Handler sensitivity

Just something random I often ponder, and now feel like sharing.

I see quite often, dogs being yanked around on choke/prong collars, being shouted at, what have you and the dogs just don't care. It does nothing to alter their behavior, doesn't make them stop or even slow down, they're certainly not shutting down... etc.

And then I look at my dogs. Who take corrections VERY seriously. A light correction is definitely enough to keep them in line, and Cajun is the most sensitive and will, for example, completely stop wanting to play or do anything if I yell at her to get away from the goose poop. And I have to be very careful during training that she doesn't have too many "wrong" responses, because then she won't participate anymore.

I would think a lot of this just has to do with the dog's natural temperament but Cajun always makes me question that. She was certainly not that sensitive when I first got her - which I get, took a while for her to see me as her "handler," sure - but she didn't seem sensitive with her previous owner, either. My first impression of Cajun was her on leash, leaping into the air and trying to jump on me and my mom, and her owner constantly jerking on the choke collar and yelling no and yelling at her to sit blah blah blah. Cajun registered none of this and just continued on with DERP DERP OMG HAI JUMP.

There is absolutely no way I could get by correcting her that way today, unless I wanted the most shut down depressed dog ever. So the question becomes... what happened to make her that way.

A friend and I were talking about this and wondering if it says anything about the relationship, or if my dogs are more sensitive because I follow through vs. just nagging like most people, or if it is just their natural temperament. Basically... nature vs nurture, and is this a trait that can be altered.

I know this is terribly jumbled, I'm just typing as I think of things lol and trying to have my thoughts make some sense... feel free to weigh in or discuss anything relating to handle sensitivity, "creating" it and all that jazz.

I think it depends on the dog's temperament/traits/personality mostly. And that this can change as the dog matures. I believe these temperament/traits/personality can be altered via the environment as well.

So yes, Nature/Nuture.

What age did you get Cajun?

If you say you got her after maturity that would make me question my thinking.

I know Angel can take corrections and not have it effect her, although she has been getting more sensitive as she ages and I have to be careful when training her not to seem too frustrated, and shaping.. does not work with her at all. Just frustrates the both of us lol.

I know Chloe has always been sensitive to moderate corrections. Although, I think she does not comprehend any physical correction (I secretly think something is wrong with her in this aspect..) as she does not connect it to her behavior, differently than in the situation you described about pulling on the leash and the dog continuing.

I have never had a dog that shut down from verbal corrections though. But I have been trying to change my words from "No" in training to things like "Oopsie" or "Try again".

But uhh.. what was the question again?
Oh yeah,
I would imagine that if a dog was always babied and never been corrected that they would be more sensitive to corrections than a dog with a person who always naggingly gives corrections. So I would agree this could be relevant and possibly something that could be changed, to a degree.

Okay, it is late.. I am unsure if I said anything that is what you were asking about.. so I am just going to post this and go to bed lol.

It can vary within a dog, too, I think.

If I sigh wrong Elsie's tripping over herself to fix the problem. :| My boyfriend can literally yell at her and she'll be all eye-roll and like, "yeah okay calm down geeze loser" attitude.

Context matters too. If we're working, she's more sensitive.

I think this. I mean, I think it's a blend. I have follow through, and don't nag, so my dogs (most of the time) respect me. To get Jentry's attention when she's gone off the deep end, she needs a hard, fast, well timed correction. And she bounces back like "oh sorry! lost my mind for a second there!" rarely does she show behavior that looks like pressure. Limit can be pressured with a frown and a harsh word. Kastle is both, depending on the environment and how loaded he is. In the house, a harsh word/gesture is enough to send him scurrying, but on the IPO field he needs a VERY hard correction to get through. Kind of like he's a hysterical woman that needs slapping LOL

I think it's a bit of both.

Milo is really not a soft dog...but he definitely reacts differently to corrections by different family members. If he's jumping and barking at the window, for example, and my mom starts yelling bloody murder for him to get down, he'll totally ignore her and keep barking. If myself or my dad tells him to get down, he gets down, and if we raise our voices, he comes skulking over all appeasing. Because if he doesn't get down, we go and get him and leash him or block the area, and he knows he isn't supposed to do that. If we yelled like my mom he'd probably hide under the bed for a week. But my mom yells constantly and nothing happens to reinforce it, so it's just nothing to him.

Especially with stuff like leash yanking - a riled up dog might take that as playing or amping them up, not a correction. Especially if it's not followed up with removing the dog from the situation or enforcing a sit.

Some dogs are soft and are going to be timid no matter what and take corrections harshly. Especially certain breeds. I've met less dogs that are oblivious to corrections even when clear and enforced. They're out there, but pretty rare IME

Watson is handler insensitive, but he is pretty soft. You can correct over and over and smack him around and yell at him and he just smiles and jumps around and has no idea what's going on. But the one time he understands that it's a correction, he melts and shuts down. He's tough. I'd rather have a handler sensitive dog whether it was hard or soft in temperament.

I don't like using corrections, and I don't have the sense and timing to do them as hard as needed to get through to Watson, but not so hard that he will shut down. I've probably made him more insensitive from corrections that are too light or nagging, but a lot of that is really just his personality.

Really interesting subject.

Hugo doesn't really think of physical corrections as corrections, I don't think. Once he was getting a little too close to my mom's food when she was visiting and before I could give him to stink eye and tell him to go lay down, she whapped him on the nose (which is how she trained her dog). He just looked at her like... "is this a game?" and got all bouncy anticipating play. I don't usually use physical corrections, so the only other time I've done anything physical was when he was barking the face of a opossum and I was afraid that if I reached to clip the leash the opossum would bite me. So I smacked him with the leash fairly hard to try to get his attention. It didn't work, I ended up shoving him with my foot away from the animal so I could grab his collar.

BUT when I first got him, he would melt into a puddle of sad if he perceived I was snapping at him, or if I even suggested that he wasn't doing what I wanted while training. He took "try again" to mean that he was an awful dog that I hated and would just mope and get sad. I've worked hard to build his confidence and now (he still gets sad and mopey if he thinks I'm mad) but if I say "nope" when he's offering a behavior, he'll just try a new one. It takes a lot longer than before to shut him down.

TL;DR I think every dog and handler team is different. I think the dog comes with a base temperament, but it can be altered by the dogs relationship with the handler, although I do think they revert to more base temperament behaviors when with strangers? Perhaps?

I think it is a mixture of both dog/handler/enforcing rules.

If you constantly nag the dog with "corrections" and then don't actually enforce anything...the dog learns that said "corrections" really aren't corrections at all and just their human being weird.

An example: at my old clinic, there was this gorgeous yellow lab that would board. She was very young, hyper, and had no manners what so ever. She would drag her owners around the lobby and they would tell her "no", "heel", tug back on the leash, what have you. The dog didn't give a flying flip.

Well, this dog was also very dog aggressive and when she first started boarding would try to throw all 90 pounds of herself at the end of the leash you were holding to get at other dogs. There was one day I was in a rather short mood and she jerked at me, cutting the leash into my hand. I have her a stern collar correction along with a "knock it OFF". She looked at me like, "Woah. You mean there are consequences to my actions?" She became SO MUCH better on a leash while boarding, and you could actually walk her by other kennels without her turning into a ball of fury. As soon as you handed her leash over to her owners? Crazy pulling beast was back, oblivious to her owners "corrections" because they never actually "enforced" anything.

So, I think, not only do dogs learn what "corrections" are important from what people based on the way they're handled, the personality of the dog affects what kind of corrections would be effective regardless. For example, Cynder would probably *die* if she were ever given a collar correction, regardless of who it was from. Abrams takes a mild-moderate collar correction and puts it under advisement, regardless of who its from. Cynder whilts if she even thinks you're mad at her. Abrams will be all bouncy happy excited if you yell at him, unless you are PISSED. Once you're that upset, he actually gets it. (I imagine a hard collar correction would have the same effect, although I don't think I've ever had to give him one.)

I was actually recently thinking about this and speculating that while this does have to do with the dog genetically, I think that an imbalance of correction vs. praise can do this as well and almost have more meaning.

The way that I was taught was that for every correction, there should be an equal or greater valued opposition. For instance, if you correct a dog for reacting with a level 5 prong correction, as soon as they're not reacting and it has worked, you better praise/reward at level 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...

Personally, I don't correct a whole lot, and this is all I've seen in person, but it does seem to carry merit. I watched a breeder that I admire doing some private training with this and it was extremely clear to the dog and while the dog looked like a soft spooky nerve bag, he handled these corrections just fine - because they were balanced. I was thinking that I couldn't imagine correcting Recon like that, and the dog seemed much more nervy than Recon, so...

Food for thought.

I've thought about the topic a fair amount, as I have two dogs who are extremely handler sensitive. I'm not sure if I produce the trait in my dogs, or if it is just a coincidence that I got two like that. I think Meg would be a soft dog with any handler; I thought I couldn't get a softer dog than her, and then Gusto came along and is possibly softer than she is - or at least harder to work through that tendency.

Having said that - for my situation, I'm also not sure it is a bad thing. I joke (and kind of don't joke) about how my next dog is going to be an ACD/Kelpie/Hyena/Mal cross, because I am so sick of soft and I want a hard dog. And people regularly correct me and say I don't want a hard dog - I want a soft dog with higher drive so that it is easier for them to work through it.

I don't think it is an issue of corrections for my dogs; if it is, I'm SOL, because I'm simply never going to be someone out there regularly doing physical corrections to create a harder dog. It isn't in me to train or interact like that. I do think one of my failings as a trainer is that I wasn't good with either of my dogs about teaching them to work through stress and frustration early on. I quickly back up and make things easier and break things down, rather than teaching them to deal with it and keep working and trying.

I also think that part of Gusto's tendency towards softness comes from what I can only call over-thinking. He does not ever charge head-long into a situation; he seems to very clearly understand that his actions result in reactions, and I think he gets "stuck" sometimes because of it. Or maybe that's my tendency to over-think stuff when it comes to my dogs.

All I know is that Hank is not sensitive at all in any way. It's nice on one hand.... he is easy to train, never phased by anything. On the other hand, HOLY CRAP he does not get any subtly in my moods at all or any subtle hint to move or subtle anything. The paps I can tell to shoo or barely move my hand and they scatter, Hank is like derp de derp and in the way ALL the time. Trying to remove him from the bed or couch, he is like a ton of bricks. Not gonna budge or respond to me trying to move him. I can trip over him and kick him across the room accidentally and he doesn't ever think to avoid my feet. He does not seem nearly as intuitive as far as picking things up outside of training sessions. The paps really follow my patterns and anticipate. Hank just... Hanks around oblivious to me.

But in training he blows everyone else out of the water. He is super smart, I know it. But good god he is oblivious a lot of the time. I'm pretty sure I could hit him with a 2 x 4 in the head and he'd barely notice a lot of the time.

He is a mama's boy and very attached to me. Cries like a baby if we're somewhere and I leave him. But he is not hanging on my every word like some past dogs. Good and bad I guess.

The paps are both fairly sensitive. Summer is VERY sensitive and soft and Mia is environmentally very soft and prone to worry but less so when dealing with me. Anyone else though? If you are harsh towards her, she will likely never forgive you. With me though I can raise my voice and it stops her for about a second before she just ignores me.

Omg so funny, you just described Lola (cockapoo) to me with the way you described Hank. She is 6 months old so starting to come into her little personality now and even though she is really smart and quick with training, other things I look at her like YOU ARE SO DUMB DOG lol. She totally doesn't pick up on when I'm angry with her or frustrated or anything. It's good and bad for sure. And she is also very attached to me though, follows me into the bathroom, freaks out if I leave a room and she can't get to me....

Whereas Jackson sounds like Mia. I've only ever TRULY yelled at him probably twice in his life but even that from me don't seem to affect him much. But god forbid my step-dad yells at the TV during football, or my mom is fighting with my little sister in the morning, he's all ears back and under my bed lol.

With Lincoln, if he just THINKS that I am angry with him he will fall over himself offering behaviors and wiggling in the cute aussie way he does, trying to "make me love him again" (since he is convinced that if I am mad at him, that I don't love him anymore LOL).

Josefina could care less if she pisses you off or not, she only listens because she doesn't want to lose privileges.