From a two-part series "Can Training be Holistic?" by Laura Wallingford, this is the experience of Wolf Clan editors at a Suzanne Clothier seminar. 

Can Training Be Holistic? Part II
By Laura Wallingford 

At a Suzanne Clothier seminar, there are many sights and sounds familiar to those accustomed to dog training classes or canine behavior seminars. The crates, the leashes, the floor mats, the occasional bark or whine - these are the things you come to expect when dogs and the people who care for them come together to learn. What is different, then, about a Suzanne Clothier seminar?

For one thing, you will not see a dog jerked off his feet with a choke chain because he was forging during a heeling exercise. You will not see a dog "dangled" off the floor because he or she reacted "aggressively" to a canine classmate. You will not see a dog thrown to the floor and rolled over on her back to show her who is the alpha, or dominant party, in the relationship.

The editors of WOLF CLAN, Laura Wallingford and Carin Segal, along with Carin's dog Kafa (see December's Wolf Clan cover photo), attended a Suzanne Clothier seminar in Mt. Prospect, Illinois in October of 1993. The seminar commenced on a Friday evening with a program called "Exercise With a Purpose." The evening's activities began with a session on developing pure observation skills for the human attendees. One by one the participant dogs were walked by their guardians for several minutes in the center of the room. Around the perimeter of the mats sat the other attendees and their dogs. The task for the human participants? Sounds simple: observe. It was a lot harder than it sounds! How does the dog move? Is there any indication of limited range of motion in any joint or limb? What is the overall manner of the animal - is the dog happy, bored, curious, "hyper," frightened, relaxed, anxious, etc.? Watch the eyes, the mouth, the position of the tail. Is the dog's breathing slow and relaxed, or too shallow and rapid? Around and around, one at a time, the animals went, while the human attendees strained to cultivate the skill of being an astute observer.

The wealth of information that came out of these sessions surprised everyone. The many things we observed about each dog became more and more significant throughout the weekend, as we continued to work on the specific behavioral problems which had caused these guardians to seek help. Often our observations were basic to understanding the root of the behavioral problems being experienced, and yet in nearly every case these characteristics had gone unnoticed by the guardian and the host of veterinarians and trainers previously turned to for help.

One very clear example of the importance of observation was in the case of a dog who was observed to have a very subtle stiffness in her hindquarters. As the dog was walked around we observed some physical indications that nervousness and stress occurred when she was asked to sit. When we were later given the dog's behavioral history to study, imagine our reaction at discovering that this anxious little dog was at the seminar largely because of "aggressive" behavior-she had twice bitten people in what were supposed to be nonthreatening situations! Upon closer study of the facts underlying each of these incidents, it was clear that in both instances her hindquarters were being handled-in one case, pressed upon to try to get her to sit. Suddenly, what had previously appeared to be unprovoked biting incidents began to look suspiciously like responses to pain that no one had even been aware she was experiencing.

The second part of the Friday night session involved teaching the human participants in the seminar to use passive and active exercises specifically designed for dogs to improve everything from gait and symmetry to appearance and even behavior. While there is ample information available on exercise physiology for humans and horses, for instance, there has been little or no such specific research on dogs.

Suzanne conducted a study (with backing from the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association) which looked at the effects of passive and active exercises, sport-specific conditioning, and chiropractic on dogs. She found that in dogs, as in people, behavior is definitely adversely affected by any physical imbalance.

Moving on into the Saturday and Sunday sessions, Suzanne built upon the observations of Friday night as she began presenting her alternatives to traditional training methods. She began by comparing the ideal relationship between a person and a dog to that of partners in a dance. You try to flow with your partner, not fight him or force him to arbitrarily go in some direction without his willing consent and participation. Ideally, communication between the partners is subtle, becoming more effortless the more you dance with that particular partner. She stressed that because in the human/dog relationship, the dog is not a voluntary participant, it is morally incumbent on the human to know everything possible about the animal.

For instance, Suzanne believes that dogs give us all the information we need to develop a wonderful relationship with them, but we are too unskilled as observers to note it and take it into account as we go about deciding exactly what type of relationship -we want with our dog. Eventually, the poor dog must take some extremely overt, dramatic action (i.e., bite) because we've missed all the preparatory signals he or she was frantically sending. Suzanne described people and dogs as beings from different cultures, with different languages, neither superior to the other. She stressed that the information coming up the leash from our dogs was equally important to the information going down the leash from us.

As an example of the importance of observing your dog and interpreting the information the dog is transmitting, Suzanne stated that a happy, calm dog wags his or her tail slowly. The more quickly the tail wags, the more anxious the dog is. As a trainer, you must watch for signs of anxiety; the time to help the dog regroup is before all control has been lost. Similarly, when a dog is focused his or her head is carried steady; when he or she is looking up and down or side to side, it's time once again to stop the lesson and have the dog relax. Calmness is the most important thing to be transmitted from trainer to dog at these times. The faster they go, the slower you go. Don't feed into their lack of control or growing anxiety by starting to jerk them around or yell at them because they're "not getting it" or "not trying. " A good trainer's focus should be on the dog at all times; ideally he or she has stopped the deterioration of a session before it's even really begun.

We know of no other trainer who even acknowledges the concept of self control as being one that can be taught to and learned by a dog. With Suzanne Clothier, this is the most essential and basic skill of all. Trainers can learn to teach this to their canine partners by observing them closely enough to spot the beginnings of crumbling concentration before it's gone very far. Then, in a soothing, calm, and confident tone, you ask the dog to sit and ask him to control himself. You are using both your tone and physically touching the dog to bring them back to the present moment. The request to regain control, however you phrase it, is vocabulary that can be learned by the dog just as any other words are learned, by repetition and consistency.

Interestingly, Suzanne said that it has been definitely shown that you increase aggression between two dogs by tightening up on a leash. Pulling back on the dog and holding the leash taut in the presence of another dog, person, etc., is one of the methods used traditionally to make a dog aggressive-it is commonly used in protection training. Our actions, though understandable, are communicating very clearly to our dogs that, "Here is a situation we're really worried about. " They respond accordingly. And the next time, because of the dog's reaction last time, we tighten up quicker than ever when that same situation recurs, and they respond aggressively even more quickly than the first time. And so on, and so on, and so on. The self- control you as the trainer should be continually exhibiting, teaching, and requiring, comes into play here; you are merely expecting controlled behavior, watching for the first sign from your dog that he or she may "lose" it, then quietly (with a loose lead) having them sit and requesting that they control themselves.

One of the most fascinating demonstrations Suzanne did with one of the canine attendees was showing how a change in body language of a dog can actually change the dog's behavior. Suzanne prefaced this by saying that, for a person, when a situation is uncomfortable, the person can make the conscious choice to change and try a new behavior. For example, in a situation where something makes you very nervous and you notice yourself beginning to breathe rapidly and shallowly, you can decide to take deep, slow breaths. Many people have discovered the difference in how they feel in such a situation following a change in breathing patterns to those patterns which occur naturally when you are calm. What was required? Observation of the breathing pattern during stress, and a deliberate change to the pattern normally present during non-stressful times.

While a dog cannot make such a decision, Suzanne demonstrated that the observant guardian can change the dog's body in certain ways and achieve the same result. For example, one of the dogs was clearly nervous about the whole proceeding. In the previous observation exercise, we had determined that among the clues which indicated to us that the dog was nervous were that her tail was tucked between her legs and her coat looked somewhat ruffled. We had also noted other signs such as more white than usual showing in the eyes and an increase in panting. Suzanne, while talking in a low and soothing voice to the dog, didn't just pet or cuddle the dog- she smoothed the ruffled coat back into its previous state and untucked the tail. What followed was obvious enough to be seen even by fledgling observers such as ourselves! The little dog's panting eased, and the eye expression looked much more focused. Several times thereafter we all saw signs that her newfound courage was failing her; each time, Suzanne put the coat, tail, and ears back into the appearance or position each possessed during periods of calm, and there was a visible positive effect on the dog's ability to remain calm.

An even more dramatic demonstration of this connection between the physical and emotional occurred with a nine-month old German Shepherd. This poor dog was nearly paralyzed by fear, but hostile to both people and other dogs, making it impossible to actually get near enough to stroke or soothe him. When he first came out to be walked in the center of the room for observation, he literally could not walk around in a circle; he darted or bolted in bursts of "fight or flight" behavior. Suzanne continued the slow, gentle, soothing conversation she had used on the other frightened dog, but since stroking or petting him up close was as yet impossible, she lightly stroked him from her leash end position with a slender, flexible wand. We observers could see his breathing become regular just as the strokes were regular, down one side and then the other, whisper fine strokes which again and again traced the outline of his body. It was also evident that when the wand stopped touching him for even a moment he was immediately close to losing control totally. The touch on his body brought him back to solid mental ground.

Suzanne deplores the fact that dog training is so much less advanced in its thinking than horse training. After all, it never even occurs to anyone that it would be possible to dangle a thousand pound animal that wasn't doing what you wanted, so no one even tries. They entice rather coerce because coercion simply isn't possible. (Suzanne's note: horse trainers do indeed use coercion, pain & punishment. I was referring to top level, highly informed horse trainers.) Dog training is, figuratively speaking, still in the Dark Ages largely because, with a few exceptions, it is physically possible for people to force dogs to go somewhere or stay somewhere. Therefore, trainers do not take the time to secure their agreement or their involvement. Suzanne's strong opinion is that training equipment is useful to the extent it clearly communicates information in subtle, non-confusing ways. It is most emphatically not to be used for punishment. As she stated, the mark of a great rider is subtlety of signal, the ability to communicate to the horse with nearly imperceptible movement of the reins. Jerking and pulling are the marks of the novice. So, too, she feels it should be in dog training. Those of us who have attended many of the "jerk and dangle" classes that predominate can only wonder how differently training would be conducted if all trainers believed they could not physically force their charges to do anything. If dogs had the good fortune to weigh what horses weigh, we humans would conduct ourselves differently.

In her career as a trainer Suzanne believes that most of the problems she has helped resolve where the description presented to her initially was "resistance to training" were instead simply total confusion on the dog's part as to just what it was the person wanted. Because of its inability to give clear signals to the dogs and its action, which is true to its name, Suzanne abhors the use of the choke collar, the staple piece of equipment in most training today. She instead uses the prong collar, generally using a very tiny prong on even the largest dog. On smaller dogs she might wrap the tiniest prong in a scarf or with nylon. She compared the prong's action to that of a bridle in a horse's mouth; it enables you to give the smallest, gentlest clues to your canine partner about where you are going.

For those attendees who had heretofore used a choke collar and believed the more intimidating- looking prong to be mean or painful, Suzanne offered them a chance to try both not on their dogs, but on themselves. Perhaps three or four people accepted. Suzanne put prong collars around one upper arm, choke collars on the other, and then with a leash lead the person around by each collar in turn. Everyone involved in this demonstration had a change of heart about the prong. They found the choke collar-the more "harmless looking" of the two to have pinched their skin painfully without having given them the information they needed to avoid being jerked when they, confused, went the wrong direction. With the prong' the twists and turns taken by the handler were clear enough in advance for the person to stay right alongside without ever being pinched or pulled. Every one of the people who previously found even the sight of the prong distasteful ended up purchasing one.

Most training systems you hear about today assume that noncompliance by the dog is deliberate on his or her part. Suza nne believes that if that assumption is held by any trainer, then that trainer works from fear and cannot but have a confrontational attitude. It is helpful for the human trainer to mentally place a three or four-year-old child in the dog's place, Suzanne suggests, when you don't understand their behavior or aren't getting the response you want. It helps take your anger out of the situation helps you not feel the animal is being deliberately stubborn or obstructive.

On the second day of the program, Suzanne stated that she (along with famed dog trainer and behaviorist Dr. Ian Dunbar) does not believe in the "pack theory" of dog behavior in relationship to the dog's interactions with the humans in his or her life. Her view is that dogs know we are not dogs. Humans are not any where near the subtle communicators that dogs are, nor do we successfully read the myriad clues our dogs have given us long before they resort to a gross behavior such as biting. These things don't come "out of nowhere;" we just didn't see or accurately interpret all the distress warnings our dogs were "shouting" at us as best they could.

Suzanne does not believe at all that dogs are constantly trying to work their way up the pack pecking order to take charge, the premise behind all the many "show them who's boss" tactics practiced so widely today. True alpha dogs are, according to Suzanne, rare, and are the most supremely confident individuals you will ever meet. These are dogs who share their toys, and get into very few fights. These individuals walk into a group of dogs and a path immediately opens up before them; it's the canine version of the parting of the Red Sea. They know they're on top, they exude the confidence that accompanies that knowledge, and others react accordingly.

She also opined that dominance and submission, about which people hear so much in the dog training world, are situational reactions to confrontation, as opposed to a fixed way of life or personality type. Most dogs spend the bulk of their time in a neutral or relaxed state. It is in this state that learning takes place.

Suzanne makes effective use of the "Tellington Touch," a method of body reeducation and re- orientation developed by Linda Tellington-Jones based on her experiences with the Feldenkrais method on people. Demonstrations were given by Suzanne of using TTouch on some of the dogs to help resolve various problems, after which all participants took turns doing TTouch on their own or other dogs at the conference.

One of the most dramatic and insightful exercises Suzanne used at the seminar was to have the human participants (dogs got a well deserved rest!) break off in groups of two. Each person was given a piece of paper which contained on it the skill that needed to be taught to the partner, or "dog. " The catch was, the only words that could be used to teach the partner his or her task were the names of fruits and vegetables. For example, you might be attempting to teach your dog (your partner) to move his or her head from side to side. "Squash! Squash! Squash!" you might call out excitedly, while turning your head. If the partner did not get it, or did the wrong thing, or simply lost interest in watching what you were doing, you had to use tone of voice to coax them back. The correct movement might be met on your part with an excited "Grape!" And then, in trying to have the partner repeat the performance to proof that the skill was indeed learned, you might discover that it was just a coincidence that their head had turned from side to side at that time, and they still had no idea that that particular movement was in some way related to the strange word you kept saying.

Afterwards Suzanne led a discussion by the entire group about how the exercise had felt, both as trainer and trainee. Many - most - participants stated that it was very frustrating to be in the dog role, and that they had begun to feel stressed when it became clear from the trainer's voice that they were still failing to give the desired response, even though they were trying.

"True," said Suzanne. "And remember - in this exercise everyone assumed two very important things: the intelligence of their partner and that partner's cooperation in achieving the goal of the exercise. And people, unfortunately, don't always give their dogs the benefit of those assumptions."