How does Predictability help Behaviour Problems?
The predictability of basic training is one of the most important lifestyle factors you can give your dog because it makes the emotional command systems work optimally leading to a content dog who can cope with and learn from stressful situations!
Therefore a great tool, to install security in a dog and thus address fear, phobias, anxiety’s and symptoms like, aggression, whining, barking, inappropriate elimination, compulsive behaviours, depression etc is by teaching a series of very simple training techniques, thus easily creating an environment in which your dog can reliably predict and has control over a series of positive outcomes.
For example, the word touch, followed by the dog learning to touch it’s nose to the owner’s palm can always result in the pleasant conditioned reward mark ‘good’ and a variable schedule of treats, or it can even be met by the more than expected positive outcome of a super treat or a walk.
Explain…!?
Now before I delve a little deeper, it’s worth mentioning that I suspect after genetic pre disposition, the most important thing for any dog is having a successful socialisation period, hence it is known by some as the critical window but at least the sensitive period. A lack of adequate socialisation is very likely to result in fear, phobia, anxiety, aggression etc. Many of you will already have a good understanding of this but for more on Socialisation and Socialisation exercises click here:
However perhaps the next most important lifestyle factor for a dog (Which should happen within the socialisation window and then continued throughout its life) is creating a calm PREDICTABLE environment in which your dog believes they have control over positive outcomes!
Why?
Dog’s living in environments lacking predictability often present with fear, phobia and anxiety, which may present as Freeze, Fight or Flight, Aggression, Compulsive behaviours, Separation Reactivity and Learned Helplessness.*
“Emotional command systems are modulated by cortical control systems that process experience and prepare dogs to act in ways consistent with past experience on ongoing events. Under optimal conditions, prediction control expectancies are formed that promote adaptive behaviour, but, under the influence of disorderly environments, faulty expectancies and dysfunctional behaviour may develop. Particularly malignant influences may originate in traumatic events or results from habitual exposure to social and environmental events that lack adequate predictability (resulting in anxiety) or controllability (resulting in frustration). A lack of predictability over significant appetitive anniversary events may disrupt emotional activity associated with the fear panic axis, possibly contributing to the development of phobias, compulsive disorders, and separation problems.” (Lindsay, 2005).
How?
So essentially when your dog does something and the outcome is as, or better than expected, the emotional command system’s function optimally creating a calming, de arousing effect on the body.
For more about the importance of not over arousing your dog, check out my article on trigger stacking.
Thus, when your dog does something and an unpredictable, worse than expected outcome emerges then the Fight Flight System (FFS) is activated readying your dog for emergency with alertness, arousal etc, thus the opposite of calming.
“In the case of unpredicted or uncontrollable aversive events, subcortical pathways may rapidly mobilise neurobiological changes conducive to emergency adjustments, including the instigation of the FFS (Fight, Flight System), with the release of CRF in the activation of the HPA system.” (Lindsay, 2005)
For more on the effects of Corticotropin Releasing Factor (CRF) and its effect on the body and behaviour of your dog check out my article on Stress.
Conclusion
Therefore, if your dog is presenting with fear, phobia, aggression, anxiety or depression or compulsive behaviours like barking and licking does the environment they live in offer enough predictability leading them to believe they have some control over gaining positive outcomes and avoiding aversive ones?
For example, do you allow your dog to jump up one moment and punish it the next because that is not predictable?
Are you with your dog solidly for days weeks on end and then suddenly leave them for 5hrs because that is not predictable?
When your dog goes and sits at the door do you always taken them out but your partner tells them to get out the way because that is not predictable?
Do they know any simple reliable tricks which result in a consistently positive outcome, like ‘Sit?” Because those training skills ARE predictable so we want those.
Is there anything in your life that makes you act suddenly and unpredictably which can affect your dog?
Do you ever punish your dog more than 3s after the unwanted behaviour? For example, your dog has ripped up your cushion while you are out do you punish then when you return because if so they cannot make the connection, therefore they do not understand why they are punished and thus they do not feel they have control over avoiding such aversive outcomes.
Therefore when you come to me and say you have all these various behaviour problems and I start getting you to teach your dog to learn a series of consistent, simple behaviours which reliably create positive outcomes for your dog, can you understand why that basic training is so important to the overall well-being of your dog and for the behaviour solution you so highly sort?
“Structured play and ICT (Integrated Compliance Training) provide the puppy with events and activities that are highly predictable and controllable, giving it beneficial opportunities to succeed and to obtain the emotional event benefits associated with success ( eg elation). Nothing more consistently promotes enhance well-being in contentment than repeated success with periodic surprises (positive prediction error.)” (Lindsay, 2005).
Creating Predictability Ideas
Have a routine but a loose one. E.g be fed between 5-7pm but not at exactly 6pm everyday as the day you inevitably miss time it will be stressful for your dog.
Teach basic Training.
Ensure all reward and if any punishment is used, that it happens contingently (at the time of) the behaviour so you dog knows what it is for and thus feels it could have control over getting or avoiding them.
Create a calm consistent environment.
Punishment
Please note that by definition, punishment is anything you do in an attempt to decrease a behaviour.
Punishment does not have to mean physical abuse, it could just be the dissatisfaction and frustration of not being able to successfully communicate and thus obtain your basic wants desires and needs to those who have control over them.
Learned Helplessness
I’ve mentioned this above but if you don’t know, learned helplessness is a condition in which a dog suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression and hopefully by now you can start to understand how the inability to predict and control positive outcomes can lead to this phenomenon.
“As a result of nurturance (affection and caregiving) and punishment provided on habitually non-contingent basis, the locus of control over significant attractive and aversive events maybe externalised, that is, placed outside of a dogs voluntary initiative. For such dogs, the acquisition of comfort and safety may be integrated and experienced as something that happens to them, rather than perceived as something that they control and produce for themselves. Instead of learning to control such events by proactive means, they simply learn to receive or react to them. Just as the loss of control over aversive events is conducive to the debilitating effects of learned helplessness, the loss of control over appetitive ones can exert a similarly paralysing effect on a dogs ability to adapt.” (Sonoda et al 1999.)
Insecurity
Again I hope you are starting to see that frequent changes, perhaps moving house & changing routine & rules coupled with a lack of basic training and thus lack of opportunities for your dog to control positive outcomes, leads to insecurity and with insecurity, behaviour problems.
“Social environments lacking order may prevent a dog from establishing a coherent system of prediction control expectancies, thereby impeding its ability to adjust effectively. Social interaction that lacks adequate predictability and controllability may cause modal activity to become progressively perturbed and reactive. Without an orderly incoherent foundation of standard or normal expectancies, the dog is not only deprived the calming effects (secure mood) of somatic reward and enhanced comfort and safety, it is also barred from advancing to an organisation of learning and adaption conducive to cortical reward eg surprised, and freedom, that is, behaviour liberated from reactive adjustments. According to this hypothesis, uncontrollable reward and punishment, that is, aversive or appetitive events occurring independently of the dogs initiative or ability to control them, gradually leads the dog to become increasingly dependent, insecure, and incompetent.” (Lindsay, 2005)
Aggression
Again lack of quality predictive information can lead to anxiety, which is likely to lower aggression thresholds thereby increasing the dog’s likelihood to act with defensive or reactive behaviour (See Stress). This coupled with insecurity and thus a potential over dependence on a particular person is likely to contribute considerably to aggression directed towards other dogs or people approaching the dogs primary caregiver or residence.
“Reactive aggressors often show signs of an insecure attachment neediness, often forming an overly exclusive attachment with a particular family member with whom they may feel relatively comfortable and safe or ambivalent but not aggressive.” (Lindsay, 2005)
Inconsistent Owners
With all the above in mind can you see how being inconsistent as an owner can cause problems?
For example, with no rules, no predictability, no way of knowing what to do, a dog may feel really insecure and anxious.
A confident dog who uses force to get his own way and is allowed to by a passive owner will learn this works and it may escalate.
A dog with a genetic pre disposition to fear and anxiety who has an owner who uses any form of positive punishment, which can simply be the word ‘No’ for very sensitive dogs, may over compensate with fight, flight, freeze. Thus you may see this dog urinate, hide or become aggressive
In other words, Train positive behaviours and ask for them instead of unwanted behaviour. Don’t punish. Be predictable. No rules is not lovely for your dog even if its completely free of punishment.
To book an appointment to help you create a plan for you and your dog enquire now.
STILL CONFUSED?
Imagine you enter an environment where you are unsure of the language and customs. You thus take the native customs you know and politely try to initiate a conversation but you are ignored, maybe even pushed away or punished for what you think is polite behaviour? Then, imagine you lashed out and were rude to these people but bizarrely, for that, the person you directed that sort of behaviour, rewarded you by asking you to join in a game.
Now, after the initial confusion, you finally work out how to get what you want in this foreign land of new customs but then the rules change, and you find yourself, once again confused. Now you are being punished for what you got what you wanted for yesterday and praised for what you were rebuked for the moment before?
Now let’s say this frustration and confusion continues indefinitely and you find it incredibly difficult to communicate what you need and want successfully? How would you eventually respond? With anger? With neediness? Perhaps you end up following around someone who just sometimes gives you what you need? Maybe you develop some sort or repetitive coping mechanism like counting to deal with the anxiety? Maybe you feel hopeless and powerless and thus completely shut down?
So whats the answer?
Yes you got it, create a calm predictable environment e.g every time you touch the fridge you get fed. Every time you open your arms you get love. Every-time you sit at the door you get exercise. Now despite the language barrier the vulnerable one has a way to successfully control and predict that they are able to ascertain their daily needs and positive outcomes, which as you can imagine must feel like a great relief.
© Tom Holloway (CPDT-KA) 2021