Temp Testing and Rehabilitation - Part 1

One of the sessions I went to at the No Kill Conference was entitled "Rehabilitating and Adopting Dogs with Special Needs."

The presentation was given by Dr. Linda Wolf -- who is a veterinarian and animal behavior consultant who does a lot of consulting for Animal Ark -- a No kill Shelter in Minnesota.  With Dr. Wolf's guidance (and a lot of work from a dedicated staff and volunteer group who are dedicated to the saving of animals' lives), Animal Ark has euthanized only 1 dog due to behavioral issues in the past 4 years.  At a time when many people are using basic temperament tests as a way to kill dogs without consequence because they were "unadoptable."

While much of what Dr. Wolf talked about was not new to me, per se, there were a lot of new nuggets that tied a lot of different pieces together for me .

She began talking about what forms behavior, and signs of dog behavior. "If you don't recognize and understand signs of dog behavior, you won't know how to deal with it," she said.

She talked about when certain behaviors develop. Even during the prenatal period, behavior is affected a lot. Stressful situations before birth can have negative consequences for a dog. Dogs that are heavily petted during pregnancy will have puppies that tend to be more docile and desire more touching.*

From 0-14 days, puppies require touching to develop their motor development and nervous system. Dogs that are handled during the first 2 weeks after birth tend to be more confident.

From 3-12 weeks is a dog's main socialization period. This is when the puppy's brain develops rapidly and they learn to socialize with their littermates.

From 12 weeks to sexual maturity, this is when dogs learn aggressive behavior. They learn a lot by "play biting" -- especially bite inhibition. This is when a puppy learns to bite by not using their full strength so they don't cause injury. Many people inadvertantly cause two dogs from having proper bite inhibition by breaking up play-fighting -- by doing so, the puppy never learns what that 'max level' of biting is to when the other dog gets hurt.

"Without bite-inhibition, socialization, and habituation, you'll end up with a serious bite."  If you have bite-inhibition, without the other two, you'll end up with a much less serious bite," said Wolf.

* None of this is really very supportive of the idea that nature is a bigger driver of behavior than nurture....in fact, in a 2 1/2 hour lecture on the topic, the topic of genetics never once came up as a driver of behavior.

So then Dr. Wolf talked about different gestures -- filled with all kinds of visual examples of such behaviors.  She discussed Distance-reducing behaviors -- these are appeasement gestures that encourage approach.  Often the dog has its head/neck lower, the dog will be twisted somewhat sideways, eyes will be looking slightly away, or often, the dog will lie down, with it's belly up. Other signs might include licking, tail wagging (but be aware of how high up the tail is, if the tail is nearer to vertical, that is a different sign), and a raised paw/shake-type gesture.

She also discussed Distance-increasing behaviors: Stiff body, ears up and forward*, tail up and staring directly at the target.

Dr. Wolf also discussed fear behaviors (cowering, head very low) and calming signals (Sitting, lying down, nose licking, looking away).

* Interestingly, she brought up her huge dislike of things like cropped ears and tail-docking.  When a dog has cropped ears, the ears are always in an "up and forward" position. Other dogs will almost always interpret a dog with cropped ears as being in a distance-increasing posture, which can lead to the other dog mirroring that behavior -- which leads to two dogs in more aggressive-type positions. It is hard not to think that the popularity of ear-cropping in 'pit bull' breeds has actually caused some of the "dog aggression" issues that people perceive because it actually spurs other dogs to react less invitingly to the dog with cropped ears, which can spur a little more rivalry between a couple of dogs. I also wonder if ear-cropping had something to do with Randall Lockwood's initial thoughts on "pit bulls' back in the mid-80s when he said that pit bulls didn't give warning signs before attacking -- because one of the major "warning signs" would be ear position -- and I don't know how much we understood about canine behavior when it comes to body position subtleties in the 1980s. 

After this, she discussed different temperament tests. It was Dr. Wolf's opinion (and one I share) that temperament tests should not be used as a pass/fail -- with "fails" being killed at the shelter.

She said there are many flaws in using temperament tests for the sole evaluation of a dog's behavior:

-- Environment -- if a dog is in a strange environment they are likely not going to behave in a natural way

-- Stressed -- a dog that is in a strange environment, around strangers, is likely going to feel stressed

-- Length of time - -many temp tests are only 5-10 minute tests -- and don't really give the dog ample time to show their very complex behavior.  Let's face it, if someone met you for 5 minutes, they most likely wouldn't have a full understanding of your behavior.

-- Experience/skill of the evaluators -- many evaluators are not properly trained to do temperament evaluations

-- Testing only "potential problem dogs -- in many shelters, they only test dogs they perceive to be "potential problems". So evaluators realy don't get an understanding of how a "good dog" would do on the test, so they don't have a good comparison of how the dog should perform.

-- She also warned that testings assumes a one-size-fits all approach to dogs and that only one type of temperament is acceptable.

The end result: Most dogs fail, and failure = death.

Which is happening all to often in many of our shelters today.

Part 2 will come soon.

Comments

[YesBiscuit!]

Interesting. I'd hate to think a 5-10 minute test *regardless of the qualifications of the person administering it* would determine life or death for a dog. Obviously it's worse if the test is conducted by an unqualified person but even the best qualified behaviorist isn't going to be able to know a dog in 5-10 minutes IMO. I've never done or seen any testing done for shelter pets. But the tests we put puppies through are longer than a few minutes. And of course we have 8 weeks of individual experiences with the pups and years of experience with dogs to toss into the mix so it's not as if the temp test is the major determining factor on placement. To me, a fair evaluation of a shelter dog would include an exam by a qualified person which would be considered along with multiple other factors in determining the dog's ideal match.

[Jeni]

Excellent points on cropping and docking even more reason to ban those activities.

[John]

Always an interesting topic and one of the loopholes in No Kill that surprises me - I know of a few organizations that claim to be No Kill but routinely execute dogs for relatively minor behavioral issues (A dog that hasn't had regular access to food for months displaying food aggression? Shocking!). Even dogs with some issues deserve a shot at adoption with full disclosure to a person prepared to handle those issues. There are those of us that love the hard cases. :)

[MichelleD]

There are not loopholes in No Kill - there are however, people flat out lying about being no kill. We have several in KC...they say they're no kill to bring in the $$s. Bottem line, you should be saving at least 90% of the animals coming thru the door to be No Kill - higher for rescues/shelters that get to pick what animals they actually take. I actually don't like people saying they're a "no kill rescue" - yeah, you take in a limited amount of animals and don't kill them.

I'm a no kill rescue - I haven't killed any of the dogs I foster. I don't expect any props for that...just silly. Its not about misleading titles to make people feel good its about SAVING ANIMALS!

And at the end of the day...if one shelter in a community saves 100% of their animals while the shelter down the street is needlessly killing; No Kill has not truly been reached for anyone (most importantly the animals) in that community!

[MichelleD]

I do want to add we have a couple cities in our Metro area whose completely inept AC (KCK, KCMO) depts are making achieving No Kill a TON harder. And that is in addition to BSL and anti-feral cat laws we have in various cities...

We also have a lot of people doing it right tho!

[Ricky]

Brent- thanks for a great job on this post. I agree with other commentors that temperament testing on animals upon admittance to the shelter is an irresponsible practice. I would like to see our local shelters engaging in this practice be exposed. I have found that most people who adopt are not aware that this goes on. People have a right to know when they adopt what shelters are truly NO KILL and what shelters are being creative with this language.

[Barb]

I was a little confused about the comment about cropped ears "always being 'up and forward'" because I have several dogs with cropped ears and they have no trouble at all folding their ears back submissively - or for that matter of holding them in any other position: half mast, sideways, rotated, partially up, fully up, or REALLY up and tight and forward. They are tremendously expressive of all sorts of emotions, and much more easily readable (at least to humans) than the natural floppy Great Dane ear. And they certainly do NOT typically trigger distance-increasing or aggressive posturing from other dogs.

But the next few sentences cleared it up for me, when you mentioned possible reasons for cropping pit bulls. That is a very different crop, very short usually and probably pretty stiff. My Danes have extremely long crops, which would explain the difference.

[[email protected]]

I love this post!! I volunteer with a bully bread rescue group in st louis and am putting some information together on temp testing etc.
I am anxiously awaiting part 2 (didn't see it anywhere). Please post it soon, as I hopefully want to participate in the large fight bust here and then want to help train the rest of the group.