November 3rd, 2011
By Eric Letendre
Power is still out.
No heat, no hot water, no power but…
…it’s all good because I am at my sister’s house and it is warm and we have internet access which allows me to write this to you.
Anyway, yesterday my sister wanted to know why her dog, Vera, rolled in anything stinky she could find.
She said that every time she went outside, she would find anything that stunk and roll all over it. She was
disgusted and tired of giving her a bath. I explained to her that rolling in smelly stuff is a throw back from her hunting days. Dogs and wolves would roll in anything that smells to mask their scent.
This made hunting easier, they could sneak up on tonight’s dinner without being detected and WHAM – raccoon tartare.
She thanked me for the lesson in canine behavior but was more interested in learning how to stop it.
I informed her that stopping a behavior is simple, all she had to do was apply a negative consequence to whatever behavior she wanted to stop and she had to catch her dog in the act.
I added that there are many ways to apply a negative consquence to a behavior. Negative consequences can be anything her dog does not like. We talked for a few more minutes and she said that her dog hated being sprayed by the hose.
Okay, I said. Now all you have to do is give your dog a verbal command like “NO” and spray away.
Here is the crucial part, I added. “You have to catch your dog in the act. Even a few seconds late will
confuse your dog and it won’t work.”
“That’s all there is to it?” she asked.
I replied, “Changing behavior is all about consequences. If you want a behavior to occur more often like sit, down, come, heel, reinforce it with something your dog likes. If you want to stop a behavior, apply some type of negative consequence.”
I also told her that negative consequences do not have to harm the dog. You can use sound, water, your voice, even breath spray.
On the Dog Training Inner Circle, we discuss and show many different ways to reinforce and stop behaviors.
Every dog is a little different and that is why we have over 80 videos and articles to help any kind of dog. We also have a forum where you can ask me questions. I get over 300 emails a day and can’t answer them all – sorry, but that is why we have the forum.
Check out the Dog Training Inner Circle today!
All the best,
Eric
Eric Letendre is a professional dog trainer from the United States and has been training dogs for over 20 years, teaching regular, average, every-day owners all over the world how to get the training results they want as fast as possible. Eric is also the author of numerous reports, the E-Book “101 Ways to Improve Your Dog’s Behavior,” “The Amazing Dog Training Man Book,” and produced and stars in his DVD “Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer.”
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Eric Letendre is a professional dog trainer from the United States. For more than 20 years, he has been developing dog training "hacks" that have worked for dog owners all over the world. Eric operates from a home office or a laptop while traveling and draws on his experience and passion for dog training to show others how to develop a dog that is truly “Man’s Best Friend”.
Eric is the author of numerous reports, the E-Book “101 Ways to Hack Your Dog’s Behavior,” “The Amazing Dog Training Man Book,” and produced and stars in his DVD “Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer.”
Thanks Eric! I’m glad to know that correcting this type of behavior is so easy. Zeva has just started rolling in “whatever”. Now I’ll be able to discourage her before it becomes a habit.
Marie
Dogs not only roll into smelling things to mask their scent.
A recent study on wolf behaviour, demonstrated that rolling into the feces of an animal or in a carcass, its a way for collecting valuable information for the pack.
When returning to the pack the other dogs will greet the dog by smelling his nose and neck and collect this information.
It has also been demonstrated that other dogs of the pack can follow the way back to the source of the “information”, even if it’s miles away.
Btw, I was very lucky with my dog, when she was still a puppy she did just that in front of me, I was quick to interrupt that behaviour verbally while she was doing it, and she never did it again so far.