What's in a Name

For me, one of the highlights of acquiring, adopting, or fostering a dog is naming him, or her. A name is not meaningless, as some trainers state, but mirrors the owner’s personality and often reflects his purpose for having a dog; his expectations and the relationship he is aiming for.

The dog’s name gives me a hint if the owner might be needy or overprotective, soft and mellow, ego-driven and on a power trip, demands mindless obedience or has a sense of humor. Typically I am right on the mark: Rottweilers Ruger and Dillinger had somewhat shady owners; Angel, the sweet pit bull blossomed under the gentle care of her loving foster mother; Romeo, a standard poodle belonged to a perfectly done up and cosmetically enhanced single female; the intact German shepherd Butler to a type A law enforcement officer, and beagle Wontlisten’s tousled person couldn’t care less about obedience, just wanted the food resource guarding to stop.

To make it unequivocally clear, taking mental name notes doesn’t mean that I compromise how I treat someone, or the methods I apply. I never judge a person before I meet him, or afterwards for that matter, cause I neither walk in their shoes nor can I help a dog if I’m disparaging with her human. I treat the name as an important piece of information that helps me to angle the consultation a certain way, so that I am the best communicator I can be, so that the dog’s person is more likely than not following my advice. That’s all.

For the dog, a name isn’t meaningless either. True, the combination of letters is, but the sound should have relevance: it ought to be her cue to pay attention. It’s her instant on-switch. You say your dog’s name and she should flip around and look at you inquisitively, like the canine version of: “Heard ya! What do want me to do?”

Attention is the foundation for anything else you want to do with your dog. When you have it, behaviors can be learned in a flash, if you don’t, obedience training is lagging and a drag. In addition, while your dog is connected to you she can’t focus on another stimulus at the same time, and that can keep her out of trouble.

Instant name attention is crucial in day-to-day life. It serves both as a cue for your dog that what you are about to do involves her somehow, and as a signal to reconnect with you. In both cases, action always follows, and it has to be rewarding quality time.

If the dog associates her name with discomfort, she is less likely to respond consistently and readily. That doesn’t change even if you sometimes reward. Ambiguity creates apprehensive, not eager, performances.

Fun interaction as the consequence for instant response guarantees that the name is not just a conditioned default attention getter, but that your dog stays connected instead of checking out after a quick glimpse in your direction.

Action always follows for another reason: a dog whose name is called, but is then left in limbo because nothing happens, learns to ignore it – and by extension you.

There is nothing more annoying than someone saying your name again and again, interrupting you at whatever you are doing, just to ignore you as soon as you look up. Even if that person were to hand over a piece of chocolate each time, but without giving you further information, you’d likely be infuriated despite the treat. You can test that with your favorite person if you like. Trust me, your dog feels similarly and will tune you out if you are nothing more than irritating white noise.

If you have a young puppy, teaching name attention is easy. A pup, although not entirely a clean slate because behaviors are partly genetic, and partly imprinted by the environment she lived in before you got her, is needy and therefore naturally attaching herself to the mighty one who owns all assets. She also feels neutral about the name you have chosen for her; not yet ambiguous, worried or uninterested. To switch it from neutral to rewarding, say it often and reinforce with fun interaction. You’re on a roll if your dog, during a game of puppy piñata, stops searching for the handful of treats you tossed out and instantly pays attention to you as soon as you call her by name.

If you are someone who rather gives an older dog a second chance, test how she feels about the name she came with. If she doesn’t respond to it, or if she averts her eyes or head, change it. For that matter, also test her with other common commands, for example the recall one “come”. If she does anything else but enthusiastically run to you, change that also.

Paying attention to her name should be the first thing you teach your puppy, or older new family member. Every considerably intelligent dog, regardless of age, can learn a new name in no time. Our Will was nameless for her first ten weeks or so of life, became Trisha after she was humanely trapped, then Sadie a couple of weeks later in her foster home, and was renamed Willkommen by us. Three different names in five months and she responded to the one we gave her within ½ hour.

You’d teach it the same way you teach the pup: make yourself interesting, possibly having the dog leashed when you practice so that she can’t walk away, say her new name and entice her to look at you, and the moment she does exaggerate your happiness and follow up with a big deal interaction, which you can name as well. Putting a word to the action will become commands you use to communicate to your dog what will happen next.

Saying a dog’s name is the best, kindest and most natural way to get her attention. We are humans with human habits. We don’t poke or electrically stimulate someone we want to connect with, but use his or her name, and that is what we should teach and apply with our dogs as well.

Look At That - Look At Me

The Department of Ethology in Budapest Hungary, http://familydogproject.elte.hu/index.html

conducts very interesting dog behavior research projects for quite a few years now. Those are real scientific studies done by real behavioral scientists, and although their focus is the family dog, they also study wolves, as control groups, to find out if and how dogs and wolves behaviorally differ. One profound distinction they discovered is that it is natural for dogs to look humans in the eye, and for wolves it isn’t.

It is wonderful to get a scientific confirmation for what many of us positive dog pros knew all along: It is normal for dogs to offer and receive eye contact.

Dogs are domesticated, which means that humans are an accepted part of dogs’ natural environment. And that is true even for the ones not reared by humans - the Budapest scientists studied that as well. People and dogs, cause we shared the same environment for such a long time, evolved together and there are quite a few social similarities. The way we use our eyes it one of them. We can try to kill someone with a laser look, but mostly we pay polite attention to the one we interact with.

So, eye contact is not something people should have to teach dogs. But alas, thanks to the still popular misperception that a dog looking at a person challenges for alpha status, in reality many dogs neither offer that natural form of communication, nor are they able to accept it. Dogs with problem behaviors always get worse as soon as someone looks at them; as soon as they feel paid attention to.

And that’s a shame, cause offered eye contact equals attention, and who wouldn’t want that. A dog encouraged to speak with her eyes willingly connects to the owner to ask for permission or help, which gives the owner control and the dog a copout during a conflict situation. That is what we should foster.

A dog who always averts her eyes is afraid because she was corrected in the past for looking, and one who appears aloof likely has unlearned to look because it was ignored. If the person does not acknowledge eye connection, the dog learns to look to the environment for informational cues.

In both cases it is up to the person to re-teach what should be natural; that “talking” with the eyes is desired and asking for help an option.

Initially you can prompt your dog by saying her name, or even using a treat lure you hold between your eyes. Your dog’s eyes will follow the lure, and she’ll automatically look at you, which you then reward with the treat. Incrementally move your fingers away from your eyes. Most dog quickly understand that it is eye contact you are after, and once she does ask for offered, the emphasis is on offered, connection before you give access to any resource she wants, including her food, a walk, being let outside, allowed off the leash and so on.

Eye contact is attention, and attention will become a default behavior and with it off-leash obedience is much more reliable. Although some dogs signal with a twitch of an ear that they’re with you, prolonged eye contact is an unambiguous sign of deep connection. Once your dog has learned that eye contact is a successful way to communicate with you, she will also do it when he is nervous of something. Eye contact becomes a signal for you to take action before she reactively lunges and barks. Eye contact as a coping skill decreases stress and fear, and the resulting unwanted emotional outbursts.

Every dog should be desensitized to accept eye contact from strangers, cause strangers will look at your dog even if you tell them not to. The advice some trainers give to tell all strangers to ignore your pit bull at the end of your leash is not realistic. Especially the fearful of canine teeth person will look - guaranteed. And if you have a cute, but shy dog, people will look also trying to make friends. It’s difficult enough to get them not to pat uninvited.

Needless to say, never, ever punish your dog when she looks at you. Not even if she gives you the hairy eyeball. If your dog throws you a hard, intimidating warning look you have a deeper-seated relationship issue that you won’t solve by confrontationally staring her down.

My goal with my dogs is for them to signal with their eyes when they want something, when they are worried or confused about something, and that they heard me.

When your dog looks at you, you have her attention, and only if you have her attention giving her a command makes any sense. If your dog is not paying attention, she has you tuned out and is unlikely able to obey.

From now on, encourage, acknowledge and reinforce eye contact. Especially when presented with stimuli. To withhold the environment from a dog is as unrealistic as telling every person not to look at her. Dogs, people, cats, cars and squirrels do exist, and it is normal for every species to observe cohabitants. The important goal is to have a dog who periodically and voluntarily checks in with you, the owner, her lifeline. So “look at that” is okay, but “look at me” is what should be reinforced with a game, or a treat, or a whole lot of loving attention. Then maybe some day you, like us, will rarely use the come command anymore, cause your dog is “with you” the matter what, and you know she is cause she looks at you.