She likes to sit in a coffee shop and watch the people who come and go. Anyone who passes her by wouldn’t get a glimpse into her outgoing personality and passion for untangling behaviours.
Neither would anyone ever guess Zoe MacBean started dog training after picking up a book in the library at 17 years of age. Nor that she once sat beneath a movie set covered in bloodhound drool, peanut butter, coffee and cheese dust just to make it look like Garth the Bloodhound was talking.
“I had drool rags over my shoulder and they get so soggy. I spent four hours doing this then we took a break and did it again. I was so glad when it was over,” she explained.
“I like it in little doses,” she said of movie training. “It’s kind of exciting. You get to meet some really interesting people, the food is pretty good, the dogs are wonderful to work with but the truth is it’s really long hours and no sooner have you trained the behaviour that you’re given another list of behaviours they want.”
She has a friend who, when in Vancouver, calls on her once in a while if she needs an extra hand. Occasionally, MacBean sources talent for movies as well. However, she hasn’t been involved with any movies recently, being busy enough with having a family and running Wing Nut Training for non-celebrity dogs in Powell River.
These days MacBean works with behaviour problems at home. When a relationship between dog and owner becomes messy, MacBean said she would rather work at untangling those behaviours instead of working away at a seemingly endless list of behaviours that have to be generated “at the drop of a hat.”
Many dog owners know the chaos beloved pets can cause: torn apart bathrooms, dogs dragging owners down the sidewalk or an over-energetic German Shepherd running rampant in the living room knocking over flower vases with its wagging tail.
MacBean focuses on the relationship between dog and owner, trying to increase the level of understanding between the two parties. “It’s just a little different,” she said. “I have no breed bias. I can prove on paper to anyone who is interested that there’s no such thing as stubborn. I’ve worked with approximately 5,000 dogs. I have yet to meet a stubborn one.”
She used the example of pulling on a leash, calling it a “learned behaviour.” On a piece of paper she compiled a list of incentives for a dog to pull while on a leash and incentives for not pulling.
While pulling, she explained, a dog arrives where it is going faster. It might find food on the ground, it can bark at everything, chase squirrels or cats, experience new smells, drag its owner up to other people and receive pats.
On the accompanying list of incentives for dogs not to pull, there isn’t much, but by changing the cues of that behaviour, MacBean said, a dog will react differently to a leash.
She calls cues “anything that happens consistently, either during the behaviour or just before the behaviour.” Cues for pulling on a leash can include holding the leash, touching the doorknob, clipping the leash onto a collar, or something as simple as forward movement while the dog is on the leash. Those cues need to change if the behaviour is to be altered.
“First step is put leashes on in the house,” she said. “We tie them to a belt, get our hands off the leash. Don’t look at the dog, don’t say anything to the dog and wander around the house in a non-linear pattern.
“Sometimes we have to do a total equipment change because the leash and collar they were used to wearing, that’s their cue to pull,” said MacBean.
While such behaviours can be frustrating to owners, MacBean poses a simple question at her training classes: “Can you imagine what it’s like to be the dog?”
She puts dog owners though an eye-opening exercise. MacBean chooses a behaviour to train owners, assuring them no harm will come to them and they will not be demeaned.
She will use a marker signal, reinforce it and that’s how the owners have to figure out the task she wants them to do. It could be something as simple as turning on a light switch or pouring a glass of water.
She said owners will exhibit stress behaviours like sweating or flicking their eyes during the exercise and they will comment how stressful it was. She then explains to them she could have added in a choke chain or some yelling.
“That’s what it’s like to be a dog. That’s my job, to untangle that relationship and get that understanding and once you have the understanding that it’s a dog and it doesn’t speak English and it’s completely lost and looking to you for guidance...once we have that in place we have a correct relationship and we can put in some leadership skills.”
A little dog was given to her because it was biting people’s ankles, barking and growling as they were leaving the house. Then he tore apart a bathroom.
He was a small dog living in a big open-plan home, MacBean explained, and he would bark when they were gone. He was moved to a smaller area and then a crate, but didn’t like either. She said his owners put a bark collar on him, which gave him a little shock every time he barked. But the dog didn’t realize the collar was to stop him from doing so, she explained.
“Getting shocked out of nowhere is a bit scary. If you’ve had three years of barking, you’re not going to think it must be the barking. But if you see a cat in the front yard you’re going to think it’s the cat because it has never happened before and then there’s the cat. Next thing you know it’s the mail man. They connect it with what they’re seeing. He just knew when he was alone, it hurt.”
The dog’s behaviour was simply him trying to prevent his owners from leaving the house because he didn’t want to get shocked anymore, MacBean said. It is one of many behaviours she has unravelled in dogs.
“Untangling behaviours is fun.”
