Expert: Lee Charles Kelley - 11/1/2007

Question
I've rescued my dog Cody about one year ago and he's coming up on his second birthday.  All I know about his past is that his previous owners tied him up and left him to fend for himself.  He's a sweet, wonderful dog with a couple of quirks that I can manage.  However, a mere sight of a motorcycle and he goes absolutely crazy.  He'll start getting upset and barking if he hears it from 2 blocks away.  Any advice on how I can manage this behavior?  Insight where it may come from?

Answer
Hey, Daria,

Does he seem like he wants to chase the motorycycles and "kill" them? If so, this kind of behavior is clearly (at least to me) a result of Cody being left tied up in the yard with nothing to do. That's because being left utside caused his prey drive to be stirred up by whatever stimuli the environment had to offer. Being tied up left him unable to act on whatever impulses he had as a result. Who knows how, exactly, his predatory energy became fixated on motorcycles but they make a lot of noise, and they generally move pretty fast, making an excellent "prey animal," and so with nothing else for him to focus on, the neighborhood Harleys and Yamahas got elected.

How do you control the behavior?  Well, first of all, the sound of the motorcycle stirs up a lot of energy in Cody, right? He can probably go from 0-60 in about two seconds flat. And I would imagine that there's probably very little that YOU do with him on a regular basis which creates that same kind of strong, immediated surge in his energy. I mean, he loves you. You're the center of his universe, right? Yeah, but when he hears that vroom-vroom, you kind of disappear off his radar a little, don't you?

So what you have to do (at least in my view), is work to make yourself more interesting to him than absolutely anything else in the environment, starting with little things, and building up to the big bad bikes.

#1 - Hand Feed Him All His Meals

Do this outside. Hold his food in one hand and put the other hand against his chest and hold it there. As he eats, pull the hand with the food away little by little so that he has to push into you to eat. Do this every day, increasing the amount of energy he has to use to push into in order to get fed. (Think of it as making him work for a living, something dogs are genetically engineered to want and NEED to do.)

It's going to be messy, it's going to be sloppy, it's going to be cold, but it will also begin to make you more "interesting" to him than you were before. Remember we need to work small in order to end big.

Here's a link to a full description of the exercise, written by my friend Neil Sattin. He not only describes in detail how to do this, he gives you the reasons it's so important. http://tinyurl.com/3balu6
                  

#2 - Play Tug-of-War Outside and Always Let Him Win

Let's get down to brass tacks: Cody wants to bite those motorcycles. To him that would be nirvana. (At least he "thinks" it would.) Since we can't let him do that, and we can't let him chase the damn things, we have to give him an alternative outlet for all that energy. Tug is one of the best outlets there is. It satisfies that urge to bite like almost nothing else you can do as a trainer. Here’s another link from Neil Sattin: http://www.tiny.cc/tug

#3- Play Fetch and Use it (and Tug) to Teach Cody Commands

Sit is fine and all, but we want to teach Cody some other commands (like "heel," "down," "stay," and "Cody, come!") while he's a bit more revved up. Teach him these commands, with a quick ball throw or game of tug as a reward and you'll see quite a difference in his energy level and focus when you give him any of these commands. Make it fun and lively for him. (If he won't play tug or fetch, let me know; there are ways to stimulate those behaviors in almost any dog.)

Then once you've got a good handle on getting him to obey these basic commands, make him choose between obeying the command and going after the ball or tug rag. In other words, he'll be getting a chance to choose between a strong urge to chase and bite something, and focusing on you and your commands. Once you've built up his skill set in doing THAT, you'll have more control when the motorcycles start to rev up his emotions.

Here's an example:

Have him on a 6' (or better yet, 10' leash), tease him with a ball and get him to do a down/stay. Then give the ball a short toss to his left side, with not too much energy. Keep him in the stay, focused on the ball. Then walk over to his right side, but not all the way to the right--keep your body slightly in front of him. You're still holding the leash. Keep him in the stay. Then, in a very excited voice, say "Cody, come!"

He'll probably jump up and go after the ball. But you have the leash on him. So he won't be able to get to it. Pull a 2nd ball out of your pocket so that when he looks at you, he'll realize that while he can't get to the 1st ball, he CAN get to the one in your hand. When he comes to you grab the ball, praise him, get him to chase you around for the ball, then give it a good throw and let him go after it.

This is just to give you an idea of what I mean when I say you have to make him choose between chasing and biting something and obeying your commands. It would take far too long to go into all the details of how to do every aspect of that here, but you can find these types of training exercises in books like NATURAL DOG TRAINING by Kevin Behan (available at Amazon.com), PLAYTRAINING YOUR DOG by Patricia Gail Burnham, and SCHUTZHUND, THEORY AND TRAINING METHODS by Barwig and Hilliard.) But I think you can see that "forcing" him to choose between chasing a ball and coming when called will be very helpful when he hears a motorcycle coming.

I hope this helps!
LCK