Time Out

Pet Article

There is a new puppy in my house and he is as crazy as the last puppy that was in my house. He wants to jump on me, nip my hands, pee on my floor, bark at my friends, eat my food and sleep on my bed. I am looking at this puppy as I type, thinking, “How is this any different from bringing a wild animal into my house?” I inhale, and then exhale slowly. I cradle my head in my hands, thinking, “Why, oh-why, do I have another untrained puppy in my house. Did I not suffer enough horror with my last dog? Apparently not.

Suddenly, a beam of light shines through the clouds as I remember something important; I have a puppy training cage, a crate, an inexpensive wire construction that is designed to keep a puppy confined to its bedroom area. The next time my new dog decides to hit me in the groin with his head, intentional or not, I am going to send him to his room. “Time out,” I will bark - a bold and grandiose declaration, “To your room! If you cannot control your head around my ‘small and gentles’ then you must leave!”

Suddenly, yes, another ‘suddenly’, I remember something I read on the internet, written by a respected dog trainer. The trainer, Ed Frawley, writes, “I never heard of time-out until a few years ago. Not sure where the idea came from but a time out is not a correction. In fact it’s a bad idea. It goes against what we are trying to teach our dogs about crates- which is his crate is a good place to be – not a punishment.” Frawley continues on to say that, “The fact is I don’t think dogs look at the crate as punishment anyway. I think they look at it as a place to take a nap. Maybe if dogs lived longer – like 50 years, they could grasp the concept of being in a crate as punishment.”

Ed is right, being in the crate is not the punishment, rather, being away from the owner is where the corrective power of a time out is found.

In Biblical terms, Hell is sometimes defined as the greatest distance away from God. The further you stray away from your faith, the greater your torment in life will become. I believe this to be a great truth, and it is also a truth that applies to the way we can correct unwanted dog behavior.

I first became aware of a time out when watching a group of dogs playing together. There were five dogs in the group, four adults and one ‘teenager’. The four adults played with an uninhibited sophistication and mutual respect, while the youngster played like a buffalo. The mature dogs tolerated the buffalo for only so long before they aggressively turned on him and chased him away from the group. The buffalo, having no where to go, turned and watched the playing adults but did not attempt to play with them again. And when he did muster the courage to raise his buffalo head, the other dogs were quick to run him down. What was most interesting about these behavioral displays was that it was clear to me that the buffalo no more wanted to leave than the adults really wanted him gone. I was not witnessing four adults banish a youngster, rather, I was watching a buffalo learn how to be a dog.

A time out is a natural way for one dog to demand respect from another. The message that dogs send to each other is simple: “Treat me well or leave”. Experts who have lived with groups of dogs have all witnessed this behavior but few of them have developed a way for us to use this natural form of communication in our own lives.

When you were a child and you were sent to your room as a form of punishment, you did not learn to fear your room? Probably not. Rather, being left alone gives us time to think and reflect on how we can better fit into our families when next we socialize with our loved ones. The ability to think and improve our behavior based on our own inner thoughts is a skill shared by many animals, including puppies.

Dogs are social animals that have a strong desire to live harmoniously with their human pack. When this harmony is disrupted and a dog is asked to remove itself, nature has programmed puppies to modify their own behavior so that they can better support the feelings of their family. Telling your dog to “go to its room”, is not a punishment based on coercion or isolation. Rather, it is a natural correction that taps into your dog’s ability to use its own mind to better itself.

The above article is used with the written permission of Puppywishes.com
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