Whole Dog Camp Blog

A Whole Dog New Year

2010-12-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

http://wholedogcamp.com/woof/index.php

2010-12-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

Dog Up for Anything

2010-12-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

So, I have this little bit of time between now and February, and thought I'd use it by fostering a deserving dog. I don't have all the time in the world, so I am entitled to choose from the zillion dogs who need a home, and I went looking for best quality prospects. I'm not going to use my time right now fostering dogs with temperament problems, or dogs with bad hips, or chronic barkers. I want to help a dog who would succeed in activities like pet therapy, agility, freestyle, rally-o.

So, here's Beautiful Bella. About eight months old with an undeniably ideal family-dog temperament, she is also extremely flashy-looking, smart, agile, athletic, fantastic with kids and other dogs. Kelpie? Hound dog cross? We're not sure, but in addition to that very sweet gentle face, she has the world's softest and glossiest easy-care coat. Her previous owners loved her so much, they taught her to cuddle like a champ, and bought her loads of toys and treats and gear, but they evidently didn't take her to training classes? Maybe they themselves never loved school as a child?

We're putting her back on track. She's so smart, she will learn very quickly. It will only take us about two weeks and she will very likely be house-trained, leash trained, crate trained. We're also going to throw in a few other tricks, like toenail clipping, because it's really not hard. Too bad that the previous owners didn't take classes, because if they had, they would still have beautiful Bella. Also, they'd have a better idea about how dog training really works. But now this very deserving dog has her chance to find a very deserving home.

The Whole Stunned World: A novel by Jenny Ruth Yasi

2010-09-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Human behavior, social status, and comments about Obama's chest

2010-08-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

We all share responsibility for social behavior. Together we reinforce and strengthen certain community behaviors, while we consciously or unconsciously make other behaviors disappear.

The difference between beginning trainers, and experienced trainers, is that experienced trainers are very conscious of where the environment is delivering punishment (P+) and reinforcement(R+), whereas beginners are often delivering P+ and R+ unconsciously. Beginning animal trainers accidentally diminish or extinguish desirable behaviors, while reinforcing problem behaviors, and that happens in our communities too.

How? We deliver money, social status, food, water, physical comforts. And we take these reinforcements away. Just like cheese and a game of tug, or a click and treat is to a dog, ideas, games, access to foods, money, social status, creature comforts can be manipulated to influence behavior in people. The cheapest and most powerful way to manipulate others is to manipulate social status. People talk about each other a lot, and talking about people has more influence on the behavior in your community than your might realize. Think even of President Obama's refusal to bare his chest while swimming, because he doesn't want the public to be making comments about it. A President is great example of how a community works together to shape social status.

We can help deliver social status to in ways that strengthen valuable behaviors, simply talking about them.

Dog Friendly Maine

2010-08-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

Charlie had a very privileged day yesterday. First he came with me to my dentist appointment. The normally shady parking lot was completely in upheaval and off-limits, and my dentist was understanding and dog friendly. Charlie laid at my feet or looked out the window, as good as gold. The only real problem was the dog kibble falling out of my pockets! But I was very proud, and Charlie was VERY pleased with the role. He keeps telling me, "Take me everywhere. I promise I will work like a soldier! BUT if you keep putting me in second place to Tigerlily, then I will just be a bouncy kangaroo!" Charlie is amazing when he knows he is on duty. But it's up to me to put him on duty more often!

(here you can see Charlie practicing a subtle little bit of hyena behavior.)

So after the dentist, we had to follow a detour that brought us by Beals Ice Cream store,so we happily stopped for "Mongrel Monday." I got a "small" pistachio (NUTTY! YUm! Huge!) and Charlie had vanilla in a dish, surrounded by dog bones. Charlie's ice cream was free. When I couldn't eat all mine, turns out he LOVES pistachio and sugar cone!

And then we came back on the ferry. People, dogs, pigeons, seagulls, planes, traffic, brick sidewalks, slick dentist office floor, I was very pleased with my 3 year young Charlie dog.

Throughout I found a head-halter a really effective way to handle Charlie around his still-big distractions. While good as gold in most situations, Charlie gets VERY excited, I'll have to tape it, the noises he makes are very hyena-ish. He leaps and sings with things in the sky, like airplanes, seagulls, even just airplane tracks in the sky. At one point yesterday, while on leash sitting on a bench in the ferry terminal outside, and a plane was going overhead and pigeons were flying around, he just tilted his head into the sky and started hooting! He also seems terrified/excited around cats. So whenever he showed signs of transforming from soldier into leaping hyena, I just popped on the head halter, and led him away. I keep the head halter as loose as I possibly can, and I barely have to touch the leash, he just is extremely responsive to even the lightest pressure on his nose. I can guide his head with it with really what feels like no force. He was well conditioned to this tool, he knows how to control it, and so he keeps it loose. He just goes with it. And then when he had been behaving perfectly for quite a while in a new environment, like at the dentist's office or on the boat, I switched the leash to his other harness, and took off the head halter. The head halter going on and coming off makes "privilege" more clear to Charlie. He is willing to work to earn a privilege, if he understands his job. Young Charlie had a few light bulb moments I think.

Snowy

2010-07-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

"Kick Butt List of Everything Distracting"

2010-07-20T04:58:00.000-07:00

Susan Garrett assigned this homework as preparation for her new recall e-course ( http://susangarrettdogagility.com/ ). I'm supposed to write down a "kick butt list of everything distracting" and then rate them 0-10, in my dogs' lives! This is my emerging list for Charlie. I'll write up a list for Tigerlily too! I was surprised that his list isn't really as unmanageable on paper as it seemed in my head. I really enjoyed this exercise and thinking it through gave me a much better "picture" of my dog. Fun! And highly recommended. I can tell, as I rank them, that it is going to take sometime and thoughtfulness to develop this list, but that understanding my dog's distractions on this deeper level, really holds the key to understanding what we might use to reinforce them. I wonder if all Charlie's undesirable reactivity to noises is also his gift, as he is also sensitive and attracted to my click and other auditory cues, and he's been picking up on Tigerlily's hearing services job. That Charlie is distracted by the telephone is a good thing! As that little clip shows you, Charlie knows how to play with toys!

Airplanes flying overhead 9

Birds 8

Insects (nearby) 8

Buzzing bees (in glass door) 9

Fly in the door 8

Airplane track in the sky 7

Lightning 10

Camera flash 9

Thunder (if running around loose)10
Thunder if he's in his crate 2

Talking People with dogs walking past 9

Barking dog(s) in the distance 7
click 10
"freedom!" 10
"hand" target 6.5

People entering training yard when he’s working in the yard 9

People talking approaching house when he is in the window 9

Someone approaching car with a dog, when talking 7-10 depending
people and dogs when he is managed on leash 1.5 or up, depending on "other" friendliness

Phone ringing 7

Knock on the door 9

Person in the woods 9
people in the distance 0
dogs ignoring him 0

Me! nearby and at a distance 10

My husband approaching/greeting 10

My daughters approaching/greeting 10

Other known people 5

anyone friendly who is physically nearby 10

Deer scent 6

Animal scents:

New environment (first minutes in new place) 5

Environmental change (first minutes of new dog, cat, person, smell, food, toy rule, anything) 6

When he’s outside walking on leash, unknown cats 10

Squirrels –scent or sight 10

Dropped food 5

food on counters 4

food cooking 3

breakfast 3

hunger 4

pains, itches, tickles 6

sight of his harness (wants it!) 7

table 6

crate 6

Rotten smelling stuff! 7

Rolling in rotten smelling stuff! 8

Crunching plastic bottles, flapping Frisbee 8

Tigerlily when she’s working with me 8

Tigerlily when he’s working with me 0

Other dog (managed) 4

Other dog (offleash, unmanaged) 9

Open gate 9

Open door 6

Open window 2

Me training Tigerlily on the beach while he’s in the truck 4

Being on the beach 9

The sound of the ocean 8

Sea birds 8

Boats 8

Boat engine noises 8

Riding on the car ferry (the noises and engine rumble) 8

Riding on the island romance (engine heat and rumble, noise) 9

Little boat (movement, seabirds, motor) 7

This is a picture of poor Charlie when we first brought him home from Puerto Rico. He had been a feral dog, and was very thin and sick, but he sure perked up with love! I'll keep adding to this list!

Susan Garrett's "five minute formula" to a brilliant recall

2010-07-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

I enrolled in Susan Garrett's new online e-course ( http://susangarrettdogagility.com/ ), five minute formula to a brilliant recall. The video below is me practicing a free bonus exercise, and I am working with two sensitive dogs who might get itchy and anxious with an unpracticed collar grab, so, yeah, they need it!

Charlie is my formerly feral dog, brought home from PR two years ago. Extremely affectionate, loving to burrow into arms and nibble gently on ears, he can also be ticklish and bouncy and escape in a flash. Charlie LOVES freedom! It also seems to scare him! Maybe it's scary when he knows that I can't control him and he's got a choice. Charlie at three years old is aware in a way that seems peculiar to formerly feral dogs, and so my focus is on conditioning him trust my cues, and take his cues more from me than from the environment. Susan's program will help me do that. I'd like to get him so I could take him off-leash on the beach, and not have him freak and split, but have him reliably coming when called! I also want to be able able to have both of my dogs off-leash at the same time, and not have one dog interfering with the recall of the other.

Tigerlily is my five year old black fluffy french waterdog. Around prey, she is typically half-focused on me, and half-focused on the prey. When Tigerlily was two, she switched her attention from my water recall game, to a distant sea bird, and took off swimming, forgetting all about me as she went further and further, past buoys and boats, and got herself lost amongst anchored boats and buoys in the Portland Maine harbor. I saw no choice but to strip down to my undies (and BOYSCOUTS were on the beach!), and swim out around the boats in deadly cold water until she saw me. She was happy to see me too! She was out there trying to climb up on the lobsters buoys, and was just going to freeze and exhaust herself and drown. I was a bit afraid that could happen to me, too! So, perfect recalls are worth working on. A bit more important than even weave poles! I am really looking forward to putting Susan Garrett's recall program into play!

Six Months On: How the Red Cross is Helping Haitians Recover

2010-07-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Reinforcing the "no!" command

2010-07-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

Too many people continue to express anger or irritation towards a dog that is responding correctly to "no."

When your dog responds instantly to your "no," your job is to reward the dog for correctly responding! Why? Because if you ignore, or continue to act angry for several moments after the dog has corrected his behavior, that confuses your dog. And what does "no" really mean to your dog, anyway?

If you are screaming "no!!" while your dog is barking, your dog thinks you are barking, too. If you are screaming "no" ten seconds after the dog has peed on your couch, the dog thinks either you're a raving lunatic, or maybe you were stung by a bee. We humans make hysterical noises for all sorts of reasons that are all but impossible for a dog to understand. Our displays of anger create stress and confusion in many dogs. They can easily learn to tune us out and hope we aren't barking at them.

So, if a dog doesn't immediately correct a naughty behavior, you can switch to management mode. Leash your dog, take away the dog's naughty opportunity, and rethink your training plan. But what if the dog responds to a shriek by stopping naughty behavior? Instantly stop your own punishing behavior! Praise your dog for responding correctly when you say "no!"

Why “clicker training” is so hard, and why “easy” is better.

2010-07-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

I had a great conversation recently with a sometime-training client, who admitted to me that he hasn’t really applied everything that he was given in our classes. The loose leash walking, he liked that. And he still uses the mat and the crate, and his dog is really a great dog, and performs all the basic behaviors. But he doesn’t do hand targeting, and all that stuff about operant conditioning, or using a marker signal, that pretty much went in one ear and out the other.

I really hate to admit it, but my clients don’t seem all the interested in learning theory. They just want to have more fun with their dogs. So I discover (again and again and again!) that less truly is more in dog training class.

But let’s face it, until you understand operant conditioning, and how dogs read ALL the cues or signals in their environment, until some of that theory starts to sink in, you’re relying more on luck and maybe “training superstitions” than truly understanding what educating your dog is all about.

Dogs are smart. They are very, very smart. And people are also very smart. But both dogs and people get confused. This is a case where the right paw often doesn’t know what the right hand is talking about. People tell me their dog is stubborn, but the dog has no idea that “drop it!” is an instruction. The dog doesn’t completely understand his cues. I get people who say “my dog is crazy!” or “my dog is not so smart,” when it appears to me the dog is doing exactly what the handler unknowingly taught him to do.

It helps me to remember that with kids, we start with nursery rhymes and pat-a-cake. Rather than going into all the details of what we are doing, and why, I’m finding that it works best with dog owners to just play, and use the language without talking about it a whole lot. We can start conditioning the clicker, just because that’s fun. And if we do it on a mat, well that’s a great start to mat training. And that’s hop away from “find it!” and “touch it” games. And as those games develop, we get “hot” and “cold” games, and increasing directional, distance, and even duration control and communication starts happening. And fluency in a new language doesn’t happen overnight, but people start picking up on it naturally.

Maybe that’s the best way to get people “hooked” on shaping behavior. Note to myself: make it easy, and don’t talk about it!

2010-06-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Getting a guest dog to eat

2010-06-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

Matilda, like many dogs, is very emotional. Even though she loves being here, she misses her owner and her regular life, and she shows it by being a very picky eater. Last night, I just ignored that, as she was still settling into the new routine. We had house guests, and Matilda did extremely well with all the comings and goings, she cuddled on the couch and sighed heavily, but she just wasn't hungry. This morning, she also started out the day by refusing to eat her breakfast. She misses Mum.

In general, I don't feed guest dogs in the same room with my dogs. Best idea is to feed guest dogs separately, then pick up their food dish, because you want all the dogs to feel safe and relaxed and not feel like they need to protect their food from another interested animal. Some guest dogs would react to this situation with a display of resource guarding, or stress. But in the this case, with Matilda (who is very trustworthy and gentle with other dogs, and has spent several weeklong visits at Whole Dog Camp), having a couple of other dogs munching in the same room increased her appetite!

Whole Dog Camp, Peaks Island Maine

2010-06-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Barriers and teaching freedom

2010-06-17T06:11:00.001-07:00

How do you teach a dog to come, without a shock collar or a leash, even when he would rather do something else?There are many different ideas, wives tales and also real science that have things to say on this topic, and more than any other behavior, this one requires that you know your dog.

I've seen lots of puppy owners lately who have the superstitious belief that they can circumvent this whole problem by just letting the dog do what he wants most of the time. They keep the dog off leash, no crate, no kennel, and if the dog survives (though typically in my neighborbood, the dogs get maimed, killed, or serious behavior problems around 8 - 10 months of age, when they become more confident and start moving faster, chasing things, venturing further afield) this works great, that is, until your dog has to go into an unfamiliar environment, like the city, an airplane, a veterinarian's office, a storm emergency shelter, and the staff needs to crate your dog, or you need to leash your dog.

The reason why people believe that just giving the dog freedom works, is because sometimes, very rarely, this really DOES work. How can you know in advance whether this will work for your dog? If your puppy shows no interest in chasing squirrels, bees, skateboarders, deer, car, cats, birds, kids, or anything, and if your puppy is not likely to get hit by a car while peeing on the side of the road, and if you don't ever plan on taking your dog anyplace where he might be required to be crated (soon to be a law for all automobile transport), or leashed (already a law in many locations), if your dog is big enough that another dog couldn't kill him, and confident enough that he wouldn't hurt a hair on another dog's head, this means if your dog is a really VERY unusual and special dog, with an unusual and special lifestyle, then you don't need to train him, you can just depend on love.

Puppies typically don't have a lot of problems. They don't have storm phobia, aggression, separation anxiety, they don't chase cars or cats or kill chickens till they are around 10 months old. They might not have to spend a few days in a veterinarian hospital until they a year old and have a broken leg. They don't tend to show separation anxiety, or storm phobia until they are 2 or three years old. And that's when the "give 'em freedom" philosophy often falls apart, and people wish they'd trained their dogs to walk nicely on a leash, to rest quietly in a crate, to hang out and relax alone on cue. I'll write more on this topic, about the down side of barriers, and what we can do to reduce the dog's awareness of barriers.

Some Handler Moves for Loose Leash Walking

2010-06-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Authors Table at Peaks Fest

2010-06-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'll be manning the authors table as well as the Whole Dog Camp table, on the dock at Peaks Island for Peaks Fest June 19th. Then, as Peaks Fest continues through the weekend, we'll have an open house June 20th from about 3 till about 6 pm. It's a party, and it's also a chance for you to test your dog! Don't worry, you're the person who assigns the grade as you work your dog through a number of assignments, and rate your cues! It should be a fun and eye-opening weekend, and not just because the peonies will be in bloom.

This weekend is also a launch party for my first novel, the Whole Stunned World, which is available now on Amazon.com, also on Kindle, and I'll have copies to sell and sign. http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Stunned-World-Between-Boston/dp/1449567770

Talking to Children about the Gulf Oil Disaster

2010-06-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

A nice old woman on the island was telling me about many difficult years she experienced as her husband declined and died, and how she did her best to avoid telling her children or grandchildren about how difficult those times really were. "Let children be children," she said. "They don't need to be thinking about that."

Her advice came instantly to my mind when I read a little report, written by a fifth grader, for the local elementary school newspaper. It was explaining how the oil spill is a terrible thing, and asking readers to try to imagine how terrible it really is, and it expressed fear at the thought that something like that could happen here in Maine, too.

None of us are emotionally able to imagine how terrible this disaster really is. And unless you are immediately involved in the response, or if you are a scientist or thinker or doer who can contribute to resolving the problem, it might not be productive to spend much time suffering about how this is going to play out in various impacts over the rest of our lives. I'm not saying don't think about it, but it's too easy to make yourself sick when you think about it, so be careful.
And be even more careful when sharing this information with children. Let children be children.

Our children are not responsible for this disaster. They will have plenty of opportunities in high school and college to invent solutions to our energy and environmental crises, and hopefully they are already recycling, reusing, and avoiding waste. But let's not terrorize them with our knowledge. This is their world, and their future that is being wounded, and 10 years old is a scary time to get that news.

Children need to be optimistic in order to do all the things that children need to do. Children need to be able to dream, hope, plan, experiment, dare. They aren't supposed to be solving the problems of the world, they are supposed to be falling in love with it, falling in "trust" with life. We want to cultivate courage in our children and not scare or depress them to death.

Tell them about heroes, and all the great things our heroes do and have done. Tell them about miracles, big and small. Tell them about micro-organisms that eat pollution. Tell them about the inventor who invented that cool polymer that absorbs oil out of water (here's a science kit to demo the product http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/1265 ). Tell them, if you have to talk about the spill, about women who have been making booms out of human hair (http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/gulf_coast_oil_spill_fought_wi.html). Amaze them in visits to museums. Read them stories about triumphs over tragedies.

But don't worry them about how the Gulf coast is likely to be damaged if a hurricane hits. Don't let them watch the news or be bombarded with this story that only becomes more terrifying the more we know. And don't terrify yourself if you can help it. We're all in the same boat here. And we're the men and women. And they are the children.

"Jumping Up" (and scroll down for Matilda and Maddie)

2010-05-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dogs jump up and all over you for many reasons. Often, it's because they are very excited, and they have this surge of emotion that they really just don't know what to do with, and then the human response reinforces the dog's behavior. And sometimes we humans are a bit conflicted regarding the behavior. Especially if the dog's fur is soft and the temperament is friendly and sweet, some people will love it when the dog jumps up, and other people will hate it. The people who love it pet the dog who jumps and the people who hate it give the dog a shove (which the dog misinterprets as play), and both are reinforcing the behavior.

And so the dog maybe gets mixed messages, gets more agitated, hopes you want to play and jumps more! So, first step is to make sure your dog really understands the cue for "off." In our cuing system, "off" means put all four paws on the ground. We want the dog to learn this behavior and ENJOY this "off" behavior. We don't want to say "off" in a stern voice, especially in the learning phase, as that might make the dog think that "off" makes you angry and isn't a very fun thing to do.

I practice "paws up" and "off" on me too, while I am standing, walking, sitting and on the floor. Once you put the cue into play in "real life," make sure you continue to generously reinforce it. Often, you don't need food, but simply generous petting. Many dogs think the only way they can really get petted or physical roughhousing is when they jump up, so make the game "I tackle you with affection when the paws are all on the ground." Once the dog is gluing himself to the ground in order to get affection, you can cue "off" before the dog delivers a habit behavior, and then dive-bomb that dog, petting as long as his paws are on the floor. If you cue "off" and stand there looking like you expect something to happen, this might confuse the dog about who is supposed to make the next move. It's your move! Cue "off" and reward it!

Here's another little clip so Anna will know that Matilda is also having fun. I like this clip because it shows Matilda performing a very polite "look away." This is the opposite of staring, and here, Maddie is parading around in front of Matilda with a dog bone. Matilda is doing the very polite thing of COMPLETELY ignoring Maddie's behavior. See how her head is turned 180 degrees away from Maddie's initial display? Matilda is being a very good girl and we all love her like crazy.

Matilda gets a bit of R&R at Whole Dog Camp

2010-05-04T14:45:00.001-07:00

Matilda reports that though this is not quite as nice as going to Italy, she has throughly checked the place out and she is enjoying her stay. Dandylion reports that he wants to be big and brave just like Matilda when he grows up. Matilda also reports, "Nothing like a nice salt breeze and three other dogs salivating over your shoulder to work up an appetite!"

Dogwalker, or Dog Daycare? Which is best for you?

2010-04-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

When "dogwalkers" hear that I am a professional dog trainer, they often want to tell me their horror stories. I'm not sure why! Here are some of the stories I was told just in the past month, beginning with a story I was told yesterday.

A dogwalker brought a dog to the boat, where he was to meet up with the mom. Another leashed dog came too close, and the two dogs got tangled leashes, there was a dog fight, which escalated to a people fight including kicking, screaming, pulling leashes, and the dog owner falling to the ground and getting kicked hard by a person who was aiming at the dog. Smooth. True Peaks Island style.
Another professional dogwalker explained how she went to pick up her charge, and surprise, found no leash. So, she hoped the dog would follow her off-leash, and luckily he did. She doesn't always tell the owners, but she likes to walk dogs off-leash. It's better exercise, more fun for her and the dog. I asked "What if the dog takes off after deer, or chases a car, or gets hurt?" and she explained how she thought it could be dangerous for local CATS, that maybe one of her charges could have a chance to kill a cat, but she had a hard time believing one of the dogs could get hurt.

I recently came across this walker in the woods with an off-leash dog. I was training a dog in loose-leash walking (the one situation I do professionally "walk" dogs). I asked her about her off-leash dog. "How is that dog with other dogs?" She answered, "I don't know. I haven't had him before." Grrreat.

And when you hire a small child to walk a dog, you are really placing both in danger. Inevitably, dogwalkers of every age and size run into scary situations. What will your child do if the dog is attacked by an off-leash dog, or starts to explode off after a girl on a horse? I have a cute little neighbor, maybe 10 years old, who is often walking his big sweet dog. EVERY single time I see him, he "accidentally" drops the leash, the dog comes romping over to bark at me and my dog. At best, that's bad training that one of these days could turn into a tripped person, a car accident, a dog fight, or worse.

It is generally safer, healthier and less stressful for dogs to play in a safe fenced in yard (doggie daycare), than to walk for half an hour. Many daycares can help shy dog-reactive dogs come out of their shells and learn to relax around other dogs. Dog daycare provides socialization, exercise, entertainment and education that dogwalking can't match, and it's cheaper! If you want your dog to get safely, professionally exercised and socialized, send him to a nice dog daycare, where the handlers are trained in how to work with untrained or unknown dogs, and your dog is in a safer environment. Walking for half an hour can frustrate dogs (especially if the handler is jerking on their leashes) whereas dogs who romp and play come home exhausted, enlightened and relaxed. Daycare means your dog has support in the event of a thunderstorm, and someone who will notice if he isn't feeling well. Yes, dogwalkers might not want to see your evidence of a rabies vaccine, but compare options carefully when deciding what really works best for your family.

Dealing with Food Distractions

2010-04-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

This is a Charlie the Wonderdog clip from my video "Dealing with (big) Distractions," which will be available for download soon from my "home" website, www.wholedogcamp.com. Isn't Charlie cute, now that he's not starving anymore? And not only does he deal admirably with food distractions, but he also is healing from a cut on his front right pad.

Temperment

2010-04-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I discussed coat, and how the choice of coat will greatly influence your life with your dog. This post, lets think about something that is harder to see at a glance: temperament. Whether the dog licks and climbs up on you, or rolls over and shows you her belly; whether a puppy is outgoing and curious, or cowering behind his mother; whether a puppy "plays rough" or hardly plays. We all look at puppy behaviors when we are picking out a puppy.

But the thing is, behavior isn't stagnant. It's always changing. A full grown dog doesn't typically behave exactly like the puppy. But we can observe puppy behaviors and reliably predict some of the behavior changes that will naturally occur as dogs mature. Typically developing confident healthy dogs generally become stronger, more confident, more expressive, and more experienced, for better or worse, as they mature.You can see fairly quickly if a puppy is more interested in the humans, or the other dogs, and how he naturally reacts to stimuli in the environment.

It's harder to predict how shy, reserved puppies might react to stimuli. A puppy might bark at, quiver, freeze, shut down, chase, snap, retreat, hide, lick, bite, submissive urinate. Sensitive puppies have almost an aversion to some stimuli, which makes training more challenging . With a great education, pairing good things with manageable levels of scary stimuli, reactive, nervous and submissive dogs can grow to become more confident, wonderfully intelligent, expressive, sensitive, thoughtful dogs. But we're talking "a great education." Because without it, sensitive dogs can too easily become more sensitive, and their world gets smaller as they become less friendly.

I don't regret one second that I spent training any of my dogs, but I advise you select a naturally "cheerful" and "outgoing" pup, if you hope to save yourself some training time. Choosing the right puppy means you'll find "off-leash" games safer sooner in the training process.

You can see a great natural retrieving interest when the puppy not only runs to get a crumpled up ball of paper, but also when he brings it right back to you. Doing this is said to correlate with higher trainability in dogs, though it might be hard to notice the natural retrieve before handlers have taught the puppy to play keep away. You can still usually tell in puppyhood if your dog will be a natural retriever or how hard you'll have to work to teach it.

My old dog Lassie wouldn't pick up a thing. Her teeth were rotten, so there's my excuse, but even when she was a puppy, she was never much into retrieving. The upside with Lassie was, she never needed a leash or a collar. She always kept one eye on me, I never had to keep an eye on her. And if I went for a walk, she was beside me. It was just the way she was. I didn't train her to be that way. I just got it automatically. It was her natural temperament, maybe it was her achey hips, but it not at all visible when I picked her out of a shelter at two years old. The only thing I could see was that unlike all the other dogs there, she wasn't barking her brains out, but she was sitting there with her head cocked, silently watching me.

Recently I saw a poodle, carrying a toy in his mouth, obviously a great retriever. I asked the poodle's guardian how her dog reacted to squirrels. "He doesn't seem to notice them," she said. It left me feeling jealous. Tigerlily's retrieve is incredible, but just don't ask her to prove it around squirrels. Different dogs come with such different natural interests and abilities. If you're lucky, you'll have a chance to think ahead about what sort of interests or abilities you are taking on when choosing your puppy.

What do you look for, and how do you judge temperament in puppies?

Before you get your puppy: consider hair, or fur?

2010-04-19T05:59:00.001-07:00

You're going to get a puppy. But, which puppy should you get? Think for a moment about the dog's coat.

Shedding or non-shedding I like my non-shedding dogs, because I can hold them in my lap, sleep with them in the van or the boat or our bed and we're not covered in dog hair. There are many breeds that are non-shedding. I bathe my non-shedding dogs bi-weekly, they smell like shampoo and hair conditioner, they are clean and sweet to cuddle, but there is a down-side to this feature: grooming. I groomed my own dogs for three years before I surrendered and trusted "The Pet Stop" to clip them, four to six times a year. Finding a good groomer is like finding a good pediatrician. Trust me, if your dog has hair that grows longer instead of fur that sheds, you'll need one.

If I take Charlie and Tigerlily out for a walk and they both run into the swamp, Tigerlily emerges looking like a mudpie and Charlie comes out clean as a whistle. I bathe both dogs, Tigerlily requires three rinses as the water starts out black, and Charlie the water runs clean from the start. So poodles, waterdogs, spaniels all need to be bathed and groomed, as they become uncomfortably matter unless they are regularly groomed & clipped. Spaniels, though, with their shiny smoother coats might have easier care than poodles with kinkier hair collecting more mud.

Charlie is at the other extreme of dog coats: short, smooth, shiny, shedding. It's what we call a "Teflon" coat: Dirt just can't penetrate. His coat is so short I could find a tiny tick in it, but in winter, a sweater or coat, and a cozy bed, is necessary. He remains very clean with very little grooming. Downside is the twice a year he sheds. I wind up with dog hair all over the place, especially on my black coat. The more hair, the more a dog will need to shed. Long coated dogs also get burrs and bugs and tangles, but they are lovely to brush and so soft to hold! Smooth short coats can also be silky and showy, and are easier to manage.

Think about what sort of coat you want to find in a puppy. Long thick coats are important for SAR dogs who must be able to work in cold or wet conditions.

I used to have a long coated shedding dog who did great in snow, and didn't slip on ice, and as she got older, she increasingly shed year-round, big gobs of hair. I had to vaccuum every single day, and I also groomed her daily, and she collected dirt and smelled; yet she was heavy (75lbs), had hip displasia, so getting her into and out of the tub for a bath was a project. I decided that my next dogs would weigh less, so it would be easier for me to get them in and out of the tub.

Every once in a while now, I still manage to find a hair that I think belonged to Lassie. When you are selecting your puppy, one thing you can consider as you make your choice is the coat. The dog's coat will have an influence on your whole family lifestyle.

Canine Anxiety

2010-03-21T12:27:00.001-07:00

If your dog is "anxious," it means he doesn't know how to relax on cue. Anxious isn't just fearful or nervous. Anxious dogs aren't simply reactive to certain scary things, but they seem to be anxious much of the time. You can't just take a break from the anxious dog when you need a break, you can't just let your dog go spend the night with the neighbor. Anxious dogs might bark incessantly, pace around. S/he might follow you constantly, they won't let you out of their sight, or the opposite --they head for the hills and never look back. Anxious dogs often seem to have "butterflies" in their stomachs, manifesting either in very picky eaters who won't take food reinforcements (making it difficult to train) or in dogs who can't stop eating, who wolf down all their food and then go on to eat socks, rocks, toys, sticks, and drywall. They often drink a lot of water. Anxious dogs tend to get gastrointestinal disorders (diarrhea, throw-ups). They react to different things -- some dogs are very storm phobic, others are fearful of people or other dogs, and some just can't be left alone in their own house (or in a boarding kennel!). A whole lot of people seem to have anxious dogs lately, but there are some simple things you can do to help your anxious dog:

1. First, go and visit a veterinary behaviorist, such as Dr. Nicholas Dodman at Tufts University, and get the right prescription medication. Unfortunately, most veterinarians are still prescribing acepromazine for canine anxiety, which stops immediate symptoms but can make canine emotional anxiety and behavior prognosis worse (google acepromazine and Dr. Karen Overall, or go to http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/dvm/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=136493&sk=&date=&pageID=3 ). There are better drugs today available, which address the dog's anxiety, not just the dog's muscle function. The correct drug can make it far easier for dogs to practice relaxing. For most anxious dogs, medication is only necessary during the learning stage. Medication makes it easier to break the habit cycle of anxiety, and dogs typically don't need the medication once they have new "relaxed" habits in place.

2. Crate train your dog. A crate is not a cage, it is a conditioned relaxation cue -- or at least it will be. How? Have your dogs practice eating treats and meals in the crate, and then build up to eating treats and meals with the door closed, and close the dog out of the crate just before he's completely finished, then let him back in to finish later, also chewing on a bone for a few minutes in the crate. I'll put more articles on crate training on my www.wholedogcamp.com site soon, and there are many other good web articles on the topic. Crate training teaches your dog to TRUST you and to TRUST confinement. It teaches dogs to enjoy a bit of alone time. Anxiety in the crate is a learned behavior, but so is relaxing and feeling safe in a crate. To teach a dog to feel safe in a crate, use food , but also reward dogs with an open door. Crate dog, and close the door. Cue the dog to "down." When the dog lays down, open the crate door. If he starts to stand, or bark, close the door. When he lays down again, open the door. Use a release cue ("ojkay") to signal the dog that he can exit the crate. All dogs have a natural inclination to den up. The more your dog practices laying down, eating breakfast, chewing dog bones, taking naps in his "den," the more you'll be able to use the crate to calm your dog whenever he displays anxiety, or demands attention. I apologize for the audio in this video clip. My husband was drilling a hole in a piece of plexi-glass in the background, so this dog was being a very good girl, staying quietly in the crate, even during an obnoxious sound.

3. Eating is a very relaxing activity for dogs, but sometimes THINKING about eating is upsetting! Some dogs get into a panic over it! So it helps if you ritualize eating, that is, train the dog to lay down by the food bowl while you prepare the meal, don't let him practice barking at you or otherwise freaking out while you are getting the meal. Also it is more relaxing, and healthier for the dog, if you can prolong the feeding (without increasing the amount of food). Rather than just leaving a bowl of food out, I feed anxious dogs by moistening their food, and stuffing it into a Kong. If a dog has to really work at getting his food, and chew and chew for quite a while, this can really help him/her feel they have really had a nice eating session. I also give dogs raw beef bones (not nylabones) to chew in the crate. Nourishing food is important, and really working for the food is helps anxious dogs. I sometimes just chuck a handful of dog food into the snow and cue the dogs to "find it" as sniffing out the food is less boring and more work than just getting a bowl of chow delivered. Today, I stuffed a kong on a rope, and tossed the kong under the couch. The dog (who suffers from separation anxiety, but she has a great appetite!) figured out that she had to pull on the rope to get the kong, and this project kept her happily, peacefully occupied all by herself for quite a while. I called her in just before she finished chewing the kong as I like to "Leave 'em wanting more!"

4. Fence in your yard. Having a regular fence, and not an electric fence, keeps cats and dogs out of your yard, and reduces your dog's anxiety. I also using a long line to give dogs safety with a sense of freedom. Lots of exercise and opportunities to sniff around and explore really help dogs feel peaceful. Dogs need some interesting habitat, and opportunities to exercise, sniff around and socialize. We all need healthy habitat. When you give it your dog, you enrich your own life as well.

There are also anxiety wraps and DAP spray, calming caps and other tools that you can take on the road with your anxious dog. What ideas (and or medications?) have you found useful?

Do dogs think? (Video of thinking dog)

2010-01-28T05:45:00.000-08:00

I've had some on-line discussions about whether dogs think or not, and I am sure they do. In fact, I get more and more sure about that every day.

I have a camera again and so I'm back to videotaping training sessions (that's the way to become your own best teacher!), and here is a funny 2 minute session. In my method, dogs sorta HAVE to think, and just like us, sometimes they don't know the answer to a puzzle! I ask her to sit pretty on the mat, and I think my tone of voice or something confused her. Look at this video and you tell me: can dogs think? (this is sort of a retort to Kevin Behan, who's presence on earth I enjoy and I'd love to meet and train with someday, but I do disagree with him on the dogs not thinking concept).

Why we want what we want

2010-01-24T05:19:00.000-08:00

Joey Houdini is with us again for about a week, and his wants are interesting to observe. When we first met Joey, he seemed to want nothing but a very dangerous sort of freedom. He was in a panic about life in general, and especially panicky about weather, and rather than wanting to hide or cuddle, he only want to escape and go, go, go. He couldn't bear any sort of confinement, and especially freaked regarding crates.

Last year, I spent the year thinking about "what do I want?" This year, my theme is going to be motivation, or "why do I want what I want?" Both questions are pretty easy from a behavioral perspective to analyze, but from a personal perspective, it's good to keep in touch with out (sometimes crazy) wants, and understand where they come from.

Our primary wants are survival and freedom from suffering sorts of things: food, water, physical comforts, group alliance. Our secondary wants, like to sing, play guitar, dance, swim, garden, write come from our successful interactions with the environment, where these secondary rewards have a demonstrated ability to help us ensure and beef up the security of the primary wants. For example, we sing people emerge from rubble and sing, because in the past, singing has proven to provide relief from suffering.

In Joey's lifetime, he learned that getting excited and hyped up and them bashing his way out of confinement was a great way to find himself jogging down the road. His destructive escape behaviors made it very hard to keep Joey. So his training plan this year has been all about teaching him that the way to get what he wants is to lay down and relax. Last summer, we played this game with the crate. Now we play it with the east deck. He doesn't need to bash and bark his way out, he can just lay down and wait, and that is what will open the door for him.

Why Do We Do Anything?

2010-01-21T04:22:00.000-08:00

We humans stay busy, but why? Sometimes it can seem like a Buddhist sand-painting, painstaking work, swept into a dustpan, and tossed into the sea.

So, I've been working on this novel since 1998, and I finally had it all finished, I was thinking of just cleaning up these little formatting details, and somehow I have run into a computer glitch that every step I do, something else about the document screws up. REALLY screws up. And so it feels really terrible, like the hand of God is just saying no, I will never be able to move on, that no matter what I do nothing will work. And like the novels are the things that don't sell, hard to find readers, and it looks like all these hours ahead that really I should be working on something else, as I have several other projects that are calling to me. But what if I screw up their formatting too? My computer seems to be betraying me.

And of course it feels even worse than that in Haiti. I imagine myself dying between the crushed walls of some building, thinking, oh well. There go my plans. I can't believe I was ever worried about my stupid computer, and whether or not I wasted 10 years of my life writing a short novel! And these sort of thoughts make me think about why we do what we do?

When People Turn on Each Other

2010-01-20T05:47:00.000-08:00

We like to think that we would be noble in a disaster. But if we were in a place with 100 people, and only one bottle of water, and we had a child who was likely to die without that water, we don't know what we'd do, or how we'd act. We can't imagine what it would be like to suffer the sort of trauma Haitians are suffering now, after all the trauma of poverty and flood and hunger and illness and despotism that they have suffered in the past.

But what we are seeing in Haiti isn't just a product of nature. It is a product of poverty, of people crowded into shanty towns in an unstable corner of the world. Our economic concerns and interests are pitted daily against the economic concerns of people all over the world, and some days it appears that the West is winning. So far, we are the winners who wind up with the water.

Some might be watching the people of Haiti, casting judgemental eyes on people who "loot" (I wouldn't call getting food from crushed stores "looting," I'd just say it's sensible), or fight over food or money. But I say, look at your own behavior. We fight to hang onto our resources too. It's just that when we fight, it's not so difficult to win.

How do you present yourself?

2010-01-04T03:48:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why people, kids usually, have pictures of themselves on the internet drunk, stoned, or you know, tongue out and drooling.

You'd think, being a "public" forum, much like Town Hall, that people would "dress themselves up" for it.

I'm thinking this way partly because of a fun party I went to last night, at very dear friend, artist Ted Haykal's. Two of the people who were there, I've known for 25 years, Ted Haykal and Mary Lavendiere (also an incredible artist!), and her husband Henry, who we've also known for maybe 20 years? Not sure how long they've been married.

And also Annie OBrien, another artist and writer was there, my island neighbor from way back, and Kevin Attra and Rhonda Dale, and all these other similarly creative interesting people who I've met in more recent years, and some I was just meeting. Ted always has the best parties.

So Ted had told me to bring my guitar, he insisted that I should sing, and so when I was getting ready I thought, "this is a good excuse for lipstick."

And I wanted to do something really dramatic with my eyes. And I had gold-brown eyeliner that has a slight glitter, and mascara, and purple and silver eye-shadow, and I had a really great outfit, this riding jacket I'd bought on e-bay and a glorious scarf Echo found down in the horsebarn.

But I looked horrifying when I finished with the make-up. I should have taken pictures, but suffice to say at this age, less is more.

So I took it all off, and the whole process made me laugh at myself and whatever it was that I was trying to do with the make-up.

Then I went to make my impression, whatever it would be, at the party. A first thing that happened was one of my still newish hearing aids went "squack!" in my ear, apparently the battery was dying, and I had to publicly grab it out of my ear (my hearing aid feels very private to me, sort of like my diaphragm). And then I only had one functional hearing aid for the rest of the party.

I want to come across as a good listener, as youthful, intelligent. But I have to use the body and the life that I have now, not the body I had when I was twenty. So I went ahead and felt the music and I was able to sing along. I don't know if I was on pitch or not, but I don't really need to know.

Charlie has been asking me to do something special for a week, so Charlie was the "special privilege" dog who got to go to his first party last night! And he was a very good boy, just exactly like he promised, sweet with everyone, and laying down neatly and politely where asked, responsive to requests to stay off, no counter surfing, people helped me train him, gave him a fantastic first party experience there. Charlie made my heart burst with pride.

"Help! My dog doesn't love me!"

2009-12-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

This is a common fear of pet owners who land on my door, and other trainers have told me that they hear the same thing, from typically new pet owners (who got their pets less than a year ago): "My dog doesn't love me!"

Why is this fear so prevalent? I have a list of reasons.

1. The dog doesn't know his name. A name is a cue for a behavior (look at me), and if you say the dog's name and you don't see the dog respond immediately, it can sure look like a snub. But we need to train the dog to respond to his name methodically, much like we train a sit, a down, or a roll-over, otherwise dogs don't know they are supposed to do something when they hear their name. Dog's don't learn their name by hearing it over and over again, in fact, that just teaches the dog to ignore it. But after we have trained the dog to respond by looking up at us eagerly when he hears his name, that behavior looks a lot like love.

2. The handler doesn't love the dog. Dogs can be difficult. Owning a dog isn't all a bed of roses, and the first year can be particularly trying. Managing and training a dog is a lot of work, and handlers get frustrated. We are used to using the English language to get what we want, but dogs aren't born understanding words. If you sit there and say "no bite! no bite!" while sticking your hand in their mouth, the dog is thinking you are saying, "here, chew on this." Saying something louder doesn't help dogs understand. It is difficult to love dogs who bite, chew, jump up, pee, poop, or drag you out of bed in the morning or wake you up at night. Handlers didn't realize they were getting a full-time job when they got a dog, but dogs, especially puppies or untrained rescue dogs, require a lot of training. So they don't love their dog, but they blame it on the dog. "He doesn't love me." Hey, the dog didn't buy you, you bought the dog. It shouldn't matter if the dog loves you. What really matters is whether you love the dog enough to give the dog what he obviously needs: an education. Take the time (and the classes) to teach your dog a language. Don't expect him to automatically understand English.

3. The handler doesn't love him/herself. Before you got this dog, maybe you thought you were great with dogs, a natural with dogs, and you might even be the next Dog Whisperer. But dogs are put on earth to humble us. Unlike the old dog who was easy, the new dog might chase cats or kids or pee on the furniture or chew on the doors.That's what new dogs do. They make you look like an idiot. That's their job. But it doesn't mean you really ARE an idiot, it doesn't mean that you're not loveable, and it doesn't mean that your dog doesn't love you. It means, you have things to learn. Let the dog humble you enough to recognize that you need some education. You won't become a better trainer by hiding in your living room with your books and your dog. Being a dog trainer is a lot like learning to play tennis. There are physical skills required, and you need a coach. Get a coach, and learn how to train your dog and you'll see: your dog will love you for it.

Garden Planning

2009-12-13T06:59:00.000-08:00

One of the things we do at this time of year is move around a lot of squash. It's all "cured" now and ready to be stored.

We eat a LOT of squash, and if you grow your own food, you'd be smart to read about all the kinds of yummy squash and pumpkin there are, as these foods make a delicious nutritious staple, and you get a lot of productivity out of a family plot.

I always think productivity in gardening. I try to grow crops that are too expensive to buy, like grapes, basil, garlic, tomatoes, red peppers, greens of all varieties, peas and beans. I don't try to grow wheat or rice or often, potatoes, as these crops in my area are cheap to buy. Due to tomato end blight, we grow our tomatoes in this plastic hoop greenhouse (we also grow peppers and eggplants and basil and sometimes melon in here). We tried this year, for the first time in years, growing a few tomato plants outdoors again, but we lost all those to endblight. Our tomatoes in the greenhouse did great, and we got twenty pounds of tomatoes out of this greenhouse in November.

I also want my garden to be easy on me, so I get a lot of mileage out of perennial crops. Our peach tree is worth it's weight in gold peaches, so I fertilize it every year, after the ground has frozen (right now is ideal).

I keep rethinking what I grow, and often I have to change my eating habits to accomadate what we grow. I have all sorts of recipes for squash centered meals, but I need to get used to eating more jerusalem artichoke. They grow easily, they are nutritous and delicious in stir fry with garlic scapes, but eating it is like eating a big bowl of figs. It's important to be careful not to eat too much.

I've been working on getting crops of hazelnuts and kiwi now for several years, I am hoping they will be coming along, I haven't yet collected my harvest, but maybe this year. Hazelnuts are high protein, high fat, excellent food source, and they grow sorta like lilac bushes. The nuts are delivered in big fat cobs, and you can whirl them into hazelnut milk, or make a nutritious meal for baking into breads and cookies. I have some bushes I planted a long time ago, but I am thinking they needed a second variety for pollination. I got some amazing new baby hazelnuts that should deliver very big cobs, and the two varities growing together will be more productive than either alone.

The kiwiws have been growing on the training yard fence for four years now, and so typically they begin bearing fruit in their fifth year. They sure look ready to explode, I have to continually cut them back or they attempt to hang out over the dogwalk. I've had friends with kiwis, and they typically wind up with huge baskets of kiwi to give away. I like the kind of productivity where otherwise not very useful pieces of land, like the garden along a chainlink fence, delivers so much food you have to give it away.

Ideas I'm stealing from Terry Ryan

2009-12-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

I just got back from chicken camp 1 with Terry Ryan, in Sequim Wa. (where the weather outside was quite cold and decembery), and I got several great teaching ideas that I intend to steal.

One idea is just this idea of team training. She had people training together, taking turns acting as a "coach" and as a "trainer." That idea alone for me was worth the price of admission, as it's a great way to make all the training criteria easier for all involved, and it gives trainers more perspectives and more skill practice in every area.

Each trainer was working with two chickens, so my partner and I were working with a total of four chickens. This chick was just weeks old, and I shaped her to circle around the cone. Terry said that chickens respond pretty well to verbal cues as well, and it wouldn't be hard to vary this behavior to twists and twirls and a sort of dancing. It was super fun, happening so fast that everyone is sort of panting with excitement. I also had an older "rescue" hen (debeaked) who I used as my "discrimination" bird. That means I was training her to peck a hexagon shape, and not the heart or the triangle shape. I wound up video taping my partner and didn't get later shots of this, but here's a clip of when we were still working with just the 2 part discrimination, before we'd added the triangle.

Am I just a training geek or do others admit that this is probably the most entertaining game the world has ever played?

Punishment and Dog Training

2009-12-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

And I like and enjoy all sorts of people, but I don't approve of all sorts of dog training methods.Punishment can cause harm. I'm not saying I never ever use applied punishment, but it is extremely risky, very tricky to apply properly, the results are not always predictable. You tend to get lots of unintended side effects. When I am asked for a referral, I avoid referring clients to trainers who use applied punishment as a first resort.

For example, there is a local trainer, in Maine, who is a very nice person, but I don't refer to her, because several years ago she tried to convince me to spray my shy reactive waterdog puppy in the face with mouthwash every time she reacted to another dog. I didn't approve. Aside from the immediate risk of getting spray in the dog's eyes, punishing a scared dog is like adding gasoline to a flame. Maybe the dog will shut down (and my puppy shut down way too easily) or maybe it will cause her to increase her reactivity. There are too many things a dog COULD do when sprayed in the face (fear you, run off and hide, throw up, freeze, squirm, snap, have a nervous breakdown, develop fear of the handler's hand, or fear of spraying noises). I don't like to gamble when I am training. I want to be able to predict and control the results, even if those results are predictably going to be slow and steady. I do that with reinforcement.

When a trainer is doing some unorthodox, like spraying client dogs in the face with mouthwash, she might get some immediate results (the dog stopped barking!), but some results (the dog is becoming more aggressive! or more fearful!) might not be visible immediately.

Anything work sometimes. And some dogs don't care if you spray them in the face with a firehose. But sometimes, punishment really causes problems. In general, when we have reactive or aggressive or anxious dogs, it is very important to avoid punishment, which can increase reactive and aggressive anxiety. It's not just me saying this. It's Tufts University, American Veterinary Behaviorists Association, it's many other trainers. Instead, we focus on controlling reinforcement.

Dog trainers collect the same variety of dogs that anyone else has. We have mellow dogs, intense dogs, shy dogs, middle of the road dogs, reactive dogs, hunting dogs, herding dogs, territorial dogs, little dogs who don't like rain. Just as you'll find parents who have smart kids, shy kids, hyper-active kids and kids who need braces. Some dogs are born to chase squirrels, other dogs would never chase a fly. Some dogs are easier to train than other dogs. Some dogs are better at agility or SAR or obedience than other dogs. Some dogs have problem behaviors, others have no issues. Just because someone has a mellow old lab and you have a reactive young collie doesn't mean that the owner of the lab has the advice that is right for your dog. Trust yourself. Trust what you know about your dog. Good things don't happen overnight. Dogs, and trainers, need time to grow. It's a step by step by step learning and maturing process. I think people who use mouthwash are in too much of a rush, and they hurrier they go, the behinder they will get.

The Whole Stunned World Between Boston and Burma

2009-11-23T13:07:00.000-08:00

The Whole Stunned World Between Boston and Burma

Preview

Separated from loved ones in the 1988 Burmese pro-democracy uprisings, married to Robert while pregnant with Maung's baby, Gurney never expected this life in Boston. Gurney can't choose her fate, but she must decide where her loyalties lie.

My first novel will be published in the next few weeks, and so here's a preview (the first chapter). If this first chapter hooks you, please review and share it.

https://www.createspace.com/pub/community/give.review.do?id=1062370&rewrite=true

Joey Houdini

2009-11-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

I thought you might like to see how Joey Houdini went out for Halloween. Susan sent me these. Joey is doing great. And that's his friend, Dante. I'd give them a treat for that. Joey is here now, and he's being as good as gold. No more amazing death defying feats.

Bite Inhibition

2009-11-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

Puppies teach puppies bite inhibition, but say your puppy was an only puppy. Or maybe the puppy was removed from the whelping pen too early, before he learned that it hurts when he bites. Or maybe you're a puppy with an adrenaline problem, and biting things makes you feel safer, or more comfortable; or if you get scared, you gnash the air and just bite at whatever is in the way.

Adult dogs that have an unacceptable bite history -- and I am not including puppies in this rule, as puppy biting is a normal part of growing up, and needs to be managed in other ways -- ought to be muzzle trained. I use the "puncture" rule. Any adult dog that has punctured any pet or person needs to be wearing a muzzle anywhere he could possibly make that mistake again. But they also need to be taught bite inhibition, and you don't do that with the muzzle on. So, I play with a dog's teeth and tongue and gums when she is in a safe, low distraction setting, helping her become more aware of what her teeth should and shouldn't be doing. And then, "tether the camel" by using the muzzle in EVERY situation where the dog might possibly attempt to "bite."

One way you can tell a dog didn't learn good bite inhibition, is they bite hard enough to do damage. But it's also sometimes visible before a dog makes his first bite in dogs who, when they get excited, grab at clothing or hands with teeth, or jump face up towards face, or attempt to nip the handler in the butt! Muzzle training means, teach the dog to love and trust and feel comfortable in the muzzle. If you see the dog attempting to remove the muzzle, it means either you went too fast, or you didn't reinforce it enough, or both. Scroll down in this blog for video clips of Ginger's first introduction to the muzzle. Only if you reinforce the muzzle generously, can it become a great tool that will allow you to safely socialize dogs without good bite inhibition.

If you have a puppy in this situation, we train to a head halter, so that we can prevent the dog from biting us. All we need with a puppy biter is the ability to control his head and handle him safely, managing situations where play biting is more the problem.

I've had several people say , when they hear tales of canine aggressive behaviors, you've just got to teach that dog who's boss. But meeting aggression with aggression (even subtle threatening) is a bad idea with any dog. If you act aggressively towards your dog, it increases your dog's anxiety and fear, and canine fear and aggression go together.

Ironically, although some people would say that this yellow lab is a "dominant" dog, my goal in training her is to build up her confidence. Dogs behave best when they trust their leadership . Dominating a dog, that is, simply bossing her around, will not build a dog's trust.

Hand targeting is another game that helps dogs develop bite inhibition. You should make sure that your dogs never second guess your hands. They should know that those hands are safe places ALWAYS. You want your dog to trust you, trust your hands, trust your cues, and follow your leadership because they believe in you. That means you need to be very generous in meeting the dog's needs, but it doesn't mean letting your dog boss your around. But unlike the video clips I've seen of Cesar Millan, we never have any need to hiss, yank, choke, hang, terrify nor knock a dog nearly unconscious and exhausted to the floor. In contrast with Cesar Millan's technique, I guess my method must seem a bit boring!

Playing a lot with the dog's teeth. Mark and reinforce the dog for using the tongue and a licking motion to get treats out of your hand, rather than for biting treats out of your hand. Stick fingers in your dog's mouth every day, teach her to bite onto tugs toys, give her an outlet and teach when it's okay to clamp down with her teeth.Deliver a lot of dog bones.

Do you sleep with your dog?

2009-11-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

My dogs sleep in my bed. Well, I should add, usually. Often. Sometimes I kick them out, and other times if I can't sleep I call the dogs and one or two will volunteer to snore in my ear. There is nothing that helps me sleep quite so soundly as the sound of a dog snoring in my ear. Personally, I don't think I'd bother with owning dogs if I wasn't ever allowed to sleep with them! It's one of life's little luxuries, a clean cuddly dog in the bed. When we travel, we all sleep together in the boat or tent or the hotel or the van, and it's a nice safe feeling. I conk out, and Charlie keeps one ear up all night long.

But I don't think every dog should be allowed in every bed. This is not a one size fits all situation. One rule I have is that if there is EVER even the slightest hint of a growl in the bed, that dog is banned forever from the bed. It's really not a place where you'd ever want to have a dog fight, and so if any dogs are competitive or if they might think it is THEIR bed, then forget it. Out. It's your bed and that goes unquestioned. If the dog starts thinking, "this is my bed" or "my chair" you can't let the dog in the bed. Another rule I have is only my personal dogs are allowed in my bed. Guests dogs are NEVER allowed to join our casual crowd. That's just not safe.

But in my house, my dogs know the bed is definitely the human's bed. They know it is an incredible privilege to be in the bed, and they sigh as though they have died and gone to heaven when then jump up and snuggle into my arms. It's kinda cold here in Maine, and sometimes they join me because they are chilly (Charlie has very short fur, and Tigerlily gets clipped), and usually when they are chilly, I am chilly. Sharing the bed for us is a win-win situation.

But if your dog has perhaps gotten into ticks today, or has fleas or sheds or just hasn't had a bath, then you don't want ticks in your bed, you need to have another sleeping alternative trained and in place! But I learn a lot from sleeping with my dogs. They seem to want to get in the bed more often when they are newly adopted, like little kids, and they slowly outgrow it. Charlie sleeps with us more than Tigerlily now (she's 4 and he's 2), and he whispers little things before he goes to sleep. He used to lay his cheek on my cheek, and sigh, and flubber his lips. I wouldn't have missed that for the world. And we're all fairly sensitive animals here, sleeping together helps us unwind. But when I really am trying to get high levels of performance for an agility or freestyle event, I have the dogs sleep in their crates. My dogs never argue, they've been trained to sleep quietly happily in their crates, but they wake up a bit more desperate to please, and they perform with more zip. And regularly, like if they are hogging the covers, or if my husband and I want a bit of private time, I make sure they stay in practice with sleeping elsewhere. Sharing the bed feels nice and right for us, but maybe that's because my dogs are smallish. Charlie is 50lbs, the others are less than half that. I never let my old St. Bernard in the bed. So, what do you think? Do YOU let your dog sleep with you in your bed?

Boundaries, frustration and healing canine aggression

2009-10-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

Some dogs, like my Charlie, and even more so, Tigerlily when she was little, bark or hoot, whine, make noises at other dogs. I call this "talking." Tigerlily was usually saying "stay away from me you big hairy idiot!" Not very nice or polite, but it wasn't dangerous and it didn't mean I am a horrible trainer because I couldn't gag her. Charlie says things like "um, ah, you better just leave me alone? You better not be troublesome? Because I'd kind of like to meet you? Should we sniff?!" Again, it's kind of stupid commentary, but dog talk is perfectly fine and natural, especially when dogs are young. There is a person on the Peaks Island ferry who sneers angrily every time he sees two-year old Charlie making his slightly nervous little funny noises, and so I assume this happens to lots of people. Ignore those arrogrant people with silent boring dogs! Maybe someday, they'll get a more typical dog and learn something.

Contrast the "social talkers" with a dog like Ginger, who barks insanely for exercise, or to demand something of the humans, but she doesn't have anything to say to dogs in social situations. She thinks dogs are just vermin. If a dog gets too close, she just might suddenly flail and gnash her teeth. An inexperienced trainer could easily make a very big mistake with Ginger, because she is a cuddly sweet labrador retriever one moment, exactly the sort of dog people say, "she'd never bite," but she would. Bites happen when dogs build up adrenaline and they don't know what to do with it. Ginger needs careful management while she learns how to control her adrenaline.

There is a dog tied out across the street from the Peaks Island store who displays a perfect example of a "boundary aggression." Dogs on tie-outs often build up adrenaline and excitement when something tantalizes or provokes them, just out of reach. Bad things happen when the chain suddenly breaks. On Peaks Island several years ago, a dog on that same tie-out broke the chain, raced across the street and ripped a bichon out of her owners' arms and killed it. Dogs on tie-outs, especially in stimulating situations, frequently develop a dangerous adrenaline habit. You see that in leashed aggression or dogs who fence fight. They get tantalized and teased by things passing by, their adrenaline mounts like a narcotic high. No trainer is there to tell the dog to use the adrenaline to run the agility course, or to maintain a perfect heeling pattern, but the dog needs to release the adrenaline somehow. Dogs don't feel pain when they have adrenaline coursing through their veins. Adrenaline feels good, so when these dogs get frustrated, they just conjure up more adrenaline to kill the pain. And that is dangerous.

So, Ginger is getting lots of safe opportunities to release any frustrated energy. I take her for several off-leash walks in our extensive fenced training yards every day. And she is wearing a muzzle whenever she is anywhere but in her secure crate or kennel. It's slightly inconvenient to have to put it on and take it off, but it means, she can't make a big mistake. On a little island like this one, certain people are bound to talk or panic at the sight of a muzzled dog, but get used to it. Muzzle-trained dogs are perfectly safe. (The audio on my camera is broken! Rats! Sorry about that! This clip was Ginger's very first "walk" around loose dogs while on a muzzle. She no longer even notices that she has it on.)

Muzzle training

2009-10-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Some dogs never got to see too much of the world, for two very important reasons. One, they are miserable to take for a walk! That's probably the biggest reason people bring dogs to me, and maybe this is the reason many dogs wind up in a shelter: they pull your arm right out of the socket.

But some dogs also discover that it's entertaining to get into fights with other dogs. The owners intelligently decide, we can't take this dog anywhere! The dogs lose any social skills, because they don't go anywhere. Muzzle training changes everything.

We can change the dog's life by making it safe to take her for a walk. That means, muzzle train her.

When I muzzle train a dog, I teach the dog to LOVE the muzzle. A guest was here yesterday, laughing at how much this dog already loves the muzzle. I hold out the muzzle, she stuffs her nose inside and keeps it there. And just now I muzzled her and took her for a walk around the grounds. At this point, I want her to learn that every-time we go for a walk, she wears a muzzle. Muzzle equals walk. This will help me ensure that she LOVES seeing the muzzle.

Wearing a muzzle is sort of like wearing eyeglasses or a hearing aid. It takes a little bit of time to get used to it, but then you don't even notice it. Dogs wearing wire basket muzzles can eat, drink play and do anything that other dogs can do, except bite. In a world where off-leash or out-of-control dogs often approach without an invitation, the muzzle means this dog can't possibly make a mistake.

The Truth about Dominance

2009-10-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

I just had a reader ask me to write a post with this title, and since Tigerlily had a "breakthrough" this weekend, I thought I'd try to put a response in that context. Look at this video of our performance at All Dog's Gym "All Pet Expo" on Sunday.

There are lots of articles now on the web and in print that explain why "dominance theory" (or, that theory that there is a hierarchy in wolf community in which the "top dog" rules the roost) is wrong from an ethological perspective, as wolves are more into cooperation than competition. So, you can read about that elsewhere. I have never used "dominance" theory in training, even when I re-train dogs who are aggressive, so I don't know much about dominance. All I can share is why cooperation (operant conditioning and classical conditioning) works better for me.

If you look at the video, what makes it nice is that Tigerlily is having fun. She's performing because she WANTS to. What you can't see is all the work that was required to get her to this point. Tigerlily was a very shy nervous puppy. As many old-fashioned hunting dogs are, she was extremely reactive (fearful, barking, lunging, snapping) with other dogs, even hats, umbrellas, shiny things, masks freaked her out, and she'd shut down, and want to hide. Other times, her prey-chase drive made us both crazy, and she'd point, quiver and scream in frustration at the end of her leash. But look at her confidence and balanced energy now! No leash, no collar, and there were a half dozen dogs right out of range of this camera, llamas chewing cud right around the corner and a lady holding a ferret had just walked by. This was the "All Pet" expo at All Dog's Gym in Manchester NH, and there were all kinds of small pets in cages, kids, dogs, people, and Tigerlily was cheerfully, patiently ignoring them all.

Why? Because she trusts me. She's my partner. Trust doesn't happen overnight, and trust never happens when domination is involved. Trust grows organically between partners, over time and life experience, bit by bit. I think this is the first time that she really "got" what all our preparation is about. She put together our pet therapy work (we've volunteered at Spring Harbor Hospital now for 3 years) and the freestyle practice and she had an "aha!" moment. Now four plus years old, she was regal with the other dogs, performed like a pro, schmoozed and kissed children afterward. When I brought her home she kept staring at me, it was *really* weird, sitting directly across from me on the ottoman, very alert, silently staring at me with love in her eyes. Then she'd climb into my lap and lick my face. It was as though she was telling me, "I loved it. Now I know what you've been trying to teach me all this time, okay, yes, I like the job. I agree. I think we should take it."

Tigerlily helps me and I help Tigerlily. It's a two-way relationship, but let's face it, she knows more than I do about lots of stuff. Plus, she is a much better dancer than I am! I love the things she teaches me. She teaches me to have patience, to give learning all the time it needs, to surrender, to love, to trust. If I were to try to dominate her, she'd never be able to teach me anything.

Dog Owners Survey

2009-10-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I want to thank all the people who have been responding to the Dog Owner's survey. The results are going to be very valuable, as we are getting some real numbers that can give us an idea of how people feel about training, what is working and what is difficult about owning a dog.

Right now we've got over 400 responses. If you're curious about the responses, please post a link to the survey on your homepage (one-shot blog posts or social media posts don't count). All the responses, the entire collected data, will be shared with those who recognize the value of the surveyed responses enough to commit to collecting reponses via their homepage.

But if you're more interested in the general results, and not the raw data, if you are supportive at the level of re-tweeting or facebooking or blogging, thank you so much! Once we have shared the data with other principle collectors, all the collectors will be posting their own analyses! If you'd like to help analyze the raw data, then do post a link to the survey on your homepage, and we'll be happy to share the responses, once we hit 1000 responses. This gives us a chance to have a large enough sample to glean meaningful results.

Here's the weak point of the survey in my mind, though I anticipated this issue from the start: Only a very small portion of reponses describe dogs where the respondant has considered (or managed) ending the "dog owner" relationship. This result was anticipated, as people naturally are considering dogs that they've kept, and forgetting or "not counting" the dog they had to give away, who didn't wind up truly joining the family.

So instead of including all dogs, this survey is painting a picture of the dogs who, for better and sometimes for worse, aren't the worst case scenario. These are the dogs who aren't homeless, they aren't in shelters, they aren't euthanized. Survey respondents are describing "the keepers," and challenges that are part of keeping dogs.

Working with 3 Dogs at Once

2009-10-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

I am trying to get so I can work my dogs altogether, and so I videotaped a little session so I can see what I'm doing right, and what I'm doing wrong. When you're busy training multiple dogs, you can hardly know what you're doing, because your brain is so busy concentrating on at least three things at once. It's easy to simply not see something that happens.

My basic training plan here was to reinforce the off-duty dogs for not interrupting whatever I was doing with the active dog. This has been difficult for them, so I have already been working on this by reinforcing the inactive dog for putting up with me asking for very little movement from the "active" . Here, Charlie especially was showing excellent progress, letting Tigerlily move quite a lot without trying to interrupt her (but he didn't want her running around the cones, and she knew this). This was recorded yesterday, and today I did a similar practice and they seemed to do even better. Tigerlily felt far more confident to run around the cones, enthusiastically, while the other two dogs were laying in the center.

Video tape of a belly shaping session

2009-10-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

[This video is posted on www.jennyruthyasi.blogspot.com (for my feed followers) ]and it shows a "shaping" session with Charlie. Charlie adopted us a year ago last February, when he was about one year old and dying on a beach in Puerto Rico. Dogs like him don't like to expose their belly much, they tend to lay down with belly safely on the floor, so I have been training him to get him to expose his belly. In Freestyle, I want him to do lots of rolling around on the ground someday, but also, I think teaching a dog to roll over helps him practice confident attitude, relaxation, it helps him flex and strengthen his body, and it helps him learn how to think, and follow the "click" too. So, you can see how easy it is even for a formerly feral dog to learn how to follow my reinforcement marker signal.

You can see he starts out by laying "down," and then he puts his "head down" and then he lays "flat" on his side. These are all behaviors I've shaped over the past year and put on cue, but I'm not cueing them here, I am just letting him offer them, and I'm marking them for reinforcement (with a tongue click), then next time he offers it, I withhold the click, so he pushed the behavior further, trying to get me to click. That's how I shape a behavior, but you'll probably get more out of watching the video than out of reading this, as I'm in a hurry and not in a writing mood.

He's so cute and I was having too much fun, so I went on too long in this session. I preer my shaping sessions to be under three minutes. A little bit of progress each day is all you need. Immediately afterwards I gave him a rub down, because that was like doing the twist, he was feeling some burn in his side muscles!! Another thing I saw when I watched this clip was that I probably should put something soft on the floor. He's more likely to lift his back legs enough to roll onto his back if the surface is softer. Tomorrow I'll do this shaping exercise with him on the bed or on the couch, to make it easier for him. I love to video tape training, as I can improve my method a great deal by watching afterwards, when you notice things that you might miss at the time. Let me know if it's helpful or interesting or if you have any questions. I'm not luring him, because I want him to learn to follow the "click" not the food.

Dog Owner's Survey

2009-10-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've put up a Dog Owner's survey, and I hope you will take it. It's just twelve multiple choice questions, with room to comment on every question, and I'm getting a lot of fascinating information back already. Please fill out the survey and share the link with your friends. I ask people to fill it out for every dog you've ever owned, but at least, don't forget the dog you had to give away opr euthanize. I want to know about the times dog-owner bonds fail as well as the times they succeed.

Take a look at the survey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5T254FK1D13exD1NEEPlJg_3d_3d Are you curious about the results? Like, wanna know how people answered the question with Cesar Millan in it? Post a link to the survey on your website, then send me your website link, and once I have over a thousand results, I'll start sharing them with you! We can get a lot of important information out of this survey if we work together, send the link around, and get lots and lots of responses.

Behavior Science

2009-10-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

It makes me crazy when people who know next to nothing about modern day behavior science spout misconceptions about so-called "behaviorism." My advice to you is, if you want to know how modern-day behavior science works, don't take the word of someone who doesn't study it. Ask a behavior scientist. Or better yet, read up on it yourself at the Cambridge Center for Behavior Studies, or through the Journal for Applied Behavior Analysis, or the Journal for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. You should also go back in the history and read some Skinner and Watson, but don't neglect the newer researchers and writers. It's a fascinating field of study.

Dog training is a lot like religion. We get our various gurus, and all these different churches trying to gather followers , but just because someone has a new word for gravity doesn't mean that gravity doesn't really make apples fall from the tree. There are still people who believe the earth is flat, and they would be happy to mis-educate you. Similarly, there are still people who misunderstand behavior, and they're eager to confuse you as they cling to misunderstandings in the hope of increasing the market for their own ideas.

Bizarre behavior

2009-09-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

I just received this email:

Hello Dear,
How are you today? Moneta Bianco, i am 42 yrs old. I use to work in England as a pet sitter 7 yrs ago before i relocated with my family to Milano, Italy where i now work as a caregiver, I have lots of happy clients here in italy.

I have a client Miss Eliska Kovarova a model here in italy. She will be coming to the U.S in 3 weeks time for a photo shoot job and will be residing in Maine temporarily until the neccesary arrangement for her job has been made before she leaves, She has one 11months old teacup Maltese Puppy and would be needing a Dog trainner to train the Puppy while she is out on her photo shoot.
I have been looking for a dog trainner for over two weeks now, till i met an old friend Ms. jennifer moore, She use to live in America before she relocated with her family to Milano where she works now. I met her at Cosmetic Surgery and Beauty Conference that was held over the weekend in Florence I spoke with her about my client and was referred to you. She gave me your referral, So i decided to contact you to know if you will be able to train her Puppy.

Miss Eliska asked me to come with her to the US but i told her i would not be able to go with her to the US as i have a course i will be going for in a week time and i do not know much about trainning a dog. So i promised to help her get a good dog trainner in your Area. Pls tell me a little more about your self, how long have you been a dog trainner? and would you be able to train her Puppy from the 12th of next month to the 20th of November, 1hr individual training session twice a week for for 5 weeks?

Pls i need you to get back to me with the amount you charge per her and also let me know if she can pay you via US money orders?

Do send your reply to my personal email address ( monetcare@yahoo.it ) for a quick response as i do not check this email often.

Thank you very much and do have a nice day.

Moneta Bianco
21 Via Merkato ,
1,20121
Milano Italy

************

So, I have to wonder. WHAT is someone fishing for here? This email is an example of bizarre behavior, but what it means, I don't know!

Freestyle Bar-B-Que

2009-08-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

Here's some video of Dandylion and Tigerlily performing for freestyle bar-b-que. I was pleased with Tigerlily's solo performance, with only the next cue as reinforcement. When she barks at me, sometimes she's asking me. "who are all these new people and dogs and why are they sitting here watching me?" and other times she's saying, "Hey, isn't it about time you food reinforced me or something?" But I think this shows some pretty darn good progress. Video tape is an excellent way for identifying the things we need to work on. My plan, after watching this, is to build the heeling precision by building it as a behavior chain. !

Breeding & behavior

2009-08-22T06:32:00.001-07:00

I am going through a second phase of disillusionment with my four year old waterdog, Tigerlily. Accepting her as she is, who she is, isn't easy.

The first phase was when she was a puppy. I saw right away that she was shy and nervous (she was 1/3 the size of her littermates) but I had been waiting three years for her, so I took her anyway. For the next several years I had to work with her reactivity to anything that moved, and her particular dread of dogs.

We made great progress. She isn't so scared of everything. In fact, she can come across as rather confident, and she is just exactly the right type of friendly when we work in the pediatric psychiatric units of Spring Harbor Hospital, providing pet assisted therapy. She is no longer barking and shrieking at dogs, in fact she ignores them usually, and no long attempting to take off after every single moving thing. Not EVERY moving thing.

But she has been going after feral cats around Greenwood Gardens, and so I have been working with that. What I WANT is to be able to get her to behave herself reliably off-leash, but the reality is, she is too unpredictable. I can't really work her off-leash anywhere where she could possibly react to one of her distractions. And her distractions are everywhere.

I have only been feeding her on our walks, and so this morning, I loaded up with chicken and took her for a walk through the woods. The plan was to exhaust her, and walk all the way to Greenwood Gardens, arriving at the hot part of the day when she would not be as inclined to chase and then really feed her there. The idea being, I wanted her to choose me over cats.

But we never got that far. She had been doing GREAT, ignoring joggers and dogs and cars and deer. We were on the last leg of our walk, and a golf cart with a grouchy old man and his wife driving it came by. Tigerlily sat, I fed her, the cart drove on by, we resumed our walk, and then Tigerlily took off like a shot after the golf cart, herding it like a sheep, running in front of it to cut it off.

The driver hesitated briefly, spilling his coffee to avoid running her over, and then continued on, calling back over his should to me something understandably angry, while Tigerlily was deciding she hadn't stopped this sheep quite well enough, and she was barking and nipping at the moving vehicle, getting more excited the more determined the guy was to speed off. I screamed "stop stop STOP!" at the top of my lungs as I ran, but the driver wouldn't stop to let me catch the dog until Tigerlily actually jumped up and nipped him in the leg. The nip drew blood.

As soon as he stopped the cart, Tigerlily stopped reacting and just stood there looking sort of stupid. I caught up, leashed her, apologized profusely, like a fool I gave the guy my name and the name of my business and then went and sat down in the woods and cried. I want Tigerlily to be a dog that she can never be. I got home and the old man had gone to the police station, and the police called me to fill out a report of a dog bite. I can't turn Tigerlily into the dog I want her to be. I have to recognize her for the dog she is. This is where I have to face again the choice that I made when I took home a shy reactive puppy.

Conditioning a head halter, loose leash walking

2009-08-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

We've had Charlie over a year now, so he first learned to hand target while on a regular leash. And he knows the loose leash rules, so he walks on a loose leash with a regular harness or collar perfectly MOST of the time. But sometimes, he wigs out. Usually it has to do with a kitty, or sometimes he likes to impress other dogs, and he hears a loud something and he jumps and makes funny noises, and yes, that is embarrassing to a professional dog trainer! Professional dog trainers are supposed to have perfect dogs ALL the time! So, I am conditioning him to walk nicely on a "Gentle Leader," or head harness.

A head harness is used much like reins are used on a horse. It is extremely important to keep the nose loop LOOSE. The only time it should tighten is when the dog leaps around like a bouncing ball. That tightens the nose strap. Your job is to make sure the dog understands that the only time the head halter is ever a problem, is when he is bouncing around out of control. In general, you want the dog to LOVE his head halter. So, this is a clip from a mid-way point in head halter training. Complete beginning, middle and end information on working around BIG distractions(including conditioning a head halter, and transitioning to off-leash around BIG distractions) will be available for downloading at www.wholedogcamp.com in September.

2009-08-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

Joey has gone home, and I am really looking forward to hearing how it is going. We left the training plan that Joey doesn't have to spend every night in his crate, as long as he plays this crate game, that is, lay in the crate in exchange for keeping the gate open, during movie time. To reward this sort of mellow, he can be released with an "okay" to sleep on the floor, but if he starts pacing around and acting silly, he gets meds, goes back to the crate games.

It's sad to see older rescue dogs like Joey, who if he had been properly conditioned to love the crate from puppyhood, if he had simply had a guardian who was committed to learning more about dog training and management, would never would have had to suffer so many anxieties and rehomings. Joey is an example of what happens to wonderful dogs who are horribly misunderstood. They become what in humans we might think of as mentally ill.

Now he knows how to calm himself down in a crate, in order to get a greater degree of freedom. Even a tiny increment of freedom, is the most powerful reinforcer at our disposal. Even when Joey didn't want to eat, didn't care for toys, petting or praise, he works very hard to keep the door of his crate open.

Joey during bad weather

2009-07-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some clips of what might happen during a storm with a dog like Joey. What he used to do was go crazy, out windows, and attack to destroy his crate. It does absolutely no good to get angry or frustrated, he is trying as hard as he possibly can to be good, so always be friendly and kind, never show anger or frustration with him when he is freaking out. Don't go crazy trying to comfort him either, just be fairly neutral, like an emergency room nurse perhaps. So now he has learned that if he wants me to open the door to his crate, he needs to lay down and stay down. This is a great reinforcer, that helps me control his behavior during a storm in a nice peaceful calming way, but it doesn't help me get much sleep! If Joey continues to deal with his storm freak-outs this way, (laying down in his open crate during a storm, plus taking a Xanax to help him feel better) slowly over time his ability to calm himself WILL get easier. He won't bother reacting to storms as often as he figures out that the only freaky behavior available is just to lay there.

I'll put two clips here, as a reference for Joey's owner. In the first clip, I have just taken him out to toilet and given him a Xanax, and I put him in the crate rather assertively. This is not the time to train crate entry (though I did spend lots of time doing that during good weather. Scroll down in this blog to see the whole process). Don't let him hesitate or think about whether he will or won't go into crate. If he is having a freakout, you just have to put him in there as quick as you can with no question about it. If he gets away from the crate as he did there at the end, just go and get him pronto, and cheerfully yet firmly as possible put him immediately back in the crate, wait for the down, feed him if possible through the bars, or reinforce with opening door. Later, he wakes up in the middle of the night and starts his panting or crate destroying hysteria, or he starts slamming around in the crate, put on music and or movie, and watch him till he lays down. Reward that calmer behavior by opening the door, but not by letting him out. Give him another Xanax if that seems necessary and sit with him till he seems mellow, then close the crate. Leaving the movie going while the crate door closed helps him . If he goes back to freaking out, and can't calm himself with the crate door closed after a couple of minutes, you might need to give him a second Xanax, and go through the whole "down opens the door" process again.

Playing and Learning

2009-07-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

I'm showing you this clip of Tigerlily and Charlie playing, because that's what they had been doing the entire time I was doing the crate training exercise with Joey, below. Their playing perhaps made it a bit harder for Joey, who is showing us that he no longer thinks the only way to get out of his crate is to bash or destroy it. This clip of Joey was taken several sessions ago, and he has advanced incredibly since then. Tomorrow I'll post again, but this clip shows a privotal moment, as he is really "getting" it, that barking, whining or pawing at the gate isn't a good solution, but laying down and being cute IS. He is trusting me, trusting that he can communicate with me, trusting that he is not powerless, but that he can shape his environment with his behavior.

Last night we had a fabulous session, too dark to tape, where he learned laying down and relaxing in the crate increased the amount of time the door stayed open. He lulled himself nearly to sleep that way, and when I closed the latch for the last time of the night, it didn't bother him at all. He's so good. No medication, clear weather, but we are watching the weather reports.

Joey's favorite "toy"

2009-07-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

I had to post this clip of Joey. When I was a kid I really loved Jane Goodall, and any books really that dealt with behavioral observations of lions, gorillas, wild horses, wolves, goats. So, it's natural that I love the "ethology" portion of dog training -- observing natural behaviors. You learn a lot from just observing animals. This is Joey with his favorite "toy". Having a really big pillow to move around in his kennel is very comforting for Joey. He plays with it daily. We take him out of the crate at night, so in the morning, he hurries back to see his pillow is still there. We put it back on the porch, to give him this project to do.

Joey gets crate trained

2009-07-20T13:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a clip from a few minutes ago.

At night, if Joey enters his crate and sits, he sometimes tends to wind up, pant more and more intensely and then start attacking the crate. On the other hand, once he decides to lay down in the crate during the evening, he tends to quickly go to sleep for the night. So, here I am beginning to build reinforcement him being in the "down" position in the crate. Two weeks ago, it was difficult for him to enter the crate for just a second, so this is showing real progress. I hope to build a lot of reinforcement for this position in the crate, so that at night if he starts to freak, Susan and I will hopefully be able to cue him to lay down. When he is upset in the evening, he far more difficult to reinforce, so we need to prepare him by practicing and really reinforcing this during the day, while he isn't especially anxious.

Joey makes a choice

2009-07-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some clips of Joey's crate training, working backwards. This one was from this morning. As you can see, removing the leash helps Joey relax. When he finds out that no force is involved, he has a bit of fun. Near the end, wait, Joey re-enters the scene.

Here is another clip from yesterday morning, where I left him crated long enough to elicit an example of his undesirable crate behaviors, and how I handle them. (to clarify, ordinarily, during the daytime I am able release him before he starts this sort of nonsense. But I know sometimes, we miss that perfect moment, so I wanted to record an example of what to do if Joey starts fussing when you are trying to get ready to let him out). If Joey starts making noise, and acting pushy, back away. Don't walk towards him when he starts fussing, walk away. Walk towards him as he quiets down (view the video for example). Notice: If I put my hand to the crate latch, and Joey also touches the latch, I don't open (back my hand away from) the gate. I open the door when he has backed off the gate and is sitting (or when he is relaxing rather than winding up). Don't open the gate if Joey is urging you to do so. Make "you've got freedom" a reward for "Good boy, you relaxed in the crate!"

Joey is learning this as fast as he can. Tonight, we had thunder, so I cranked up music, put him in the crate, and he sat there and quietly panted for about ten minutes. Good boy! I let him out when he settled down, then cleaned the inside of the crate with enzyme cleaner. Cleaning nervous saliva out of the crate is kind of like changing the sheets on the sickbed. It makes the patient feel better. That way when Joey goes back into the crate for the whole night, the crate will smell fresh.

If I (or anyone else) make the crate an ordeal for him, he won't learn to relax. We have to be careful to both set limits, and set expectations at a level where he can succeed. So during the day, I let him out pretty quickly once he's calm. His habit of nighttime crating helps me to increase daytime duration slowly, for those times when he needs to be crated to help him settle down. I'll post clips of his newer practices soon. He is making fast steady progress. I expect that in 3 weeks, he will be sleeping through the night no problem, and resting in the crate during thunderstorms without a lot of fussing (though you'll want to have music playing!).

Cesar Millan: Why isn't this reported?

2009-07-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Please review the video and commentary in my last post. Am I missing something? Why are viewers tolerating this blatantly misleading show? All his success stories share a theme, that they are "successful" from the point of view of the owner, while in this case, we don't even know if Jack was euthanized, rehomed or what.

Cesar Millan's mastery of illusion

2009-07-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

The Dog Whisperer is an amazing entertainer. Like old animal trainer's a big part of his act is illusion. He's one part magician, amazing people. Check out this video, where he amazes us by, um, lying to us. This is a family update to see how this family is doing a year or so after working with Millan. But check out what is really going on here, that Millan has edited out. The family actually got rid of their problem dog, a black and white Jack Russell terrier mix named Jack, and replaced him with this mellow pitbull, shown only in the opening clips.

Also notice where the Tatoo man says, "It only took him 2 seconds." It didn't take Millan two seconds to change the dogs, it took him two seconds to change the dog's environment. Dogs are very situational. Put some little fighting dogs into an unfamiliar environment surrounded with unfamiliar dogs who could kill them easily if provoked, it is understandable that any tough guy bravado they share amongst themselves is immediately subdued. But this family couldn't very well move Millan's pack into their living room, so, apparently they got rid of Jack and got this pitbull. I wonder why they don't just say that in this video? I wonder whatever happened to Jack?

Addiction, Freedom, and Letting Go

2009-06-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

Joey spent his second peaceful night in his crate last night. I crated him at 10:30 pm, and his initial panting/worrying behavior was very brief, just a very few minutes. I've learned that if I blow gently in his kennel when he starts to hyperventilate, this interrupts the behavior and he settles down. Then he sat and quietly stared (quiet breathing) for maybe 15 minutes (I stayed beside him on the couch, completely ignoring him, which was easy, as I am engrossed in James Hayman's book, "The Cutting") then he went to sleep. He wiggled around a little bit at 3:15 am, went back to sleep, and he was sound sound asleep when I opened his crate door at 4:45 am. He emerged from the crate very calm and sleepy head, and after breakfast (my whole family has just taken our little boat out into the fog and rain to get a guest to the airport on time) he went into "his" chainlink kennel, lay down in the new gazebo/doghouse that Ryan made for him, and went happily into his doggie reveries.

I've learned so much from Joey, the biggest lesson being that too much freedom is not only an obstacle for training, it can become a stressful thing for dogs. I'm not sure what the story has been with Joey. People tell me that Samoyeds are known for their escape behaviors, and Joey has been rehomed many times over his 8 year life, but today I'm really not sure if he was used to constant freedom, or to no freedom at all, since he was perpetually anxious when he thought that since he could, he probably should escape. Now that we have completely reeled him in (he is always on leash, or in the super-max kennel) and taken away any possibility of him escaping, to my amazement, he is relaxing more.

Almost our entire property here is fully fenced in, and no other dog has escaped from our yards during the time we've had Joey here (not counting Lion, who did follow Joey one day out the gate). Something about the way Joey was able to get out of a crate, and jump out our windows while we were sleeping, and magically disappear out of confinement was making me feel very discouraged and worried about him, and it felt like there was nothing I could do. Many dog owners come to me in this frame of mind, that there is nothing anyone can do. Joey has reminded me of how real that feeling can be, but how false it actually is. It took this little bit of effort -- his owner bought and brought a special Joey-proof crate, we made some modifications to the kennel (Joey's owner spent last week building her own fortified fenced in habitat), and we modified our training plan, and now we should all take our little bow, including Joey. He is showing us that he has what it takes to be a happy dog in his forever family. Now that he can relax enough to sleep in a crate at night, and to be contented in a kennel during the day, he is letting go of his drive to escape. Being held, and confined, is comforting him. You can see it in his face and body language. It is obvious to all of us that Joey wanted this.

When Joey went

2009-06-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

All day yesterday, from when I popped out of bed at 7:30 a.m. am discovered Joey Houdini missing (he'd jumped out a window plus two fenced enclosures while we were sleeping), till I found him tied to Barry Shaw's porch railing at 3pm, Joey was missing. Last night I found out more about Joey's adventure from Mayo from Awayo, a local fisherman and musician friend who has fished off Alaska, and Canada as well as off the coast of Maine and of course that's where Joey had spent most of his day yesterday.

Mayo says he got up, stretched, stepped out on his porch and nearly stepped on this big fluffy white dog, who looked up at him, like it was a question, and Mayo says like "Fine with me man, stay as long as you need to." Mayo says he read his tags, but couldn't figure them out (Joey has four tags, including one that says "Whole Dog Camp") and anyway he admits he was in a hurry and had to be someplace and kind of liked having Joey laying there on this porch. "He wasn't going anywhere, man," Mayo says, "He was flat out."

I actually collected Joey off Barry Shaw's porch. Barry is a mason who believes that dogs should be free, and so he is not the sort who wants to leash a dog. Barry also didn't look at the tags, but the only reason he collected the dog, tied him up and called the cops (who called me) was because Joey tried to get into his chicken coop. Barry released Joey as I got out of my car, so with all the build up I practice dove on Joey. Barry says, "He's not a runner. He's not going anywhere. He's been hanging out here all day."

Um, yeah, that's what Joey does. He hangs around, until something in his spirit says it's time for leaving.

Joey the escape artist

2009-06-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

It took me about a week from the time Susan introduced me to Joey Houdini for me to begin to understand her concerns. Though he is an older rescue, and has been rehomed many times, at first he seemed like the perfect dog. But at 8 years old, he's never been taught how to be alone anywhere, not in a crate, not in a kennel, not on a tether, not in a house or car. He's learned that he can have complete freedom, if only he fights for it. A master escape artist, his anxiety builds if he feels that he can't go out of the house (or kennel, or yard) whenever he wants. So, he is smart about it, and he sneaks. When he gets it into his head that he wants to be somewhere else, he waits till you're not looking, then doesn't give up until he's gone.

So in the two weeks he's been here, he's gone over, under and through numerous fences, gates and buildings, partly destroying one crate, one window, a window screen and a door in the process. All the damage has occurred while we've been right here in the house with him, during what are normally our sleeping hours.

Yesterday he stayed and relaxed for several hours (with raw beef bones to chew) in our various chain-link kennels with no complaints, which gave me a lot of hope. But when we are successful in confining him, in spite of all the various fenced in environments we have here, he get anxious and unhappy. That anxiety is expressed in incredible escape behaviors. Last night, after a couple of hours chewing a beef bone in our 12x24 foot "most secure" kennel, he was brought into the house for dinner, some games, and to sleep. Albert and I were exhausted, and as we were falling asleep, he pushed a partly open window open further, jumped through the screen onto the fenced in porch, out of the fenced in porch into a fenced in yard, and then out of the fenced in yard. It took me 8 hours of searching to find him sleeping happily on a neighbor's porch down the street.

So, to make a long story short, it's really too bad he didn't learn that confinement is an okay thing back when he was a puppy, because now it is much harder for him to trust it, or to trust the people who attempt to confine him in even the most benign ways.

Joey Houdini

2009-06-21T16:05:00.001-07:00

Peaks Fest was a blast. Here the dogs appear to consider what condiments they might like on their Whole hotdogs. And pictures of Joey, who would MUCH rather go under a fence than through a gate.

After my report, Susan came to see Joey (I think checking to see for sure to see if he still has his head on, and give him lots of kisses!) and below, Sophi and Travis's kitty, Francis. Tigerlily and Charlie both had to chill in their crates for 1/2 hour before they were able to calm themselves at all around Francis, while Joey shows us that kitties are almost as nice as escaping.

For those of you who have been following the saga of Joey Houdini, he's the guy in the white coat. Everyone has asked "why didn't you take pictures of him sticking his head through the wire crate," and but at the time, I was wondering, how come there's no blood? It looks like he cut his head off! The camera was not at the front of my thoughts. If only I had taken pictures, they would have become an internet legend, sigh, so it will have to suffice to share these other pictures of a dog who doesn't really care ALL that much about freedom, but he really LOVES escaping! A big part of the reason he came to Whole Dog Camp was because he is an incredible escape artist, and once he escaped and stood in the middle of a train track while a train was coming, and nearly caused his family to have heart attacks! And he looks so mellow, eh? We're crazy about him, and obviously, so is his owner!!

Whole Dog Campers after a very big rain

2009-06-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I'm still fiddling around, learning to use my imovie editing software, and thought I'd try to show my Whole Dog Campers at play -- in the hours right after our torrential rainfall. Somehow Joey Houdini (Susan, you need to spell his real nickname for me! heehee!) didn't get into these clips very well, but I'll post some cute pictures of him later. These clips were right after torrential rains. Our gardens normally don't have a water feature!!

I'm recovering

2009-06-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

I'm recovering from the scare Joey gave me last night, and it helps that tonight's training session went so well. Not long after we recorded this session, Joey was trying to push past the gates to break INTO this crate. That's super good.

So, this is how I am handling the dangerous scare of last night, when Joey forced his head through the bars of a sturdy wire crate. First off, I will NEVER use a wire crate with a dog who isn't perfectly crate trained ever again. I guess I did have an idea that some sort of crate destruction was sometimes possible, but I thought that would be more of a loud big frantic dog, not a quietly determined lightweight.

And two, I'm carrying on with our mission, but tonight he will be in the big plastic crate, with me sleeping right beside him on the couch. Duh. So, look who's getting used to sleeping in the crate. Me! And the world's most ambitious samoyed. Joey Houdini.

Another Joey clip

2009-06-16T10:39:00.001-07:00

The thing about Joey is, what will he do when you're not looking? The more he is practicing relaxing in a crate-like or kennel-like or fenced in setting while we ARE looking, the more likely he will behave in the same way when we aren't looking. Joey is an older dog, who gets anxious, so he needs lots of stress relieving free time. Right now he practicing being alone in a space under the outside stairs, curled up in the shade relaxing.

Joey surrenders?

2009-06-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

This is a long (5 minute) clip, but I wanted to show Joey's learning process. Last night Joey scared us to death. We put him to bed at midnight in the big wire crate, and he wasn't noisy, butknowing Joey I decided to check on him at 1 in the morning. He was laying down, his head stuck through the wire crate, head outside (through a 4 inch by 1 inch slot) body inside. I nearly dialed 911, but Albert had the right tools and we were able to extricate him quickly. Surprisingly to me, he was fine. He acted like nothing happened, but he could have strangled or mangled himself to death!

It scared the pants off us, and once my knees stopped knocking, I despaired about how it would influence his crate training. But here is his session today, post Houdini. He's doing great? Dare I imagine the crate/head wedgie taught him something? So, I can't believe it! In spite of what seemed like a big setback, we're marching merrily forward in conditioning him to the crate.He's laying down, eating, showing signs of relaxing. I have another shorter clip of him in the mini chainlink kennel, and he acts even more relaxed there, just entered, lay down and relax. But he won't be spending any unsupervised time in crate with me again!

Escape artist

2009-06-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

I've never seen a dog who is as much of an escape artist as 8 year old samoyed Joey. His owner rescued him in March, and now it's June. Joey is staying with me for about 10 days of retraining. We're teaching him to accept being crated at night, and to respond to his name, and to follow a hand target. It's a great arrangement, where Susan did residential training with me for a few days, left Joey as she heads off for Geneva, and she will stay for another few days to help Joey practice his exercises when she comes back.

But first, we had the Joey fence test. At Whole Dog Camp, almost all of our land is fenced, in a sort of onion fashion, with the small yard off the porch, a big agility training yard wrapped to the north of that, a big fenced flower garden (with further fenced vegetable garden off that) to the south, and a fenced woodland to the west. The idea being, we can train off leash while still managing our dogs for safety and training purposes.

On arrival, when unleashed, Joey would just turn his back to the world and go off inspecting intently for any weak spots in the fence. We ran after him, filling in places that he might be able to squeeze under or leap over. To my amazement Joey escaped a several times in his first few hours here, but fortunately, we are on an island, and there really isn't anyplace to go, so we ignored him and he would return to the ever more secure yard after a few minutes. Susan and I sweated and pounded and kept dragging out more fencing, and finally even the very determined Joey couldn't get out.

And once he discovered he really couldn't get out? He relaxed. He stopped staring out gates and started acting happier and more playful. He could think about toys and social behaviors instead of weak spots in fences.

Escape behavior is interesting. Joey was the type who would pace the house at night, stare out windows and doors and threaten to jump out windows. He just couldn't seem to settle down. But now that he is more convinced that he really isn't going anywhere, his energy is far more relaxed and happy looking. He is coming when called (we call him in the north door, and reward him by letting him back out the south door). At 8 years old, he is learning how to learn. His surrender to our management appears to be a really happy thing for Joey. He is learning that he doesn't need all the responsibility of running the entire show. He can relax, and we'll take care of him.

Dogs don't really want to be in charge. It must be a bit scary to outsmart the humans. Maybe all his escapades were really testing us, more than the fence.

USDAA tournament

2009-06-08T04:38:00.000-07:00

We went to our first USDAA agility trial. Because I live on an island, going to competitions has always been kind of an overwhelming adventure. You know, load up the dogs and gear on the boat, then unload and reload into the car, then hit the road, drive two hours, then reverse the whole process. Too much rushing around. But it was so worth it, that I am printing out all the other USDAA entry forms I can find, planning on going to as many as I can this year. Island life has confined me a bit too much, and now it's time to bust out. This is what an agility trial is like:

You arrive and all these people have set up tents and coolers and easy chairs and doggie playpens around a couple of huge agility playing fields. The people are mostly women, and they are accompanied by highly trained young dogs. Old women, younger women, middle-age women, one or two young girls, plus maybe five men. And everyone of these people is an excellent dog trainer. You never hear a harsh word, you never see a choke (nor a tug on a) collar, you see everyone dishing out reinforcements, playing games, having a language with their dogs. These people understand dogs, they understand behavior in general and they train and compete at very high levels. It is so wonderful to see smart women running amazing dogs. And you are allowed to grow old in this sport! Old is good! Old is cool! Best of all, old is potentially competitive! Or perhaps, there is no such thing as old, it's just "experienced."

And the newbies are all sorta grouped together competing in one ring, and the pros in the other ring, and everyone is helpful. When your dog dashes out of the ring to chase another dog (I mean, when MY dog did that!) people say things like, "We've all been there," and "that's a green dog for you." When my dog completes her second run over time, but she actually DOES it, and I am so happy about that, people recognize the small accomplishments. They see her sniff another dog's butt and they are like, "Look at her! Isn't she the brave one now!"

We didn't q or place, but we played and learned and made some excellent mistakes. We watched and learned. I came home and wrote a song about running the dogs for the island talent show. I fell in love with the sport, in love with the people who play it. Can't wait for the next trial! Maybe I will run Charlie too...

Do you understand your dog's body language?

2009-05-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

This video shows some helpful examples of dog body language. We see a BIG puppy, blundering around, a bit like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Two of the small dogs are her "siblings," they live with her, and then there are my three dogs (the white curly Dandylion, my black curly and naturally shy Tigerlily, and the one that looks like a german shepherd is Charlie). The big dog is about twice the weight of the next largest dog (Charlie), which makes my dogs a bit nervous. Observe the dog body language when this big puppy comes charging around. They are trying to figure out how to slow the big puppy down or stay out of her way, and they finally do that by holding very still and looking away. If a dog is bothering you, you can do the same thing. Stand still, look away. This is their way of trying to avoid attracting the larger dog's attention.

Also notice how face to face confrontations makes dogs (Charlie) nervous. That behavior of the big dog -- of blocking Charlie's path and getting in his face is a bit pushy and intimidating for Charlie, yet often times dog owners don't understand this, and allow or encourage their own dog to get into the face of another dog. Charlie gives a little "back off" growl and then politely turns away to sniff. Charlie is a formerly feral dog, who is very smart about dog language, and also, he does NOT want to get pounded by this big puppy! Sniffing helps quiet the other dogs, by putting focus on the ground. Notice how when the big puppy comes and sniffs Charlie's butt, that's not quite as stressful as when the big pup stuck her face in Charlie's face.

Typically, young puppies (this one is less than a year) are socially awkward, often pushy and wanting to get in older dog's faces and jump all over them. Just as with little human kids, that isn't polite behavior, older animals don't always love it and especially with big puppies, it can hurt to get landed on by a big puppy! It's important to supervise and interrupt big puppies, and discourage harassment of the other dogs.

Also notice how the large dog stops sometimes to scratch. Dog's don't always scratch because they are itchy. Very often, it looks to me like when little kids twirl their hair or chew the eraser. Turid Rugaas identifies scratching as a calming cue, sort of like sniffing. It helps dogs relax by taking the focus off social interactions. It shows a dog who's focus is internal, thinking about an itch, not thinking about bothering anybody. The scratching behavior helps us recognize that although this big puppy might be pushy, she is totally friendly and means no harm.

Ruff Love

2009-05-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

I've been doing Susan Garrett's "Ruff Love" program not because I have any particular problems with my dogs as pets, but because I am trying to ramp up their performance in competitive freestyle and agility. My sensitive dog Tigerlily has refusal issues. If it's raining, or if there is a stick in her fur, or if there is something slightly annoying going on, she might decide she doesn't feel like performing, whereas when all the stars are in the right position, she is AMAZING. So, I want to be able to show off how amazing she is any time, any place. Charlie, my formerly feral best friend, is still young and learning many things, and he knows that if he's off leash in the woods, I can't catch him. So, with him too, I'm aiming for "the perfect performance, anytime, any place. I am convinced that the Canadian trainer Susan Garrett has the right method to bring my dogs from having variable responses to having more consistently "excellent" responses. The one issue that I have run into with Susan Garrett's "Ruff Love" program is that at first, it seems to stimulate an extinction process that can be difficult to recognize and respond to properly.

To explain what I mean by that, I'll backtrack and talk about something else, something I call "boundary frustration." Boundary frustration or aggression happens in big ways when dogs are confined, as behind a fence or on a tie out, and if they finally escape they can explode into freedom and can be dangerous actually. An extreme example of boundary frustration was observed when the Jack Russell terrier who is constantly tied, left to bark his brains out across the street from the grocery story, suddenly broke his chain, ran across the street and ripped a bichon dog out of his owner's arms and killed it. So, frustration can build adrenaline and aggression. Fence fighting is a type of boundary frustration.

Just a little bit of frustration can build energy too, hopefully in more useful ways, as it can build energy and drive in performance dogs.

When I first began Susan Garrett's protocol of taking away all my dogs' privileges, when I took them out to work with them, or around the situations where they usually have my permission to sleep in the bed for example, and suddenly that wasn't being offered, I saw them expressing some frustration and excitement. They were "demanding" these things. I thought of this as "boundary frustration" at first, but now I think that this is actually an extinction process (and if I'd been paying better attention, I would have seen that Susan Garrett warns us about this!). The dogs are used to receiving a bit of something for nothing, and when I stop doing that, they try harder than ever to get something for nothing.

So, I'm handling this in a few different ways. I'm working with the dogs off leash and off collar inside the tent, or in the house, where they really can't take off on me. I don't want the presence of the leash or collar to be their cue that I have control. Also, I am being more clear about my criteria. With Tigerlily, that means the one second space out during training is no longer acceptable. If she loses her focus even for a second, I want her to experience a consequence (crate!), and not just have her expect that I'll give her another cue. I am also fading the long line in different ways, using lighter line, not necessarily shorter line with Tigerlily, to reduce the possibility that she can explode off to chase a bird or whatever without getting a consequence.

I am having a blast, learning and growing so much as a trainer, and learning many new things about my dogs. They are more capable, more communicative than I ever realized. The dogs are responding to my "clearer communications" with incredible awareness and high spirits.

Training clips

2009-05-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

We did four little sessions like this, where we just play around with the music, and latter I did some session without the dogs, where I thought through some choreography ideas. This is Charlie, the sato we adopted from a beach in Puerto Rico one year ago, and Tigerlily, my "Princess and the Pea" french waterdog who is four years old and needs to be groomed.

Susan Garrett's method

2009-05-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

I've been applying Susan Garrett's ideas here, imperfectly, but the glory of her method is that even when you don't do it correctly, you learn a lot from trying!

So, to make a long story shorter, it's building their working drive! Wowza! Tigerlily is jumping 22 inches, Charlie too, blasting around the yard. Well, this is also Silvia Trkman's method, because when we run the course it's progressing from just running a board on the ground, we're doing running contacts! and it's also the Rockin Vibrations method (that was a reggae band I sang with years ago). As we do in training dogs, they practiced beginnings or endings separate from the whole song, or groove, and when it came time to actually play the song, they didn't keep stopping and starting, but cycled through again and again. I'm aiming to do that more in our run-throughs, just mark it, and keep going, cycling through again with variations. I think that is also Silvia Trkman style, but I don't think I could reinforce my dogs highly enough to do Silvia Trkman's method, without Susan Garrett's crate games, and her understanding of environmental reinforcements, and how to get control of them and put them to work.

My dogs are so funny and smart! They give me so many funny stories and not enough time to tell! But I think the difference between an electric collar approach, which I don't do, (but can EASILY imagine pulling that trigger and, just, you know, zap! Take that you dang rascal dog!) but I can't do that to my dogs any more than I could do it to my child, and this is why. When you teach with reinforcement, and focus on controlling reinforcement, dogs develop more creativity and confidence. They aren't robots, also they aren't afraid that suddenly, they might experience a sharp pain. Electric shock-collar trained dogs are taught to avoid pain. They learn, when you are avoiding the pain, you are doing the right thing. Whereas my dogs are taught, like any great athletes, ignore pain. They are taught GO FOR IT! Tigerlily was born naturally shy, Charlie was feral, but I've been building their confidence in me and in the world along with their skills. Both are so much fun to watch and play with, they fly through the air with the greatest brave abandon! Dandylion too, I should mention is also behaving with this new desperation to train! It's not less work for me, but it certainly is fun! I will post a few clips of our practices ASAP...

Spring

2009-05-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sophia Yin: Experts Say Dominance-Based Dog Training Techniques Made Popular by Television Shows Can Contribute to Dog Bites

2009-05-21T06:44:00.001-07:00

People ask me what I think about Cesar Milan, and the article link below explains my opinion on "The Dog Whisperer" pretty concisely -- that it is dangerous for pet owners to "believe" in the Dog Whisperer. If you are a "believer" in Cesar Milan, please click on the link below and read this article.

Sophia Yin: Experts Say Dominance-Based Dog Training Techniques Made Popular by Television Shows Can Contribute to Dog Bites

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Permissiveness

2009-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

One of Susan Garrett's training mottos is "permissive is not positive," and I do agree with that, but I also think sometimes "permissiveness" has a purpose, unlike punishment it doesn't do irreparable damage if you learn from it and modify it, and I wanted to write about and show a video clip of that.

"Permissiveness" is referring to the criteria we reinforce, and how we set our criteria. You can't start with the same criteria for every dog. I organize my classes so that in the first class, we begin conditioning a marker signal, and training a dog to respond to his name around distractions. But what if, as happened recently, a dog arrives to class who is afraid of people? Who is afraid to have his collar touched? Who is afraid of or reactive to a leash? Who is averse to being touched? Or what about a dog who is super confident and bites his owner when he wants food, or when he doesn't want to walk in a certain direction? Our criteria and handling skills for each dog is going to be very different.

This week in class I had a rescued aussie pup who is super confident, agile, gentle, playful, friendly with people, with dogs, loose on leash and not all that interested in wildlife, and first class games were easy for this nice pup. We gave her more advanced games, playing "trade ya" with high value bones and she was quick to pick up beginning hand targeting, but then we saw she actively avoids being crated. So in that behavior, we might need to take the crate apart and start reinforcing her for entering just the bottom half of it. We customize training for each team. We do "permit" dogs to show us what they need.

My dog Tigerlily was born a scaredy cat. At eight weeks old, she saw another dog 50 feet away, and screamed in absolute terror. I was on the CBL ferry, bringing her home, and she was my bargain, a shy waterdog. I have progressively built her confidence and reduced her shyness and prey reactivity, but I can't change her genetics. I have to set my criteria, my expectations, my training plan, for who she is where she is. Punishment -- even simply withholding reinforcement or taking a dog out of a game -- can discourage some dogs and reduce low confidence to even lower confidence. In training, we need to build a dog's confidence in focusing on the handler, and that requires more reinforcement for desired behaviors and less "correction." Some dogs can tolerate less correction than others! Tigerlily can tolerate more negative consequences now, at four years old, because she has so much experience earning positive consequences in responding to my cues. Videotaping can help us see when a criteria has become "permissive," or below what the dog can reasonably be able to perform.

My Charlie, who was dying last year on a beach in Puerto Rico, is reactive to beaches. It's weird. The first time we brought him to a beach, he went into an absolute panic. So, springtime, and I'm beginning to work with him on the beach again. Normally, I think/hope I deliver each cue just once, but notice in the first clip that on the beach, I was being quite permissive and giving Charlie every "sit" cue twice. A cue is reinforcing. If you give the dog a cue twice, you are actually reinforcing him for ignoring the first cue. I definitely don't want to keep that up, so I'm glad that we videotaped. He did better with the recall (below), but next time, I plan to go back to kindergarten with his beach behavior, which means, shape and reinforce but avoid putting cues on beach behaviors until I can see he is ready to respond on the first cue.

Ruff Love

2009-05-16T06:14:00.000-07:00

I've been studying Susan Garrett's approach to training, and the process it is teaching me a lot.I'm With both my four year old genetically reactive/excitable waterdog, and my 2 year old formerly feral chihuahua/german shepherd type mix, and increasingly, even with my bichon, I am going back to foundations work and getting lots of details about what is reinforceable behavior and what is not reinforceable behavior crystal clear.

In music, I had to do lots of ear training (and turns out, it's helped me a lot as I've lost my hearing). In animal training, we need to do eye training. We need to wake up our eyes and see the behavior that in pet homes is just the wallpaper, the stuff we take for granted. We don't take any of the wallpaper behaviors (along with their wallpaper reinforcements) for granted anymore, Susan Garrett has really outlined where the environment that we create is molding behavior, and perhaps in a confusing way for the dog.

One thing I am "seeing" more clearly is all those little moments when Tigerlily temporarily checks out/spaces out/loses focus/ takes a wee break. I have a habit of ignoring many of those moments, getting over them somehow and getting back to work. That habit had a raison d'etra earlier in our training, but at this point, my aim is to teach her that there is a consequence to spacing out, or flying off the handle.

This morning we did crate training with distractions, she was my perfect little buddy, and so I decided to do some agility as a reinforcement. I asked her to down on her mat while I moved a tunnel. I am running her over the teeter first thing, and not again, as a way of building her drive for the teeter (which last fall she was refusing). I go into the tent to get treats, she busts off the mat to go bark at someone passing the driveway, so I "oopsie" and cue her to "crate" and she flies back, runs right over the teeter and holds her two on two off position. I know I'm not supposed to laugh, but how smart is that? She figures I can't POSSIBLY call off the game if she's going to teeter like that. So, I food reinforce the teeter and verbally recue "okay, crate" and she runs into the tent to her crate, and so I just call her right back out again and now we're doing tunnel/obstacle discriminations.

So, maybe I was making it too tricky, just standing there saying "tunnel," while she ran through a tunnel that was set up leaning against the "A frame" and then I cued "Aframe" a few times, and I was working up to random times, and that was probably getting to be too many times because she goes up over the Aframe, from the top she spies Robert and Jack (bouncy dog) walking down the road, and she explodes off the Aframe to run barking to the gate.

"Too Bad," I say, which means, totally the jig is up, she's going to be crated, so at this point what has she got left to lose? She gets in a few more barks and starts trotting to evade me as I come to collect her. I said, "Tigerlily, where are you going? Come over here." And she gives me her cutest smile and comes racing to me, cueing right up onto my shoulder. I snuggle and cuddle her and bring her to the crate, and then I just leash her and Dandylion, and back inside.

Any of Tigerlily's reactivity is far less duration, far less out of control than it used to be, but what I am aiming for now is closer to 100% reliability that the reactivity can be stopped before it expresses itself physically. This is a behavior chain that I want to build: see distraction, turn to handler, collect reinforcement. Yesterday she had this 100%, but today, she had an opportunity to learn what happens when she reacts, and I have to get clearer and quicker at seeing her start to react, and the consequence of any break in focus, big or small, has to be extremely boring for Tigerlily. Part of this must include her understanding that when she is off-leash, that's not off-duty, playing with me off leash is not an opportunity to relax the focus, that's not a cue that criteria is softening. I want her to understand that when she is off-leash, that means on duty, full focus. I want to be one of those pain in the butt handlers where Tigerlily feels she has to focus on me constantly to keep me in the game. This means shorter, more perfect sessions, not longer with loose criteria.

Distractions

2009-04-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

I'm just figuring out how to edit movies. This is the start to a training video about distractions that I am working one. Hope it's helpful Katie!! Sophi I love your page!

Jost Van Dyke demo

2009-04-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Jost Van Dyke demo

2009-03-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

Jost Van Dyke has about 40 kids in the school, so it reminded me a lot of the Peaks Island school. I began with a little demo to music,(which I can't seem to upload from the wi-fi, so I'll post pictures instead) improvised as we were in the shady area which was maybe 10 by 14 foot, and the kids were the most enthusiastic audience! I love kids! Every single child said they had a dog, and a few said they had more than one dog. And it was also obvious (from all the screaming!) that many of them were fearful of dogs, so after the freestyle demo, in addition to talking about training, and how to teach the dog the dog's name, we talked and I answered questions about dog safety, preventing dog bites, and keeping dogs healthy and fit. The kids had smart questions and were interested to know that Tigerlily is spayed. Not having litters of puppies is part of what has kept Tigerlily so healthy and fit!

I encouraged the kids to teach their dogs to trust them, by understanding what dogs need to be healthy, mentally as well as physically. After this demo, we couldn't go anywhere on the island without a handful of kids who recognized us, followed and shouted friendly hellos to Tigerlily. We made lots of young friends. Jost Van Dyke is a wonderful community. We were treated as people, not as tourists, which was notable and wonderful.

Virin Islands

2009-03-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures of a collie we will be bringing back from Puerto Rico. We are looking for a home for her, she is very sweet and about six months old, a smooth coated collie mix, with excellent conformation and a very submissive temperment....She's super gentle and loving and pretty....

Jost Van Dyke

2009-03-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Jost Van Dyke is one of the smaller of the British Virgin Islands, but it is the biggest in my heart for it’s loving community. The first person we met was Gregory, who gave us a friendly smile and offered to “hold your dog,” while we were entering customs for check through. I told him no, thanks much, I am the only person who holds Tigerlily’s leash. One minute later we were refused admittance to the customs until we’d tied up our dog, so I had to return sheepishly to Gregory and thank him while taking him up on his offer.

And Gregory turned out to be the son of Roxy, who owned the music/tee-shirt selling establishment, who was the best friend of Errol. Errol is a native of Monserrat who has lived on Jost Van Dyke since the volcano exploded there, and he was the longtime keyboardist for Foxy, while Foxy was the leader of the band. Foxy told me he no longer performs “on Doctor’s orders” but he had lots of good tune suggestions. Errol was a delight, open minded and everywhere he went he had people smiling, and introduced us to so many people, so Albert and I took to thinking of him as Jost Van Dyke’s version of Matthew Day.

The men we’ve met here have been very funny, smart, excellent storytellers,very entertaining to sit around and listen to their stories which often have a punchline. Foxy is like the king of this paradise, he’s got what we compared to “Jones’ Landing” on Peaks Island if you combined Jonesies with Plants, because he’s also got the mini-ferry. It old him I was surprised, and hadn’t realized that he not only operated this community music and party, bar-b-que and tee-shirt central but he was also a musician. Foxy might not play anymore, but he is the consummate entertainer. This white lady walks by and I asked Foxy, “Is she your wife?” and he said, “She’s my boss,” and I think I may have looked horrified for a moment until he laughed and said, “You don’t know what a boss is. She’s been my boss for 37 years!” He says he doesn’t do anything anymore, he doesn’t know who is playing music or what’s on the menu or what anything costs. He just sits and socializes. He was very friendly and nice to sing to.

We haven’t really gotten to know the women as much, they haven’t been out socializing or playing music, but I sat near several local women who socialized a bit after work, or maybe some were still working, admiring a newborn baby . We have had cooking conversations and informal recipe trades with the woman who sold us two coconut ice cream cones, plus six tomatoes and two eggplants from her garden). I enjoyed meeting the teacher, Jessica, at the school, and after the kids are finished with their mid-year exams, I plan to offer a little class on dog care and training.

We’ve had very limited internet access, and so can’t really keep up with the many adventures and the many wonderful friends we’ve made. I am presenting a canine education program at the island school next week, and will try to get pictures of that. The people here are wonderful, we don’t lock anything or worry about anything, it feels very safe and loving, much like home.

Salinas

2009-03-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

(These are our Salinas friends, Julio and Joy)
We met up with Sophi and Travis, first in a beautiful ecolodge in El Yucay National Rainforest, and then they came back to Salinas and spent the night in the boat. Tigerlily has been switching on as a service dog, almost acting a bit strange as she starts to adapt to quite a lot of new responsibility, and last night I noticed she was resting on Travis and Sophi’s pillow. Sophi had made up the berth so it was fit for a Queen, and Tigerlily evidently took a shine to the role, reclining there she looked so pretty, but I noticed wet pawprints in the fabric. I just thought, her paws were wet, so I kicked her off, then Sophie said, “it’s pee.” Tigerlily had just lain down and drained herself!

I have told others that when a dog pees in your bed, it means he’s a little bit insecure and he’s trying to mark his place and say, “This territory belongs to me,” and my theory continues that as the dog becomes more confident of his territory, and has a deeper sense of ownership of the space, he won’t need to mark it anymore. The theory certainly seems relevant here.

Sophi and Trav left yesterday, and outside of Tigerlily’s one big mistake, she has been showing me incredible self-control and intelligent thinking, alerting me to all manner of things, including a couple of teenage boys who were mysteriously swimming around the docks and looking into the boats. She insisted on getting off the boat and showing me the kids, and then she wasn’t comfortable coming back aboard until they swam away. She is my hearing dog, and she has been alerting me to all sorts of things, including the usual cell-phone and equipment sounds, which is very helpful. Communication is a two-way street, and I make more mistakes than she does, as she alerts me to things, and I mistakenly think “it’s nothing” and it takes me a few seconds sometimes to understand that she isn’t being disobedient, but she is telling me that someone is walking up behind me, or a car is coming through the gate, or there is a baby crawling at the gate (true!), or quite a variety of useful things. I have been shifting away from assuming that she is reacting to the feral and wildlife, because increasingly, she isn’t.

When you have a service dog like Tigerlily, you are giving the dog a bit of adult responsibility. I mean, I can’t use her services if I can’t trust her judgement about what is important and what is not important. So today, after Travis and Sophi left, Albert and I did some work on the boat (I smashed my shin) and then I took her for a little walk. But she would just stop in her tracks, refuse to move another step. Weird. And I really don’t like the way that lately I have found myself pulling on her collar, I will not have her forcing me to force her, so to speak, so I decided to just see where she wanted to go, let her alert me to whatever the hell things she was thinking were so important.

So I told her, “Okay. Let’s go,” and I let her lead me. She strolled across the inner sanctum, the parking lot in the mangroves where only boat owners can park, and then into the outer parking lot, searching the spot where we’d said goodbye to Sophi and Travis. She walked me out back, to where the trashcans are, alerted to a cat, I told her to leave it, just a kitty, and she was completely fine with that suggestion, just went immediately back to sniff and alerting me to the area where she’s last seen the kids. She froze again, peering across the inner sanctum, really refusing to walk forward. I said, “Tigerlily. Sophi went home. They ‘re gone, they went home, they aren’t here anymore. I’m sorry.” And she started walking again, but hesitated at the dock to look down toward the end, where the kids spent time this morning, gawking over the boats and the people on them as well.

Termites, and ticks

2009-03-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

We landed in Ponce Puerto Rico at at 4:30 in the morning, rented a car and in spite of warnings that the streets of Ponce can be dangerous after dark, we went outside and slept for an hour in the car, Tigerlily sharing the back seat with me. Then we made the drive to Salinas just after the sun came up, and through farmland that snuggles between a view of the mountains and the sea. But these aren’t ordinary farms. Many acres belong to Monsanta and other chemical companies who grow genetically engineered crops here. Julio translated on a “red tape” trip to austere government offices that make Maine’s Registry of Motor Vehicles look like a bastion of elegant efficiency, but it took us a day, and then we registered the boat.

Everything looked more impoverished than it did last year, but still beautiful. The politics, we’re told, are corrupt and we don’t know about that, but we have seen signs of misplaced priorities. It’s hard to believe, but there seems to be no real environmental controls here, no pump out boats at the marinas, no recycling or bottle return, no bans on out door burning.

Other dog owners at the marina had been warning us of pesticide resistance in ticks which carry a disease – ehrlichia – which is potentially deadly to canines. So far, Promerisw seems to be working fine on Tigerlily.

Last year, when we bought this beautiful old boat, we were seeing signs of termites. We were reassured that the boat had been “tented and gassed” and the only possible termite on our boat was a dead termite. But it Magus had (has)live termites.

We used a week doing things we hadn’t planned on doing. Fortunately, my suspicious nature had led me to ship a bottle of “bora care” (a boron salt pesticide and wood preservative) to Puerto Rico, just in case we might need it, and we spent a very grungy icky week , working from stern to aft, and getting to know our “new old” boat very intimately, lifting every board, yanking everything out of every hold, sweeping up termite dust , and antique flecks of human skin and dust and hair that accumulated there, and painting the underside of every board, searching for live termites. It was obvious they were there, but where? Albert said he thought termite culture was a lot like ant culture, and I was wondering what sort of music termites like, when we hit paydirt. That not quite the right word, but it’s the right consistency for the termite city we finally found in a stern cockpit locker, under the screwed-in plywood bottom . A pile of softwood scraps saved from long forgotten project was completely swarming with maggoty looking termites.

Apparently, the gas hadn’t reached into this corner of the boat. We felt like surgeons removing a tumor, and we feel as though we really got every last speck. The every hidden corner of the boat is coated with boron salts. Albert followed our surgery and treatment with some carpentry, and now we only need to get the sails on, check the engine and thru-hulls, fix a few electrical issues, and hopefully we’ll be underway by Tuesday night.

The people of Salinas have been extremely loving and helpful. Frank went to San Juan, and brought us back the parts we needed from West Marine. Fred is a semi-retired boat surveyor, loaning us an outboardmotor for the dinghy, and he’s helped us with all manner of boat issues (and his opinion on the termites? “I wouldn’t worry about them. All the boats here have ‘em. Termites never caused a fiberglass boat to sink!”).Julio later invited us to dinner with him and his wife, Joy. Mary, with her substantial, informal dog-rescue gave us a ride to Walmart, and we went to a birthday party (for Reggie, who is sexy and beautiful at 66, and who says her secret to good health are the many dogs she rescues). Internet access is extremely sketchy, and I am posting this in a hurry from a local bar!

Matilda's toenails

2009-02-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

I want to reinforce Matilda for relaxing her paw. So, I hold her paw and as she relaxes it, I let it go. I want her to find out that when she relaxes her paw completely, I let it go.

I practiced this without the nail clippers in sight, but later it might be good to practice this with the nail clippers just laying on the ground. Matilda was here for ten days this time, and on the last day. Albert brushed her while she was standing, and I went around and clipped all her nails with no problem at all. Let's get a video of that the next time we clip her nails.

Going to Puerto Rico soon

2009-02-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

There are quite a lot of hoops to go through in getting ready to sail in the Caribbean for six weeks. Without even going into the boat preparations, but just on this end, we now have Rob, who will be staying in our house and watching the dogs, keep the woodstove going, water the greenhouse, pick up poops, and we also have Rhonda and Amelia to deliver extra cuddles for Charlie and Lion. And Charlie slipped on the ice yesterday and pulled a muscle and is limping a bit, and then I found he had pulled a bottle of ibuprophen out of my backpack, and cracked it open in a kennel! It could be funny, as I was going to call my vet and ask him if I should give him an ibuprophen for the pulled muscle, but it's not funny. I am just packing anything remotely toxic well away, and Rob, I hope you will do the same! This trip makes me realize what a great service Whole Dog Camp offers, as now that I am in need of similar homestyle professional care for my own dogs, I can't find any other place else that has makes this sort of canine lifestyle available! But Charlie will get to go hang out with Rob, and that will be a fun change of pace for him, and both Charlie and Rob seem very adaptable. Dandylion will be mostly with Rhonda I suspect.

Because we plan to sail on into the British Virgin Islands, I had to get blood drawn from Tigerlily, and have her rabies titre($180), another expense of many which are adding up. Timing was good, as she was due for her three year rabies vaccine this fall, and the BVI requires the last rabies to have been done in the past 12 months. Then after my vet filled out the long form, I brought that to the USDA veterinarian, because he had to stamp his approval on it (another $76), which he did with a VERY fancy stamp. Today Albert is faxing the form to the BVI to make sure all is okay, but we have had difficulty reaching anyone in the veterinary division by phone.

And, I found my debit card and checkbook, right where I had carefully FILED them, duh, and I am not letting my passport out of sight, because I lose things , especially when I am excited or nervous. I've been telling Tigerlily, "You have won a six week freestyle and sailing and swimming vacation in the Caribbean, all inclusive!" Tigerlily loves sailing, loves everything about being on the ocean, she is an incredible swimmer and retriever and she is excellent about alerting me to things I can't hear, like, boat alarms! The one good thing about my increasing hearing loss is Tigerlily, who gets to wear her vest and ride in my lap on the plane, which would be fine except we have a long lay-over in JFK, and then we get into Ponce at 5 am! So I am hoping she will pee on cue on her puppy pee pads, because otherwise she will be holding it for 11 hours.

I am packing one teenyweenie bag for me, and a big HUGE bag for Tigerlily! It is rather comical. Tigerlily has dog toys and all her food and treats and medicines (I got a dog stapler, just in case, in the first aid kit). She's got a lifejacket, and long line and training journal.Tigerlily is bringing more pairs of shoes than I am!! On some of the islands there are cactus with huge thorns, so you will laugh when you see pictures of her in her special shoes. And all I need for myself is two bathing suits and summer stuff which packs down very small.

Mini work- out

2009-02-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Here's an example of a short training session both for Charlie and for Lion, in case handlers want to give it a whirl. You'll notice I am usually saying the cue just one time, and then giving the dog a chance to respond. These little clips are pretty short, but even a little session like that can really help an energetic dog settle down (although right now Charlie is certainly ready for agility class! So that's good!)

The reason we do "paws up" and "off" is so that if he jumps on you, or something, and you say "off," he knows exactly what you want him to do ("off" means, put your paws on the floor). I tried to demo hand targeting, but couldn't video tape well while doing it, so the idea is that the dog puts his nose on your palm. You DON'T put your palm on the dog's nose. The dog will come to the palm, the palm doesn't go to the dog.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Toenails

2009-02-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

This is Matilda, who is just about the smartest dog I have ever known. Anna saved her life about 3 months ago now, and through her Matilda has come a tremendous distance in learning to trust humans again.

Unlike every other dog I've ever known, Matilda truly does not care much for food as a treat. This will make her a very cheap dog to train! A hug and a kiss and a tickle and a giggle work wonders on Matilda. For her, the best treat in the world is being brushed, or any sort of touch and play. We notice that she recalls the fastest when we giggle and wiggle our butts. She also, incredibly, learns by watching what the other animals do. She watches everything that happens very carefully. It's funny to watch her with our bichon, Dandylion, because Matilda takes on her natural role of a sheepdog guarding her sheep, we can easily picture her watching over a flock of bichons, but really, we are all Matilda's sheep. Deep sleep is easy when a dog like Matilda is guarding the house.

However, she also has this real issue regarding her toenails. She doesn't want clippers coming any where near her toes. I put a whole bunch of Matilda videos, playing outside etc., on my video blog at www.dropshots.com/yasijenny , but here is one where I've actually made a little bit of progress, and Matilda is letting me make clipper noises and show her the clippers. (Unfortunately working around my technical issue via dropshots has removed the end of this clip?! argh) But if you look at some of the dropshot clips (eventually I think I'll edit them altogether and make a toenail clipping tape if Anna lets me?), you can see how at first just the sight of clippers caused her to want to escape. In fact, right after the first presentation on the previous day, where I just showed her clippers with the brushing, she curled up in the corner of the couch, then threw up. In this clip, she is just starting to accept them as part of the brushing environment. When I ended this session, she was definitely left wanting more. By practicing in this way for just three minutes most days, it won't take forever for Matilda to get over whatever trauma she suffered with clippers before, and accept them as an everyday part of a peaceful life.

Shaping

2009-02-04T05:23:00.000-08:00

I am having difficulty uploading video, I don't understand why, but I am working on it.... If you are curious about the KGS (Keep Going Signal, where I use "yay") you can see it in play a little bit with this dark clip of Tigerlily posted below....

Shaping

2009-02-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

Shaping a belly up position is sort of an emotional thing. My dog (formerly feral) Charlie is just learning, and (Princess and the Pea) Tigerlily already knows how to do roll overs and belly ups, but I just thought I'd take away any cues, and go back to shape them both with reinforcing belly up in mind. Charlie wasn't in the mood for anything serious, so I didn't push it even though he is further along than it looks here. Charlie was distracting Tigerlily outside the door, so with her too, I called it quits the instant I got the behavior that I was looking for. I can always play this game again tomorrow, and get it on cue later. But these are good examples of how it looks with two different dogs when I am "shaping" a behavior. The behavior I am trying to get ultimately will be on their backs, with their feet in the air, but for now I'm happy with Charlie is he'll start to go flat on his side, and Tigerlily when she rolls all the way over.

Resource Guarding

2009-01-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

The little cockerspaniel is back, and wow, amazing how easy it has been to clean up the resource guarding. Today he snuggled up to Charlie, leaned the bone against him, and chewed, gnawed as peacefully as a cow chewing cud.

I'm so glad we nipped that in the bud. Resource guarding can really be a problem, but dogs generally respond very well to a sense of safety and abundance, as I described below, a couple of posts ago.

This is a picture of Charlie and Tigerlily, from last year, when we had just adopted Charlie, and we were showing him that he was safe, no one was going to take away his toys, there are plenty of toys, giving him more toys, flooding him with all the toys he needed, not taking toys away. Dogs really relax after they find out that no one is going to just steal their stuff. People tell me feral dogs often resource guard, but Charlie doesn't demonstrate any resource guarding at all. I see some nervousness in his face in this image, which was in the first month we had him, but he is completely relaxed and smart about sharing. It's not a high stakes game. By providing plenty for everyone, sharing stuff is more of a fun game, not a desperate game.

Clicker Training

2009-01-29T04:47:00.000-08:00

Since 1996, when I studied with Leslie Whitney at Tails Up! in Falmouth Maine, during a time I was also studying behavior science at Vermont College of Norwich University, in an independent, self-designed major which allowed me to integrate a Buddhist approach and studies with Thich Nhat Hanh with reading lots of B.F.Skinner and Darwin, and training dogs, and anyway, for all these years, I've called myself a "clicker trainer."

I don't know why I used that label. Yes, I was clicking, not luring, not choking, not forcing the dog into a sit. It sure sounded like clicker training to me! But several years after reading Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot the Dog," it slowly became more significant that I wasn't doing things exactly as a "Karen Pryor Clicker Trainer"(TM) is taught.

Karen Pryor promotes the use of a handheld clicker, and I ditched the handhelds and starting clicking with my mouth about four years ago, partly so I could stop buying the damn things from KPCT. Also, the KPCT academy training, that "click ends the behavior" is something that many of my agility mentors have helped me see as not desirable, not always true, and certainly not not always necessary.

If I'm clicking my dog to be quiet, hopefully I haven't taught her that the click ends her behavior. I don't like to corrupt my marker signal, and have it serve as a cue to end a behavior, as well as a reinforcement marker signal, yet the Karen Pryor Academy defends the notion that "click ends the behavior" as though it's their religion. And using a Keep Going Signal, and behavior chaining, is increasingly important and useful in my practice, and little in play among KPCT(TM) clickertrainers.

Over the past few years, I've attended seminars with some of the greatest trainers in the world -- such as Carolyn Scott, Mary Ray, Diane Kowalski, Emma Parsons. I went to a KPCT "clicker expo" and got to bathe in the aura of trainers like Kathy Sdao, Kay Lawrence, Attila Szukalek. And I regularly train with local agility trainers like Anne Andrle (who is a nationally ranked competitor), Cindy Ratner, Liz Harrison. In written communities, and in online training groups, I've been able to learn from some of some of the greatest trainers in the world, like Michele Pouliot, Attila Szkukalek, Tina Humphrey, Kayce Cover. I'm always asking questions regarding how these great trainers do things-- and no one does everything in exactly the same way.

Learning to "play the language" of operant conditioning is a lot like learning to play a musical instrument. It requires sensitivity to the animal, and creativity, and love, for great trainers to take the science of operant conditioning, and from it, craft a language that communicates artfully with animals, and turns around to express itself through the behavior of our animals. It is very inspiring and liberating to observe how a great variety of trainers approach their art.

So, over all these years as I grow as a trainer, I find I'm falling away from the KPCT corporate idea of "clicker trainer." Rather than promote dog training as "proprietary" knowlege, which is bought and sold and employed as a whole cookie-stamped package, I am finding the better journey will look more like my other artistic ventures, where I can freely explore technique, make my own discoveries, while cultivating fluency and creativity with an operant language that is spoken among a diverse and multilingual community of trainers.

Fifty

2009-01-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

It's my birthday, I'm 50 years old today! Went through all these old photograph albums, and so much not in the albums, but found this photo of me at five years old, at my first birthday party. That first birthday party was a really big deal, I had to talk my mother into having it, even though my brother and sister had already had like two parties each, but then yeah, she let me invite my kindergarten, and some of the kids came. Mommy gave me a card, from Nana I think, and it opened into a crown that said 5. And I was wearing this orange fluffy dress, with one of those nylon puffy slip things. I saw that picture of me at five, today as I turned 50. The memory of me at five hit me so vividly, weirdly, and I felt it so clearly, how I was then, how it felt to wear that 5 on my head, how important and scary and wonderful.

Resource Guarding

2009-01-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

"Resource guarding" is the term we use to describe a sort of aggression that occurs around "possessions." The possession might be a food dish, dog bone, a soft space on the couch, or even the dog's human. Sometimes new dogs here do that. They figure out that I dole out treats, so they start to growl or threaten when other dogs approach me, as though saying, "hey, that's MY treat dispenser."

Needless to say, nobody likes resource guarding. It can be a bit dangerous, for example, if a dog is guarding a bone from another dog, and the handler intervenes, there is a chance the handler might get a redirected bite.

So, for some reason, a familiar guest arrived showing a bit more intense resource guarding this visit than last visit. I definitely don't like to see resource guarding escalate. Generally it is a sign of insecurity, where the dog feels he needs to defend his stuff, as otherwise, he fears someone might take it. It's not the worlds most horrible thing when a hissy fit is directed at another dog, but when they are a bit startling, it's time to address the issue.

So, what I've been doing is practicing "trade ya" to make sure this dog is happy about giving me his bone or whatever, and flooding the environment with delicious chewable things, and giving him lots of safe secure un-threatened opportunities to chew. So, out there today are two beef bones, four pig ears, zillions of toys, and I keep passing out dog biscuits and dental chews. This is the opposite of what you might hear about resource guarding, where you have to keep toys and treats picked up. In this sort of situation, where a young dog is just starting to resource guard and it is not an established aggressive behavior, but more of a game that is just a little too serious, I think it, it's best to FLOOD resources onto the floor, so the dog gets a sense of abundance, and gets used to having so many resources available, that the perceived need for guarding is reduced.

It's working. He is finding out that he can chew on a pig ear, and the other dogs aren't going to bother him, because they have their own pig ears. Pig ears are beginning to seem a little less over-the-top exciting. In fact, there are so many good things to "chews" from that he is laying here at my feet, maybe his mouth is exhausted from chewing, not at all worrying about the fact that Tigerlily is chewing on a beef bone a few feet away.

We need to teach dogs that sharing "their" stuff is fun, and painless, nothing to worry about. We can do that by reinforcing the dog's sense that giving up any object is a low cost (there's plenty of objects! I'll trade you this one for that one!), and highly reinforced ( I'll pay you for letting me have it) behavior.

Yard manners

2009-01-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

I am SO glad we have fenced in yards! It makes it possible to teach things that would be very difficult to safely train otherwise. So, Matilda is proving herself to be a total sweetheart, and also, she has a LOUD bark! She needs to be able to enjoy the great outdoors without too much barking, and also come when she's called.

Last night the kids left out a plate full of turkey, so I am using it as treats today. First I just call the dogs (Matilda suspects she is one) and they all come running because they know the drill. Yasi calls when she's handing out snacks. I don't call because they have to come inside necessarily, I call because I found this chunk of meat that they might like. Yippee! They come running as though they've got a phone call.

And when I bring the dogs inside, it's the same thing. They come inside to get the meat and then they go right back outside. I don't want the dogs to avoid recalling because they don't want to come inside. I want them to think they are just recalling for a snack, and then, right back outside to play! So they come flying! And when they have lots of outside time, they get so they don't mind the inside time after all.

So, to condition a quick recall with less barking, I wait till Matilda is quiet, and then I go outside and call her for turkey-time. If she is barking at the trees (or some other dog a mile away), I avoid calling her, but just go outside, interrupt her, and sort of shepherd her back inside if I can. Maybe give her some dog food if she cooperates, but nothing spectacular, and if she persists in barking she has to come inside. But I call turkey time when she's quiet. So, she is quiet more and more, because that increases the chance I'll come out and call her (self-discipline required on my part!). And so she comes running, "here's a yummy treat, now get lost kid." So now instead of hiding, barking in the furthest corner of the yard, worried that I might come out and ruin her happy moment (as she was doing two days ago), she is hanging around quietly for longer periods of time, and nearer the door, just in case I might call.

Matilda

2009-01-04T09:33:00.000-08:00

My camera is so annoying, I took all these videos of Echo and Matilda playing together, and then when I look at the camera it has one second of video. Rrr. My last easy share camera was great, but this one does not function well on rechargeable batteries. Oh well. Here are some photos I took yesterday. Matilda doesn't like the flash, so she doesn't like the camera, thus the expression on her face.

Matilda and Pirate

2008-12-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

Matilda is fabulous with other dogs. Pirate has also improved his canine social skills. They take turns chasing, and let each other take a break. This is really nice dog play.

I love to watch dogs interact. Observations skills are an absolutely essential foundation skill of good trainers. Trainers need to observe a great deal of canine behavior in order to understand what we are seeing.

A belief in punishment...

2008-12-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you are my student, the first thing I have to learn about you is, what are your training beliefs? If there is a sort of dancing-bear magic to it, do you believe in the magic, or more in the in the bear's chains and muzzle? The muzzle and chains are management, not training. Many students arrive at first training classes with a sort of religious belief regarding the power of punishment as a training system. This belief is an obstacle, and can get in the way of giving focused reinforcement a serious attempt.

Beliefs are often obstacles to new information. I just clipped the following out of an article I found on google news via Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-obama-birth-certificate1dec08,0,7258812.storytoday .

“Nyhan co-wrote a study this year that said journalists' attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions because many people want to believe the misperception.

"People often have a strong bias for believing the evidence they want to believe and disbelieving what they don't believe," Nyhan said. "There is less of a sense that we all have a common set of facts we can agree on. There's a polarization, and we can't even agree on the basic factual assumptions to have a debate."

I see this every day in dog training. People WANT to believe in punishment. We want to believe in change that we can make occur anywhere other than inside ourselves.

Another news story today lends credence to what the Buddha has always said, and Thich Nhat Hanh has always said, that happiness is contagious. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525793

Well of course. Behaviors are contagious, happiness is a behavior. Beliefs are also contagious. Behaviors/beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum. Behaviors/beliefs exist in relationship, and our most important relationship as dog trainers, is our relationship with ourselves. We need to know what cues we are sending out, what punishment, what reinforcement. Our right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. Whether we learn this in dog training or in our human relationships, it’s the same: change our own behavior, to change the behavior around us.

Many behaviors are always happening at once. My behavior, the dog’s behavior, the bird’s behavior, the behavior of the paper bag in the wind. We can’t train response to any of it unless we can first train our own response.

Believe you'll need to get rid of the food reinforcement pretty quickly, but intend to keep using punishment as long as you need it? Instead, try using reinforcement for as long as you need it. The more you practice, the more you build that history of reinforcement on the behaviors you like, and the more you will see results that reinforce your faith in reinforcement.

MY sister made this video!

2008-10-27T07:50:00.001-07:00

Matt Damon on Palin

2008-10-19T13:30:00.000-07:00