Copyright © Eva Bodfält

Contact and compliance

Close contact with a compliant canine companion is the goal of most dog owners. Your dog should be eager to please and attentive and not run off without first asking permission. So far so good, most of us would agree. But how do we get there?

There are, of course, different methods for getting your dog to be obedient. The method you choose often depends on your personal values. Some people believe that man’s relationship with dogs is based on dominance. A dog should submit to our will. Personally, I believe I can get a lot further by taking advantage of the dog’s spontaneous desire to seek contact with me.

Close contact with the dog will open the channels for communication and lay the foundation for further learning. To build up the kind of relationship I want to have with my dogs, I employ a simple principle: I reward the dog’s own initiatives in making contact. It’s a give-and-take interaction where both human and dog are winners. By learning to read and understand the dog’s signals, I end up with a dog who is happy to obey. I gain by having a dog who is attentive and eager to please, and the dog gains greater freedom.

This is what I call the contact contract, and for me it isn’t just a training exercise, it’s a way of life.

In this book I have gathered training tips and the fruits of my 20 years of experience as a dog consultant. All you need to get the most out of the book is a curious and observant mind coupled with a desire to have fun with your four-legged friend at home, at work and in the field.

Good luck!

Ingarö, Sweden November 2001 Eva Bodfäldt

For me, contact and compliance are of fundamental importance, since they open the channels for cooperation. It isn’t necessary to start with “sit” and “down” to achieve communication with your dog. I read and reinforce a dog’s spontaneous desire to make contact with me by offering the dog something that is important to him instead of just teaching him to obey on command.

Compliance – genes and training Due to inheritance and selective breeding, herding breeds such as German Shepherd, Border Collie, Kelpie and Belgian Shepherds usually possess a natural inclination towards compliance and cooperation. If you choose another type of dog which has not been bred primarily for its herding characteristics, much more work will be required to achieve equivalent results.

How do you get your children to behave? “Train obedience”, “be dominant”, “make demands” and “be tough”. This type of thinking is common when it comes to getting dogs to behave the way you want them to. And it’s a method that often works. Up until a few decades ago, this approach was also common in bringing up children. Fortunately, modern ideas of how we should get our children to cooperate are different. Now many dog owners are also looking for other ways to get their dog to be attentive and obedient.

Avoid conflicts, nagging and irritation For me, compliance is something quite different from having a dog that obeys because it is afraid of me. In my experience, communication between two individuals is doomed to fail if consists largely of conflicts, a battle of wills, irritation and nagging. All you end up with is stress, hostility and estrangement. Irritation and nagging always have a distancing effect – on dogs as well as people. The result is that the dog becomes less willing to seek contact spontaneously. And contact is the foundation of functioning communication.

A dog that comes to an obedience school for the first time quickly creates a mental picture of what happens during training. The signals sent out by the other dogs, the instructor and the owner contribute to whether the dog will have a positive or a negative attitude to the training. If you are irritated and feel that your dog is the only one who “acts up”, this will have a negative effect on your chances of achieving a successful training result.

Your irritation makes the dog stressed Dogs are drawn to people who radiate calm and confidence. The opposite often triggers anxiety and wariness in the dog. The old saying “like master, like dog” contains a great deal of truth.

Most dogs respond negatively to our irritation. They often become cowed and withdrawn and find the training unpleasant. It is also common that as we get more irritated, the dog becomes more and more stressed and tries to find a vent for its frustration. He may, for example, react by running around the field, jumping and biting the leash or running off to other dogs.

There are of course situations where the dog may run off anyway, but we should be aware that our irritation often greatly reduces the dog’s capacity for effective learning.

Intuition, powers of observation and imagination There are people who have never set foot in obedience school and have rarely even had their dogs on a leash, but nevertheless have a nearly wordless communication with their dog via facial expressions, gestures and body language. If they use their voice it’s only with very small differences in pitch. Impossible? Not at all, some people are born with this ability. They have highly developed intuition, powers of observation and imagination. They can read their dog, form an immediate impression and then give the dog the right signals at the right moment.

Fortunately, dogs have more reasons for making contact with us than just to beg for food and water. Dogs have the same need for social contact and interaction as we humans. If the dog doesn’t have a meaningful daily life, it will be less inclined to spontaneously seek contact with you. You will instead have to initiate the contact, and you may find yourself in a situation where you have to pester your dog for attention.

Why doesn’t my dog think I’m fun? Increasing a dog’s desire for contact isn’t difficult, provided you know what behaviors you want to reinforce. But we often try too hard to get the dog’s attention in situations where his interest is directed elsewhere. The risk is that our invitations to play and reward will become ineffective when they are used in the wrong situations.

I sometimes meet dog owners who have a knack for getting any dog to frolic and laugh – except their own dog, who sniffs the ground and shows no interest in what their owner is up to. If we behave with exaggerated enthusiasm and phony excitement, the dog may respond with subdued and restrained body language, since it doesn’t feel completely secure in the situation.

The contact contract In order to build up contact and compliance, I teach my dogs that it pays to pay attention: If the dog looks at me, something fun happens. I reward the dog’s own initiative to make contact. I want the dog to keep his eyes on me or come up to me without my having to say anything first. Regardless of whether I’m on a walk or engaged in competition training, the basic principle for compliance is always the same: The dog should take active contact with me to get me to play or with him or give him a task.

When you start working with the contact contract, the only important thing is that the dog should look at you or approach you, spontaneously and without a signal. The reward for this contact can and should be varied. For example, throw a ball either to the dog or behind you as a reward when he makes contact and looks at you from a distance. You can also throw a treat for him to find.

Sneak up on your dog like a panther and pounce on him playfully. Change direction when he looks at you. Then sit down without enticing the dog and reward him when he comes. Some dogs love to be brushed, others want to be massaged or scratched in a special favorite spot.

The basis for the contact contract is your own imagination and commitment. You have to reinforce and reward desirable behavior; otherwise the dog will never increase the number of contacts. The most important thing is variation, finding many different ways to reward and stimulate your dog during a walk. I usually assign my students to find ten different ways of rewarding their dog without using treats, which causes some frustration when they start running out of ideas.

A dog doesn’t have the same notion of what is fun or embarrassing as we do. It may be enough for you to pull your jacket over your head to get them to go into hysterics. This is like playing peekaboo with a small child, where you cover your face and then peek out, causing a fit of giggles.

Avoid demanding looks Like many other people, I learned not to look a dog straight in the eyes, since the dog may perceive this as threatening. Today I teach my students the importance of eye contact based on trust and positive expectation – not on demands.

The dog who often experiences its owner’s look as demanding seldom takes contact other than with furtive glances, which can be incorrectly interpreted as indifference. For this reason, don’t stare at your dog threateningly, whether in daily life or during training.

Reward spontaneous contact
Reward your dog’s spontaneous desire to establish eye contact and approach you. Sit down as a reward for this behavior. Reward the dog when he comes close with a treat or by caressing or playing with him. Don’t sit down and entice him when he’s busy doing other things; remember who is supposed to make contact with whom.

Turning away
Reward your dog when he seeks eye contact with a “good dog” and a treat. If you want to increase your close social interaction, sit down and at the same time turn away from your dog so he has to actively seek you out.

If your dog is a little farther away, move away from him and don’t sit down until he’s at arm’s length.

Reward the social behavior – seeking close contact – and not for sitting passively in front of you or looking at something else.

If you can get the dog to have the same positive feeling in this “turning away” game as in the greeting ceremony you have when you come home, you will have succeeded. The dog should not be under a command when you sit down. Don’t hold him or catch him with you hands, but squat down and turn away. Let the dog work actively to seek contact. The intensity of the contact is further reinforced if you reward the dog by getting him to take a treat from your mouth.

Petting can be unpleasant
Dogs generally don’t like it if we bend down to pet them. If you notice that your dog backs off or turns his head away when you reach out your hand to pet or caress him, remember that your reward can be perceived as a sign of dominance. It can make your dog passive or unwilling to come near you. So take careful note of how the dog reacts to you hands.

A gentle nudge
If your dog doesn’t respond to you with joyful enthusiasm, then instead of petting him you can playfully nudge him with your shoulder while turning away. Turn you head and eyes away at the same time so that you aren’t looking at him. A good idea is to study how two dogs nudge each other playfully. If you can imitate their gentle play it is sometimes infinitely more effective than petting.

Keep it short and sweet
You create a need by not giving quite enough of a good thing. Play and cuddle and then make sure you’re the one to stop before your dog gets tired and turns away. The simplest way to cut it short is to turn or move away from the dog. If your dog leaves you in the middle of a reward, you can playfully push him, without any hint of threat in your voice.

If you allow your dog to leave you first, you won’t be able to create a need for more contact. Your dog has already grown tired of you and started doing something else that he is more motivated to do for the moment.

It isn’t the amount of praise, treats or play that is crucial for a good contact. The important thing is the effort your dog has to put in before he gets the reward. The more you turn away from your dog, the more interest and thereby the greater compliance you will create.

Give the treat from your mouth
If you use a treat as a reward, you can teach your dog to take it from your mouth instead of your hand. If you would rather give the treat with your hand, hold you hands with the treat close to your face. Try different things to create a situation where your dog has to work to get close contact with you.

Time out
Your dog should seek contact with you – not the other way around. If you have to jump and shout to get your dog to pay attention, he won’t respond to your praise in the right way ever again, except for short periods. So the first thing you have to do is to figure out what triggers your dog’s willingness to spontaneously seek contact with you.

If the dog loses interest during the training session, an effective method is an extended time out where you leave him alone for a while. Tie the dog up or signal him to “stay” and then walk away. Go back when the dog is attentive and focused on you. He should plead with his eyes for you to go on working with him.

Act pleased to come back to him, and make the most of his renewed attention to start one of the above exercises.

Compliance training while on a walk
A walk in the woods is often something quite different for a dog than for us people. We want to get exercise, have time to think and enjoy nature. For the dog, on the other hand, the walk is an opportunity to sniff out scents of various kinds.

No matter what you purpose in having a dog, you will have to devote more or less time and effort, depending on the breed, to teach your dog that we cooperate in the woods. The dog should not be allowed to go off exploring on his own. The exception is cases when you entrust the dog to assist you, for example while hunting or working. Then there are very clear signals in the form of a gun or a service emblem that tell the dog that this is no longer an ordinary walk in the woods – it’s work.

Controlling your dog
You are responsible for making sure your dog gets the exercise he needs. But there are better ways to do this than unleashing a dog that doesn’t always come when you recall him. He may frighten other people and animals. No matter how nice your dog is, he’s a danger to people who are afraid of dogs and wild animals.

Linda and Lily
Linda and her Norfolk Terrier Lily didn’t do very much together when they went out for a walk. So Lily started to find things to do on her own. She ran after cars and lunged at cyclists. As a result, Linda’s and Lily’s communication outdoors consisted mainly of scolding and nagging.

Lily had never learned that it was possible to have fun with people. For her part, Linda thought walks with the dog were exasperating. She came to me because she wanted a quick solution to her never-ending conflicts with Lily. At first it was hard for Linda to understand that the root of the problem was that she and Lily didn’t cooperate outdoors. This made it impossible to eliminate the dog’s improper behaviors by training.

First Lily had to understand that Linda was more than just an anchor at the other end of her leash. She had to perceive Linda as her leader in neutral situations so that Linda could then get her to obey in more acute ones, since it is much more difficult to get a dog to obey if there is no fundamental cooperation.

We tried to find a positive, undemanding mode of interaction – what did Lily like to do? Play with a ball, search for treats on the ground, or jump up on rocks and walls? Perhaps practice circus tricks where the dog and her owner could have fun together. By training for short periods, Linda gradually built up Lily’s willingness to cooperate. They avoided places where Linda didn’t have any control over the situation, since this undermined the training we had started. After two weeks of training, Lily was much more alert and attentive so we could start tackling the more acute problem.

It’s difficult to make a dog quit its undesirable behavior without first offering it a more meaningful activity in neutral situations. Trying to teach the dog something only in acute situations is doomed to fail. Succeeding in acute situations builds on what we do in neutral situations.

Train for only a minute or so at a time, but train often and vary the activity. A dog who isn’t used to mental stimulation can’t stay concentrated for any length of time.

Searching for treats
Most dogs have more energy at the start of the walk, which means it’s extra important that you involve your dog in an activity where he gets to work both physically and mentally. A good activity is searching for a toy or a treat that you have hidden. Start by throwing out one or two treats. Then release the dog and let him run and find the treat.

In more advanced searches I place out a few dozen treats over an area about half the size of a football field, which means it takes a while for the dog to find all the treats. Then I wait quietly for the dog to finish searching. The dog’s behavior determines how many treats he gets to find. If I notice a fall-off in the intensity of his searching, I continue the walk instead. Someone else gets the treats.

The advantage of searching for treats is that the dog can improve his perseverance, at the same as it doesn’t matter so much if he quits after a few minutes. You can hide the treats in trees and bushes, under and on rocks – anywhere you can think of.

The Indian game
No one wants a dog who goes off on his own when you’re out walking so you have to spend most of your time looking for him. Moreover, it’s illegal to let your dog run off in this manner. A young dog has to learn not to depend on your always being nearby. In order to encourage compliance you have to behave in such a way that your dog will naturally feel a need to stay close.

Dare to be quiet – if you talk too much and too often your voice will quickly become background noise that enables your dog to know exactly where you are at all times.

Like an Indian I use increasingly sophisticated methods to try to sneak away from my dog, who usually manages to find me. It can be hilarious when your dog catches up with you and gives you a scolding for running away. Vary the game by sometimes letting the dog find you, and other times coming out and revealing yourself when he seems overly anxious. Don’t let your dog become too much of an expert in tracking you down, since he will then become overly confident that he can always find you. If you have an independent dog you can pretend you feel sorry for him being left all alone in the woods. In this way you further reinforce the dog’s desire to be close to you.

Some dogs don’t understand when we suddenly disappear and simply continue going about their business without a care. In that case, try walking in another direction when you take off the leash. Reverse direction abruptly when the dog is about to pass you. Repeat this until he stays within the desired distance, and reward the dog with play or another activity he likes. Line training is another possibility, in which case you should make sure to let the line run along the ground without holding it. If your dog passes you even though you reverse direction, step quietly on the line and continue walking away from the dog.

By changing direction firmly and with exaggerated emphasis just when your dog is about to pass you, you create both surprise and confusion in your dog. He wonders what the heck you’re up to? Many dogs react to your changed pattern of movement by paying greater attention to you – then you can reinforce the spontaneous contacts your dog initiates with you.

My owner is gone – so what?
If your dog doesn’t feel a need to follow you, you have to be cunning. Stop giving your dog food in a bowl indoors and instead take the food with you out in the forest. Sneak away from the dog, sit down and pretend to find food under a tree. When the dog approaches you can act in different ways. You can pretend to be hungry and quickly eat up the food. Then you get up and walk away. In the meantime your dog will scavenge the ground looking for left-over crumbs. The next time you sneak away you can be a little less greedy, and when your dog approaches you have found a little more food which you don’t gobble up as quickly. Instead you get up and leave some for your buddy.

You can also use other things besides food. Try with an object your dog likes, hide it and then pretend to sniff it out in the woods. After a while your dog will start looking in front of you when he sees you walking with your head down, scanning the ground in front of you. In this way your dog will learn that you are a skilled hunter, and that it pays to stick close to you. This will reduce the number of conflicts when you’re out walking, since the dog knows you’re good at finding interesting things.

Don’t always walk the same way, and don’t signal the dog when you change direction. Instead, turn around without warning and start walking in the opposite direction. This will encourage your dog to make contact with you more frequently to make sure you don’t get away from him. When you’re walking along a path, you can suddenly step off into untracked terrain. If you often walk on paths, the dog will get in the habit of following the path rather than you.

Train contact with distractions
The next step is to leave your dog in the presence of a distraction. This can be anything that distracts the dog’s attention, such as people talking to each other or the dog, If your dog is leashed and there are no cars or other dangers around you, you can drop the leash and quietly walk away. Elaborate on the Indian game by trying to sneak away from your dog in different environments and situations. Reward the contact with things you know your dog likes, and remember to avoid using the same tone of voice and reward every time.

Run away – recall and reward
We often worry that our dog strays from us while we’re out walking. Instead we should ask ourselves why the dog doesn’t stay in sight. A dog who comes quickly when called but then dashes off just as quickly again may have learned that the best way to get attention and reward is to run away from you.

One dog owner laughed when I told him this at a lecture I was giving. Her dog ran away, stood behind a tree or a bush and waited for the owner to recall him. The owner had routinely recalled her dog when he vanished from sight, leading the dog to make the association: owner out of sight – recall and reward.

Can a dog really think this way? It doesn’t have anything to do with thinking. It has to do with the fact that we have recalled the dog numerous times in similar situations. On the one hand, the dog has learned what we wanted: to come when we call. The side effect of our static training is that the dog has also learned that in order to be recalled and rewarded he first has to run away. It is therefore extremely important that we vary the situation when we recall the dog.

Who does it pay most to stick close to? Dogs learn from each other to stick together when they’re out on a walk. They investigate smells together. It’s impossible for us to comprehend the importance of this, but absolutely necessary. They learn from each other, and it doesn’t take long for the little puppy to understand that it pays more to follow a dog than a human.

Trolle, my retriever puppy, realized after only a day or so in the family who was best suited to teach him what to amuse himself with outdoors. Kipling, my older dog, didn’t pay any attention to the puppy, but went around as usual investigating his vole holes. Suddenly he struck pay dirt and starting digging frantically. Trolle watched Kipling’s behavior with fascination, and all at once he dove down into the hole to see what treasure Kipling had found. That was a big mistake. Kipling let out a booming roar, and little Trolle flew up peeping and whining as quickly as he had jumped in.

From a safe distance, Trolle then observed Kipling until Kipling finally lost interest and went off to look for a more promising hole. Immediately after Kipling had abandoned the first hole, Trolle returned to explore it further, now with furtive side glances in Kipling’s direction. After having investigated the hole and the smells, he turned around to see what Kipling was up to now. It’s as simple as this from a dog’s point of view. A younger dog follows whoever is best suited when it comes to interesting experiences.

Buried treasure
Fall is here and you decide to plant some new bulbs and spring flowers. You work hard and when you’re finished you go back in the house and relax, feeling satisfied. The next morning you go out and discover that your dog has dug up every bulb you planted.

Dogs don’t look at buried bulbs in the same way as we do. Things that have been buried are there to be dug up, for fun or for food. Gardening work such as weeding or planting is something the dog understands and gladly takes part in. But we don’t always appreciate the dog’s help. We try to shoo him away with words and gestures, but this only strengthens his determination to share the experience with us. Something that we defend so vigorously by pushing him away must be something very worthwhile.

Another example of a situation where we have more intense contact with the dog than we want is when we’re out in the woods picking wild mushrooms. We walk bent over with our heads down, focusing on the ground. Suddenly we spot a cluster of much-sought-after chanterelles and give up a joyous whoop. We start scooping up the treasures when four happy paws suddenly land amidst all the yellow.

The forest is a natural place for a dog to hunt for smells and experiences, and it’s up to you to teach him what type of hunting is permitted. You can’t just forbid a dog to hunt without simultaneously teaching him what it is you should do together in the woods. You either compete with your dog for the scents, and risk losing. Or you make sure from the start that you are the most skilled hunter. Do like Kipling: look for interesting vole holes and create a curiosity that reinforces your dog’s compliance.

Taking a break
A walk in the woods should also include rests so you don’t keep moving all the time. If you walk and walk without sometimes stopping to rest, there is a risk that your dog will become increasingly independent. For a dog, a walk is always an opportunity to go hunting. With a young dog in particular, it’s important to take many short walks, to vary Indian games with mental activation, and to rest together.

During my education I complained about all the dog walks I had to go on. My teacher, Anders Hallgren, retorted that if I sat down on a stump and quietly observe the dog’s behavior I would learn a great deal about what goes on in a dog’s head. I never understood what he meant then, I thought it was just a way of avoiding the question. Why did I have to keep on taking so many dog walks instead of doing more important things? Now I understand that Anders wanted me to get to know the dogs in the school by just sitting back and observing what they did, without demanding anything of them.

Who decides when it’s time to go?
Some dogs are like some people, they are never satisfied and always have to see what’s around the next bend to know whether the grass is greener there. Our boundaries are not the same as a dog’s. A dog’s boundaries consist of scent marks that create doubt or arouse curiosity.

Sometimes I sit in the woods and chat about a dog with its owner. All the while the dog walks around, checking the scents in the vicinity. Suddenly the vegetation changes, and instead of the underbrush and grass the dog has been sniffing in there is now a path. The dog stops and starts to sniff the air, stands still, appears to be in doubt for a moment and then makes his choice. After a quick glance in our direction he crosses the boundary to see what’s on the other side. Or he turns his head and looks at us – then looks across the boundary again – but turns back.

There must be no disruptions, in the form of other dogs or people, when I teach my dog that it is I, and not he, who decides how long we will rest. In some cases all I have to do is clear my throat or clap my hands when the dog crosses the boundary in order for him to turn back. Other times I may have to toss a stick or other object at the dog’s rear end to get him to turn back.

Then when he makes contact I speak with the dog in a mild and friendly voice, without making a big deal of what happened. The next time your dog is debating whether to cross a boundary or not, if you see that he turns back, give him the same kind of low-keyed, friendly praise. The result of such training will be that your dog learns to relax when you yourself relax, without having to be commanded to lie still.

How do we signal that it’s time to go?
The participants in a course were assigned to study how their dogs reacted, depending on how we got up after a rest. On the first occasion, the owner was supposed to calmly get up and go. On the second occasion, he was supposed to rise abruptly and leave the place quickly. On the third occasion he was supposed to rise slowly, stretch and then calmly leave.

One of the dogs in the group hardly reacted at all when the owner calmly got up and left, but followed nonchalantly. On the second occasion, however, when the owner abruptly rose and walked away, the dog got up, followed a few steps and then looked frightened as if he suspected that the owner was running towards danger. On the third occasion, when the owner got up, stretched and yawned, the dog responded by wagging his tail and stretching. Then when the owner walked away the dog followed attentively behind.

This gives a simple indication of how important it is for us to signal that it’s time to go. Often our dogs react with strong emotions if we rise quickly, for example from the sofa to answer the telephone or when the doorbell rings. Think about how you get up – what kind of signal are you sending your dog?

The more compliant the dog becomes as a result of your exercises, the more you will be able to take “ordinary” walks. Be sure to have the dog on a flexi leash or a line if you aren’t in the mood for training, so that you don’t lose the initiative in deciding what experiences you will have and thereby act inconsistently when the dog is loose.

Don’t train during the entire walk either, keep it to between five and fifteen minutes at a time. Then leash the dog again. You have to be focused and committed if the compliance training is to succeed, so quit in time.