Have a dog that's easily distracted or driven to chase prey-like critters? In this episode Tracey and I talk about overcoming critter distractions and building behaviors so you can both enjoy the outdoors again.
Transcription
Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I have Tracy McLennan here with me to talk about overcoming distractions caused by critters out and about. Hi, Tracy. Welcome back to the podcast!
Whitney Webb: Hi. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
Melissa Breau: I'm excited to have you. So to start us out, do you want to just remind listeners a little bit about you and your current canine crew?
Tracey McLennan: Hello. Yes, I do. I am Tracy. I have been working with predatory dogs for a few years full time, for a few years now. I started really when I was studying for my master's degree, I started really researching it and looking into learning a bit more.
And then I kind of pivoted all my work to really focus on helping people with predatory dogs. So that's all that I do now. I help people with dogs. I help with the scientific research into predatory behavior in dogs because there isn't an awful lot of it out there. I am doing everything I can to get more of it created. And also, I've lived with predatory dogs for a lot longer than that.
That's kind of where my interest came from probably for as long as I've had dogs. One of them has had some sort of interest in prey and often it seemed like I've tended to have quite dogs who are quite intense about it. Some of them accidentally. The first couple definitely by accident, the last couple not so much by accident. So dogs I have right now, I have got two working bred English Cockers.
I don't know what you would call it. We call them working cockers here, but the dogs that are bred for working on shoots, or we would also do field trialing and working tests with that variety of cockers. So I've got two of those. Wren's three years old, and she is, I would say, at the moment of the two of the more intense and was very intense about wildlife from eight weeks.
So that's always been there in her. And the second one, Spike, is four months old now, and he is actually, they're closely related. He is Wren's nephew. So for the moment, he doesn't have all that much interest in prey. He quite likes to watch birds, but so far, he's nothing massively interested. Now, I don't expect him to stay like that. Fair. I expect him to develop a very strong interest in pre his mum is quite, has got quite a lot of drive and I expect that this will, it'll appear as he matures, probably at some point during adolescence.
So at the moment, I don't know all that much about Spike because he's too young and he's not yet, like, hit the sort of times of life when it would be likely to appear. But those are my dogs at the moment. A couple more months. A couple more months and that'll start to kick in. Yes, I think so, yeah. A couple more months and I think I'll start to see you.
Melissa Breau: So when we talk about dogs who are easily distractible by, you know, sight, scent, sound, kind of prey animals or birds. Right, are we talking about genetics? Are some dogs just wired this way more than others?
Tracey McLennan: Yeah, there definitely is a strong, strong genetic component, which is why I'm so confident that Spike will develop that sort of interest, because, you know, he comes from that sort of breeding.
So, yeah, there's a very strong genetic component and that's why typically, if you got a labrador, you would expect them to want to pick things up. If you got a border collie, you would expect them to stalk with eye. If you got a cocker like I have, you would expect them to be very interested in birds and putting their nose down and moving in that quite erratically across the ground.
So there is a very strong genetic component. But it's not only genetics, it's like everything. It's learning as well. Learning is very strongly influences how dogs will express their genes. So depending on where you live, depending on what you do with your dogs on a day to day basis, all of that impacts on how those genes express themselves in the world. So it's both really learning and genetics are equally as important, I would say.
But yes, certainly I would not. I would consider myself quite silly if I was to get a dog of spikes breeding and be surprised if when he develops an interest in birds and starts wanting to, you know, doing a lot of training with him at the moment around birds, because I expect the interest to pop up at some point, he'll reach a stage of development and then something will happen that will kick the interest, and that's usually what happens.
Melissa Breau: I know, like, part of what you talk about sometimes is like, predatory instincts and kind of what that looks like. Right. Can you, can you maybe just talk us through an overview of that? Kind of what you mean about.
Tracey McLennan: Absolutely. So predatory instincts are part of most all predator species and are linked to getting pre. So with dogs in particular, unlike any other predator on the planet dogs have been selectively bred to enhance some parts of that and limit the expression of other parts of the behavior.
So for me, there's like ten part, ten separate behaviors that are probably more than that. I've read articles about herding dogs that talk about other things, and I've spoken to people with working terriers who told me about specific vocalizations they make at specific times. So this list is, I would say, nowhere near exhaustive, but this is what we've got for the moment. So hunt, searching for. Searching for prey, orient, which just means, like, turning towards, positioning themselves in some way, getting ready to move closer to the prey, or getting ready to do something with the prey, they might not necessarily move.
The next step along is eyeing the prey, which is, like, what you see border collies do a lot of. And you see them as well with, like, toys and things. They often will. Like, if they're playing with toys with their person, they'll often just drop the toy and start staring at it. That's eye stalk that crouch down, head low, chest low, very slow movement, common in setters and pointers.
And those sorts of dogs often can be seen doing a good stalk chase. I think everybody's familiar with chase running quickly towards the pre with the intention of closing the distance or assumed, we assume the intention is to close the distance. I would question if that is the case with every dog. I personally have seen dogs, like, chase prey out of an area so that they could go back and just hunt around and enjoy the smell.
And I also question. I sometimes watch dogs chasing, and I think, is it really that you want to get closer to the prey itself, or is it that you are following the strongest scent? What's going on there? So even Chase, I don't think it's as straightforward as they're trying to get. They're trying to close the distance because I don't think it is with every dog, but probably with most dogs chasing to get closer.
So then there are the bites, the bites, and dogs might do one, two, unlikely to do all, but there's a grab bite, which is a hard bite that in a wild predator would be intended to disable or even kill the prey. So when my mastiff, he was my first dog, and he had a, he had quite a prey drive, and he, if he caught a rabbit, he would kill the rabbit immediately with a grab bite.
Because he was such a big dog, he didn't need to do anything else. As soon as he had the rabbit in his mouth, that was it. Was that was the end for the rabbit. So then there's the possess bite, which is softer, where you. This is what your gun dogs would do, soft hold or hold and carry rather than biting, to injure. In fact, if they do injure, that's really bad.
In field trials nobody wants. The dogs must not be injuring. It's usually birds, but I am told in the UK at least, that they used to do field trials with rabbits, which I did not know that, but apparently that rabbit rabbits at one time were more popular than game birds anyways. Mostly birds, yes. I was really interested. It was a. It was somebody in his seventies or eighties who was telling me that, who'd been field trialing for a long time, but now it's birds, typically birds.
So that hold possess is all about holding and carrying, rather than like trying to kill or capture the prey, because typically those animals have been shot and are at least injured, ideally already dead by the time the dog puts their mouth around them. Then there's the kill bite, the hold and the shake of the head that terriers do. I do. People with gundogs have said to me that sometimes they do it as well, it's a bit of a fault and they try and train it out of them, but apparently some of them will perform a chic off the head.
But more often than not, you would see it in terriers. And then the last two stages are dissect and consume. Not as interest, not as likely to see in dogs. So dissect is all about tearing the prey open so that it can be eaten and consume as eating. Most domestic dogs probably won't do those. There are occasions when it might happen, but it's less common in domestic dogs, but partly because it's been completely not selected for in breeding.
All of the other bits are useful to us, they dissect and consume. That's not useful to anybody with a working dog. So it's broadly been selected away from. So those are all the parts. So there's lots of moving parts too. It's super interesting to think that we've selected away from the part that's probably functionally the most important if they weren't domesticated. Right. Really interesting. But there was some research in the 1970s, a research are compared, beagle puppies and coyote puppies.
I mean, it was in the seventies when the ethics were different, when it came to scientific experiments, because he used live rats and they experiment and basically just put a rat in with puppies to see what would happen was the bulk of the experiment and what he found was the Beagle puppies just didn't know what to do. They would be interested in the rat, but they didn't really understand what to do with it.
Whereas the coyote puppies, they had no trouble. They were eating those rats. They were, you know, was no problem for them. So there is some research as well into it that we have selected away from the. What would be the functional point of it all is not so much there now.
Melissa Breau: That's so interesting. So if somebody finds themselves with one of these dogs who kind of live for hunting or chasing or finding prey, where do we start? What foundation skills do we need to teach to start to maybe overcome some of that, at least kind of on a level where it's functional for us?
Tracey McLennan: Yeah. So there's a number of things that we can do and skills that need to be learned. So for the dogs, self or impulse control, people call it different things, but for the dogs, definitely learning to at least put a pause on their impulses is important also for the dogs, some sort of an incompatible behaviour.
People use various things like I've seen hand touches used. I quite like a stop or a wait at a distance and a recall. Some people teach a really good about turn, but something that's incompatible with continuing towards the prey. And for humans, the foundational skills for people are really about learning how to be a good observer of her. That's the most important thing for people. And then management for both humans and dogs, learning to be able to be on a lead and it not be chaotic, or at least not chaotic most of the time.
You know, that sort of management as in as well, and having. Being able to be in fenced areas without getting really, really frustrated about it. So there's like lots and lots of management as well. And that's really for both. But those are the foundations that I would be looking at.
Melissa Breau: If you're working specifically on trying to overcome this type of behavior, how much of your training do you do out in the real world? And how much of it is about really building those foundations to a fluent level away from the type of distractions that we're talking about?
Tracey McLennan: So ideally, I think you would build them to a good level away from those distractions. And ideally you would use distractions that are under your control and then you would start to introduce the prey in practice. Few people are going to be able to do that because few of us live in a way where we could never come across prey while we're training our dogs.
So, you know, I've got my puppy who I know at some point is going to become very interested in birds. And whenever I go outside, he's highly likely to see birds. You know, there might be one just flying out the garden as we open the door. Or, you know, when I'm in the park, a bird might swoop right in front of his nose. So in practice, in an ideal world, I would have none of that until I felt as though, you know, until he was, like, over a year old and we'd gone through most of adolescence and everything, was going well, that that would be my ideal.
But in practice, in practice, almost everybody is training around the distractions as well as in places like their house, because you have to, because otherwise you couldn't take your dog outside. And in fact, one winter, I had a mouse in my house. So even inside the house, I have a friend who's dealing with that at the moment. Her dog has decided that she needs to be very aware.
Yes, that was. That was what happened to me. It was fine if I was out or if we were, or if we were going to sleep, that was all fine. But if I was trying to sit in my office and work, brain was like, really, really just wanted to hunt for the mouse. She wanted to work. Yes, she wanted to work. I would say if you're catching. If your friend is catching them with human traps, take them a long way away from home because they apparently can travel several miles to get back.
I started off, I would catch the mouse and release in the back garden. It would come straight back in again. You have to apparently. Then I googled, and you have to apparently take them a long way away. So then I caught three, released them miles away from the house, and then it just. Oh, that was fine. They were the last of that was all the mice, and they were gone.
Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Okay, so I think that we kind of hear two different pieces of advice when it comes to this stuff, right? Like, we hear the advice that we don't want our dogs to practice the behaviors that we don't want them to repeat because behaviors grow stronger the more that they're practiced. So that's one side of things. But we also kind of hear that certain behaviors, they feel kind of necessary to our dogs, and we hear it recommended that instead we need to find other outlets for those same behaviors in order to meet those needs. Can you talk a little bit about where you kind of fall on that spectrum and maybe why, when it comes to prey based behaviors?
Tracey McLennan: So where I fall on that spectrum when it comes to prey based behaviours is we need to be giving them outlets 100%. For most of our dogs, their interest in prey has been quite deliberately created in them through selective breeding and also the way we live in places where we often live quite close to prey animals.
And so for the dogs to have those instincts and us to be saying, oh, no, you don't get to do any of that. I mean, it just creates difficulty, it creates things in the dogs when the predatory instincts aren't well understood and aren't well managed and alternatives aren't given. What you end up with is dogs where as soon as you step outside the door, the dog instantly can't look at the person because they're busy scanning the environment or with some of the retrieving breeds.
English cockers are seem to. This seems to happen more with them than some of the other dogs that are bred to retrieve. But you sometimes get quite extreme resource guarding, if that need to hold, have and hold and carry isn't met. You can get resource gaurding, you can bring it out in them quite easily. So the outlets are vital for the dogs because it's not their fault, right?
They're bred to find whatever, do whatever their job is with prey, and then we get them and say, I don't want you to do any of that. I want you to just like, walk to the park with me, hang out with every dog that you see and be nice to them. Ignore all the birds, the squirrels, the deer, the foxes, all the wildlife, just ignore it, and then we'll come home and that'll all be fine.
And it's just, it would be. I always think it's like if I was to go to a puppy class with my puppy, and the trainer said to me, now, Tracey, you need to bring, you know, good, bring the good treats, because he'll be distracted by the other puppies. So bring, you know, nice roast meat and, you know, get something good that he's going to like. And I said, I don't want to do that because I just want him to work for kibble.
Most reward based trainers would say, well, that's just not realistic. That's my view of expecting dogs who are bred to have an interest in prey, or if it's just sometimes it's a surprise, sometimes they're not bred to have an interest in it at all, and it's just there because genetically they are descended from predators. So for some dogs, it is just a surprise. I've met some toy breeds where they've got a really strong interest in prey.
And so even if that's happened, even if that's happened, you can't still. It's a bit like insisting that you take your puppy to puppy class and reward them with dry kibble and that they'll focus on you, not on any of the other puppies or the people around you with cheese and hot dogs and roast chicken and things like that. It's just, it's not realistic. So for me, finding meaningful outlets that don't put you at risk, your dog at risk, or ideally, the wildlife at risk are as important.
Melissa Breau: Do you have an example of an outlet?
Tracey McLennan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's easy for me to give outlets because I have got cockers. So often I'll just, like, hide toys in the grass or even if I know there's, there's scent, I might even just see go and run around in there and sniff for a bit. And that's an outlet for my sort of dog. If I had, like, a terrier and they wanted to grab and shake, I'd be using, like, long toys that they could hold and shake, and I might wriggle them in the grass like they were some kind of a critter.
I'd probably get toys with squeakers because for terriers, that's often like, they like, they like that because the squeakers are meant to sound like an animal being bitten. So I would use things like that if I had a terrier. So, yeah, there's, like, loads and loads of alternatives that you can give to dogs. And the trick is. So there is some. There is some. I would ideally, I would be wanting to focus the dog's attention on something like a toy, particularly for the dogs that want to kill things, rather than on the animals themselves.
So that's where I would focus. My management is on, like, doing my best to prevent a catching of squirrels or rabbits and instead offering them something else to do. For sure. That makes a lot of sense when we're talking about this kind of thing. Is it ever possible to actually completely overcome critter distractions or is it something that handlers should just kind of expect they're going to be working on one level or another for the life of their dog?
In most cases, I would expect to be working on it somehow for the lifetime of the dog. There are exceptions. I didn't really have to do a huge amount of work with my mastiff. He was unusual in that what he most wanted to do was eat. So the only thing that I did consistently was make sure I always had food on me when I was out with him and I.
Because I was a reliable source of food, he would always just leave prey alone. He was. He was unusual, though, because of his, like, very. He was very specific about what he wanted and it was to eat the prey. And most dogs aren't like him, but possibly with dogs like him, you can reach a point where you don't really need to think about it. But for most of them, the interest will persist throughout their life until, like, the dog is too old or too ill to do.
That's usually what stops it. I mean, even my dog, Culan, who was the dog that really got me into this when I found I couldn't train him, in spite of being able to train a dog who'd been killing rabbits to leave them alone, when. Then I got Kulin, who was a collie cross, and he. I couldn't train him. I couldn't keep him near me, he was such a struggle.
And eventually I figured out what was going on with him. I trained him and he was able to be off lead for years and years and years. He was always interested in wildlife scent and he was like that until he died. And towards the end of Kulin's life, he was deaf. He couldn't see very well. He. He was ill. He had a neck injury, he had a tumour pressing on his heart.
And every day I used to take him. Yeah, but he had the best end of his life. So every day I used to take Kulin to this field near me that was filled with rabbits. And every day he would just, like, run around or, like, slowly run around, because he couldn't go very fast by then, but he would slowly run around, he would sniff the scent and I didn't really have to do anything in particular with him by then.
He'd learned that if he came across an actual rabbit, he should just come back to me. And he'd learned by then he had a really strong habit of keeping an eye on where I was because that his thing had been, he used to get lost. So we'd worked very hard on him, remembering that he had to keep an eye on where I was when he was sniffing for wildlife scent.
So he would sniff the rabbits and he would always remember to be watching for me because I couldn't call him back, because by then, because he couldn't hear me and he couldn't see me very well either, so. But he was actually. He was more dedicated about keeping an eye on me when he couldn't hear me or see me very well, so. Yeah, but right up until the end, with cooling, he had an interest, and to me, that's normal with these sorts of dogs.
At the end, when life's very hard for them, they might lose interest. But even then, I've seen video footage of dogs that are clearly, you know, badly injured or very close to the end of their life, and they're still trying to do something with prey, like herd sheep or search for rabbits. So it's part of them. I do always think that mindset work is really important for. For people with dogs like this, because often it's not wanted in companion dogs at all.
And so to look at a young dog who's doing things that you would really rather they didn't and then be saying, and this is you for the rest of your life, it's hard. It can be hard to come to terms with. So, like, mindset work and seeing it as more and more and more important. The more I work in this area, the more important I think it is.
I mean, it's completely different if, like, the gundog trainer I go to, Shedden, she would be really horrified if she had a spaniel that wouldn't hunt, you know, she would find a new home. She wouldn't keep a dog like that because the dog would sit in a kennel and have nothing done with them because her dogs all work. So. But in companion dogs, it's often really not wanted, and it can be a bit of a process to come around to see it as a good thing, but I, like, really want it to be seen as a good thing because it's part of, you know, it's part of what a dog is.
Melissa Breau: So part of the reason we're talking about this stuff, right, is that you're offering your first class at FDSA this term on this topic. Do you want to just share a little bit more about the class, maybe what you're planning to cover and who should consider signing up?
Tracey McLennan: Absolutely. So my class Composed and Focused Around Critters. I'm very excited about it. So it looked. The main focus of the class is understanding what the dogs really want when it comes to prey, because.
Because it's so unwanted in companion dogs, really often what people will come to me and say is, but my dog just loves chasing things. And when we delve into it, that's not at all what's going on. So there's a lot in the class about testing and observing and understanding what each of the dogs wants when it comes to pre, so that can offer them an alternative that's meaningful to that dog because I think what happens a lot of the time when food and toys fail, it's because they're not being offered in a way that's meaningful to the dog or they're being offered in a way that just raises arousal, but without meeting the dog's needs, like the many dogs I see in the park who are chasing, who are just being exercised with a ball thrower, and a lot of them that's not meeting their needs at all.
And I, and to me, I think it just ramps up the dog's arousal and doesn't, but doesn't satisfy them properly. And so, so we're going to spend a lot of time working out how to satisfy the dogs because when you can do that, it's a real game changer. And it's just, it's not as straightforward as just getting a ball and a ball thrower and going to the park.
Delve into that. I will talk about moving training into the real world because that's often a real sticking point. And I know people get stuck because it seems so difficult when you don't know where the pre is going to be. And that, for people, is a real second point. So we're going cover quite a lot about pre in the real world. Some impulse control training, just a little bit of impulse control training and a little bit of work to help people keep their dog in an area because often it's useful if they will stay closer to you rather than be on the horizon.
So that's really most of the class, I think. So people who should sign up, I actually think everybody with dogs needs to know this stuff is so fundamental to them. I mean, unless for people, some people will maybe have a dog that's absolutely no interest in prey and it probably wouldn't be helpful for them now. But the chances are if they keep on having dogs, it'll be, this content would be interesting for them with another dog down the line.
This is really fundamental stuff. And a lot of, and the information isn't widely available, at least not, not in the pet dog world. You know, with my collie cross, now he was a collie cross. Had he been a cocker spaniel, I could have. My work would have been much easier because I would have taken him to a gundog trainer and they would have understood him and they would have told me how to understand him.
But because he was a collie cross, I didn't have access to that. And so most people don't have access to somebody who could explain that, like what their dog's getting out of things to them. And that's why I've got this, like, that's why I spend so much time, like, researching it and looking at it and thinking about it and studying it is because it's not often. The information's not always easy to come across.
So, yeah, everybody really, I think, would benefit, but certainly people whose dogs are. Whose are having problems with their dog's interests and pre. Definitely they'll get something out of the class.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. Any final thoughts or maybe a key point you want to leave listeners with?
Tracey McLennan: Absolutely. Yes, I do. So I would really encourage everybody listening to see prey based behaviors as a great way to build a stronger working relationship with your dog and to get a better understanding of your dog.
They'd encourage you to look at it like that rather than considering those kind of pre based behaviours just to be an irritating behaviour problem. That's my final thought. Fair enough. And probably, you know, maybe not a surprising thought based on where you're coming from, but a useful one to kind of think about, right. That, like, these behaviors that we often think are not ideal can actually be part of the picture in building a stronger relationship.
And I think that's a great reminder, 100%, I think. I mean, the. The problem I had with Kulin came from me not at all understanding what he was getting out of things. And so what I became to him was a real drag. I was just that person stopping him, doing what he wanted, what he felt he needed to do. And our relationship really suffered until I learned how to understand what he wanted.
Our relationship just was never as good as it could have been. And without me doing all of that learning, he would have been a dog who was on a lead and frustrated about, you know, he would have spent a lifetime being frustrated. So it is not, to me, not an irritating behavior problem anymore. You know, I nearly gave up being a dog trainer because of Kulin, because it was so difficult.
So a hundred percent. I considered it to be a deeply irritating behaviour problem for a long time. But then once I understood it and I started to learn about it, like, I changed. And now, like, this is a great way to get a better working relationship. If you just understand what the dog wants, it's all much easier. And, of course, now with wren, um, it's like, I love going out with her and she's got so much drive that I was a bit worried when she was a puppy that I was, you know, I was going to completely just drop off her radar.
But actually, we've got a really good working relationship and, you know, we do lots of things together. And going out with her, just so interesting and exciting to me. That's why I've got another one, another same sort of dog. So to me, it's just, it's a great way of building a stronger working relationship. And as long as you do that, it's all excellent.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you, Tracey, so much for coming on the podcast.
Tracey McLennan: No worries. Thanks for having me.
Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Shade right cell to talk about location specific markers. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.
Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by Bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. Happy training.
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!