"What kind of time out methods do any of you use or suggest?"

As always, one's choice may depend upon the circumstances. I first try to help owners establish what I call "a quiet zone" or "a safe place" for the dog, where it may settle without being disturbed by other dogs in the home, or by children playing, or by visiting guests and whatever they may do.

The Safe Zone

 As you may well imagine, oftentimes that safe zone may be the dog's crate, if such a crate is placed in a location away from the front entryway. This safe zone, quiet zone, is an area where the student dog may calm itself down, self calm, after an overly exciting bout of fetching tennis balls, or after a rowdy wrestling session with another dog in the family.

Given the student numerous opportunities to associate the quiet zone with "something good for dogs," such as a frozen stuffed Kong toy, or a bit of beef jerky roll.

For owners of some particularly small/toy reactive dogs, I've even recommended use of a child's playpen. I'm able to buy them at yard sales far cheaper than at the store, disinfect them, replace the bedding with a new store-bought playpen mattress, all at very low cost, particularly if I buy the playpen mattress at the store when it's on sale.

For owners of medium-sized to large robust dogs, I've recommended purchasing and installing an interior kennel run, made of extruded aluminum, to place in one's cool basement. I've discovered that these pens then are about size 5'7" square, which is sufficient size for a bedding pad or mat, plus a dog's food bowl and its water bowl. Oftentimes the cellar of a home is 15 to 20 degrees cooler than the upstairs, and that temperature factor is an important plus for the comfort of heavily coated dogs, such as collies.

Why the need for such a space? In practical life, a family may actually wish to socialize with adults, may invite folks to dinner. A guest may not like dogs, may have had a traumatic experience with dogs at some time in his or her life.Or a guest may be allergic to cats. and or to dogs. Out of respect, a host and hostess would not subject one's guests, then, to the close proximity of family dogs or cats.

If one uses classical conditioning to help a dog "accept" such a safe zone space as an "Okay" space for a dog, then its going there will not seem to be aversive to the dog. The practice will become routine for the dog.

Secondarily, I believe it to be a good practice for a dog to learn to accept some social separateness from its family members for brief times during the day, such as when one showers, or perhaps during meal preparation.

Wendy Dreyer, a knowledgeable breeder and trainer in Connecticut, who was a longtime contributer to the Agbeh group, explained her process of teaching young dogs to accept staying away from home. She and a fellow breeder would "trade" such a dog for the night. Each young dog learned that other people are kind, too, and that it could handle the visit to another home just fine. Such an experience helped the pup to develop more confidence in different social settings. That's a good thing.

***

Now, with all that having been said as preparation, I then would use the safe zone from time to time as a place for the family dog to stay briefly when I felt the need to move the dog away from the center of focus, to a more peripheral role, away from constant attention.

Similarly, I have used the safe zone area as a way to help a very reactive/ fear-aggressive dog learn that he would not be harmed when visitors came to the home. He could hear them through the door; he would need a few moments in 'his safe zone' before coming in to the family room to actually face them. That use seemed to be an effective intervention to put in place between a dog's arousal alert bark mechanism, triggered by hearing some car pull into the driveway, and the dog being ready emotionally a few moments later to actually see such guests.

 Some dogs with anxiety issues needed just 30 seconds or so. Some other dogs may need three to four minutes.

In another situation, I've used the kennel set up as suitable quarters when I need to remove a dog from the living room because its behavior is inappropriate. Is that brief time out punishment then?

Common pet owner comment: "I've heard you should never use a dog's crate to
punish it."

I'm not doing that. I'm using negative punishment (P-): the taking away of something the dog wants as a consequence, very brief in time, for exhibiting some specific undesirable behavior. The message conveyed is: "If you act like that, then I won't let you stay in the living room."

Is that punishment? To me, it's the simple setting of some limits.  In behavioral terms, that timeout consequence is called punishment only if it resulted in a decrease of the dog's undesirable behaviors toward guests the next time.

We all know how teenagers (canine or human) invariably test us by pushing some boundary limits. We set limits; they test them.                                                                       

There's a normal human behavior to respond, "Why not just teach an alternate behavior instead?"

Well, of course we do that. But sometimes we prefer not to give the dog attention as the consequence /contingent upon the dog's offering  undesirable behavior. The aim here is not to make the choice to build an undesirable behavior pattern as a way to deal right at that moment with a dog's attention-seeking behaviors, such as mobbing, taking one's personal space.

As the owner, one needs alternate strategies.

In pet owner homes that do not have such a plan in place, particularly in open floor-plan homes ,I've observed that the owners may seem to be unable to deal with a dog's misbehaviors without constantly rewarding the dogs/ giving them social attention, for the behaviors that the owners actually do not wish to reinforce.

It's not a good idea to sabotage one's own efforts.

From such a dog's perspective, it really doesn't matter what it does, for the owner responds the same way consistently: that is, calls dog over to his side, gives a verbal cue or hand signal to down by his side. Some people seem to feel limited to using that single response. Some owners haven't yet even taught the dog to "Go settle over there."

In any event, as I see it anyway, brief time-outs for a few seconds may be a strategy used only during a short transition phase between a pet owner's former behaviors and his or her learning of some new effective teaching methods to build desirable behaviors.

People have different tolerance levels, too, and sometimes they need a brief period of time with the dog safely away from them.

Just how I see it. Maybe some of this will be useful.   I'll try to get to Time Outs, part 2  a bit later. 

© June 22, 2008. All rights reserved. No reproductionn permitted without express written consent  from the author, Barbara D. Brill,North Chili, NY. Email address: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it