A cue is a signal (like a green light) that indicates to your dog to do a certain behaviour for a potential reinforcement/reward.

Cues can be:

Verbal or hand/body language signal (like gesturing with your hands or saying a word such as “come”)
Sights (such as the chained conditioning of you putting on your shoes and getting the leash out to go for a walk or going to a certain park your dog loves)
Sounds (signals like a whistle or clicker)
Smells (including, scent work, treat trails or scatter feeds)
Touch (handling or cooperative care)

Cues don’t just come from training- they come from multiple indicators such as you and other people your dog meets, the other animals your dog encounters, their senses (like smelling barometric air pressure changes during storms) and environmental influences. For example, your dog always knows that on a walk when you turn left at a certain street that means they’re going to the park and then they get excited.

Your dog is constantly receiving and learning from the cues around them- but what happens when they find the cues scary?

Every dog is an individual, so they decide what is and what is not aversive/ scary/ fearful/ stressful to them. (You don’t!) These negative emotions can lead to what is called a poisoned cue.

What is a poisoned cue?

Used with permission from A Canine Affinity

A poisoned cue is any cue that is taught using positive reinforcement and corrections or anything that the dog finds aversive/creates negative associations.

Poisoned cues can come from any cue(s) that creates negative emotions or connotations to the learner (your dog!). Remember, a cue doesn’t have to be a word, it can be anything- a situation, sight, sound, smell, taste or touch- that can create a negative conditioned emotional response (-CER), negative association and become a poisoned cue.

How to tell if a poisoned cue has been created?

Your dog won’t perform the cue when asked
Your dog will move very slowly/are sluggish when being asked to perform the cue
Your dog will show calming signals (appeasement and displacement signals) when being asked to do the cue like lip licking, yawning, turning their head and body away
Your dog will regress in their training progress
Your dog won’t eat the food/treats you’re using (this can also be due to increased distractions, environmental or personal influences- which is why watching your dog’s behaviour is important!)

Everyday life examples of a poisoned cue:

Your partner says, “we need to talk”. You know that that this may mean you’re in trouble or your relationship is in trouble- negative connotation
Your boss or principal at school says, “come to my office”- you know that you’re in trouble- negative connotation
A horse refusing to go into a trailer as trailers are dark and closed-in spaces, and they’ve been physically forced to go into it before- negative association
Your cat sees the cat carrier come out of storage, runs and hides into their room - negative association

When in school, if my principal said “come to my office” to a student, I would watch them fidget (a fear response), and then walk as slowly as possible (another fear response- moving slowly like walking through Jello) to the principal’s office due to their conflicting emotions and negative connotation (poisoned cue) of these words. The student wasn’t being difficult when walking slowly (most of the time) as they were so often labelled, they were fearful- were they going to be rewarded or punished??

Similarly, and all too often, fearful dogs are commonly labelled as difficult, just as scared cats are labelled as fractious (which by definition means unruly). But it is time we saw what was beneath those labels and toss them away! Instead, let’s identify and address the underlying emotions that are driving these behaviours such as a poisoned cue, stress and fear.

As stated above, a poisoned cue is created when using positive reinforcement training with corrections. Training a dog using corrective methods and aversive “tools” such as shock collars, prong collars, choke chains, leash jerks and physical force create pain and stress, destroy your relationship with your dog, lead to behavioural fallout, increased bites and worsen behaviour issues. Technically, using corrections and positive reinforcement together (like a leash jerk and then a treat), the stimulus (reinforcement) will lose its value as a positive reinforcer and your dog will develop a negative conditioned emotional response (-CER) with the cue and stimuli used- which is the creation of a poisoned cue. If your dog doesn’t do as you ask- it is not “failure” as your dog is not a robot to do your whim, instead your dog is struggling and needs help- but if it is followed by punishment, the cue and reward for your dog, the learner, is no longer safe. Emotionally, it also creates conflict, anxiety and stress in your dog as they learn, because they don’t know if the cue will be followed by positive reinforcement or punishment- a threat or a reward.

Dog training examples of a poisoned cue:

Sit: a dog is forced into position using a hand on their rump, which hurts them.

o Develops a negative association to a person’s hand going near them and the cue sit- both have been poisoned

Come: a dog goes for a happy run away from their person who shouts COME- COME -COME and when the dog finally comes back, the person hits or shouts at the dog.

o The word come has then been poisoned and the dog has learned to not come back to their person or face punishment

Veterinary/grooming/handling: your dog is physically forced into position/to comply or painful procedures are done to the dog

o Next time your dog will be even more fearful of these procedures, the vet clinic, and/or your car, and may refuse to be handled as handling and these other factors have been poisoned

Other animals: an off-leash dog charging your dog on a walk

o Your dog now associates other dogs with this dog, becomes fearful of other dogs, therefore other dogs have become a poisoned cue

Noises: you’re teaching your dog training cues and a thunderstorm rolls through with a loud BOOM as you’re asking your dog to perform a cue

o Next time you ask your dog to do the cue they will associate the BOOM with the cue and may become sluggish or not want to do the cue at all- it’s been poisoned due to the fear of the noise

Using punishment-based training, or training that combined positive reinforcement and corrections is outdated, inhumane, not fun for you or your dog and poor welfare. To see more on why positive reinforcement, reward-based training helps dogs, uses welfare in its training principles and works with a dog’s emotional levels to effectively achieve results go here.

Sometimes even the best intentions can create negative emotions and associations in a dog, leading to a poisoned cue. For example, a very common misconception and action that people do with fearful dogs is giving strangers treats to feed to their very fearful dog or place the treats specifically on someone/something that the dog is scared of, so the dog can “get over it” (helpful reminder- dogs don’t get over things as their behaviours are driven by emotions). DO NOT DO THIS. It is flooding (full force of negative stimuli), and your dog may accept the treats, but it will put them into a state of conflict and/or learned helplessness (physical and mental shutdown), and the treat itself will become a poisoned cue. How will the treat become a poisoned cue? Your fearful dog will associate the smell and taste of those treats with their fear of strangers (fearful stimuli).

How would you feel being forced to take candy from a creepy stranger? The next time you saw the treat you’d be triggered.

Case Study #1

One dog guardian was told by another individual to consistently give strangers who greeted them treats to feed their very fearful dog. They did this in multiple environments. As this was constantly flooding the dog, the dog’s behaviour issues worsened not improved, they became even more reactive and very cautious around treats, even very eating their own meals was conflicting to the dog and often times they wouldn’t do it if people were around, as food had become a poisoned cue. When we first started training, it took us awhile but using a combination of positive reinforcement, enrichment and meeting the dog’s needs, the dog soon was eating without fear.

If your dog is fearful or has developed a poisoned cue, contact WFA for either an online or in-person consult or course here.

Case Study #2

Photo of QiuQiu- photos and story told with Joe and Tamzin’s permission

QiuQiu, a fearful former street dog, lives in Chengdu, Sichuan, China with her “sister” (from another mister) MoMo and their wonderful humans, Joe and Tamzin. Since summer of last year WFA and they have done online consults and a few training courses to help MoMo and QiuQiu overcome their fears, especially QiuQiu’s fear of being handled by the vets. Joe and Tamzin put in a lot of hard work, consistently taking QiuQiu to the vet clinic to develop positive associations at the location and staff, as well as training a positive conditioned response (+CER) to handling and vet care so that she could be vaccinated and spayed.

However, last month Joe and Tamzin rescued a dog off the street who desperately needed help and fostered the dog until they could find an adoptive parent (the dog is now in a loving home). QiuQiu developed a very serious and painful ear infection because of the stress of having another dog in her home plus the humidity of Chengdu.

QiuQiu’s fear of handling made a stressful situation, taking a dog to the vet and applying ear drops, even more challenging. To try to help decrease her stress while applying her ear drops, Joe and Tamzin used treats during their application. Resulting from her fear, QiuQiu developed a negative association towards the treats as the treats meant that her ears would be looked at - she simply refused to eat any treats. Her fear escalated to the point that a muzzle became a trigger for her fear, anxiety and stress (FAS) to escalate, and resulting from her high FAS she attempted to bite Joe and Tamzin if they tried to apply the ears meds.

Due to QiuQui’s negative association towards her ear drops and their application, treats became a poisoned cue.

Joe and Tamzin reached out and WFA provided them with some useful tips such as incorporating the Bucket Game by Chirag Patel while providing ear drops.

They worked hard to desensitize her to a blow-up Elizabethan collar, used the Bucket Game for focus and a grooming glove (a different reinforcer) to utilize positive reinforcement methods when applying the ear meds. Thankfully, the Bucket Game helped QiuQiu enormously get used to her ear drops.

Currently, she is on mend and has achieved major progress on her road to recovery.

How to help your dog overcome a poisoned cue

Take a break from using that cue for a few days or in some cases a few weeks
When re-training the cue use different hand/verbal signals such as “over here| instead of “come”
Reteach the behaviour using a new reinforcer such as a brush or a toy (something your dog loves) and slowly rework treats into training
Train in a new location
DO NOT use corrections during training