully handle sitting patiently as you prepare his dinner. Be creative in your training, but always work at a level that is fair to your dog.
4. “Failure is information. If the dog does not perform as expected, it’s just because you asked for something you have not yet fully trained.”
Remember that behavior change doesn’t happen overnight. Persistence, patience, and practice are key.
5. “If it ain’t fun, it ain’t done. As soon as training becomes a drudge for either end of the leash, stop, rest, and find ways to bring the joy back into it.”
Smart trainers know that dog training can – and should – be fun. Many pet training classes now use fun games like Hide & Seek and Red Light, Green Light to encourage a joyful, playful attitude while training. Good training should leave you and your dog wanting more, not feeling like it’s a bore and a chore!
“Emergency Brakes”
While White no longer uses punishment as a standard training technique, he offers an honest assessment of its use:
“Through the years, the more positive reinforcement I use, the fewer aversives I use,” he explains. “I’m not 100 percent pure positive; I sometimes need to use an emergency brake (such as a verbal reprimand or leash correction) – but I no longer use aversives as a teaching tool.”
No form of training will produce perfect dogs 100 percent of the time. In law enforcement, if a police dog makes a mistake, people (or the dog) can get hurt.
“Police dogs do something other dogs don’t,” White says. “They consummate the urge to bite, and then are asked to voluntarily stop something that is either highly reinforcing in a positive way by being fun, or negatively reinforcing by vanquishing a life-threatening adversary. It’s a demand that is unique to law enforcement and military dogs.”
When lives are on the line, if the dog fails to respond appropriately to a cue, handlers must have a way to stop the dog.
“Emergency brakes are just what the name implies – for emergencies only. They are not a training tool, but an emergency management tool.” says White.
Note: In pet dog training, whether it’s your walk-in-the-wood companion or your competition obedience star, if you find yourself frequently using aversives, it’s a strong indication that your reinforcement history is weak.
Shaping A Dog’s Behavior
Eden and White utilize the training principle of shaping, an operant conditioning technique where the dog is encouraged to discover (and then be rewarded for) the correct behavior on his own rather than physically manipulated or lured into the desired behavior. In the early stages, the handler’s job is simply to manage the training environment in a way that prevents the dog from self-rewarding undesired behavior. Eden calls this letting the dog teach himself.
“If we get a dog into training that we allow to teach himself, the benefits are exponentially greater than what we had under the old system of negative reinforcers and compulsive training,” he says. “We found that it was so much better and the results were at the point where we had very little recidivism.”
Many trainers (both in law enforcement and the civilian world) maintain a strong belief that incorrect responses must quickly be corrected. Through shaping, Eden and White turn this concept on its head, setting up training scenarios so that the dog, who initially does not know what the correct response is, experiments with different behaviors in an attempt to earn his desired reward; for most police dogs, it’s the chance to bite and tug the sleeve. The trainer must construct the exercise so that the dog is unable to perform undesired behaviors that are self-rewarding. For example, in the early stages of training, the handler might keep his dog leashed to prevent him from prematurely launching himself at the training decoy’s sleeve. The excited dog might bark, whine, and lunge in an attempt to get what he wants, but the handler allows the dog to bite the decoy only after the dog lies down.
“When he does what you want and is rewarded, it modifies the behavior so that he continues to achieve his reward by consistently doing the same right thing over and over again,” Eden explains.
For canine officers, one of the most difficult behaviors to train is the “out” or bite release, especially from a training sleeve. Handlers are required to maintain clean bite release work in training and on the street with suspects. If the team is ever involved in litigation, they must prove the dog is responsive to cues in all settings. Most police dogs are high-drive and equipment-oriented; they live for the chance to fight a decoy’s protective sleeve. Convincing them to let go is a challenge.
Traditionally handlers deal with non-compliant “outs” by issuing a strong correction on a choke chain, pinch, or shock collar. While this often offers results in the short-term, the added conflict eventually sends most dogs into a state of avoidance where, as they see the handler approaching, they begin to rotate away from the handler, positioning themselves on the far side of the decoy in an attempt to prolong the bite and delay the correction.
In contrast, White and Eden teach the dog that releasing the sleeve results in more fun and another opportunity to engage in a bite. An important characteristic of the training is that the difficulty level starts low and is gradually increased as the dog’s behavior improves. For example, in the early stages, the decoy remains calm and the only fight comes from the dog rather than a fighting decoy that further arouses the dog. When the dog engages the sleeve, the static decoy and the handler wait; they know the dog can’t maintain the bite forever (although White tells the story of once waiting 18 minutes before seeing his dog-in-training begin to waver). When the dog begins to fatigue, the handler might cue an extremely reliable behavior (such as “down”), and upon getting compliance, rewards the dog with an enthusiastic game of tug. Or the decoy might slip out of the sleeve, leaving the dog with a fight-less piece of equipment, only to don a second sleeve and fire up when the dog releases the lifeless sleeve on request. In both examples, the lack of punishment results in a calmer, more clear-headed animal.
Compulsion creates stress and often, as Eden explains, the stress level becomes so high that the dog literally cannot achieve the mental process necessary to open his mouth and release the sleeve. This lack of compliance causes the handler to escalate the force, which adds more stress and creates a vicious cycle that can, as one officer described it, result in “one dumb animal beating another.”
Shaping VS. Luring
When it comes to positive reinforcement training in law enforcement, White and his colleagues rely on shaping, a training technique that involves initially rewarding an approximation of the desired behavior, and gradually rewarding better and better approximations en route to the finished behavior.
Another popular method of positive reinforcement training is luring. In lure-reward training the dog follows a desired item (food treat or toy) into position to earn the reward. White says both methods have a place in the well-rounded trainer’s toolkit, but both require skill and judicious application. He offers the following overview:
METHOD
PRO
CON
Lure-reward
Can quickly achieve the topography (physical shape/action) of a behavior.
Easy for handlers of all skill—levels.
If lures are used too long they can interfere with the dog’s understanding of the behavioral concept (what it’s for).
Extended use of lures can create a lure—dependent dog who focuses more on the lure than the desired connection with the handler. This often results in handlers using the reward as a bribe rather than a teaching tool. To use effectively, the lure must be eliminated as quickly as possible.
Free-shaping
Promotes desired problem—solving as the dog must initially experiment with different behaviors to determine what ” pays off.”
Puts greater emphasis on the behavior than the reward. The dog still works for the reward, but without the salience of having it directly in front of him. As such, many report that shaped behaviors seem to “stick” better.
Requires more effort at the front end to get the wheels turning. Can take longer to achieve finished behaviors.
Requires a keen eye for observation and an astute sense of when to raise criteria to the next level. Often challenging for beginning trainers.
The Old Way to Handle K9s: Compulsion Wears Out Fast
When Phoenix police officer Vince Bingaman joined the department 10 years ago, compulsion was the name of the game.
“With the types of strong dogs we deal with, that’s how you got an animal to do something,” he says. “He was forced to do it and there was a negative repercussion if he didn’t. When the dogs did well we praised them, but we were really into compulsion to force strong-willed dogs to do what we wanted them to do – and it led to a lot of conflict.”
The conflict between dog and handler led to many handlers sustaining serious bites. The idea of compulsion and punishment leading to increased bites is not limited to working police canines. Many pet dogs react the same way, especially when punishment techniques are employed in an attempt to modify aggressive behavior. The agency eventually turned to Bob Eden, who, over three months, helped transform the canine department with amazing success.
“Compulsion adds a lot of stress to a dog and we had difficulty getting ideas across to the animal,” says Bingaman. “With compulsion, because the dogs were forced to do what we asked them to do, the results were quicker, but they weren’t long-standing. It was a cycle. The dog would work for us for a while and then there would be some negative side effects of the dog falling back into his old ways and then the compulsion would have to come back in and the dog would comply and the cycle would continue. When we trained the dogs in a more positive environment, the training stuck.”
Like White, for Bingaman, a major advantage of positive reinforcement training is the ability to achieve reliable behavior that, at its core, allows the dog to not only comply with the handler, but to feed his own satisfactions and desires. “That’s the beauty about operant training,” Bingaman says. “The dogs do what we want them to do, but actually they do it because they think it’s their decision.”
Change isn’t easy, especially for police officers who, by way of the job description, are fault-finders. (When’s the last time an officer pulled you over to reward you for not speeding?) Initial concerns within the department centered on the fear that a positively trained dog would lack respect for the handler. Police agencies specifically select strong-willed dogs who love the fight and have been trained to bite from early puppyhood. This sometimes results in a dog challenging the proverbial pecking order.
“When a dog says, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do that,’ and he tries to eat you, there’s some compulsion in that, but it’s remedied quickly,” Bingaman says. “Like any training, there has to be a balance and once we got the balance right, we all realized it’s quite a pleasure working a dog with operant conditioning and the conflict was eroded.” He estimates that training is now approximately 80 percent reinforcement and 20 percent punishment whereas historically, those numbers would be reversed. Further, because of all the operant groundwork, when punishment is deemed necessary, it’s dispensed at far lower levels. Once he switched to positive reinforcement training, Bingaman was able to work his last dog in the field without needing a single correction for the remainder of the dog’s career. “This new dog, I can go out and run his control work and his obedience and everything without any collar on,” he says.
He often marvels at the pet owners he encounters who claim that negative reinforcement or punishment is necessary to handle their own dogs. “If I can run a hard dog using (positive reinforcement-based) training methods 80 percent of the time, I don’t know why people couldn’t train their pet dogs with at least 99 percent (positive reinforcement) training.”
Positive Training Pays Off in the Long Run
Smart dog training is simple, but that doesn’t make it easy. One of the biggest mistakes pet owners make is thinking their dog “knows” something long before he really does. When the dog’s behavior falters, some owners choose to punish the dog (which often results in a desired behavior change, but usually only temporarily) while others blame the technique, declaring it ineffective. In today’s instant gratification society, it’s hard not to demand desired results right away, but as the Phoenix Police Department found, diligence and patience are valuable virtues.
“It’s a very time-consuming process for us,” admits Bingaman. “At the compulsion end we could have dogs up and running in a couple months or less, but the long-term effects were shorter and we continually had to put in more training. With the operant training, our (maintenance) training hours can be reduced and we have dogs who, if we didn’t do any training for weeks, can still come out and work because they’ve learned (the tasks) for the right reason.”
One of the biggest advantages of the agency’s switch to positive reinforcement training has been removing conflict from the dog-handler relationship.
“Nobody wants to fight with their dog. Most of us have been at this job long enough to have been on the receiving end of the bites while in training – it’s part of the job,” Bingaman says. “Nobody wants to be in conflict with their partner. As soon as it was realized that we could train with minimal amounts of compulsion, everybody bought into it. These dogs are an investment for us, not only monetarily for the city, but for us emotionally – we become attached to the dogs.”
The dramatic reduction in compulsion also helps protect their investment by lengthening the dogs’ careers. In compulsion training, all the corrections on a pinch or choke collar come from the neck, which can breakdown vertebrae and eventually shorten or end a dog’s career.
Check Your Ego at the Door
Ego often interferes with good dog training. Much of the often inhumane actions inflicted on dogs are based on the handler’s need to feel dominant over the animal.
“You can shoot yourself in the foot if you take it personally when the dog doesn’t listen to you,” says Bingaman. “If a dog’s not listening, I need to step back and look at how I need to adjust my training – it’s the human end of it that’s missing something. The dog is a simple-minded animal. There’s no conspiracy going on in the dog’s head, no matter what people think.”
The problem with ego is compounded by the general human misunderstanding that dogs have the logical capability to know right from wrong to a degree that they can make a logical decision. Dogs make behavioral decisions, not logical ones. The dog will only do what the dog wants to do. As White often explains it, whenever you ask a dog to do something, the first thought that goes through his mind is, “What’s in it for me right now?”
“The dog has to have the desire to do it,” reiterates Eden. “If he doesn’t get a reward for what he’s doing, he’ll only do it to avoid punishment. When you have a dog who’s constantly under stress and doing things to avoid punishment, he won’t work as intensely, as efficiently, or as stress-free as one who does it because he understands and knows what he needs to do to get the desired result.
“A dog who loves to go out and work is closely bonded to his handler because they mesh together as a team. If it looks like they understand each other – it’s because they do. The handler has figured out how to work the dog at the dog’s level. Many people don’t think at the dog’s level; they expect the dog to think at their level.”
It’s a Slow Process
Dog trainers have a saying: “The only thing two dog trainers can agree on is what the third dog trainer is doing wrong.” In attempting to transform the world of police canine training, this trio of dedicated trainers and their colleagues are careful not to be too heavy-handed in their efforts to convert others. The success of agencies like the Phoenix Police Department, combined with the public scrutiny made possible by the proliferation of phone-based video cameras and YouTube, have helped White become even more hopeful that more agencies will begin to explore positive reinforcement training.
“The word is getting out there,” says Bingaman, who, thanks to a supportive management team at Phoenix Police Department, routinely travels to demonstrate positive methods to others, including several other agencies throughout Arizona. “It comes down to them (the law enforcement dog handlers). We can show them what it takes to get the dog off compulsion, but it comes down to the work they want to put into it. People see our dogs and know the success we have in our profiles, but ultimately it boils down to the individual – they have to want to do it.”
Both White and Eden caution against the tendency of some positive reinforcement trainers (professional or pet owners) to openly bad-mouth the use of other methods, recommending instead that they focus that energy into training their dogs and the dogs of clients to show – not tell – how their method is better.
“The positive reinforcement community has been talking about this now for a long time,” White says. “The time has come for us to put up or shut up – to produce a result that other people want so badly, they beg us to show them how we got it.”
It’s what Seattle, Phoenix, and a handful of other police officers and agencies have done. “My successors are doing it. I feel really proud that the guy who’s in charge of the unit I was part of for so long is moving in the right direction,” says White. “The tipping point will come if we continue to pursue it.”
Like any good shaping plan, success doesn’t come overnight. It’s all about learning to recognize small successes en route to the end result. Baby steps in a positive direction.
K9 POSITIVE TRAINING: OVERVIEW
1. Do your best to eliminate compulsion from your training. Look for every opportunity to reinforce your dog for increasingly better efforts.
2. Support your local police canine foundation; they’re often a source of funding for police K9 units.
Stephanie Colman is a writer and dog trainer in Los Angeles. She shares her life with two dogs and actively competes in obedience and agility.
Whole Dog Journal Training Editor Pat Miller wrote an article for the January issue about why and how to teach your dog his or her name (“Say My Name”). She mentioned in the article how important it was to pick a good name for your dog, and shared the story of how she and her husband named a few of their dogs. She also challenged readers to share their dog-naming stories, and promised to award a signed copy of her latest book, Do-Over Dogs: Give Your Dog a Second Chance for a First Class Life, to the three readers who submitted the best dog-naming stories. (If you haven’t yet submitted your story, send it to WDJEditor@gmail.com or Whole Dog Journal, 1655 Robinson Street, Oroville, CA 95965, before January 31.)
My favorite dog name was one that confused everyone outside my family, but made perfect sense to us. I was the youngest child in my family and the last to leave home – and I took my two big dogs with me. This left our rural family home guarded by two yappy Yorkshire Terriers, and a small mixed-breed dog named Andy (although a boyfriend later dubbed the dog “Bob Newhart,” because his demeanor was just as determinedly milquetoast and comical as the comedian of that name). Feeling a bit lonely and vulnerable, my mom bought a German Shepherd Dog puppy from a friend who bred and trained protection dogs, and she told everyone that the pup was going to be a fierce watchdog. Not long after high school, my oldest sister had dated a beefy and intimidating Harley-riding Samoan man, and my mom named the dog after him. The idea was that the rapidly growing Shepherd would scare people the way my sister’s old boyfriend used to.
My mom’s plan backfired for a few reasons. One was the fact that the breeder, knowing what a marshmallow my mom was, sent her a particularly sweet, “soft” puppy – not a watchdog candidate at all. Also, out of loneliness perhaps, she allowed “the watchdog” to stay indoors most of the time . . . watching soap operas on the sofa with her and all the little dogs. The lanky puppy grew up feeling like a tiny terrier. And with none of the kids living at home, guests were infrequent, and the pup grew up into a shy and un-socialized dog who was more likely to hang behind the over-confident small dogs than to stride forth and guard the gates. This was ironic for our family members and close friends, who remembered the fearsome biker whose name the dog shared. But it was just plain confusing for everyone else. Why would you name a German Shepherd “Collie”? (Well, she didn’t. His name was pronounced like the Lassie type of dog, but it was spelled the Hawaiian way, “Kale.”) Oh well. My mom wouldn’t have known what to do with a guard dog, anyway.
I’ve had a number of older owners book lessons with me lately—more than half a dozen individuals and couples in their 70s and even 80s, all wanting some training help with their new dogs or puppies.
