Canine ResearchIt is mine! Using clicker training as a treatment of object guarding in 4 companion dogs (Canis lupus familiaris)
Introduction
Aggression in companion dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) is “ … a serious health problem that inflicts considerable physical and emotional damage on victims and incurs immeasurable hidden costs to communities” (American Veterinary Medical Association, 2001). Several studies conducted in Europe and North America indicate that most dogs engaging in aggressive behaviors were either owned by the victim or the victim's family or were otherwise familiar to the victim (Cornelissen and Hopster, 2010), and some sort of interaction with or close to the dog took place before the aggressive incident happened (Arhant et al., 2016, Rosado et al., 2009). However, these studies do not further specify if any of the investigated aggressive incidents involved preferred items, for example toys, sticks, or bowls that the dog may have tried to guard from the victim. Guy et al. (2001a) and Lindsay (2005) reported that human interactions, such as reaching toward, leaning over, snuggling, petting, or playing tug while the dog is engaging with the preferred item, may result in the display of aggressive responses. In their large-scale study (n = 3226), Guy et al. (2001b) stated that approximately 20% of dogs showed aggressive behaviors while in the possession of a preferred item. This type of undesired behavior, typically labeled as object guarding, is accompanied by physiological arousal (e.g., tense body posture, dilated pupils) and may co-occur with an underlying anxiety that preferred items will be removed when the dog is approached (Landsberg et al., 2013, Lindsay, 2005). In an important effort to de-escalate the situation, owners may often inadvertently negatively reinforce tense body posture, growling, barking, lunging, snapping, or biting by backing away when the dog engages in 1 or more of these responses (Landsberg et al., 2013).
Jacobs et al. (2017) found that dog owners have difficulties identifying canine behaviors indicating stress and/or threat (e.g., stiffening up, freezing, growling, and snarling) but reliably identified overt aggressive responses (i.e., snapping or biting) in a resource-guarding situation using edibles. Landsberg et al. (2013) reported that dogs that engage in these undesired responses typically have not been taught to expect reinforcement for relinquishing a preferred item on cue. Accordingly, recommended treatment of this problematic behavior includes teaching retrieving and releasing an item on cue by using positive reinforcement procedures as shown in the “Protocol for desensitizing and counter-conditioning dogs to relinquish objects” (Overall, 2013), for instance.
One possibility to teach a dog to retrieve and deliver an object on cue is chaining. This procedure involves breaking down a task into its component parts via a task analysis, and sequentially teaching each individual component to mastery level via prompting and differential reinforcement (Slocum and Tiger, 2011). One version of this procedure—backward chaining—involves teaching the final step of the task analysis first—releasing the item—followed by progressive teaching of earlier components, such as placing the item in the owner's hand (Slocum and Tiger, 2011). Backward chaining entails that reinforcement is delivered when the learner performs the final behavior in the sequence at the predetermined criterion level (Cooper et al., 2007). As more and more of the earlier steps are added to the training process, all previously taught steps and the current step need to be accurately completed to produce reinforcement (Slocum and Tiger, 2011). The sequence proceeds backward through the chain until all the steps in the task analysis have been introduced in reverse order and practiced cumulatively (Cooper et al., 2007). This general process is the same for human and nonhuman learners, depending on the tasks that are to be taught and species-specific limitations.
Despite the proven efficacy of backward chaining as an intervention for undesired behaviors in human and nonhuman learners (Erickson, 2013, Jerome et al., 2007, Nosik and Williams, 2011, Hagopian et al., 1996), this approach has not been systematically tested for treating aggressive behaviors in companion dogs. This gap in the literature, together with an inherent advantage of the procedure, leads to the decision of implementing backward chaining in the present study. Backward chaining entails that the learner receives the most training (and reinforcement) in the final task sequences of the chain first (Grant and Evans, 1994), which were the most relevant in the present study, as they involved a hypothesized antecedent for the undesired aggressive responses, namely the approach of a human hand.
Overall, the aim of the research reported here was to investigate the efficacy of using backward chaining to increase the frequency of alternative responses—delivering and releasing the preferred item to the presented hand of the owner—with the expectation that this process could result in a decrease in the frequency of category II (e.g., hovering over object and/or ears flattened) and category III (e.g., staring and/or stiffening up) behaviors. See Table 1 for definitions.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 4 human-dog dyads living in private households in a 25-km radius around the village of Puchberg am Schneeberg, Lower Austria, Austria.
Dyad 01 (D01) consisted of a castrated 9-year-old golden retriever male, who was one of the first author's companion dogs, and the first author's husband who trained and handled the dog for the duration of the study. The dog had a shoulder height of 60 cm and weighed approximately 30 kg. This dog had approximately 9 years of experience with
Results
The Figure 1 presents the total number of sessions per dog and the overall results.
Comparing baseline to intervention
The present study showed that backward chaining is an effective procedure to teach dogs to release a highly preferred item on cue. Overall, success rates and rates of category II and III behaviors considerably improved (i.e., increase or decrease, respectively) during intervention conditions. A comparison of performances during baselines and after the independent variable was introduced showed an increasing trend (e.g., sessions 39-45 of D02) or no tendency (e.g., sessions 40-44 of D04) of
Conclusion
The present study demonstrated that a backward-chaining procedure is suitable and effective to reduce dogs' category II and III behaviors in object-guarding situations and increase their release of the preferred item—success in this study—when prompted to do so, at least short-term. It is hoped that future research will subsequently address some of the highlighted issues (e.g., refining the categorization of aggression-related responses, effects of intermittent schedules of reinforcement on
Acknowledgments
We thank all dog owners participating in this study, which is based on the research conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the first author's MSc in Applied Behavior Analysis at Queen's University Belfast. We also thank Christian Sánchez, who helped with data processing.
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