Every year I post an article that lists last-minute things you can do to help your dog who is afraid of fireworks. We are coming up on Independence Day and Canada Day, and that means bangs and booms. Over the years, I have tweaked my list.
But here is an earlier reminder with the most important tip of all.
See your vet about medications (or speak to clinic staff by text or phone if that is an option).
“There are new products on the market, as well as several options that have been around for years. Here is what Dr. Lynn Honeckman, veterinary behavior resident, says about the benefits of medications.
Firecrackers: many dogs’ worst nightmare
Now is the perfect time to add an anti-anxiety medication to your firework-preparation kit. The right medication will help your pet remain calm while not causing significant sedation. It is important to practice trials of medication before the actual holiday so the effect can be properly tested.
There are a variety of medications or combinations that your veterinarian might prescribe. Medications such as Sileo, clonidine, alprazolam, gabapentin, or trazodone are the best to try due to their quick onset of action (typically within an hour) and short duration of effect (4–6 hours).
Medications such as acepromazine should be avoided as they provide sedation without the anti-anxiety effect, and could potentially cause an increase in fear.
Pets who suffer severe fear may need a combination of medications to achieve the appropriate effect, and doses may need to be increased or decreased during the trial phase. Ultimately, there is no reason to allow a pet to suffer from noise phobia. Now is the perfect time to talk with your veterinarian.”
Dr. Lynn Honeckman
I’m writing this year with a new urgency. Although I’ve had a clinically sound phobic dog before, Lewis is my first dog to have clinical thunder and fireworks phobia. We are going through that now, and I hate to think how much more affected his life would be without medications. The meds have a direct positive effect and also help make counterconditioning possible.
Sound phobia is a serious medical condition that usually gets worse. Nothing else comes close to the efficacy of medications. The research on music, pressure garments, and supplements shows weak effects at best. There is no dog crate or ear protection that can prevent your dog from hearing the low-frequency bangs and booms. The best way to help your dog get through the coming holidays in the U.S. and Canada is to contact your vet for help. Call now.
Bonus Tip: There Is New Evidence to Support Ad Hoc Counterconditioning
I plan to publish a whole post on this topic, but I haven’t done it yet. I do recommend ad hoc counterconditioning in my other post, and in recent years there has been evidence of its efficacy.
Ad hoc counterconditioning is counterconditioning without desensitization. It’s the practice of providing appetitive stimuli (usually food or play) after the occurrence of the trigger. In other word: drop great food whenever fireworks go off. But also, feel free to treat for other sudden sounds: door slams, objects dropping on the floor, something popping—any impulse sound.
Dr. Stefanie Riemer has published three papers in the last few years on fireworks fears in dogs. Her bio states:
I am a behavioural biologist and am especially interested in how dogs feel and think. My research interests include emotional expression and social communication in dogs, personality development, noise fears and veterinary fear in dogs as well as the phenomenon of so-called ‘ball junkies’ and possible parallels with behavioural addictions in humans.
Her research is fascinating, and her papers are very readable and available ungated online. Here’s where to check them out.
Her research also supports the use of anxiolytic medication, so we come full circle to Dr. Honeckman’s words: now is a great time to talk to your veterinarian. And if you can, be ready to drop treats—good ones!
Copyright 2019 Eileen Anderson, edited 2024
Related Post
Photo Credits
Two photos of Zani copyright Eileen Anderson.
Firecrackers courtesy of Wikimedia Commons from user Tom Harpel, under this license. I cropped the photo and edited out some background items.
Comparison of the waveforms of a dryer and random noise
No, I don’t mean you should record the thunder! Record a custom masking noise for your dog who fears thunder, fireworks, or other sudden or low-frequency noises.
In my webinars and articles, I talk about the types of sound masking that work best. From a biophysics standpoint, the best multipurpose masking noises are brown or other random noise, fans, home appliances with motors, and music with a lot of bass and drums. Low frequencies can mask sounds of higher frequencies, but it doesn’t work the other way around (Kinsler et al., 1999, p. 318–320). That’s why I always recommend low frequencies as long as they don’t scare the dog.
Beyond the considerations of physics, we must customize to the individual dog. For instance, taiko drumming recordings are great for masking booms, but because of that, they may trigger your dog. The way to go about it is to think of what is available in your household that your dog is already OK with. You can record these known sounds, especially if they are duration sounds that include low frequencies. Appliances your dog is used to are ideal.
What Did I Record?
As I was scrambling to cope with Lewis’ newly emerging fears, it occurred to me that fan noise and random noise (brown, pink, white, etc.) are homogeneous. They create a hum or a whoosh or a rumble, but no momentary noises stand out. See the bottom waveform in the image at the beginning of this post. When the masking background is homogeneous noise, that means that sudden environmental noises stand out.
I realized that there is a household noise that Lewis is fine with that contains both a background hum/rumble, and occasional more sudden noises. That’s my dryer. See the top waveform in the first image. I’ve recommended in the past the “sports shoes in the dryer” trick (not original to me). I’ve never tried it with Lewis because I suspect it’s too close to his triggers. That could be a perfect solution for some dogs. But a regular load of clothes is perfect for Lewis. He hears it every two or three days without a problem. There is the homogeneous sound of the motor and the cyclical sounds of the drum rotating, and the occasional noise as a heavy piece of clothing makes a thump. In the waveform image above, those varying spikes on the top line represent the thumps and clunks.
My washer is pretty helpful, too. If I know that storms or fireworks are coming, I plan my laundry loads for those times as a bonus to the masking team.
But I can’t do laundry every time the scary noises come, not around here, where we have so many storms. And I don’t want to spend energy on unnecessary use. So now, when we get unexpected thunder, the first thing I do is throw some random clothing items into my dryer and turn it on to the air dry setting. But only for the time it takes to set up my little system. ThenI play long recordings I’ve already made of the dryer on my Bluetooth speaker that has a subwoofer.
It still makes me grin, hearing laundry sounds coming from the laundry room when the appliances aren’t on. And now my recordings are part of my plan for any loud noise event.
Making and Playing Your Own Recording
I’m not sharing my own recording for public use, since it will be a foreign sound to every dog who hasn’t lived in my household.
But you can make your own recording of a dryer or other appliance your dog is habituated to.
Use a smartphone app that can record and export in WAV or AIFF format if possible. But MP3 format is better than nothing.
Make a 20–30 minute recording when the rest of the house is quiet. If you are recording the dryer, make sure you have a load of various items in there.
After you’ve saved the file, if you have sound editing software, make the sound fade in so it isn’t sudden when you turn it on. Otherwise, you can always start it quietly with the volume control when you play it.
Play it back on a good speaker to make sure it doesn’t scare your dog. Start it at a distance and at a low level and gradually turn it up to an appropriate volume. Ideally, he won’t even pay attention to it.
If your dog is fine with it, set the sound file up on one of your devices so it can loop, or put multiple recordings on a playlist that can autoplay.
When playing the recording, use a speaker that includes low frequencies. Do not play it on your handheld’s internal speaker; they are notoriously bad at putting out low frequencies. Send the sound to a wireless speaker with a good bass. I use an old tablet to play the sound files because I don’t want the devices I use every day attached to the speaker. You can get some unpleasant surprises and scare your dog that way.
Here’s a link to the speaker I have. From the next room, it’s hard for me to tell the difference between the dryer itself and my recordings. And while Lewis probably can tell the difference, the recording doesn’t bother him and is a useful addition to the masking environment.
Sound Comparison
Here’s an auditory demo showing the difference between homogeneous brown noise and the dryer sound with its bumps and clunks. You’ll hear, in sequence: 1) brown noise; 2) my dryer recording; and 3) the two combined. Doubling or tripling up on masking sources is a great idea if your dog is OK with them all (separately and together).
Demo of brown noise, dryer noise, and the combination of the two
Lewis during a thunderstorm (with added tornado siren). Because of meds, he’s doing much better than he did during previous sound events
How Much Does Masking Help?
Masking is a management technique. It isn’t perfect, because there are no noises we can generate at home that can mask the loudest thunderclaps and booms of fireworks without being scary themselves. But masking can make the distant booms inaudible and moderate booms blend more into the background. On those lucky days when the storms don’t get close, masking can protect your dog effectively. And on the worse days, it can at least put a dent into the overall exposure.
For directly addressing our dogs’ fear, evidence suggests that medications, ad hoc counterconditioning, and relaxation training are our best tools (Riemer, 2020 & 2023).
Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson
Related Posts
References
Kinsler, L. E., Frey, A. R., Coppens, A. B., & Sanders, J. V. (1999). Fundamentals of Acoustics (4th ed.). Wiley.
Lewis performs a chin rest on my hand while I wear a plastic glove
If someone ever invents an overshadowing Bingo game, Lewis and I will win!
About Overshadowing
Sometimes a stimulus we try to classically condition has more than one aspect that can be sensed, like an object that can be both seen and smelled. This kind of stimulus is called a compound stimulus. The phenomenon of overshadowing may occur when compound stimuli are conditioned because one of the simple stimuli will likely prevent the other/s from being conditioned fully or at all.
I recently encountered a situation where potentially five different stimuli were “competing” to be classically conditioned. And of those five, the one most likely to “win” the conditioning was not the one that I needed the most. I had to tackle the problem, because it was in a training project that was important for Lewis’ wellbeing.
Oromucosal Medicine Administration
Lewis has been diagnosed with sound phobia to fireworks and thunderstorms, and one of his medications is to be delivered topically to his gum and cheek tissue.
The instructions for administering this medicine require that the human wear protective gloves so as not to touch the medicinal gel, which can be absorbed through, for example, a cut in the skin. Gloves are a new thing for Lewis.
I thought about whether I should use classical conditioning to help him have a positive response to the gloves and gathered up what I needed. I use disposable kitchen gloves for a lot of tasks, so that’s what I got out. Whoa! These gloves make a distinctive noisy rattle when touched or manipulated. You can’t even get them out of the box without the dog hearing them.
You probably see where this is going.
I wanted Lewis to have good feelings about the gloves. But what aspect of them? How many things are potentially different for a dog when you put a glove on your hand for a husbandry task, one that includes putting your finger in the dog’s mouth? How about:
the sight of the glove on the hand
the sound the glove makes
the feeling of being touched by a gloved hand
the odor of the glove
the taste of the glove
We’ve potentially got all five senses involved; the gloves present a compound stimulus.
Bingo?
How about another list? How many things about the gloves might bother Lewis? No need to repeat; it’s the same list. But knowing him, I would guess that having a gloved finger stuck in his mouth between his cheek and gums would bug him the most. But of all these, the sound often happens first, and is super salient. How can I classically condition the mouth touch without it being overshadowed by the crackle of the glove?
The Environment Would Like a Word
The plastic kitchen gloves I have are awful for the environment. I would make a different decision now. There is no perfect disposable glove yet, but latex is made from rubber and some latex gloves can be biodegradable. Reusable rubber gloves would be better than what I have, but they are too bulky for this job with this dog. Feel free to comment with suggestions.
Solutions to the Overshadowing Problem
So, how do I make sure that Lewis has positive feelings about being touched (in the mouth) by the gloves, given that classical conditioning is more likely to attach to the sound of them? Here are the possibilities I considered.
Different gloves: I’m sure some of you are internally screaming a solution. Get different gloves! Quieter ones! Good idea. I’ll be looking for a better choice. But in the meantime, I’ll proceed with what I have.
Workarounds: There are some things I could try to do about the sound. I could put on the gloves in a far part of the house and play masking sounds while I did that, just to be sure. Then I could approach Lewis and do whatever step of the plan comes next. Show him a gloved hand, treat. Or touch him with a gloved finger, treat. That could prevent some of the predictive power of rattling the gloves. But when I show him or touch him, the gloves will still make noise.
Use an operant training plan: This is the solution I chose. The gloves were not scary to Lewis; they were just new and weird. So rather than aiming for classical conditioning, I went for desensitization coupled with operant conditioning.
For our first session, I tossed him a couple of treats when I got the gloves out. Then I reinforced sniffing the glove, nose-targeting the glove while I held it loosely, and nose-targeting it while it was on my hand. Then I asked him to do a chin rest on a towel in my lap with the glove on top. Lewis said, “This is easy money!”
In the next sessions, I had the glove on my right hand and touched his cheek while I held his muzzle with my left. We had previously worked on this step without the glove.
The video includes excerpts from the three training sessions where we progressed from him accepting my finger in his mouth to accepting my gloved finger in his mouth. We spent six to seven minutes of training over three sessions, which was more time than he needed.
Watch with sound if you want to hear how noisy the gloves are (and hear me say, “Good boy!” about a thousand times).
The operant work with the gloves made them predictors of good things (classical conditioning rode along). This work gave Lewis a great foundation for the next step: putting a syringe between his cheek and gum while wearing gloves. The gloved finger was a good early substitute for the syringe.
Introducing the syringe on the outside of Lewis’ mouth
Compound Stimuli
Multiple simultaneous stimuli are happening all the time. When presenting an object, you can bet that most dogs will smell it as well as see it. Lots of visual stimuli make noises, too. As one textbook points out, it’s almost impossible to avoid multiple stimuli (Pierce & Cheney, 2008, p. 58). This experience has made me think about them a lot more. The Bingo game is not all that unusual. I’m pleased I figured out a way to win this time.
Thank you to the several professionals who provided materials and direct help for Lewis’ husbandry training. I could not have done it alone!
Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson
References
Pierce, W. D., & Cheney, C. D. (2008). Behavior analysis and learning (4th ed.). Psychology Press.
In the photo above, Clara is waiting to grab the toy, which I have been moving around with the flirt pole. She will grab it when I give the release cue. Does this demonstrate 1) impulse control; or 2) stimulus control?
Answer: both. Keep reading.
I get it. The terms “impulse control” and “self-control” don’t sound good to positive reinforcement-based trainers. They sound blame-y. “My dog shouldn’t have grabbed that cheese off the counter; he should have had more self-control.” “Did you see her jump at that tug and almost bite my hand? She needs to learn impulse control!”
These terms seem to leave behavior science behind and label the dog. They seem to relate to negative character traits or internal states that we can’t know (but don’t like the results of). People claim they don’t have a definition in behavior science.
But guess what? They do! They have a specific definition in behavior science, well operationalized, with a long history of study. And there is no blame, no fictional narrative implied. The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and other journals have a wealth of articles on self-control and impulse control.
For the rest of this piece, I will use the term “self-control” to cover Impulse control as well. They overlap in definition (Cooper et al., 2007, p. 16).
This is just the kind of thing I like to tackle, but I always hesitate and consider the implications. Am I nitpicking? Maybe, but I believe there is value in acknowledging a field of study that seems to be little known, and acknowledging the nuances in both concepts. So let’s start with definitions.
Definitions and Examples of Self-Control
Here is a definition of self-control from the literature of applied behavior analysis.
Self-control [is] exemplified by choosing a large delayed reinforcer rather than a small immediate one . . . — Grosch & Neuringer, 1981
This is a straightforward scientific definition. Behaviors that fit this definition can be observed and operationalized.
But the term “self-control” unfortunately has the same issue as “punishment.” The behavior analytic definition is different from the more common usage. Worse, it also differs from the definition in psychology. But we don’t stop using the word punishment; we take the time to explain. We can do that for “self-control.”
Cooper et al. mention two definitions of self-control. One relates to the Grosch & Neuringer definition above. The other was defined and used by Skinner (1953). I’ll discuss that definition in a short section near the end of this piece.
Here is a definition from the field of psychology: “The ability to resist an impulse, desire, or temptation and to regulate its translation into action” (APA dictionary). This definition has become the lay understanding of the term. But with its abstractions about internal states, there is nothing useful in it for the applied study of behavior.
. . . it is more appropriate to measure choice making behaviors. It has been described that the impulsive choice is selected when the participant chooses the smaller, more immediate reinforcer. The choice is deemed to be a self-controlled choice if the participant chooses the larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, immediate reinforcer. As a result, the abstraction that self-control is a private event is minimized, if not eliminated. Instead, only the choices that are made and observed are considered within the definition. — McKeel & Dixon, 2014 (added bold mine)
In training, the definition of self-control applies to certain skills we teach. Lack of self-control is not a character trait or a label. Nor is it a pathology; it covers a lot of ordinary dog (and human) behavior.
Self-control behaviors can be operationalized when we know our species and our individual. In the photo at the top, I had moved a toy very close to Clara. Being a dog (species) who likes to play with a toy by grabbing, biting, and pulling (species/individual), her likely behavior would be to grab it. But rather than the moving toy being the cue for a grab, my release cue is the cue for it. (If you think that’s relevant to stimulus control, you’re right. But let’s wait before getting further into it.)
Waiting gets her the larger, delayed reward, rather than the immediate, smaller one. The delayed reward is more intense because I have created a history that I will play with her heartily if she waits. She has learned self-control behaviors that help the game be safer for me and still fun for her.
Self-control behaviors have been studied in many species. Check out the references for an interesting article about cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) performing self-control behavior (Schnell et al., 2021).
Here’s an article about self-control in the toutouwai (Petroica longipes), a songbird from Aotearoa (McCallum & Shaw, 2024).
Definitions and Examples of Stimulus Control
While self-control is straightforward and simple to operationalize, stimulus control is a complex topic. Behavior science books generally have a large section or whole chapter on the topic.
A behavior is said to be under stimulus control when there is an increased probability that the behavior will occur in the presence of a specific antecedent stimulus or a stimulus from a specific stimulus class. — Miltenberger, 2008, p. 145
Although the definitions use specific wording, the concept seems so abstract. At least one textbook I checked says that stimulus control is used as a label (Mayer et al., 2019, p. 326), a common criticism of the term self-control in the dog training world.
The stock phrases in the dog world have not helped. Many people, including me, have defined stimulus control by listing some “rules” about it that are training guidelines. These rules don’t comprise the definition. You can read them in this old post of mine.
I’m going to give some examples of the use of the term stimulus control, because that’s been the easiest way for me to have a beginning understanding of it.
What is the stimulus that is influencing Zani to rise onto her hind legs and sniff?
A friend who is an excellent trainer and works in applied behavior analysis posted a video I liked. It shows how she taught her dog to find an item by scent. In the description, she mentions the period when the “stimulus control of the behavior of approaching the item switches from the sight of it to the odor of it.”
At first, the discriminative stimulus for the behavior of approaching the object is it appearing in the dog’s field of vision. Then, as the trainer starts to put the item farther away and out of sight, at some point the dog starts using his nose. The discriminative stimulus is now the odor (although the sight of the item can remain a factor for visible items). We can observe the change in his behavior: he is now sniffing, whereas before he appeared mainly to be looking.
But doesn’t have to be just one stimulus. Many behaviors are under the control of multiple stimuli. Paul Chance says:
Sometimes stimulus control is exerted not by a single stimulus but by a complex array of stimuli that, collectively, influence behavior. We behave differently at a formal ball than we do at a square dance, and behavior that would be acceptable at a beach party is unacceptable at a dinner party. — Chance, 2003, p. 84
For another example involving dogs, think of the stimulus of time of day and how often that pairs with other stimuli to signal the availability of reinforcement. If I go pick up my dog’s food toy when it’s not time for a meal, he may keep an eye on me, but he won’t jump up and perform “getting ready to eat” behaviors. But if I pick it up at his usual breakfast time, the time of day plus picking up the toy together comprise an excellent prediction of an imminent meal. Either one of those by itself is a much weaker predictor.
And for my example at the beginning with Clara, when I taught Clara a self-control behavior (waiting until cued to grab the toy) I changed the stimulus control from the movement of the toy to my cue.
The “Control” Part of Stimulus Control
Since behavior relies on probabilities, control is perhaps not the best word, but it’s the one we’ve got. I agree with Dr. Susan Friedman’s suggestion of the term “stimulus influence,” which loses the negative connotations of “control” and the idea that control is absolute. Pierce and Cheney’s definition (2017, p. 171) includes that “A controlling stimulus (S) is said to alter the probability of an operant.” (added bold mine)
Skinner and Self-Control
Skinner used the term “self-control” to describe what we might call “self-management” (1953, Chapter XV Self-Control, p. 227–241). He wrote of arranging stimuli ahead of time to encourage a certain behavior in oneself later.
Here are some modern examples. If I decided to cut sugary snacks from my diet, an early step might be for me to remove all such snacks from my house. And if I wanted to decrease a fast-food habit, I might start food prepping or buy a bunch of easy-to-prepare frozen meals. These actions would fall into Skinner’s category of “self-control.” We would call them antecedent arrangements. It’s interesting, because they would not fall into the popular definition of self-control at all. We’d say such actions were removing the necessity of self-control. An example of the popular definition of self-control would be the ability to have the snacks in the house and not eat them.
Are Self-Control and Stimulus Control Opposites?
I have seen claims that these two concepts that apply to behavior are opposites in effect or implication. I don’t agree. This claim depends on using the psychology definition of self-control rather than the behavior analysis one. The latter is operationalizable, and does not oppose or conflict with the concept of stimulus control at all.
I understand the reasons not to use the terms self-control and impulse control. The standard definitions have baggage we don’t want to carry into positive reinforcement-based training. There are situations where it may be best “not to go there.” But keep in mind, self-control behaviors can be described and classified, there need be no moral judgment attached, and a trainer need not rely on aversive techniques to teach them.
Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson
References
Chance, P. (2003). Learning and Behavior (5th ed.). Thomson-Wadsworth.
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Pearson.
Gao, Z., Wang, H., Lu, C., Lu, T., Froudist-Walsh, S., Chen, M., Wang, X., Hu, J., & Sun, W. (2021). The neural basis of delayed gratification. Science Advances, 7(49), eabg6611.
Grosch, J., & Neuringer, A. (1981). Self-control in pigeons under the Mischel Paradigm. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 35, 3–21. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1981.35-3
Mayer, G. R., Sulzer-Azaroff, B., & Wallace, M. (2019). Behavior analysis for lasting change (4th ed.). Sloan Pub..
McCallum, E., & Shaw, R. C. (2024). Measuring self-control in a wild songbird using a spatial discounting task. Animal Cognition, 27(1), 1-16.
McKeel, A. N., & Dixon, M. R. (2014). Furthering a behavior analytic account of self-control using relational frame theory. Behavioral Development Bulletin, 19(2), 111.
Miltenberger, R. G. (2008). Behavior modification (4th ed.). Wadsworth.
Pierce, W. D., & Cheney, C. D. (2017). Behavior analysis and learning: A biobehavioral approach (4th ed.). Routledge.
Schnell, A. K., Boeckle, M., Rivera, M., Clayton, N. S., & Hanlon, R. T. (2021). Cuttlefish exert self-control in a delay of gratification task. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288(1946), 20203161.
Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science and human behavior. Pearson.
I may have saved Clara’s life when I finally fenced off a shed in my backyard.
It’s one of those modular sheds, and set up on concrete blocks. Lots of people around here have them, and plenty of wild critters learn to hide or nest in the crawl space. Even the wrens take their fledglings there as a way station after they first leave the nest.
Some dogs figure out how to crawl around under there.
With my gang, Zani started it. She made the area under the shed her playground. She not only tracked critters under there, but she had a couple little dug-out snoozing areas. If I couldn’t find Zani in the yard, I knew where to look: a 12-inch space under a shed with bare nails poking down through the floor. I made plans to block the shed off with garden fencing. I just had to figure out how to do that and still be able to open the door.
In the meantime, Clara watched Zani scooting around under the shed for a few days and decided that looked fun. But Zani was 19 pounds; Clara was 44. As her person, I told her she was Too Big, but she didn’t agree. When I wasn’t paying attention, she would sometimes dive under there, too.
I’m so glad I took this one video. As you watch, notice that I didn’t say anything as I was looking under the side of the shed where the dust was poofing out. I didn’t want her trying to come that way, because she couldn’t get out on that side. There was only one place where she could exit, and she had to fling her body sideways to do it.
You can hear the stress in my voice during the video. I was so worried that she’d get trapped or injured. And that was before the main terrifying event.
It was February, and we had had unusually cold weather coinciding with a heavy-for-us snow. The temperature was in the teens and there were 10–12 inches of snow on the ground.
I took Clara out late one night, and she immediately disappeared somewhere in the yard. I had a sinking feeling as I suspected where she’d gone. I waded over to the shed. Yes, she was under there. In the freezing cold, in pitch dark. The path she needed to take to come out would not have been visible to her because of the snow cover. But I could hear her scrabbling around. The terrifying thoughts flooded in. The city was shut down; I couldn’t get help. If she got stuck or couldn’t find her way out, she could freeze to death. She wore a breakaway collar but could still get caught or trapped. It would take a forklift to raise the shed. But that would be horribly dangerous with her under there, and it would be the next day at the soonest. Would she survive the night? Could I throw hot water bottles and hand warmers under there? I was grasping at straws.
The snow coming up to the bottom edges of the shed
Maybe we could dig her out that night? We’d have to clear a bunch of snow first if we were to dig a place for her to get out. Was the ground frozen? My neighbors are dog lovers; could I hit them up in this weather in the middle of the night? But Clara, of course, would be scared of them.
The snow was up to the bottom of the shed, completely enclosing the space. I had rarely in my life felt such dread.
All this was going through my head before I even knew whether she was in trouble.
I carefully made my move. I dug out the snow in the normal exit area and turned on the light on my phone, pointing it straight down so it wouldn’t be in her eyes. I called her. She came out. My darling, my baby dog thrust herself happily out from under the shed.
That’s when I promised myself I would enclose that space.
Ex Pen to the Rescue
For those who aren’t familiar, “ex pen” is short for the oddly named “exercise pen,” a length of hinged fencing panels that can be configured into an enclosure for dogs. It turned out to be the missing piece, the thing that allowed me to safely enclose the shed.
I had planned for years to put garden fencing around the bottom of the shed. The spacing of the wire can allow access to squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits, but not dogs. (Note: a determined digger could loosen or move this kind of fence. Luckily I haven’t had one of those for a while.)
The stakes of the fencing are 16 inches tall, with about 4 inches pounded into the ground
But I couldn’t put the fence around the front of the shed, because it would block the door. And I couldn’t just skip the door area because then I would have a worse situation: an entrance to the crawlspace and no exit. I mulled this over for a while. A row of concrete blocks, maybe, filling in the gap under the front? Shorter fencing? My dad would have brought the fencing neatly around the corners and across the front to the edges of the door, then attached something to the bottom of the door that fit perfectly. I’m sure there are many handy people out there who would have figured out something elegant. But I like my solution. I pounded two pieces of 4-foot steel rebar into the ground near the ends of the garden fencing. I placed a length of ex pen around the front, overlapping the fence on the sides. I attached the ex pen to the rebar with carabiners. It’s easy to remove a carabiner and move the ex pen enough to open the shed door. And it looks tidier than a lot of my projects.
Some dogs will jump an ex pen. I’ve seen Zani jump out of a 4-foot pen from a standing start, and this one is 3 feet. But I knew Clara wouldn’t jump it, especially into such a small space, and I learned that Lewis is even less of a jumper than she was. Phew!
Maybe She Would Have Been OK?
Lewis knows that bunnies hide under the shed at times
As I think about it, a couple years after that panicked night, it occurs to me for the first time that the snow itself could have insulated the space enough for Clara to keep warm enough overnight. I think now, probably so. But the only reason she would have had to stay there was if she had been stuck, which was a deadly problem itself. There was no easy solution for that, even in the daytime, even if there had been no snow.
Clara is gone now, but the fence and ex pen are fulfilling their function: preventing the next varmint dog from the siren song of the shed crawl space.
This is about an incident in October 2021 that I wrote about at the time but never published here.
I’ve been walking Clara every day in my neighborhood now since April [2021]. Now, recall that as a feral puppy she was introduced to the presence of humans other than me very gradually. We met with my trainer frequently at an outdoor mall where we could control distance well. Clara was a tough case. It was a slow process, but she got to where she could walk through crowds of people happily, as long as no one tried to interact with her, and I could either prevent that or move away.
One-year-old Clara at the outskirts of the mall(2012)
At the mall, Clara was exposed to way more varieties of humans than many “normal” dogs see in their lifetimes. She has remained blasé about assistive equipment, hats, sunglasses, things being carried, big families, toddlers, children, kids riding on their dads’ shoulders, big hair, flowing garments, uniforms, people on ladders and roofs, people doing construction work, bicycles and scooters, people moving fast—all that. Which is great.
On our walks in the neighborhood, she has retained that indifference to a very wide range of humans. They predict a treat from me if she wants it, but otherwise can be ignored. Recently we walked by a man who was practicing with his fly fishing rod in his front yard! That was fine.
Social distancing is great, since she is good with strange people, even if they look at her, as close as about eight feet. So I can even stop to chat with someone if I need to.
Today, though, she finally saw someone she didn’t like.
There was a small, old man dressed all in black jogging clothes. He walked unsteadily. He was smack in the middle of the street, and he was obviously (to me) looking at his front yard from different angles. So he was neither “walking with purpose,” a behavior Clara recognizes, or “standing around,” either alone or with a group, which is another familiar behavior. Or jogging, or sitting, or working in his yard. He was stopping and starting (unsteadily) and peering. We were between one and two houses away when Clara saw him. I already was paying close attention to both him and her since it would be hard to get by him at a comfortable distance.
“Grrrrr,” said Clara. This dog who virtually never growls.
I initiated an immediate U-turn and we went a different way. Yes, I likely negatively reinforced the growl. This vanishingly rare response from her was so much better than any escalating behaviors would have been.
I thought it was interesting that this would be the one person in months she would be bothered by, and maybe the only person she has ever growled at as an adult. And at that distance!
It took us a while to find someone whose looks and behavior fell outside Clara’s very wide knowledge of what “normal humans” in the mid-southern U.S. do, but we found him! I wish I could have taken a picture.
Clara on a walk in May 2024
Back to 2024. I walked with Clara virtually every day from April 2021 until her last evening on earth in late September 2024. She never growled at a human again.
Her walk became the favorite part of her day. None of that would have happened without the excellent training she had as a youngster. But she took that firm foundation and grew into an amazing dog. I’m so proud of her. And I think fondly about the moment when a human finally stepped so far out of bounds. It took a lot to get that response out of her!
What’s the weirdest thing your dog has encountered, whether or not they reacted to it?
This post is about the tricky concept of the combination of negative and positive reinforcement.
I’ve always wondered about behaviors having more than one consequence. I’ve recently learned more about the possibility, and I’ve found a good example of it with Lewis.
So-called “synthesized reinforcement” occurs when more than one reinforcer is a consequence of the same behavior. This occurrence has been recognized since at least as far back as 1969 (Osborne), but has only been named and systematically studied in the last 10 years. Synthesized reinforcement is noted in functional assessments and used in functional analyses.
Synthesized Reinforcement and Escape to an Appetitive
Lewis’ first harness
Sometimes escape is just about getting away. From the scary monster, the hot stove—you need to move out of proximity now. But sometimes a function of escape is to get to something better. This topic is discussed plenty with humans. Reinforcement in combination like this is called synthesized reinforcement.
Some scientists suggest that synthesized reinforcement is common, that looking for only one contingency in a functional assessment or functional analysis is artificial. Synthesized reinforcement can comprise aversive plus appetitive consequences, multiple aversives, or multiple appetitives. For example, multiple appetitives could be the cause of the extra joy your dog gets when you play with him with the toy, rather than when he plays with the toy by himself. Human examples abound. Think of the many, many ways that entering a stadium for a game is reinforced for a sports fan.
Back to the curious combination of R- plus R+. The classic (if dated) example is waiting until there is a commercial during something you’re watching before getting up to get a snack. You get away from the tedious commercial (escape) and you get access to food (appetitive). Most of us dislike commercials, but we rarely walk away from the screen to do nothing for 30 seconds.
Another example is doing extra work to get some time off from a class. Class isn’t so bad, but hey, a friend will take you waterskiing that day if you get the time off!
Synthesized reinforcement is also the reason it is kind to provide another source of an appetitive when you are performing aversive husbandry activities. This is a lot kinder than just saying, “Hey, my dog can leave if he wants to.” If there is nothing else to do in the room and you control the only source of food, simply leaving is not such a great thing!
So here is my real-life example.
Lewis’ second harness. He’s worried in the photo.
Setting the Scene (the Antecedents)
I walk my dogs individually every single day except in the case of illness or very bad weather. I have always gone in order of seniority, so young Lewis goes last.
In the cooler months, we walk in the late afternoon. While I’m walking with Lewis, my partner fixes the dogs’ suppers. Lewis knows the routine: when he gets home from his walk, his supper will be waiting. Have I mentioned that he is excitable?
In contrast, in the hot months, I walk the dogs much later. It’s near dusk and long after they have eaten their suppers.
The Action: Harness Removal
Lewis is excited to get his harness off (the teal one in the photo below) when his supper is waiting. But the tracking unit on his GPS collar is bulky. That means the harness can catch on the collar if he moves while I’m manipulating the straps. So I set a contingency on harness removal: I don’t remove the harness until he stays still.
A harness we used for a time after Lewis gained some weight.
Our system is that first I unsnap the two buckles. Then he needs to be particularly still while I maneuver the harness over the transmitter on the collar. After I’ve done that, I give his release cue. Lightning fast, he jerks his head all the way out of the harness and dashes to get his supper.
Usually I give my dogs a treat after I put on or take off their harnesses. Having someone fiddle with straps and snaps around your body is not the most fun thing. But in this situation, Lewis is completely uninterested in that one treat; his supper is waiting for him.
I’ve described a whole chain of behaviors and consequences. Lewis’ behaviors include being still, pulling his head out of the harness while backing up, and running toward his supper. I am going to simplify the scenario somewhat. Let’s focus on his “self-removal” of the harness, the escape behavior.
A. Harness is in an uncomfortable position (around his neck, half-on, half-off) B. Lewis wriggles out of harness C. Harness is off (no longer uncomfortable; free to move away)
This is a negative reinforcement scenario. But during part of the year, there is another big consequence available that’s tied to escaping the harness: a whole bowl of food. What effects might that have on Lewis’ harness behavior? I had a great way to find out.
Evidence of Positive Reinforcement
The immediate function of Lewis whipping his head around is to escape the harness. He wouldn’t whip his head on the way to getting his supper otherwise. But in the summer, Lewis’ behavior changes. When I switch to walking the dogs after supper instead of before, his meal is no longer awaiting him after his walk, and he knows that. When his supper isn’t waiting, he does not whip his head out of the harness. He “helps” me get the harness off, but with a mild twist or wiggle, often after a delay. The behavior has changed from “Let me out of here!” to “Meh, I guess I could pull my head back a little bit to help get this harness off.”
So the positive reinforcer (supper) appears to have a large role to play! When it is not present, Lewis does only the minimum to help me remove the harness. The topography of the behavior is different and there is no discretionary effort.
Could I Do Anything Differently with the Harness Removal?
My tentative conclusion is that there is always an element of negative reinforcement with the act of harness removal, at least with the harnesses I use. If I waive the contingency of the dog being still before getting out of the harness, there is still the automatic negative reinforcement of the behavior of wiggling out. And even standing absolutely still could be an escape behavior if they’ve figured out that’s the most efficient way for the harness to come off.
But I recently realized the obvious: Instead of removing his harness when he enters, I can unsnap his leash and leave the harness on. No wrangling! I can wait until after Lewis has eaten his supper and experienced anything else interesting that is going on in the house before I remove his harness.
When I remove the harness after the excitement, there is still an element of automatic negative reinforcement, but there is much less frustration for him. And he accepts my offering of kibble.
Lewis in his “big boy” Hurtta harness. To remove it, I have to unsnap two buckles, then pull it over his head.
The Big Picture
The idea of synthesized reinforcement is a fascinating one, but it’s also annoying. It can dislodge a lot of assumptions. It ruins our hopes, once again, that we live in a neat and binary world. That if we just follow the right formulae, that if we are careful with our functional assessments, we can teach our dogs successful pet behaviors without any presence of aversives. That we can reduce every situation to one contingency, so we know which ones to use and which ones to avoid. That doesn’t always happen for me.
Synthesized reinforcement also doesn’t fit perfectly if we think in terms of contingency tables (“quadrants”), which I still do. Modern behavior analysts categorize behavior more and more by function. Usually there are four to six possible functions identified, depending on your source. You will find behavioral functions listed most often as social, escape, tangible, and sensory (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 511). Lewis’ harness behavior would be described as escape to a tangible (some systems would further specify an edible). The synthesized reinforcement example I listed above, playing with your dog with a toy, adds social reinforcement to access to a tangible.
But I live in the dog training world, and we are still wrestling with contingency tables. If you think I am on my way to promoting R-, you haven’t read much of my stuff. Escape to a tangible is super common in the human world. But in training and other dealings with dogs, what I have seen is that escape contingencies (R-) are mostly implemented by humans in unpleasant ways for dogs. And even what seems to us to be a minor aversive consequence can have fallout. I’ll stick mostly with the contingency way of discussing things for now, while learning more about functional categories.
Living with our dogs, it is very, very hard to avoid R- completely. I accept that R- is present sometimes even though I don’t want it to be. I am committed to being transparent about that. When I required Lewis to be still while I pulled his harness over his head, I was using an R- contingency for safety. But I figured out how to recast that situation by removing his harness after he ate instead of before. Observing tiny aversive moments allows me to practice my analysis, burrow deeply, and pursue my goal of making my dogs’ lives better.
References and Resources
Note: Most of these resources involve the use of ABA with children, either deaf or autistic. Some people may prefer not to check them out. See my statement about ABAon my training philosophy page.
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2014). Applied behavior analysis, second edition. Pearson.
Ghaemmaghami, M., Hanley, G. P., Jin, S. C., & Vanselow, N. R. (2016). Affirming control by multiple reinforcers via progressive treatment analysis. Behavioral Interventions, 31(1), 70-86.
Holehan, K. M., Dozier, C. L., Diaz de Villegas, S. C., Jess, R. L., Goddard, K. S., & Foley, E. A. (2020). A comparison of isolated and synthesized contingencies in functional analyses. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 53(3), 1559-1578.
Smith, S. W., Arroyo Antúnez, B. E., DeBartelo, J., Sullivan, W. E., Roane, H. S., & Craig, A. R. (2024). Synthesized alternative reinforcement and resurgence. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 122(2), 195-206.
Osborne, J. G. (1969). Free‐time as a reinforcer in the management of classroom behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2(2), 113-118.
Lewis panting from fear after hearing nearby heavy equipment
Something sad and difficult is happening with Lewis: clinical sound phobia. He is suffering. Three months from the onset and diagnosis, he is doing much better with the help of medications, but we have a long way to go. I want to share, for others who are going through this or might in the future, what the recent months have been like for us.
Sudden Fireworks Phobia
Lewis joined my family in December 2021, and in the next few years we had many thunderstorms and at least eight noisy holidays. I live in a capital city, so we get shows with booming fireworks. Lewis didn’t show fear during these events (with one exception under unusual circumstances). He was happy to accept food after noises, though. Due to long experience with sound reactive dogs, I always deliver good snacks for fireworks and thunderclaps. But if Lewis built up some good associations from that, they weren’t enough.
On January 1, 2025, when the New Year’s fireworks started, Lewis started panting and trembling and seeking comfort. He was in extreme distress. I had no meds for him. We toughed it out with food, when he would take it, and he finally slept, exhausted. I made plans to see the vet.
About a week later, a snowstorm started that lasted a few days, a rarity here. We hadn’t been to the vet yet. Lewis has enjoyed the snow in the past. But at around 7:30 PM the first night, we were out in the yard, and a neighbor close by set off some firecrackers. This video shows the result.
Video shows Lewis standing with his paw raised, trembling, panting, startling to quiet noises, with dilated pupils and extreme tension in his facial muscles.
Lewis not only panicked at the time, but he became afraid to go into the yard, especially at night. During the duration of the snow, he wouldn’t go outside in the evening at all, so sometimes didn’t eliminate for up to 18 hours at a time. And his sound triggers quickly generalized.
I phoned the vet, and we started prescription medications as soon as the streets were clear enough that I could pick them up. I won’t describe the whole meds experience, but many of you know it can take much longer than we wish to get a med or combination that works for a dog. When you get it, it’s priceless, a game changer. But the vet and I are still working on it for Lewis. Writing this in April, he is much, much improved. But he is not his old self.
I also had him checked thoroughly for pain (Lopes Fagundes et al., 2018) by two vets. I’ll keep on top of that. It’s worth noting that he was in the age group where genetic sound phobia typically kicks in, according to Dr. Karen Overall (2013, p. 257).
We kept having bad luck. In February, the city water department excavated the next-door neighbor’s driveway. First, a jackhammer. Then an excavator scraping up pavement and dumping it, booming, into a truck. And of course the truck made backup beeping noises. A new level of trauma unlocked for Lewis. The work started every morning at 8 AM and lasted all day. This went on for four days one week, then two more the next week. Lewis would rarely go outside and was hyper-vigilant when he did so. Indoors got poisoned, too, as he associated the scary noises with being at home. When inside, he’d ask to be taken somewhere by car. He’d stand next to the cabinet where I keep his leash and harness or try to get into the garage when I went out. Or he would simply ask repeatedly to go in another room if doors were closed. I let him, but of course it didn’t help, since there’s no escaping sounds of that amplitude and frequency.
There was a sweet spot around dusk after the workers left and before the still-scary nighttime. Sometimes he’d do his only eliminating for the whole day during that time. Sometimes I had to take him to another neighborhood to get him to go.
Lewis standing by the cabinet where I keep his leash, asking to leave the house
Thunderstorms, Too
Lewis was also terrified the next time we had a thunderstorm, and from then on. In my sound webinars, I talk from an acoustic point of view about the difficulty/impossibility of preventing dogs from hearing thunder. This has been brought home to me anew: how desperate we get, as owners, for something, anything, to block that sound. But in almost all cases, you just can’t. When a thunderclap can shake your house, it’s ludicrous to think that an insulated doghouse, a closet, or even earmuffs can make that sound inaudible. This is why owners of sound phobic and other fearful dogs are so easily exploited by companies that sell products with false promises. When we want to relieve our suffering friends; we will try anything.
I also talk about the problems with satiation when using food for ad hoc counterconditioning. This is a big problem for us. In Arkansas, we have storms that go on for hours. We recently had such a day. We knew it was coming. I had about two cups of chicken ready in bite-sized pieces. The first thunder came at 5:30 PM. I had medicated Lewis ahead of time, but he was still reacting. Not as severely as in the video above, but still upset and frightened. I gave him a piece of chicken for every thunderclap for more than 60 minutes, but after that, I had to slow down. It was just too much food.
If you have studied Pavlovian conditioning, you know that it’s important to establish a 1:1 association between the conditioned stimulus (in this case, thunder) and the unconditioned stimulus (food). The clearer the association, the better the transfer of the response you get to the originally-scary thing. But you can’t do it cleanly with thunder. There are some horrible challenges related to satiation. First, which thunderclaps “count”? You start off treating for each one, as we know we should do. Then you realize that if you continue to do that, and include the quieter ones, you will be feeding nonstop. So you try to make some acoustic threshold in your mind’s ear, and just treat for “the loud ones.” But this breaks the pairing. And is there really some magic line for the dog between scary and “OK, I’m not quite panicking” thunderclaps? Even if there is, how do we find it?
The second problem is the duration itself. I mentioned in my example that the thunder started at 5:30 PM. As of 1:30 AM the next morning, eight hours later, there hadn’t been a period of even 10 minutes when there wasn’t audible thunder. Then we had two more days of thunderstorms.
It could help if I could start to ask for a behavior and give him something to do instead of waiting for inconsistently paired food. After hours and days of storms, I was giving “consolation chicken,” since all hope of a consistent pairing was down the drain. But moving to a behavior will have to happen later; he’s too upset.
Lewis waiting by a door trying to escape the thunder (it wouldn’t work, but I let him through anyway)
Training and Husbandry Got More Difficult
I mentioned that Lewis’ triggers generalized fast. A door slam, a twig falling on the roof, a human getting the hiccups (really!), the unexpected clink of some metal pieces in a box, the excavation, cars revving—all scare him badly. There are still few days without triggers. In the video above, you can see how sensitized he is; he twitches at least twice in response to background noises.
Lewis is already a challenge with handling and husbandry. I still trim his nails by giving him frozen peanut butter on a LickiMat and clipping as fast as I can. That’s where we are with nail trims after three years, even though I’ve taught cooperative foot handling to five other dogs. Last fall, Marge Rogers started coaching me on getting him relaxed and being handled. That was coming along nicely until the sound phobia kicked in.
The handling practice is on hiatus since he’s too sensitive for much training. But he also gets upset if I do his nails the old way, whereas before, he didn’t care for the handling but didn’t seem to mind the actual clipping.
A similar thing happened with Clara, even though she was such an easier dog than Lewis. She was relaxing through Dremeling at three years old, but then she got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. She was in pain. I made the mistake of trimming her nails during this period and it was very hard on her. Although she was always cooperative, we never got our relaxed nail trimming back again, for her whole life.
Looking Back and Looking Forward
Each dog teaches me new things. I wish, for Lewis’ sake, he didn’t have to be teaching me about this.
Lewis’ condition is like Zani’s in that he is convinced that if he could leave the house (out the front, not the back), he could escape the triggers. I wish it were so! And both have/had a more severe response to their trigger sounds than Summer, who was afraid of thunder, but probably not phobic. Ad hoc counterconditioning helped Summer immensely. After Zani was stabilized on meds, structured desensitization and counterconditioning helped her to an amazing recovery. But her triggers had acoustic aspects that made them much more amenable to successful DS/CC.
Lewis has the toughest situation, with clinical phobia to thunder and fireworks that quickly generalized to many other sudden sounds and even objects associated with them. For instance, because one time some metal pieces settled in a box on the coffee table and made a “clink,” we have to be careful about cardboard boxes now.
Medications (ongoing and situational) and ad hoc counterconditioning have both helped. Lewis also profits from physical and verbal comfort. His first response when a sound scares him is to creep over to me or my partner. He often buries his head between my knees. He has access to places to hide, but isn’t interested. After his initial response, he wants to stay in sight of his humans, but not usually cuddly close. I can tell how upset he is by observing which location he chooses in the den.
I use sound masking to manage the acoustic environment. It can make such a big difference, and especially helped during the neighborhood excavation. Because of that, I figured out a trick for masking that may help some of you. I’ll publish that in a separate post.
Here’s an antidote to all the sad photos. We are still managing to have some fun during this adjustment and recovery period. I will keep you posted.
Related Posts and Resources
References
Lopes Fagundes, A. L., Hewison, L., McPeake, K. J., Zulch, H., & Mills, D. S. (2018). Noise sensitivities in dogs: an exploration of signs in dogs with and without musculoskeletal pain using qualitative content analysis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5, 17.
Overall, K. (2013). Manual of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats. Elsevier Health Sciences.
It did not turn out well to work on duration for “front paws on a platform” during Lewis’ breakfast period.
Most of us know the harm that tools such as shock and prong collars can cause. But I worry that our focus on tools causes less dramatic aversive methods to go under the radar.
We do talk about some aversive methods not associated with tools. Things like molding, where a dog is forced into position. Scaring dogs with noises. Kicking or hitting. But you know what is discussed very little?
Extinction. Specifically, operant extinction of a positively reinforced behavior. An experience that can be so unpleasant to the learner it can provoke violence (Azrin et al., 1966) or depression (Huston et al., 2013; Ramnerö et al., 2016).
Here’s a definition:
The extinction operation is the discontinuation (cessation) of reinforcement as a consequence of a given behavior, leading to a decrease in the frequency of that behavior. — Mayer et al, 2018, p. 30.
Tools such as shock and prong collars are used almost exclusively in positive punishment and negative reinforcement protocols. Extinction of a positively reinforced behavior is not an event associated with their normal use. But the experience of extinction can be anything from annoying to frustrating to devastating.
Extinction in Positive Reinforcement Contingencies
There are varying intensities, for lack of a better term, of extinction. When a trainer shapes behavior there will be episodes of extinction, in which a previously reinforced approximation is no longer reinforced. But the more skilled the trainer, the fewer and more uneventful these are. A good trainer makes it plain through the environmental setup and their actions what the dog should try next. I.e., how they can continue to access reinforcement with slight changes to their behavior.
Alanna and Flynn were just messing around. But look at his claws!
Sometimes we train a new behavior to access the same or similar reinforcement as a problem behavior. No matter how kind and thoughtful we are, our goal is to extinguish the problem behavior in that context. But good planning and providing a clear path to reinforcement for the dog can help soften the experience.
But contrast these carefully designed plans with, for example, the commonly recommended method to ignore dogs who jump up without giving them any clue about what to do instead. Many people have discussed the inefficacy of this method, including me. But besides being ineffective, any abrupt change like that can be unkind. (Depending on how this plan is implemented, it very likely incorporates negative punishment as well.)
Alanna Lowry, DVM, and wonderful, “naughty” Flynn were hamming it up in the adjacent photo. But it is no fun for most dogs to have their human completely ignore them.
That’s the kind of extinction scenario I am focusing on in this discussion: a previously reinforced behavior that is no longer reinforced at all. A complete cessation of reinforcement with no alternative offered. The dog has no ability to remedy the situation, i.e., access that reinforcer again.
This happens not only in training, but in life.
Noting quickly: there also exists extinction of negatively reinforced behavior, so-called escape extinction. I may write about this in the future.
Theoretical Extinction Example
Here is an extreme example that I hope none of us would ever do. Let’s say that every evening you have a play session with your dog. You make several preparations for this. You may change your clothes. Perhaps you’ll grab some treats from a jar. You may get some special equipment and set it up.
You make all the preparations, grab your dog’s toy, and head for the play area. Your dog is accompanying you—excited and ready for some fun. You’ve started the familiar launch sequence. But when you get to the area where you normally play, instead of starting the play, you put the toy out of the dog’s reach and sit down and look at your phone. You ignore your dog.
It’s painful for me to even imagine this because of how hard it would be on my dog. He would try different things to engage me in play for a while. I would be able to see the effects of the extinction process in his behavior as his behavior began to vary. I would likely see frustration-related behaviors if I let it go on too long (Bentosela et al., 2008; Jakovcevic et al., 2013). In other words, fallout.
If I did that every day (completely stopped playing with him after setting up to do so), I wonder how long it would take before he stopped trying to play with me? Again, this is sad to think about.
What Extinction Can Look Like
In the photos below, Lewis’ Jolly Ball, a favorite toy, is hanging in the tree behind me. He is using a variety of behaviors to remedy the situation. This is typical of an extinction process, where the variability of behavior increases. It is a diluted extinction burst.
I call it diluted because was not a true extinction event. I cherrypicked the photos out of a quick 60-second video. I did not consistently ignore Lewis. I interacted with him between these shots, and I put some peanut butter on the tree to set up that shot. It was still excruciating for me to do, to slightly confuse him and to delay the fun for 60 seconds. Of course we played heartily with the Jolly Ball afterward.
There is a lay term for this activity: teasing. “Look! Here’s this thing you want but you can’t have it.”
It worries me that suddenly ceasing to reinforce a behavior that had been reinforced in the past would not break any stated guidelines about force free training I’ve seen. Although they are acknowledged as problematic in the Hierarchy of Behavior-Change Procedures and in the LIFE model, professional organizations don’t seem to cover them in their requirements and position statements and they are not a frequent topic of discussion for individual trainers.
We are technically not doing anything to the dog at all. Not touching him, not scolding him. Yet—it can be cruel.
Real-Life Extinction Example
I made that example extreme to focus on the potential harm. but this type of thing happens in smaller ways. It happens when we suddenly change routines. Here’s a real example from my life with Lewis.
Lewis eats most of his breakfast out of a food toy. But for several months, I broke up his breakfast period with a training session. He got to choose when to switch. I went in with a handful of 15–20 higher-value kibble pieces. I made myself available and waited for him to take a break (good matching law exercise), then we’d have a quickie training session. Then he went back to his food toy.
Lewis is anxious and tapping his feet on the platform
Over the months, I noticed that we had a hard time in those sessions. He was jumpy and mouthy. He seemed conflicted, likely because of having to leave one food source for another. Duration behaviors such as front-paws-on-a-platform, shown in the top and adjacent photos, were extra difficult. The adjacent photo is from one of those sessions; the top one was posed much later. See the difference?
I had done this mid-breakfast training with Clara before, but she was a different dog with a different history with me. She moseyed over to play with me, then moseyed back to her food toy. It took me way too long to perceive the negative experience for Lewis.
After I noticed, I decided to stop our mid-breakfast training session.
I put some thought about how to break our routine in the kindest way possible. Even though the session seemed stressful, he would eagerly approach me when it was time and gobble the food. So he would notice its absence for sure.
What were the cues for this interruption? An obvious one was my entering the hallway where he eats. So if I stopped coming in, would he stop “expecting” the session? No. Another part of the cue was time. Not time of day, but the amount of time elapsed from when he started eating. Somewhere around four minutes. I could not prevent the passage of time. So I couldn’t prevent the little period of extinction where he would perform anticipatory and approach behaviors like looking up from his toy or coming to the gate where I would normally enter. Those were the behaviors that would no longer be reinforced if I ceased the mid-breakfast session.
Was this going to be grueling for him? Not likely. To anthropomorphize a bit, the human parallel would be something like, “Well, I guess we aren’t doing that anymore. Damn. I liked that food. Oh well, I’ve got this other food to work on.”
But making a plan and softening this change provided good practice for me to learn how to handle more intense extinction scenarios that might come along.
My Training Plan
Parts of the Cue (Predictors)
Elapsed time
My getting out the food (he could sometimes hear or see this)
My approach with food
Lewis’ Behaviors in Response to the Cues
Standing still (rather than interacting with his toy)
Looking around
Approaching the gate where I enter
Reinforcers
To eliminate the training session, I planned to fade the cues by softening them or moving them, and to decrease the amount of the special kibble (but not to zero).
Here are the steps I took.
I substituted something else for the training session. I came in at the usual time and gave Lewis the special kibble in a floor scatter. Then I hung around for a while. I offered this social behavior because there was a social reinforcer included in the original activity. He likes having me around when he eats.
I gradually decreased the amount of special kibble (but included the rest in his meal or in another training session).
I gradually lengthened the amount of time before coming in.
My final behavior is to come in when he is about finished with his food toy (which I have always done anyway), hand him a couple of pieces of the special food, then help him retrieve any pieces of kibble he can’t get. The last is part of our normal routine.
Why Bother?
My first example with the play session may have seemed overblown. And my example of fading the interruption in Lewis’ breakfast may seem insignificant.
But I want to practice thinking about this, working out the problems to prevent unpleasantness in my dog’s life. My thought processes will help me if something bigger comes along.
Conclusion
Whether it’s in training or in life, whether it’s planned or sudden and unavoidable, don’t ever forget about the hurt of extinction. If it’s necessary to discontinue a regular activity your dog enjoys, soften the blow in any way you can. And if you have a training credential, ask your accrediting body whether extinction without differential reinforcement is worth addressing in guidelines and position statements.
What kinds of extinction scenarios have you noticed with your dog, either in training or daily life? What happens when there is a cue for a behavior and there is no reinforcement available for that behavior anymore? This can include some very sad scenarios, such as a breakup or a death in the family. (In the future, I hope to write more about the loss of Clara. It hit Lewis hard.) But there are so many less intense things that happen: schedule changes and the like. How does your dog handle them? How do you help your dog?
References
Azrin, N. H., Hutchinson, R. R., & Hake, D. F. (1966). Extinction‐induced aggression. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of behavior, 9(3), 191-204.
Bentosela, M., Barrera, G., Jakovcevic, A., Elgier, A. M., & Mustaca, A. E. (2008). Effect of reinforcement, reinforcer omission and extinction on a communicative response in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Behavioural processes, 78(3), 464-469.
Huston, J. P., de Souza Silva, M. A., Komorowski, M., Schulz, D., & Topic, B. (2013). Animal models of extinction-induced depression: loss of reward and its consequences. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(9), 2059-2070.
Jakovcevic, A., Elgier, A. M., Mustaca, A. E., & Bentosela, M. (2013). Frustration behaviors in domestic dogs. Journal of applied animal welfare science, 16(1), 19-34.
Mayer, G. R., Sulzer-Azaroff, B., & Wallace, M. (2018). Behavior analysis for lasting change, fourth edition. Sloan.
Ramnerö, J., Folke, F., & Kanter, J. W. (2016). A learning theory account of depression. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 57(1), 73-82.
Our happy times were many and long, but usually not dramatic
I first learned of the “peak-end rule” when I read Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. I thought it was interesting and could relate. Years later, when Clara died, the reality of it hit me.
This post reflects my state of mind immediately after I lost Clara. My perspective has widened over time and the pain has softened. I am not sinking into fixations or deep regrets. I gave her a good life. The concepts I discuss in this post are part of what helped me through my initial grief. I hope they will help others, as well.
Bucket lists. A favorite last meal. A peaceful, painless death, surrounded by loved ones.
It is natural to want the best for our beloved pets at the ends of their lives, as we have throughout them.
Yet, after losing Clara, I noticed something in myself. I had a focus, almost an obsession with her last hours, her last day, her last week. Even her last couple of years. And I have seen this focus in many others.
It has a name: the peak-end rule.
Definitions: The Peak-End Rule and Duration Neglect
The peak-end rule is a cognitive bias that causes us, when looking back on an experience, to focus on two things: the most intense part of it and the end.
I’m not saying that these things aren’t important. But the peak-end rule can—and has been shown experimentally to—cause us to de-emphasize, even ignore long periods of pleasure and happiness. The same with long periods of moderate pain, when flanked by more extreme pain.
Here’s a scientific definition:
The peak-end rule . . . asserts that, when people retrospectively evaluate an experience (e.g., the previous workday), they rely more heavily on the episode with peak intensity and on the final (end) episode than on other episodes in the experience — Alaybek et al., 2022.
A related effect is called duration neglect.
. . . we define [duration neglect] as little or no independent effect of duration on retrospective evaluations of affective episodes. — Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993.
This is the flip side of the peak-end rule. We devalue duration in comparison with the peak and end of an experience, even if the peak and end are very brief compared to the total experience.
Research has shown evidence for duration neglect when we recall both pleasant experiences (e.g. vacations) and unpleasant ones (medical procedures).
The peak-end rule has been shown to apply to retrospectively assessing the happiness of a life (Kahneman, 2012, p. 387). So here I am, after Clara’s death, noticing the peak-end rule while thinking over her life.
So Many Regrets (And Some Blessings)
I have all these regrets relating to “the end.” They were very intense in the days after Clara died. In retrospect, this happened to varying degrees with my other dogs as well.
Clara’s Potato Chip
I wish I had given Clara a few more potato chips on her last night on earth. I gave her one, but she wanted more. What I would have given her had I known! And I kept thinking of it on the day she died. Why just ONE damn potato chip? Luckily, Ruth was more generous, and gave her three or four cheese crackers. I asked Ruth that day, after Clara was gone, how many she gave her the night before. I wept in gratitude about those crackers.
But Clara had great food her whole life. Good nutrition to the best of my ability, but also wonderful treats, wonderful variety, very high-value foods. Homemade dog treats. People food. A grilled lean pork chop for her lessons. Fast food chicken sandwiches for training on the road and whipped cream pup cups. And since we moved here in 2018, after we eat, Ruth gives the dogs tastes of our suppers or other fun food that’s safe for them. She does this every day.
Clara has had food that other dogs might only dream of, over the duration of her whole life. And I’m fixated on that one potato chip.
Zani’s Ice Cream
A fun outing very close to the end of Zani’s life
Out of all my dogs, I had the most warning that Zani was reaching the end of her life. She had a probable diagnosis of lymphoma, but she was still feeling good for a few weeks. We had time for a mini-bucket list. But you know what I focused on after she passed? My timing at her euthanasia. I was too late when I offered her some ice cream.
It was a blessing that I could be there at all; it was the height of COVID, September 2020. It was also a blessing that she wasn’t scared at the vet. She walked in with the tech in her jaunty way, eager to find people to visit.
But when the moment came, we were in a rush. I wasn’t fast enough with the vanilla ice cream I had brought in a thermos. Zani looked at it, then the sedation kicked in and she fell asleep. I still think about that ice cream. Is it about me and my fantasy of her perfect passing? Mostly. I still hope that she got enough of a whiff of the ice cream to have a happy feeling on the way out.
But I have some sweet memories from Zani’s last days. There was the fun mini-trip I took with her four days before she died, many yummy meals, and the special chews that Debbie Jacobs sent us in the nick of time. Zani got to chew one on her last day, about an hour before her appointment. I am so grateful for that.
Clara’s Training
A rare training session in Clara’s last month, September 2024
This one is not about the last moments, but the last years. I have a huge regret that I did not continue my training fun with Clara after Lewis came. He exhausted me. I wasn’t even able to do much of my own work for a long time. Luckily, Clara still had her walks. I had been walking her and my partner’s dog daily since April 2021 (then Lewis, starting in 2022). I am so grateful for that, and proud that I walked them so consistently. But Lewis dominated my time. Clara’s training games (and the trick title work) ceased abruptly. I feel guilty.
This is a reasonable regret, more than a bias. We stopped doing something she loved. But feeling extra bad about it is an example of both the peak-end rule and duration neglect. Clara has gotten more of my time and attention than any other dog. We lived for each other. That never stopped. She has been on outings and gone places the others never have. For seven years, she had two fun lessons a week with a great trainer. We usually went to a shopping mall (ice cream!) or a beautiful park for a long walk.
She got my best training self for ten years. And high value treats and much, much play. But because I stopped training with her for two years (with a few exceptions), and because it was during our last years together, I feel this guilt. If there had been a hiatus of a similar period, but in the middle of our lives together, I would have regrets, but the loss likely would not loom so large.
I stopped walking the dogs for two weeks last summer after I sprained my ankle. I hated it for them. But since it wasn’t at the end for Clara, it doesn’t horrify me to think about. She got three more months of walks after that. And it’s a blessing to me that her last one was extra sweet because it was drizzling rain. That was her favorite kind of walk.
Hemangiosarcoma just snuck up, so I don’t know that I could have done anything better. But I feel awful, of course, that her last hours on this earth were painful, and she was in a foreign place. No idyllic euthanasia at home after a perfect bucket week or month. But it helps immensely that I was with her at the very end, that I was the last thing she saw before she sank into peace. And it WAS peaceful. So much better than Cricket, who fought, and Summer, for whom I wasn’t present.
Perhaps Clara was in as much pain, if I can compare, after her spay when she was a teenager. They let her come home the same day, because of her extreme fear. She was hurting. But I haven’t thought of that in years. It was not at the “end.”
Do I seem callous for comparing these things? I am not undervaluing any of her pain. Just noting that her last morning “feels” like the worst to me. But I don’t know how it felt to her. And she is gone now, leaving me to think about her life.
The GoPro
My last, slightly goofy photo of Clara on a walk, a week before she died
Another regret, and this one didn’t even affect her, only me. But it feels somehow like it affected her. I bought a GoPro, largely to get some candid shots of Clara and record the dogs on their walks. Clara reacted poorly to having a phone camera pointed at her for her whole life; I was hoping she would not do so with the GoPro. I got it about four days before she died. I didn’t know what was coming. I didn’t set it up in time.
I almost deleted this example, since it feels in really bad taste to have the privilege to buy such a camera and then whine about not getting to use it. But I include it because it’s another example of bias. Because of my ankle sprain in June, I stopped using my phone to make videos of Clara’s walks. I needed to watch my footing better. I have many videos of Clara on walks. And while there are probably other three-month gaps in that set of videos, it specifically hurts that I don’t have any for her last three months.
The Experiencing Self vs. the Remembering Self
Kahneman talks about the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self” and their vastly different perceptions of situations and events. The remembering self is the one that values peaks and ends. The experiencing self. . . experiences. It’s the one living in the moment.
I’m thinking about my living dogs now. Lewis and my partner’s Chihuahua mix, Choo Choo. Many people who have just lost a dog will say to others, “Hug your babies today, give them treats.” Some will say to act as if every day is your pet’s last day because you never know if it might be.
I ran that last one through my mind in the present and my experiencing self said NO WAY. Give Lewis a whole bunch of potato chips? EVERY NIGHT, because it might be his last night? No. The “treat them as if every day were their last” idea doesn’t cut it in many ways. Health. Nutrition. The dangers of too much fat and salt and the harm that can come from unbridled treat food. The risks of exhaustion or injury if you focus on play or intense activities. What an interesting idea, to try to make every day a peak. Because that’s what the idea boils down to. But it was an instant No when I thought about it. Out of the question.
I spell this out because it was interesting to have my experiencing and remembering selves come smack up against each other. I was regretting Clara’s one potato chip at the same time I was refusing to do something that might prevent that regret with Lewis.
Application of the Peak-End Rule to How We Perceive Our Dogs’ Lives
I’m surprised that there is not a lot of written discussion about this. Grief over losing a pet is becoming more recognized and affirmed by society, and resources for this type of loss are burgeoning. The peak-end rule can aid understanding of why some things can hurt so badly.
There is one significant exception to the silence on this topic related to pets’ lives. Veterinarian Mary Gardner, in Treatment and Care of the Geriatric Veterinary Patient, focuses on the peak-end rule in the context of euthanasia. After discussion of the rule, in a section titled “Endings Matter,” she advises vets on the ways they can help not only the pet but the pet’s guardians by making the euthanasia experience as calm and peaceful as possible. The book has thoughtful instructions on how to speak to the guardian about the process, the order of events, and more. She ends the section with these words:
Although our pets are a part of our stories (an important chapter), their own lives are a story. And in stories, endings matter most. So make the most out of the end and make it good — Gardner and McVety, 2017, p. 338.
Why Knowing about the Peak-End Rule and Duration Neglect Bias Can Be Helpful
I’ve related a lot of sad moments and regrets in this post. But the point behind them, and my impetus for sharing, is that knowing about the peak-end rule helped me put those things in perspective.
I understand more than ever why bucket lists can be such a good thing. Not only for the dog, but for the person. Having memories of the extra-special times near the end of our dogs’ lives can be sweet. The ones I described for Zani above were not dramatic. Many people do much more unusual things. But ours were enough out of the ordinary that the memories shine for me.
On one memorable “peak” walk in the summer of 2016, my friend and I let our dogs get in the Arkansas River because we were afraid a dog was overheating (she wasn’t, it turns out). There are lots of reasons not to get in the Arkansas River, but Clara was thrilled.
I now have a weapon against my regrets and sad memories. I’ve delineated some of my regrets above. (That is not a complete list.) I have kept the painful images and memories of Clara’s last hours private. But I’ve learned that we can honor duration, even if that doesn’t come naturally. We can remind ourselves of the thousand fun walks or trips our dogs had even if they missed one their last day.
Rather than focusing on the dramatic “peaks,” which stand out in our memory, and rather than trying to make peaks every day, we can be present and constant with our dogs and mindful of their happiness. Our experiencing selves can do that, and we can remind our remembering selves of it.
I would never ever dismiss or devalue the events near the ends of our loved ones’ lives, good or bad. But it has helped me immensely to consider the rest of Clara’s life. It was long, it was calm, it was safe, it was happy. I made it that way, and I can feel peace in that.
Copyright 2024 Eileen Anderson
Related Posts
References and Resources
Alaybek, B., Dalal, R. S., Fyffe, S., Aitken, J. A., Zhou, Y., Qu, X., Roman, A., & Baines, J. I. (2022). All’s well that ends (and peaks) well? A meta-analysis of the peak-end rule and duration neglect. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 170, 104149.
