THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

A dear person sent me a book titled American Lambs, by T Yamamoto. It’s subtitled “Poems and Stories about Working Border Collies, Sheep, Family and Life on the Land.” The author explains that it is a mix of real life and fiction, but is all based on a real island off the North West coast in which sheep were allowed to graze the pastures and beaches until the rural land slowly, inexorably, evolved into a landscape of urban dwellers who, in the author’s words “didn’t realize that they were changing the exact things they loved about the land.”

But don’t think this is a sad book. It is a rich and moving celebration of our connection to animals and the land. I loved it, absolutely loved it, and I don’t think you need to have sheep or herding dogs to love it too. I read it in one night, and was sorry to turn the last page.

I also just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain. It’s a best seller, gotten rave reviews, but I was, uh, well, not equally impressed. Have any of you read it? It’s a novel primarily about a man and a dog, told through the voice of Enzo, a lab-terrier mix. I’ll be the first to agree that the story is gripping–a race car driver’s struggles to maintain custody of his child–but the use of the dog as the speaker comes across to me as just weird. I can see that it’s a handy literary device to describe the action from an “outsider’s” perspective, but there’s just nothing “dog-like” about what the dog says or thinks. Enzo’s dream is that he’ll come back as a person when he dies if he is a good dog now. Perhaps I’m taking this too seriously, but presenting dogs as little more than a stepping stone on the path to being human just doesn’t work for me. Can you spell  egocentric?

In the book, the dog Enzo seems to have no problem understanding the most complex of human interactions and intentions, and yet does nothing dog-like himself. You’ll  have to  look hard to find a reference, for example, to the sense of smell, which surely is the foundation of a dog’s perception of the world. Enzo is an interesting and endearing character, I just can’t find the dog in him.

I am clearly in the minority. Publisher’s Weekly and Entertainment Weekly loved it (every author’s dream), and its site on Amazon is full of raves. Is it just me? Am I getting churlish in my dotage? Did you read it, and if so, what did you think?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: How could it be mid summer already? Where did June go? Time seems to speed up as we age (my mom said just wait: in your eighties it goes by so fast you get dizzy), but this is ridiculous. I think between my knee and Jim’s arm and a puppy who has to pee every 10 minutes (better now), we lost time-related consciousness for a month. But it’s glorious here now. The endless rains have paused, and it is Ireland-green and lush and now cool and sunny. Sweet.

We are surrounded now by food, growing and ripening all on its own. As a woman who grew up in the  Arizona desert, this still seems miraculous to me.  Luscious food that just appears by itself and waits for you to pick and eat it? Is it a trick? Is there a witch behind the berry bushes?

The existence of free, wild food is amazing enough, but now? Wait, isn’t it still May? I can’t believe that the black raspberries are already ready, and that the wild plums behind the house are ripening. Dozens of stems of wild mint has been picked and dried, and I’ve managed to get 6 quarts of strawberries and 6 bags of rhubarb into the freezer. It all seems too early and I want to tell the summer to slow down please.

This afternoon I take Hope in for his last vaccination. Cross your paws for me. I’m not willing to skip his last shot, parvovirus is a constant threat around here and it is fatal far too often. I’ve done what I can: Hope is on chinese meds and lots of cooked greens (and has been a very sweet boy lately, more on that later in the week.) Wish us luck, I am hoping to skip the 24 hours of frantic, growley dog that Hope turned into after his last vaccination.

Here’s some berries I photographed this morning, waiting for me and the birds to gobble them up. Tonight I’ll pick another quart or two. It’s so kind of them to ripen in stages!

Thanks for your comments with examples of what looks like imitation in dogs and cats. I was especially intrigued by the cat stories, having had a cat myself who did a perfect imitation of a herding Border Collie after watching me work Luke every day. Luke and I would drive the sheep up the hill to the pasture, and Ayla, my tiny, gray cat, would follow behind. She often sit on a log and watch as I worked Luke on gathering and driving. The sheep, although never abused, did not enjoy this exercise as much and Luke and I, and were always ready to bolt to the barn if given half the chance. When that happened, Luke would have to streak around them at lightening speed and stop them.

When we were done working I’d say “That’ll Do” to Luke and let the sheep run back down the hill. Once they discovered no one was going to stop them, they’d usually break into a full run and dash down the hill like deer. After a month or so of this, as Luke and I followed the flock back down to the barn, Ayla darted out of the adjoining woods in front of the careening sheep, lept up and smacked the lead sheep on the nose with her paw. The entire flock came to a screeching halt. Ayla sat down in front of them and looked directly at me. The thought bubble over her head, as I imagined it, said “I can do this too you know.”

For years afterward I had visions of taking Ayla to herding dog trials, and, Babe-like, amusing and amazing the spectators while AYLA THE HERDING FELINE marched the sheep around the course. Of course, that didn’t  happen, Ayla appeared to be content with her one demonstration of prowess, and I never took the time to try to turn her ability into a circus act. But this example fits with so many of yours of dogs and cats observing the behavior of another for some time, and then replicating it. The challenge, of course, is turning our anecdotes into an experiment that rules out other explanations.

There are two pieces of research that come to mind that did just that, the work of Milosi and others with the imitating Tervueren, and the research of Friederike Range in Vienna. Here’s a summary of each:

Miklosi (& Topal and Bryne) worked with a 4 year old Terv, Philip, who had been trained from an early age as an assistance dog for a disabled owner. Philip could open doors, pick up items on cue, switch off lights, etc. His trainers began to teach him a few cues that corresponded with the desired activity. For example, his cue for Turn Around was an owner turning around him or herself. The experimenters built on that, and taught Philip to replicate 9 actions that replicated the behavior of the human. First the dog was asked to sit and attend to the person to “Philip, listen.” Then the trainer performed an action, like putting an object into a box. The “imitate” cue was “Do it.” After 10 weekly training sessions, Philip correctly imitated the action of the person 72% of the time, a significantly  higher percentage than a result expected by chance alone. Skeptics will note, however, that this is not necessarily imitation, if the cue was the same as the expected action. The question is, did Philip begin to understand the concept of imitation, versus responding to a cue that happened to be the same as the desired outcome? That’s why Philip was then asked to replicate untrained actions, which he did correctly 63 out of 94 trials.

A second test, two years later, asked Philip to pick up a bottle from one of 6 boxes and place it in another, based upon the actions of his owner (which creates 30 possible sequences). Philip performed the exact same sequence as the one he observed 28 of 60 times, which is again significantly higher than expected by chance. (Remember there were 30 possible combinations.) In addition, many of his mistakes were still very close to the correct response. There’s lots more in the paper, “Reproducing human actions and action sequences: “Do as I do!” in a dog,” published in Animal Cognition Vol 9, 2006.

In the other study, Friederike Range trained a Border Collie to get food by pressing down on a wooden bar by using its paw (versus the easier and more natural way of doing it, by grabbing it with its mouth). Three groups of dogs were allowed to watch the dog pull down the bar in this way: One group watched the BC use its paw with nothing in his mouth, the second group watched the BC use its paw with ball in his mouth, and a third group was given access to the bar without watching the BC demonstrate. 83% of the dogs in the first group used their paws to pull down the treat, but in the other 2 groups only 21 % and 15% used their paws. The authors suggest that the first group of dogs consciously imitated the demonstrator with the assumption that the BC was using the most efficient way to get the food. The second and third groups used the most natural method, the second group presumably concluding that the BC would have used his mouth if he could have, but used his paw because his mouth had a ball in it. The test dogs had no such constraint, so they went ahead and used their mouths.  If this is true, it is not only evidence of imitation, but inferential and selective imitation. The full study is published in Current Biology, Vol 17, Issue 10, May 2007. Needless to say, it looks like our observations of dogs imitating the actions of others may have serious merit. I suspect that it is MUCH more common for dogs to imitate other dogs than to imitate people (I’ve never had luck with modeling a behavior, like lying down, with dogs, though some commented that they have). It just makes more sense for dogs to relate more to the actions of their own species, yes?

Thanks as well for the comment about Ken Ramirez’s work on imitation. He’ll be speaking the day after I do in Massachusetts, I can’t wait to hear him talk. He’s one of the best, and I learn something new and wonderful every time I see him.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Tornadoes a few miles away, torrential rains every night. Dramatic enough, but try leaving your partner’s Prius out one night in a downpour with all the windows all the way open. Makes for an impressive bolt out of bed at 2:30 in the morning, not to mention an hour of toweling, 2 hours of blow drying with a hair dryer and 4 hours of huge fans streaming air through its open doors. Whoops. Dodged a bullet I think.. car seems totally dry now. Whew.

I’m about to take off for the fund raiser in Milwaukee… truly looking forward to it. I was taking some more photos of play for the talk, and here’s my favorite of Will and the Scorpion. Dog bliss!

The ability to imitate came up on an earlier post, and jump-started an interesting conversation about whether dogs are able to imitate others. I mentioned that it’s controversial in science whether non-human animals can imitate others, and promised to get back to the issue. It’s worth a half-day seminar unto itself, (and I’ll mention at APDT in October when I introduce the Cognition Symposium) but I thought it’d be fun to delve into the issue a bit here.

We should start our inquiry  by defining “imitation.” Of course, that itself is controversial! Some argue that imitation is any example of “observational learning,” while others insist it’s not true imitation unless the action imitated is a ‘novel’ one not normally done by the species. This, of course, limits the definition and makes it harder to find in non-human animals, and also brings up the question of what is “novel.”

No matter how it is defined, imitation is actually an advanced cognitive act. We think little of it (he’s just “aping you”) because we as a species are so good at it, but it’s actually an impressive behavior to pull off. It requires that an individual not only observes another’s behavior, but is able to translate that behavior mentally into his or her own action and then replicate it: Just watching someone pick up a pencil requires that your brain is able to link his arm with your arm, and that’s not something that comes easily to many animals. There’s a great clip I show in my UW class of Allen Alda doing a science special in which he interviews a researcher named Tomasello who compares the behavior of young children with that of orangutans when given a chance to replicate Alda’s behavior. The subjects watch Allen use a rake to pull food out of a box. The rake can or can not pull the food out, depending on whether it’s up or down. The kids watch Allen do it, and quickly learn to turn the rake over if they need to, but the orangs don’t seem to pay any attention to how he gets the food out. This could be an example of our species’ predisposition to watch and imitate the behavior of others and the orangutans lack of inclination to do so.

Frans de Waal, another primatologist, writes in The Ape and the Sushi Master (a truly great book) that we can’t compare an ape’s tendency to imitate a human with a human’s tendency to imitate another of their own species. He suggests that we need to consider BIOL, or what he calls Bonding and Identification-based Observational Learning. He suggests that individuals are unlikely to imitate others if they have no social relationship with them.

However, he too cautions about ascribing true imitation in cases in which it superficially  looks like imitation, but isn’t really. Example: a kitten watches its mother use a litter box, then walks into the box, scratches and eliminates. Wow! Imitating its mom, right? Nope… that’s a perfect example of what’s called “Local Enhancement.” The kitten is indeed affected by  its mother’s behavior, and is attracted to the litter box. She walks into it because she saw  her mother in it. However, once inside, the scratching and eliminating isn’t imitation, it’s an instinctive reaction to litter and needing to eliminate. We all know you can take most kittens, put them in a litter box and they’ll use it as if they’d been clicker trained to do so, right? A lot of what looks like imitation is actually this: an animals will watch another open a box, be attracted to the box, but have to learn for herself how to open it.

There’s LOTS more to this topic! I’ll write about the mechanisms of imitation next (mirror neurons and more), but for now I’ll direct you to some of the work of Adam Miklosi, an Ethologist in Hungary, who showed a fascinating video of a Tervuren (I first said GSD but found the article and discovered my mistake) trained a cue that meant “do what I do” at a seminar in Germany. Anyone else seen it? It’s fantastic.

And of course,  how could I not ask you? Send in your examples of what looks like imitation (in any species), but there’s more: write out your example and then put on your science hat. Is there another possible explanation?  If so, it doesn’t mean it isn’t imitation, or that dogs can’t imitate, but it is good to be open minded, yes? Considering alternative hypothesis will make for an especially interesting conversation.

See you in Milwaukee? I’ll be driving a few hours east to do a fund raiser for Wisconsin Human Society this Thursday night (24th) at the Raddisson Hotel in Milwaukee. I’m going to talk about Play, raise pots of money for a great progressive shelter and sign books and hopefully… get to meet some of you who read the blog. They may be sold out, but check it out if you can come and please come up and say hi if you are a blog reader. I love meeting you in person, it’s a lovely kind of reinforcement for writing.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: The lambs are huge! They are growing like weeds. Well, like lambs I guess, who are getting their fill of sweet, protein filled grass and forbs (sheep LOVE dandelions.. so do I, I pick the leaves and cook them for my dogs) and a small supplement of corn/oats and a protein balancer pellet. They don’t get much because they are getting such great grass and they are still getting milk from their mommas, but I like to give them a little extra.) Here are Dorothy’s lambs, getting large enough to lift her up if they shove their noses into her hard enough (which they do on a regular basis.)

The last few nights have been dramatic. Tornado warnings, wind damage, torrential rain. Rain Rain Rain. Enough already! But the sky sure was beautiful last night, as the clouds began to roll in for the next storm.

We’re still all about toys at the office, given the boxes and boxes of them that arrived last week. And there’s nothing like having a new puppy in the house to get you back to thinking about toys!

A great happy surprise has been that the toy we were afraid would live on our shelves forever, Sherman the (Big) Sheep, has been a big hit. It’s sold more than any of the other toys, and we are still smiling about it. (And so is Will, he adores it.)  There are a few left, but we don’t expect them to hang around for long. Just fyi, the loser of the new toy choices is the hapless Scorpion, undoubtedly an image most people don’t want to see, and to make matters worse, it’s covered in “nature’s warning colors–red and black–just to make it more off putting. Poor little scorpions, I suspect they’ll be hanging around for awhile. All our dogs are fine with that, the Scorps are one of their all time favorite toys and we’ll be forced to take them home if they never sell. Picture Border Collies, Goldens, Beagles and Heeler mixes crossing their paws.

But I thought I’d mostly write today about two toys that we discovered during our research that are, well, weird. I don’t know any other way to describe them. Weird toy number one is the Doggie Lover Doll, manufactured in Brazil for dogs to have something to hump.  Seriously. Here’s what the manufacturers said in their release: “Human beings have their hands to masturbate themselves, now the domestic animals…. can alleviate themselves with a toy designed specifically for them.” Yup, you read it right, the doggy equivalent of a plastic doll. Oh my. (And no, we won’t be adding it to our collection of toys available on our website! I tried to find the website for it, but I got a “website down” message. Should I not be surprised? Was this all a big joke?)

Weird toy number two is . . ., wait for it:  Mr. Poops! Yes, indeedy, even you can buy a toy that looks exactly like dog feces. Imagine the fun you’ll have picking it up and tossing it around your living room floor. It’s made by the same people that make some of our favorite toys, My Dog Toy, but geeez, guys, who thought that up?

I remember one speech I gave at a fund raising dinner at which the hotel staff had decided it would be soooo funny to provide the chocolate desert in the form of dog poop. Apparently they all laughed like loons, but imagine a room of very quiet people when the desert plates came out. No one ate the desert, they had to throw it all away and the laugh turned out to be on them. You just gotta love our species sometimes. (Does anyone remember this and where it happened? Surely it could  have only happened in one place!)

Anyone else know of more toys to go into the “what were they thinking” category?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Will had oral surgery on Tuesday and Hope went to a friends for a few days so that Will could come home and recuperate.  (And yup, that was the tooth that I had a root canal done on, after which I was told that the tooth would forever be brittle and he could never chew on anything harder than a rotten tomato. Okay, I exaggerate, but if I had been told an hour before what was told an hour afterward, I would have elected to have the tooth extracted then. Before the root canal the dental specialist told me that it would give Will a “fully functional” tooth. That means a tooth that can chew on something harder than a sock  to me . . . But I won’t elaborate here lest I sound churlish; see an earlier post for a discussion and great comments about teeth, chewing, bones and dental procedures.) After thinking long and hard about the issues, I had decided to allow Will to chew on some objects, while avoiding hard ones like the long bones of cows, extra hard chew bones, etc. I just don’t think a dog can be a dog if he is not allowed to chew on anything. So I figured the broken tooth was inevitable, but the timing was unfortunate, to say the least. But I still will allow Will to chew on soft bones and some toys harder than dish rags. Everything in moderation.

For now my challenge will be preventing Hope and Will from playing tug games until next Tuesday (so that Will’s gum can heal). It is their absolute favorite game, so life will be interesting to say the least. Thank heavens for crates! Hope just came back and charmed me with his sweet, enthusiastic greeting and adorable ears. I’m sooooo curious to see how Willie responds to his return. Thrilled to see him? Or not?  I’ll let you know next week.

At the farm the birds and flowers continue to be a delight. It’s green and lush and about as pretty as it can get here. The barn is full of swooping barn swallow youngsters, the wrens are busy on their second nests of the season, and the Cedar Waxwings are gobbling up the berries from the Service Berry tree. They are such elegant birds! Here’s a photo of one that a friend just sent me from his summer home in upper Michigan.

A dog’s love of a good chase is both a blessing and a curse. It makes playing with them extra fun; what a joy it is to play fetch and chase with some dogs! And it’s got a dark side too–chasers love to chase cats, cars, joggers and bicyclists, and that doesn’t tend to work out so well for all involved.

In an earlier post I talked about teaching my new pup Hope not to chase Sushi the cat, and several readers asked how I am doing that. Here’s a summary of both a generic plan and how it looks in detail in one home, with one dog, and one cat. Obviously, the details vary tremendously, but the basic plan is relatively universal.

1. MANAGE AND PREVENT: What could be more fun than chasing something if a dog is so inclined? Dogs are, after all, cursorial predators (meaning they run things down for a living), and that tendency is still very strong in many of them, 12,000 + years later. (And admittedly, not so much in others.) There is little more reinforcing than a great chase to some dogs, so once you know it’s an issue, job #1 is to prevent it from happening unless you can use the situation as a training session. That means leashes, gates, etc.. whatever you need to do to keep your dog from getting reinforced by a super fun chase game.

At the farm: Once I knew Hope loved to chase Sushi (happened once outside and once inside), I used leashes, gates and management to prevent it from happening again. If Hope was outside loose, then Sushi was inside.  If Hope was inside, Sushi was in her kitty suite if I couldn’t be on “cat duty.”

2. MASTER at least one incompatible behavior. While you are managing the situation, work on teaching at least one (more is better) behavior that inherently prevents chasing and gives you a chance to give your dog a whoppingly wonderful reinforcement. You could use “Watch” (turn away and look at me), sit down, lie down, turn away and chase you, go get a toy, etc etc. Your choice should be based on finding something that replaces chasing (or even focusing on the chasee) and is something that is easy and fun for your dog to do and for you to reinforce. Don’t choose “Sit” if it’s hard for your large breed dog to sit down, or “Lie Down” if your dog is nervous outside and he likes to chase cars. Fighting fire with fire is often a good idea, so if you have a dedicated chaser, you could teach him to look at you when you say “Watch” and then let him chase you as a reinforcement.

When I say “master,” I mean to teach the behavior (again, more than one is better, gives you more flexibility) so that your dog will do it even when she is distracted. Start, as you would with all cues, with no distractions, and then work your way up to mild distractions, and then strong ones.

At the farm: We were already working on turning to me when I said his name, and sitting on cue, so I used both of those. When we started this, I had only had him for 1 week, so I didn’t want to get too elaborate. I probably said his name + reinforcement 25 times a day, and asked him to sit about the same number of times. For reinforcement he got great treats (kibble for easy responses, cooked pieces of  steak for ones when he was distracted), cooing and belly rubs (he appears to adore them) and chasing me when I ran. Well, I can’t run much, which is truly cramping my style. I hobble along like Chester dragging his bad leg while calling after Mr. Dylan (any one else remember Gunsmoke?!) But I speed up as best I can, and have  friends and Jim use running as much as they can, because herding dogs like Will seem to love little more than a good run after a friend.

3. ASK FOR A BEHAVIOR in the presence of the chasee. Use the behavior(s) you’ve been working on and give your dog a chance to be right or to be wrong. Only do this when you have some control. Don’t start with the dog and cat loose outside, or a loose dog who can see cars passing by right in front of him. Do what you need to do to create a ‘win’ and avoid a ‘loss’… if you need to use a leash, then start there. Perhaps you ask your dog to look at you when he sees the cat behind a gate (no leash necessary there) or when you let them both into the same room together (leash might help here!). If your dog chases cars, be thoughtful about how difficult it will be for your dog to respond to your cue, the one you’ve been working on so hard in other contexts.  Perhaps you start just on your front porch, not walking any closer to the street, and jackpot your dog for any positive response before going any further.

If your dog doesn’t respond to your cue, show them some great food and lure them away from the object of interest. At first I’d give the food (assuming that’s what your using at that point) even if you had to put the food beside their nose and use it to lure them toward you, but after a while you might want to use “negative punishment” and show them the food (right to their nose), lure them away from the car or cat, and then say “Oh Dear. Too bad… you would  have gotten this if you’d been good, but you missed your chance. I’m so sorry.” (It’s really fun here to eat the food yourself .. not sure it affects the dog, but boy it feels great! Unless the only food you have is Liver/Fish Chunky Yunkies or something, Yuck.) If this happens several times in a row (no response), then you need to go back to Step #2, or set up the situation so that the chasee is farther away.

When your dog does respond to your cue, Whooooo Hooo! Jackpot (10 treats in a row, one at a time, while you wax eloquently about how brilliant she is, or run like crazy, laughing and clapping, throwing yourself down on the ground and letting happy dog lick your face.. etc etc…). Give reinforcements based on the difficulty of the exercise. Once you’ve gotten several good responses in a row, start asking for a bit more from your dog (cat closer for example).

Continue this at least 3 times a day if you can, more is better. Don’t exhaust your dog (or cat!) by asking for a Watch, for example, over and over and over again in a row. Ask for one or two good responses, then move on to something else.

At the farm: I began letting Hope and Sushi together in the house and asking for him to either look at me or sit on cue as soon as he saw the cat. (Once Sushi learned she wasn’t going to get chased she stopped running away, which made things a lot easier.) This went very well, partly because I’d worked on it so hard, and partly because Hope is a relatively responsive little pup.  Once I was at 95-99% inside, I started letting my guard down outside and not worrying so much if they were both outside together (after about a week). Then, every time he saw the cat I’d say “Hope” or “Sit” and give him my best and most wonderous reinforcement.

4. USE MILD Positive Punishment when necessary if it’s relevant and suitable. This would only be applicable in some situations, not in others. Try body blocking between a dog and a cat for example (see my farm example below). Perhaps if you had a car chaser you could get between the dog (on leash of course) and the car, and back him up in space a few paces (I love “space corrections” — you’re not mad,  not raising your voice, just ‘taking the space’ back away from your dog.) I am always very cautious about positive punishment, but as I said in an earlier post, I do not think it inhumane in the least if it is done thoughtfully and carefully. After all, as defined, it is adding something (the ‘positive’ part) to decrease a behavior (which is what makes it ‘punishment’ as defined by Skinner et al). The trick is knowing your dog, what you can ‘add’ to decrease a behavior, and doing it with the right timing.

At the farm: A few times Hope ignored my cue, and was about to start another chase. Because chasing Sushi is SO reinforcing, I just couldn’t let him get away with doing it. (In many other contexts I would just let it go and go back to reinforcements… but you just can’t do that when the problem behavior is inherently as reinforcing as anything you can provide.)

Before he could start chasing, I got between them,  facing Hope, and backed him up in space a few feet. While I was backing into him (to back him up), I spoke very softly, but with a low voice, disappointed voice saying something like: “What are you doing Mr. Hope? We don’t bother cats in this house.” Okay, full disclosure, sometimes I used other words, and sometimes they weren’t quite so sweet, but I always try to use a quiet, disappointed, but still benevolent voice.

However, two times I was behind Hope, he was about to chase Sushi and I had no way of getting between them. I said his name and got nothing, and I knew darn well the chase was about to start, so I tossed my bait bag (handily in hand) such that it landed right in front of Hope. I said “no” right before it landed, and glory of glories, the timing worked out perfectly. Hope is a relatively soft dog, and it had a big effect on him. Ever since then he’s responded to my requests to look at me or sit down around the cat, but I don’t think it all would fit together if we hadn’t worked on a solid foundation of what TO DO (versus what NOT TO DO). (In other words, just saying “no” rarely works unless you teach the dog what you DO want him to do first.)

5. BE PATIENT AND HAVE STAMINA. Everything else is the easy part, this is the hard part! What can I say? This is going to take time. How much depends on your dog, you and how much he has chased something he shouldn’t in the past. If he’s been doing this for years it’s going to take a lot more time and stamina than if you can get it turned around early on. Do keep one thing in mind: Research shows that it takes 21 to 28 days of consistent practice to turn around an old habit and learn a new behavior. It turns out that most people are really good at trying something new (exercise for example) for 10 to 14 days. Do the math. Whoops. So think about your behavior around this issue, and remember that you’ll need the most support and help around day 11 to 28!

Hope is doing well, but it’s only been two weeks. I’d estimate we need at least 6 months of work, but overall things should continue to improve, with the predictable set back occurring every once in a while. Right now he still goes over to Sushi, tries to interact, and I have to ask him to sit or look at me. He’ll do that right away, but Sushi is still irritated by his very existence, and Hope still thinks it is fun to get close enough for her to swat at him. Cross your paws for poor Sushi: we finally got stalking out of the picture and now she has a dog who wants to play with her. Maybe she’ll read the blog about all the cats who like to play with dogs?

If you have a chaser that you’ve worked with, I know readers would appreciate any other ideas and tips you have for them.  I’d love to hear too how you are handling it.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: True confessions: between my smashed knee, Jim’s exhausting brace, a puppy who has to urinate ridiculously often (checking on ‘puppy vaginitis,’ will have chinese med appt soon) and now Will having oral surgery as I write… things have been a tad challenging at the farm. Will broke his root canal tooth last weekend, so he is having it extracted. (More on that soon, including some serious grousing, but I have to go check on him now.)

The best thing that has happened all week (besides a delightful visit from my nephew and his wife) is that the toys we ordered came in. We’ve been testing toys for months, and have put the winners on the website. (Along with the coolest tiny Kong keychain you can imagine. We are all stupidly entranced by it. Check it out.) We did have a bit of a surprise: we ordered a tough, stuffed sheep that we pictured as being, oh I don’t know, toy chihuahua size, and it came more corgi size. We have an entire flock in the back room. Luckily, Hope and Will think it’s too cool for words . . .

A reader asked for an update about Will and Sushi, so I thought it was time to fill you in on how it is going. I’m happy to report that things are going extremely well. (Whew!) The entire story would be a chapter in a book (and probably will be!), but here’s the summary:

Problem: Willie stalking Sushi the cat. As I said in earlier posts, this is very different from “chasing the cat.” Cat chasing can be a serious problem, don’t get me wrong, especially if it is predatory and not initially motivated by play, but “strong-eyed” herding dogs who automatically go into a stalking posture around a cat are a real challenge. Using positive reinforcement for, say, looking at the cat and then turning to look at me for a treat or a toy wasn’t working.

The primary problem is that once a strong-eyed dog makes visual contact with an animal it sees as something to be herded, it is extremely hard for the dog not to begin stalking. I’ve read so many books that describe Border collies as “mesmerizing their prey” with their intense stare, but in truth it’s the exact opposite. It’s the dog that goes into a trance.

Super “strong-eyed” dogs are not favored by the top handlers, because they literally become “stuck” once they make contact with the sheep. They just stop moving altogether and stand like statues while you whistle yourself silly trying to get them to move. I’ve worked on that with Willie, having been encouraged by Alisdair McRae  to keep Willie moving and simply not let him stop or lie down for months and months during his early training. (I used to call Alisdair the “Tiger Woods of Herding” but it no longer seems like the compliment it is meant to be!) Willie still can get stuck sometimes, but it doesn’t happen very often at the farm and I’m grateful for the advice that Alisdair gave me early on.

But that strong-eyed predisposition made working with him and Sushi especially difficult. All the techniques you would use (and I did use to cure  him of bark/lunging at other dogs) don’t work in this situation. Teaching him to look at the cat on cue made things worse, and teaching him to get a toy as soon as he saw the cat didn’t work either. Once he saw the cat, he was lost in stalking-land. I tried telling him to lie down every time he saw the cat, but that just kept him in herding mode. (You can read more about what I’ve worked on in Willie & Sushi Part II, 12/9/2009).

We made big strides when I switched to asking for a Sit rather than a Lie Down (not a posture a herding dog takes when working, unless they are a tad confused). Once he had sat down, I reinforced him with play. That helped a great deal. But the next break through was serendipitous: I sent Sushi to a boarding kennel for a few days when a cat-allergic house guest came to visit. Sushi was gone for 3 days, and when she returned I made a decision to use (cover your ears here if you believe in 100% positive reinforcement and consider even mildest of punishments a sin) positive punishment when he focused on Sushi. Three times I threw something soft in between him and Sushi when he lowered his head toward her (twice it was my bait bag full of treats!), then we ran in the living room and played with his toys. Ever since he has been great. I think the combination of the work we’ve done before, the break from having Sushi in the house and starting over anew by stopping the behavior before it could start again was the key.

Granted, it  doesn’t hurt have a puppy to play with to keep his attention off the cat, but the problem was handled before the puppy came. Willie still focuses on Sushi if he sees her in the window, but as soon as she comes in he turns away from her and grabs a toy. GOOD BOY!!!

None of this would have worked if I hadn’t had a good foundation laid beforehand, but it sure feels good right now. Of course, it’s also summer and Sushi is outside a lot, so the big test will come next winter, but right now the Willie/Sushi problem is history. Of course, now I’m working on teaching Hope not to chase the cat (more on that later, but it’s going really, really well…).

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Will and Hope are playing beautifully in the house together, lots of tooth fencing and wrestle play. Every once in awhile Will seems to get a tad irritated and end the play session with a snap and an offensive pucker, but it’s rare and probably appropriate, given that shark-tooth Hope isn’t always mindful of the arsenal he is carrying around in his mouth. I also am quick to let Will go upstairs to take a break if he tells me he is ready, and I suspect that makes a big difference. Who doesn’t need a break from a puppy every once in awhile?

Their play outside is still driven by Willie’s nerdy and rude herding behavior. He just can’t figure out why Hope doesn’t want to play “You be the sheep and I’ll smash into you every time you move forward!” Sort of like the big brother who wants to tie his little brother up to a tree so he can play pirate and his little brother plays the captured victim. But Hope is figuring out he can play as long as he has somewhere to hide, like the edges of the wading pool:

The next photo is Will and Hope in a ‘road training’ session. Hope is learning to automatically lie down every time I walk toward the road. He is not allowed to go within 30 yards of the road, and he is learning to lie down if I move over that invisible barrier myself. This does NOT mean that he wouldn’t go to the road if I was behind him (on the house side rather than the road side) and someone appeared on the road that he’d like to meet. That is a completely different concept, and one we’ll work on once this stage has progressed. This is his 3rd session, and he will now lie down to a visual signal and stay until I come back parallel to him. Once I do, he gets enthusiastic praise, belly rubs (he LOVES them) and sometimes a piece of the cheapest steak I can find in the market. I also think it helps greatly that Will knows the drill and he has big brother beside him doing the right thing. (It’s very controversial whether dogs can truly ‘imitate’ others, but I do believe that at minimum it helps in the sense that Will is not moving around causing a distraction, and I do wonder often if Will’s behavior doesn’t also directly influence Hope’s… Food for thought.)

I’m working on a column for Bark magazine about positive reinforcement. It’s such a simple concept once you get it, but it’s a bit like riding a bicycle . . . it takes awhile to be able to do it comfortably and effectively. In the column, I want to stress that it is the receiver who defines what is “positive reinforcement,” not the giver. I find that to be one of the biggest mistakes that we humans make: doing things we think our dogs like, that they actually define as aversive (and therefore act as positive punishment, exactly the reverse of reinforcement!).

The most common example of this mis-communication is when people praise and pet their dogs either in ways the dog does not enjoy (especially patting on top of the head) or at a time that the dog doesn’t want to be petted  (while playing with other dogs for example).

One of my goals for the column is to broaden people’s definitions of “positive reinforcement,” and I’m going to provide some examples of things we humans might not think of off the top of our head. Here are my two favorite examples. One is from Karen London, Ph.D.. CAAB, (who writes a great blog for Bark by the way). She was out in the country with her newly acquired lab cross when they flushed a deer. She called Bugsy to come just before he sprang off in pursuit, and to her joy and amazement he turned and ran back to her. Alas, she had mistakenly left her treats in a different jacket and had no treats with which to reward him. She couldn’t even take off running to let him chase her because she was in cross country skis in cross country ski tracks, facing the wrong way. But, ever the quick thinker, Karen reached into her pocket and took out a used tissue and gave it to Bugsy when he arrived. Voila! Her dog was thrilled at this acquisition, and Karen’s creative thinking laid a foundation for a solid recall for years to come.

My second favorite story, (continuing along the lines of “yucky things that dogs love”), was at my farm when I had an Advanced Outdoor Training Class. One of the students had a hunting dog who had no interest in anything but sniffing out wild birds and eating sheep poop. Now, if you’re not familiar with sheep, sheep poop comes in piles of small, dry pellets that producers call “berries.” And it’s just grass, after all, albeit a bit recycled. But that explains why I suggested my student just pick up a handful of sheep berries, put them in her pocket and use them as reinforcements. There were no parasites in them that could harm a dog, and although one wouldn’t want to give too much to a dog at one time, they were the perfect reinforcement for this dog at that particular time. Jokes  have been made that if times get tough I could package the stuff and sell it . . . but as effective as it was (it IS what the dog wanted, after all!), I don’t think I’ll find a market for it.

Here’s my question for you: Do you have an example of a creative reinforcement? Something your dog loved that is beyond the usual dog treat-exuberant praise-click & treat menu that we all know and love? I’ll bet many of you do, and I sure would love to hear it. If you send it in, I might use it in the column, so no secrets!

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Rain rain rain. Sure is green here, looks like Ireland. Life in general has been a tad challenging, what with a young puppy and Jim’s arm in a brace and my injured knee (but good news — no surgery.. yeah!  It’s supposed to be as good as new in two months, phew.). Hope and Will played much of the day  yesterday, so good to see. Will gets tired though, and so today he seemed like he needed a rest. I am quick to let him go upstairs when he looks like he needs a break. I sympathize!

Hope shows no signs of wanting to stalk Sushi, but boy does he want to play with her! What an irresistible play bow.

Unless, of course, you are a cat:

But here’s a highlight: we’ve been working on coming away from the cat when called, and bless his furry little heart, Hope came off right away when I said “That’ll do.” Good boy. Of course, we’re working on not bothering the cat in the first place, but hey, it’s only been 3 weeks. In the photo below I’ve just called him, he is just turning away and is starting to come toward me. Jackpot . . . that was worth 10 treats in a row from the treat bag. (and do you love the look on Sushi’s face?)

Hey, why not? Okay, I know, really I do. It costs a fortune to get there, no way around it. But hey, I’m going to do a two-day seminar outside of Auckland on November 27th and 28th, of this year, and what better excuse to take the trip of a lifetime? Besides, the air fare rates just went way down . . .

I’ve been to New Zealand before, and hands down, it is one of the most beautiful place in the world. Ah, it’s true, I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been in some drop-dead gorgeous places, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Denali Range in Alaska, and the fjords of Norway. All of these places are awe-inspiring, but New Zealand still has my heart as the place I just had to go back to with Jim. I seriously considered moving there when I visited, so impressed was I by the people, the scenery, and okay, the food. When I was there the first time (a gazillion year ago? or maybe just 20 +?), I vowed I would come back. And now I get to, thanks to the good people at Learning About Dogs.

The seminar I’m going to do includes discussion, demonstrations, slides and videos on “Advanced Canine Behavior,” “Dog-Dog Aggression,” and “Play.”  You can learn more about it on my host’s site, Learning About Dogs. Granted, you could come to a similar seminar in the U.S., if that’s where you live, but don’t you need an excuse to treat yourself to a special trip? You could travel to Auckland, have your plane fare be a business expense, and then take a well-deserved vacation. (That’s my plan.) Besides, I’m winding down on seminars, wanting to spend more time at home and less time traveling, and I don’t know how many more I”m going to do. Here’s a site just to get you thinking about New Zealand itself.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Baby birds everywhere. The barn is full of newly fledged barn swallows, the fat, matronly Robin babies are sprawling out of the nest on the porch light, the hapless Phoebee continues to try to raise her young in a nest inside my garage–which means she’s closed in or out anytime I’m gone and have shut the door. The wren is nesting again in the vent that leads to the bathroom fan, which hasn’t worked in years because I don’t have the heart to take away the wren’s favorite nest site. The first year the wrens nested I’d turn on the fan switch and hear “cheep cheep cheep” as the air blew across the nestlings, so we stopped using the fan. Now the fan doesn’t work at all, but the wrens raise 2 to 3 sets of young from it every summer, and it means the house has baby birds growing and twittering on three sides. Surrounded by bird life, I love it.

There are flowers everywhere, including iris, daisies, and the ubiquitous mid-western transplant, the peony.

Here’s the center of one, looking far more elegant than any peony deserves.

And here’s Mr. Hope, whose 2nd ear just popped up like a piece of toast. He’s covered in grass and baby burrs, a dog of the country.

I didn’t know what it was at first. A large cat? A fox? The grey-brownish animal was trotting just outside the fence, looking inward toward the lambs, as Will and I stood looking at the flock in the high pasture one morning last week. As it came closer, I realized it was a coyote, a frequent visitor to the outskirts of the farm, but a rare sight in broad daylight, so close to my sheep.

Granted the lambs were no longer newborns, and granted some of the older ewes were capable of smashing a small canid into the dirt like bugs, but still, a coyote/lamb omelete is not something a shepherd wants to see. My guard dog long gone, I reflexively barked myself. (Will hadn’t noticed the coyote at that point, he was so focused on the sheep.) BARK BARK BARK, I said, trying to sound low and growly and oh-so-intimidating. The coyote stopped and looked at me for a moment, and continued its purposeful trotting along the fence. I changed tactics. WOOF WOOF WOOF I bellowed, and before the second note had left my mouth the predator pivoted and ran for the hills, its beautiful tail streaming high above the grasses.

It was the coyotes themselves who taught me to say WOOF.  Last year after Tulip had died a pack of them was rallying just yards from the barn and the damp, delicate lambs within it. We heard them yip-howling, sounding like happy banshees risen from the graveyard, and we dashed down the stairs and ran out onto the front lawn. In the past we would have run out with Tulip, who would  have been barking loud and low long before we got to the bottom of the stairs. Out she’d go on her tie out, where she’d roar out into the blackness, her voice echoing back from the hills beyond, and the coyotes would immediately go silent. One of us would stand there with her until long after, listening to the night, sleepy but thankful for her deep barks and her huge white presence.

But with Tulip buried practically under our feet, on the very spot she would stand and broadcast her presence, we were on our own. BARK BARK BARK we yelled, and the coyote chorus continued. For reasons I can’t explain, I jazz riffed my way from BARK BARK BARK to WOOF WOOF WOOF, and the cacophony immediately stopped. Nothing. Silence. I tried it again a few nights later, and again, BARK had no effect, while WOOF was a game stopper.

I told a friend who has two Great Pyrenees my story a few weeks later, bellowing out my BARK and my WOOF  at her home in the country as best I could to illustrate. My friend and her two dogs listened to my story . . . until I got to WOOF WOOF WOOF, and you guessed it, her 2 dogs immediately began to bark. Not only that, but each dog ran to a different area on the property where they typically bark at intruding animals (especially coyotes). One went left, one went right, and they each raised their beautiful white muzzles to the sky and barked like a stereo symphony. Their barks were loud and serious… they had to be loud for us to hear them, because my friend and I were laughing so hard, big-eyed and amazed, that we would have drowned out anything less than a full operatic performance.

Barking is such a huge topic, and surprisingly little studied for such an important behavior of the animals we live with most closely. We know that wolves bark, but rarely, and most often when they are adolescents. The message appears to be directed to two parties: one to the intruder (I see you!) and another to the pack itself (911: I need some assistance here!). Domestic dogs are veritable Chatty Cathy’s compared to wolves, which makes sense if you think of dogs as wolves who never grew up (called paedomorphic or neotonous). Surely we have also selected for barking; in many places in the world the primary purpose of  dogs is to be an early warning system for predators.

Barking itself is controversial (isn’t everything?). Some argue that barks lack any communicative value at all (these could not be people who own dogs, could they?), while others argue that barks vary by context and can be accurately used at minimum to assess the internal emotions of a dog, and at most to gain information about the environment (ie, what kind of predator is approaching?). For a great review of this literature, see Sophia Yin’s article in the Journal of Comparative Psychology (2002, Vol. 116, No. 2), “A New Perspective on Barking in Dogs.” Fedderson-Peterson, a researcher in Germany, agrees with Yin that barks can convey a tremendous amount of information. All (most?) agree that low, noisy barks  correlate with offensive & defensive threats (following the “universal principles of vocalizations” described by Morton many decades ago, with  lower pitched sounds correlating with an animal on offensive or about to be aggressive), while high-pitched, more harmonic barks correlate with fear or play or mild frustration.

So how does that fit with WOOF versus BARK? When I repeat the words and listen to myself, WOOF sounds a lot lower. It’s easier for me to say ‘woof’ in a low, deep voice than it is to say ‘bark.’ Could that be the reason it had more impact on the coyotes? Certainly, the words we use to symbolize canine vocalizations vary greatly, depending on the language. According to Wikipedia, people in Albania say “ham ham” while people in Iceland say “voff voff” to label a dog’s ‘bark.’ I find it interesting that for English, the article listed “woof,” “ruff” and “arf” for large dogs, and “yip,” and “yap” for small ones. Say those to yourself, and if you’re like me, you’ll say ‘woof a lot lower than you’ll say ‘yip.’ Larger animals inherently make lower sounds, which is believed to be one of the reasons that a deep, low bark is perceived as more threatening…. “I am BIG and I’m coming to get you…”

And here’s the beauty of the internet: This blog has about 16,000 readers now, from all over the world. So let’s hear it: what word do people use for “bark” in your native language?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Hope, at 12 weeks now, is doing beautifully on so many things. We’ve made huge strides on coming on when called (best reinforcement is running away from him, much better even than pieces of dried beef!), crate training, house training, sit and down on cue, puppy pauses, sitting down instead of chasing the cat (this one will take awhile!), and walking on leash. He is just as willing and biddable as his parents and the 7 older siblings I was able to hear all about (2 different litters, 3 yrs and 1 year of age). Of course, none of this is close to “done”.. he is only 12 weeks after all!

Hope and Will have more good moments than bad. They wrestle play and “tooth fence” in the house, and Will has lost his look of abject misery that he greeted with me every morning for a few days. Here they are now–look carefully and you’ll see the tiny, curved shark-like teeth in Hope’s open mouth. Last week he lept up and bit me on my . . . well, let’s just say I was facing forward, he jumped up above my waist, and it was quite a surprise. Good thing he’s learning bite inhibition from me and Willie both.