THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Here’s the latest on Hope and Willie: Both Willie and Hope continued to be “spooky” to all number of things. This occurred both on and off the farm, and to all sorts of sights and sounds. Willie began high-arousal barking and lunging to other dogs when on leash, and off leash he growled and tooth displayed at familiar dogs he’s been fine with for years. He backed away, ears flat and commissure retracted, to men he’s known and loved for years. Hope growled, barked and lunged at dogs, strange shapes and heaven only knows what else. Out of the blue, at least to us, one of the dogs would run charging toward the window that overlooks the driveway, making low, growly barks, hackles up, and set the other off to do the same.

It was simple, in a way. Both dogs were insecure in their current environment, and were setting each other off. It’s all fine to say that we humans need our dogs to look to us for direction and security, but no one talks ‘dog’ more clearly than another dog, and Willie and Hope were both increasing each other’s insecurities. The irony was painful, because their relationship was improving in many ways. They played “tooth fencing/wrestle play” beautifully in the house, and Willie was just, finally, beginning to stop being such a victim when Hope bullied him in the house. Hope still would growl, lunge and bite at Willie’s shoulders as they moved to the door, for example, and Willie often responded by tongue flicking and dropping  his head, but in other contexts Willie would discipline Hope for some perceived rudeness with an inhibited muzzle bite.

As I would with a client’s dog, I sat down and considered the options:

I. Do nothing and hope that the dogs would come out of it.  In Hope’s case, it is true that some dogs seem to come out of what I call Juvenile Onset Shyness by themselves, but lots of dogs don’t, and in my experience, it is crucial with most dogs to actively help them through this stage with environmental management and behavior modification. As a four year old, Willie’s background level of being an inherently anxious dog meant he would most likely regress to his previous behaviors of serious aggression to unfamiliar dogs, and further degrade into being at least fearful, if not problematic, around unfamiliar people.

Probability of success: Small to Zero.

II. Actively treat both dogs with environmental management and behavior modification. That would include:

1) Full health checks, although a medical cause of this behavior was highly unlikely, it is still always good to check.

2) Physical support from Chinese Medicine, Vet Acupuncture, possible inclusion of pheromones (DAP for example) and scents (lavender for example) and homeopathic medicines (Willie is already on Shen  Calmer, possibly add that to Hope’s diet as well?). Also included is diet, specifically the amount of grain and the protein source. In addition, Hope could not drink the well water from the farm without developing crystals in his urine, so he drank distilled water that we had to purchase. No chance of any improvement there.

3. Stimulus Management: Take dogs off the farm separately, so they don’t set each off and I could work with each of them by one on one. This is no problem when leaving the farm, but doesn’t solve their behavior at home.

4. Behavior modification: Use Operant and Classical Conditioning to condition the dogs to have a different emotional (classical) and behavioral (operant) reaction to the stimuli that are setting them off.  For Willie I would continue going back to what worked in the past around unfamiliar dogs: Start by saying “Watch” which he knows means to look at me, whenever another dog appeared. When he turned to face me, he got to play a rousing game of tug. That reinforced him for looking away from the other dog in many ways–he got to play a favorite game and the tug game allowed him to release pent up tension. The goal was to get him to “AutoWatch,” or look at me automatically when he saw another dog, and then he’d get a game of tug. That not only taught him a behavior incompatible with barking and lunging, it classically conditioned him to feel good when another dog approached. For unfamiliar men, I’d have them toss toys or balls for him (can’t train other dogs to do that or I’d use it with other dogs!), conditioning him to love it when men approach.

For Hope, who spooked mostly at strange shapes (but that included a woman carrying a small bag while walking a small dog), I have been teaching “What’s That?” The meaning of that cue is to look at something, turn and get a treat or a toy. (Treats seemed to work better with Hope than play, so I began using them more often–every dog is different.). This works well if you can anticipate what stimulus sets off the dog, but is harder if you don’t know what the dog is responding to.

5. Lots more training… of course, always more training! Willie was taught to bow on cue, and it’s a great way to help  him relax when he is nervous. (He does it himself often now, I suspect he uses it as way of relieving stress himself.) All dogs profit, as do their owners, by having lots of behaviors that they can perform that relax them, that are incompatible with the ‘problem’ behavior. Play bows are one of my favorites, because they not only relax the dog they often act to relax other dogs (people too.) The list of behaviors that are helpful to put on cue goes on, but you get the idea.

Probability of success? 70/30? 60/40? 50/50? Given the seriousness of Willie’s insecurities, it’s hard to say. Probably couldn’t make a good judgment about prognosis until about 4 to 6 months into treatment and Hope is older.

III. Re-home one of the dogs. Given that the insecurities of both dogs appear to be feeding off of each other, the last reasonable option is to re-home one of the dogs. I’ve re-homed 2 dogs in the past 25 years, always because I felt it was in the best interest of the dog. Every time it was brutally hard on me for a while, and every time the dog was better off for it. Here’s my criteria for doing so that I shared with clients for over 22 years: the new home has to be better than the home the dog is in now. Period. Pure and simple. (Of course, if one dog is putting others, either people or dogs, at risk, the criteria must be considered differently.) In each case, you have to carefully consider which dog would be better off in a new home; in some cases the answer is simple, in multi-dog households it can be more difficult. In the case of Willie and Hope, which dog to re-home would be  simple.  Willie is over 4 years old, I have moved heaven and earth to keep him alive and happy, I am bound to him as if he were a part of me, and my first commitment is to him. Hope is not even 6 months old, is a much sounder dog than Willie will ever be, and would be a much easier dog to place than Willie for a gazillion reasons.

Probability of success? 95 to 100 % if it was the perfect home, but where would one find that? How could you know what’s “perfect?” My heart goes out to those of you who commented that you have a dog you think is in the wrong place, but can’t imagine where the dog would go. It’s not always easy, I know. Because I have had Hope long enough now to know him well, in his case it would have to be a home in which he 1) lived in a settled group of dogs in which he could play with the young ones, learn boundaries from the elders and feel secure in a home with trustworthy people and dogs, 2) live in the house with people who are kind, clear, patient, humane and who would give him the kind of health care that, frankly, few dogs get and 3) once he is ready, work sheep on a daily basis with people who know what they are doing, who use humane versions of training and take learning how to do it well seriously.

I’ve been working on Option 2 diligently, wrapping my life around it, and then, like a karmic piece of toast, the perfect home for Hope popped into our lives. A  home with a settled pack of 6 dogs–a puppy his age to play with, elder males and females to provide boundaries and security. A kind, loving home, in which the dogs sleep on the couch, get home cooked food and cutting edge health care. A farm in the country with sheep and people who devote their lives to working dogs, going to clinics, herding dog trials, taking private herding lessons from the best in the country. The dogs get far more work on sheep than one of my dogs ever would, at least until I can afford to retire, which isn’t going to be for awhile.

That’s where Hope is now. He’s been there awhile, long enough to know he’s thriving there. Willie not only went back to his old self in 24 hours, he has never been happier. Recently we were out walking on leash at a public park, he saw another dog, did a loose body wag, turned and looked at me, mouth open and relaxed, and turned back to the other dog as if he’d love to say hi. He is back to loving everyone, unfamiliar men included. Never once did he look for Hope, or act in any visible way that he wondered where he was or wanted him back. (But of course, who knows what he was thinking? Did he wonder where Hope went? If he did, he certainly showed no signs of it.) He has been happy and playful and relaxed at home and everywhere else. He is no longer licking his paws, alarm barking at the slightest noise or tongue flicking.

By all accounts, Hope is happier than he’s ever been. He plays with a five-month old female pup much of the day, has been corrected for rudeness a few times by his elders and is now on his best behavior. He is behaving beautifully around all people and all dogs, has never yet had a house training “accident” in the house (he did relatively often at our house and I suspect now it was as much about anxiety  as anything else). He has “spooked” at one thing, one time, and nothing else. He fit in the day he moved in, and it sounds like he has never been happier. His new humans adore him, are eternally grateful for all of his training and socializing, and say he acts like he’s been there all of his life.

And so, the dogs are doing great. I don’t need to tell you who this has been hard on. I won’t belabor it, but what’s called “Separation Distress” in animals is the same thing we call grieving, and it’s recorded in a primitive part of your brain as if it were a serious, painful injury. (That’s why we talk about “healing” from the death of a loved one.) Willie and Hope have shown no signs of it; they appear to be happier than before. It’s the humans who are suffering. The first three days after Hope left were brutal, even though I knew it was better for both him and Willie. I gave up trying to do any work at all one day, just let myself give in to the sadness and the feeling of loss. It’s better now, but I look forward to the day when it still doesn’t feel quite so raw. One of my few regrets is knowing that, to a lesser extent, this news will be a bit hard on some of you who have followed Hope’s story with me throughout the summer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make this change as easy for the humans as it has been for the dogs, but I can’t.

I knew it would be hard personally, and I knew it would be made even harder because of the public nature of this decision, and because some people will criticize me for it.  But here was my choice: send Hope to a better home with the highest of all probabilities that it would be better for him and Willie both, or keep Hope because I loved him too much to let him go, or because I didn’t want to lose professional credibility with the people who believe that if I was good enough I would have ‘fixed it,’ or that it is never acceptable to re-home a dog, no matter what the circumstances. I can be a real coward sometimes, but I couldn’t live with myself if I passed up the best solution for two wonderful dogs because I was afraid of what people would say. This is a good place, however, to thank all of you who have been supportive during this process; there have been a lot of you, and I am forever  grateful to you. Truly. Thank you.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of talking and soul searching before this decision was made. I talked to numerous other behaviorists and shelter/rescue experts–the list of people I consulted would drive a seminar host mad with envy. The consensus was clear: it ranged from “Of course that is the right thing to do” to “Why didn’t you do it sooner?” Most of our discussions ended up asking what we could do to help people understand that sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a dog is to get him out of one situation and help to find a place in which he will thrive.

A word of caution: Please don’t try to generalize this situation too much to  any other. It concerns me that someone might read about the solution I have chosen and decide then that they should do the same. Every situation is different. If the perfect home hadn’t arisen for Hope, I never would have made that choice. What I will say to those of you who are struggling with this, based on 22 + years of working with clients, is that IF you have a situation in your home that is truly untenable, don’t assume that there isn’t either 1) help from someone to improve the problem or 2) another good home out there somewhere for one of your dogs. I have had clients work with trainers and behaviorists and end up resolving problems that they initially thought were unsolvable. I have had other clients who choose to re-home dogs with a variety of serious behavioral problems, and in many cases, the problems either went away, or the new owners managed the issues without any disruption to their lives.

Bottom line? There will always be Hope… sometimes it just lives in unexpected places.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: The sheep still need feeding, the water tanks filled. Willie has just brought the flock out of the main pasture, through the woods, for their afternoon snack. The ewes get a little bit of alfalfa hay, and the lambs luxuriate with their noses deep in a mixture of corn, oats and a protein balance pellet. The lambs stopped growing for awhile when it was so hot, but they are doing well now.

Here’s a photo showing how big some of them are now. Hard to tell a few of the biggest from their mommas.

Here’s Snickers and one of her lambs, looking through a window in the barn. Is dinner ready yet?

It is very quiet here, but Willie is very, very happy, and that is a good thing.

Gail Caldwell’s new book, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, is nothing short of exquisite. It is a book for anyone who has had and lost a soul mate best friend, for anyone bonded to another by their love of dogs, or their need for another who understands them without explanation. It is a love story in a way, a memorial to Gail’s friendship with a brilliant writer named Caroline Knapp, who most of the world knows through her book Drinking: A Love Story, and dog lovers like us know from her last book, Pack of Two.

Gail’s writing is so spare and honest and pure that I read the book non-stop, bleary-eyed at 3 in the morning, tears streaming because after Gail and Caroline find each other — two single women writers who shared living alone, having similar boyfriends (the same one sequentially at one point), being professional writers and battling alcoholism in earlier years — Caroline died of lung cancer. As Gail writes: “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and we shared that too.”

Full disclosure: I know Gail, and although I have only met her once, long after Caroline had died, we connected in seconds, old friends like comfy bathrobes on cool fall mornings. I had first seen her at a Book Fair in Florida, saw her speak on a panel and liked what I heard, bought her book A Strong West Wind and read it over a solitary dinner at the hotel, picked up and carried along by her words with such force I could barely eat. In the book’s acknowledgments she mentioned Caroline, and since I had just written in For the Love of a Dog that Caroline’s book Pack of Two was the best book on a relationship between a person and a dog I’d ever read, I was interested in the connection. Months later I found the nerve to write Gail, a Pulitzer winning writer, to tell how much I’d liked her book, and how much I had liked Caroline’s.  She wrote back that she was the best friend in the story, that she and Caroline had spent their afternoons walking their dogs together, talking about all the things true friends talk about, often with the dogs at the center. Later I was able to visit Gail in Boston, and meet her dog Clementine, heard how she had survived a horrific attack by another dog, and talked to Gail about the impossibility of life without our soul mate dogs, much less our soul mate human friends.

And so, I am not objective. But here’s what others say about the book:

“Stunning . . . a book of such crystalline truth that it makes the heart ache.” (Boston Globe)

“Caldwell (A Strong West Wind) has managed to do the inexpressible in this quiet, fierce work: create a memorable offering of love to her best friend, Caroline Knapp, the writer . . . who died of lung cancer at age 42 in 2002.” (Publisher’s Weekly)

This book is not about dogs, but Gail and Caroline’s love of dogs is central to the theme, as is their swimming, sculling and battle against alcoholism. It is also a lesson, pure and simple, about the power of language, and how very beautiful and powerful it can be.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Finally, it cooled off, cooler temperatures, lower humidity. Ahhhhh. Willie and I have worked sheep every morning.  Things with Willie and Hope are complicated, too much so for me to write about them now, but I will at length early next week (and yes yes, answer your questions about what I am doing about their reactivity.)

Here’s a photo from a walk we took today, a bunch’o dogs and a bunch’o friends, what a joy. Most of the dogs were out of the picture, but they were all Black and White (but not all BC’s.. we call it the Domino Group).

The Hope chronicles continue, with progress and problems. The good news is that Willie, on occasion, is stepping up to the plate a bit and not letting Hope bully him as often when they are in the house. As an example, ever since he was tiny, Hope has lept up growling and bitten at Willie’s shoulders as they move through space.  At first I  thought it was play, but if it was, it’s the kind of play in which one individual is having fun, the other not so much. Sometimes Willie seemed to ignore it, other times he’d tongue flick and look anxious. I came to see it more and more as a behavior related to controlling space, perhaps in part motivated by herding instincts, but rude nonetheless.

All Willie needed to do was snap at him one time, and I suspect it would have stopped. I’ve never seen Hope do this to any other dog; Hope is totally appropriate around all other dogs, giving lots of appeasement gestures or playing beautifully, with lots of self handicapping and never becoming overly aroused. As I’ve said earlier, I think Willie has a V for Victim on his forehead.

Recently, Willie has corrected Hope on a few occasions with a perfectly measured inhibited muzzle “bite.” (That is ‘discipline’ in dog language. A bite anywhere else, even if very inhibited, is either a fight or done in play). Willie’s corrections to Hope have been while wrestling/tooth fencing or over a resource. I don’t like Willie being a resource guarder (both he and Hope are to some extent), but I did love that Willie has gained a bit of confidence and is at least trying to teach Hope some boundaries. [And oh yes, yes yes, to the comments that perhaps it would be helpful to have a female like Tulip in the house. I have often said I wish she was still here for many reasons, Hope and Willie's insecurities being one of them. But I should add that getting a third dog as an experiment to fix things between Willie and Hope doesn't seem like a good risk right now, not for us and not for her.]

What’s concerning is that Willie’s behavior has recently degraded in other ways. Willie has regressed back to the fearful, neurotic dog he used to be. I believe that this is due to the fact that Hope has moved into a “Juvenile Shyness” period, and has begun barking and growling at unfamiliar shapes (strangely shaped signs, an empty grandstand, a large white rock). Hope adores people and other dogs, but if someone appears with a strange silhouette he’ll growl, lunge forward and bark. It’s very much “I’ll get you before you get me” and is, without question, fear-based.

Since this behavior appeared in Hope, Willie has behaved in ways that he hasn’t in years. While walking in town he barked and lunged at a small dog who was a good 40 feet away. He hasn’t done that in over two and a half years. He snarked and made ugly face to a BC he’s known for a long time, and was so worried about his presence on our entire 45 minute walk that he never stopped tongue flicking. Much of the time he hid behind my legs. Equally concerning is that recently he wouldn’t get near a man he knows well, and has always adored. Willie loves guys best, always has. It’s true that in his own juvenile fear period he began to act fearfully around unfamiliar men, but it was a mild version that was brief and was easily turned around. Willie’s major problems when he was young were a pathological fear of his own species, and an extraordinary level of sound sensitivity.

People who meet Willie now, at least until last week, often don’t believe me that Willie was a mess of fear and rage when he was young. He has lots of good dog friends. For the last year or so he has been completely comfortable around unfamiliar dogs he sees on the street, acting as though he’d love nothing more than to greet them. He’s greeted many unfamiliar dogs, loose bodied and comfortable, although I will say that size definitely matters.  The smaller the better according to Will. He is, however, not comfortable with any other dog coming into the house, and large dogs in the house make him extremely anxious. (That’s part of why I wanted a puppy.) His girlfriend Mishka, the beautiful Dobie he loves to run with, made him a nervous wreck when she came into the house. The dogs he’s been most comfortable in the house with have been small, male Border Collies and a Cavalier.

Until recently, if you came to the house by yourself, or saw Willie out on the street around other dogs, he’d look like a happy, care free dog. But underneath that full body wag lies years of hard work trying to help Willie out of a world of fear and panic, and I am concerned that Hope’s behavior is bringing it back out. They both strike me as insecure dogs who are feeding off of each other. Right now I’m teaching Hope “What’s That?!” (look at something before barking, turn and get a treat). I’m back to conditioning Will that if he sees another dog he gets to play tug with his favorite toy (play is MUCH more effective with Will than food, vice versa with Hope).

Because so many of you have been so kind and gracious about my writing about my own dogs, and said that it was helpful to hear about them, I will share with you that my heart fell when I saw Willie bark, growl and lunge at another dog. When he backed away from a man he’s loved for years I was stunned –he’s always loved men except for a short juvenile period during which I had guys throw balls for him and he decided they were the best thing since, well, the invention of tennis balls. I suspect that many of you know what it feels like to have a behavior problem regress; it’s tough. Willie and I have come so far, and we have worked so hard together to get him to where he is. My first job now is to carefully evaluate the situation and do what I need to do to bring back Willie’s confidence. Raising and loving Willie, a dog with problems as serious as any I’ve seen in twenty-two years, has always been a challenge, and I admit to sometimes wishing life with Willie was simpler. But it’s not, and I love him, and that’s that. I love Hope too, and I am equally committed to helping him have the best life that he can. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I’m interested in how many of you have raised dogs who have developed what I call Juvenile Onset Shyness (fear of unfamiliar things or people developing from around 5 to 9 months of age). I’m curious about the breed effect–it appears to me to be especially common in herding and guarding breeds, but I don’t believe there has been any study that compared it’s occurrence in different breeds. Anyone know of any? Of course it varies from a short, temporary period of mild fear of unfamiliar things to all out fear-based aggression, but I’m curious if there is a breed-specific predisposition. We do know that shyness is highly heritable, so it would make sense to be affected by breed and lines within a breed. Anyone seen any research?

Meanwhile, not on the farm (at least in the photo) here are the boys on Sunday morning, looking out of the balcony where we stayed in town so that the farm house floors could be refinished. It was fun to be in town in many ways, and good for the dogs, but ooooh, it’s nice to be home to the farm now.

Two more interesting books: A favorite of mine, In the Kingdom of Gorillas has been revised and updated since it first came out a few  years ago. It was written, truth in lending here, by two good friends of mine. I pretty much kiss the hems of their pants, because they are the people who did as much as anyone (actually more in my opinion) to save Mountain Gorillas from extinction. Amy spent years living with gorilla families, and with her husband and co-author Bill Weber, spent years convincing the governments of several countries that a well-managed gorilla tourist program would be economically more valuable than cutting down the remaining forest and growing crops. They are brave, intrepid people who are a big part of the reason that I and my friends got to spend a rapturous 45 minutes sitting amongst an extended family of gorillas in Rwanda a few years ago. In the Kingdom of Gorillas is a fascinating account of their attempts to learn about gorillas, their life with gorillas, and their relationships with other researchers and agencies. (And yes, they knew Diane Fossey well. Some of their stories about her are in this book. Others, well, are better left unpublished.) If you want to read about Amy and Bill’s close encounters with these amazing animals, and marvel at the hard work and stamina it took to save the species, pick up the book.

The second book was sitting on a table by my desk until I got comments from my last blog about wishing dogs could communicate with us more than they do. Many people wrote in (when asked what they would like to know about canine cognition) saying they’d like to know more about how their dog could communicate with them more specifically and more effectively. Sometimes I yearn for the same thing, but one comment also reflected my worries about that ability: do we really want to hear what they have to say?  Would our dogs relentlessly sign CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN I WANT MORE CHICKEN if we taught them how?

But here’s the book: Dogs Can Sign, Too by Sean Senechal. Here’s what it says on the back: “Imagine being able to ask your poodle, “Who’s at the door?” and having her respond “It’s Katy.” Or asking your golden retriever, “Do you want a treat?” and him responding, “No, water.” Myself, I’ve never met a GR who would pass up a treat for water, but hey, maybe it’d been in the desert and was seriously dehyrdrated… Anyone read the book yet? Taught your dog to sign? If so, let us know. I’ll pick it up soon and let you know what I think. Or, I’ll have Willie write it up.

Here’s the sunrise early this morning, a still, foggy breathless patch of time and space:

When clients, eyes shining, would tell me how smart their dog was, I’d often respond: “I’m so sorry.” Of course, I said it with a big smile and we all laughed about it, but the truth is, smart isn’t always what we want. Most of us want dogs who are “smart” in that they learn what we want them to learn at lightening speed, but we don’t want them to use their cognitive powers against us. Some dogs do just that; I swear I can see smoke coming out of their ears as they try to figure out how to train us to do their bidding. I remember one dog, a brilliant Standard Poodle, who appeared to spend much of her day trying to figure out how to “beat the system.” Others, the more biddable ones who came hard wired to want to work as a team (far more rare than the former!), not only rapidly learn learn the cues we teach them, they are delighted to perform them just to be part of the social group.

Clearly, “smart” means different things to different people, and in dogs as in people, there are different kinds of intelligence. This was emphasized in a new study by Bradley Philip Smith and his colleague Carla Litchfield in Animal Behavior (Vol. 80, No. 1, 155-162) comparing the problem-solving ability of domestic dogs to that of dingoes.  Dingoes derived from domestic dogs, but have been independent for so long they are believed to represent a wild-type canid more than a companion animal.

The study asked dingoes and dogs to solve a simple problem known as the “detour task.” In this case, a bowl of food was visible behind a transparent barrier. In order to get the food, the animals had to move right or left, detouring around the barrier to get the food. The dingoes figured it out in an average of about 20 seconds, while the dogs, bless them, were more likely to paw, whine, bark and look at their humans to “fix it.” I find this especially interesting, because I have had to teach all my working dogs the cue “Go around.” On a farm you often find you and your dog on opposite sides of a fence, and when they are young they seem to need help understanding that sometimes to go forward you have to go sideways first (to get through the gate). They learn it rapidly, although some learn it A LOT faster than others. Wolves, by the way, are adept at figuring this out for themselves, performing more like dingoes than dogs.  Even if they have been raised by people, they don’t look to us to help them solve problems like dogs do.

However, dogs are better at problem-solving that includes a social relationship. You’ve no doubt heard about the studies in which dogs are better than wolves or chimps at following an arm pointing toward something, usually hidden food. (I should note that Pam Reid, at the BFF conference, stated she has the same skepticism I do about the reports that young puppies automatically follow a point. In our experience, young dogs just sniff your hand if you extend your arm and point toward something. However, they seem predisposed to learn to follow a point, which is important and significant.) It makes such sense that domestic dogs would be better at social communication with humans than wild-type canids, while dingoes and wolves are better at problem solving on their own. As has been argued (including on this blog on 2/2/2009) dogs are excellent tool users… it’s just that we are the tools being used!

A question for you: I’m starting to work on my talk, an Introduction to the APDT Canine Cognition Symposium in Atlanta, and of course am doing a lot of thinking about well, thinking. Here’s my question:  If you could ask scientists to do research on canine cognition and your dog’s mind, what would you ask them to try to figure out? What do you wonder about? Do you wonder if your dog’s memory is like yours? If she understands death? If he can count? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Chaos reigns. We’re having several of the old Birdseye Maple floors refinished, and so the house is torn asunder for several days. It makes everyday routines into adventures–you’ve all been there I’m sure. But the weather broke though for a few days, and it actually felt cool (ooooh, cool!) yesterday. Sheep, dogs and humans are all extremely grateful.

And speaking of grateful, I am grateful for your kind responses to my last blogs. I will indeed continue to interweave information about training and behavior with with my own experiences with my dogs. I’ll admit that sometimes it is a struggle–we are hard wired to pay more attention to the negative than the positive and it takes a goodly number of thoughtful and kind replies to counteract the that say:  “I’m going to stop reading your blog because you just pass dogs around as if they were old shoes.”

Here’s my old shoe now, the wonderful Mr. Will, taken a minute ago, dozing by my feet as I write.

I’m between washing off the sweat and dirt from worming our lambs and finishing my talk on Play in Toronto (got some great new video!), but I couldn’t get on the plane without adding a few more words about Hope, Willie and the comments that have come in. I know that many readers don’t read the comments, so I thought I’d address some of the questions that came up after my last post about Hope and Willie.

If you haven’t read yesterdays post, I wrote to alert readers that it is not yet clear to me that Hope is the right dog for Redstart Farm. He’s only 5 months old, and I won’t decide what is best for me, him or Willie until he gets older, but I wanted to let readers know that there are some red flags rising, so that you wouldn’t be blindsided if I decide he’s not a good fit. I didn’t write the post for me, I wrote it because I’m aware that many readers become attached to my dogs–I will be forever grateful for the hundreds of sweet comments written when Lassie died. I’ve posted lots of pictures of Hope and Willie playing well, but I realized that I wasn’t presenting the whole story, and that wasn’t fair in a way to not alert you to the possibility of problems down the road. There is one thing I wrote yesterday that needs amending. I wrote: “And so, here I am, in the process of deciding whether Hope is the right dog for Willie.” What I should have written is: “.. whether Hope is the right dog for me, for Willie, for Redstart Farm, and if we are the right home for him.”

Ironically, one reader commented that it seemed I was uncomfortable with uncertainty, so perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten a puppy.  I’ve always said, in numerous writings and speeches, that you can never tell how well one dog will do in an environment until they’ve been there for awhile. That’s doubly true with puppies, and so when I got a puppy I was, and am, perfectly comfortable knowing that I can’t know if it’s a good match until it some time passes. That’s especially true of working herding dogs–you simply can’t know if their style will match yours until they are 10 to 12 months of age. I’m fine with that, although of course I’d much rather not be seeing some potential red flags. It’s traditional to “audition” working dogs, to see if you and they are a good match. It’s not only commonly done, it’s considered responsible. You bring in a dog with potential, work together once they are old enough, and if you are responsible and wise, only keep the ones that match your own style and temperament and find the others a better match.

If Hope’s style of herding doesn’t match mine, that’s what I’ll do, for his sake and mine. If Hope and Willie end up being two males in one household who are always vigilant and anxious, I’ll find Hope a great home and be proud of all the time and energy I’ve put into giving him the best start possible. I’m perfectly okay with that, but I know that some readers are not.

There are two ways I could go here: Stop writing about my own dogs, and limit my posts to information about behavior and training. I’m fine with that, there’s so much of interest to talk about, and I love this international inquiry we all are in together. I’ve written about my own dogs as part of the blog for a few reasons, the most relevant being that I’ve always believed it is helpful to others to see how people who are considered experts handle real life. And real life is not black and white, it’s not always a happy movie, and it’s full of complexity and uncertainty. I’ve been reading an interesting book, titled Wrong, about the problems inherent in both research and pop “experts.” One of the author’s points is that the public wants experts to speak in absolutes, whether they are accurate or not, while scientists are often ignored, because the issues they are discussing are complex and can’t be understood in a 15 second sound bite. Although there indeed some black and whites to dog behavior, there are a lot of colors in between, and I will always be drawn to the golds and midnight blues of real life, and want to write about them.

But for now, since I have been writing about my dogs, know that I’m going to make a decision about Hope based on my responsibility to ensure that the dogs in my care live healthy, happy lives. If worst comes to worst (and I’m NOT saying it will, it’s much too soon to say), forcing dogs to stay together, even if they are anxious and uncomfortable when trapped in the same house, is not responsible, loving or kind. I have seen client after client who had 2 dogs who clearly were miserable living together, but the client could not bear to do what the dogs needed, which was live apart. If our herding styles don’t mesh, then I’ll find him a place where he can work sheep and be a loving and beloved member of the family. It’s a lovely egocentrism to believe that each one of us is the perfect home for every dog, and that if we just try hard enough we can fix anything, but every behaviorist in the country will tell you that’s not true. My decision will not only be made on whether Willie and Hope play well together (I might have emphasized that aspect of it too much in my previous post), it will be made on what is best for me, Jim, Willie and Hope. I’m comfortable that as time goes on I will know what I need to know to make that decision.

Eeeps, gonna miss my plane if I don’t wrap this up! One last point: I love that many of you have suggested an older female as a buffer. Great minds…. if I had $100 for every time I’ve said “If only Tulip were still alive,” I’d retire!

Here’s a photo to make us smile, smiling is a good thing, isn’t it?

This is a tough one to write. As regular readers know, I primarily got Hope as a playmate for Willie, my turned-around crazy dog who took three years of intense work to deal with his pathological fear-based aggression to other dogs, his episodes of all-out rage, his extreme sound sensitivity, his dysfunctional gut, etc etc etc. And inside all that was one of the sweetest dogs I’d ever met, and that is the dog you’d meet if you came to the farm today–a sweet, people-loving healthy dog who loves his dog buddies and goes all happy-faced and loose bodied when he sees an unfamiliar dog approaching him. I’d never take him to a dog park, and he becomes a nervous wreck if a large dog he’s never met comes into the house, but with a little easy management he is a wonderful dog, and I love him now like life itself.

My dear Lassie-girl, the one who died in January, was Willie’s best friend, and they played together up to a few days before she died. Soon after she did, I started looking for another dog, primarily a play mate for Willie. I surfed on rescue sites for months, any breed would do, never quite finding what looked like the right dog, and then heard about a litter of BC’s from a great breeding with a super track record. That’s where Hope came from, and he indeed is a super dog. He is the smartest Border Collie I’ve ever had, and I don’t need to explain to any of you what that means. He is so fun to train it’s addictive. I could happily quit all my jobs, including this blog, and spend the next few years training Hope. He’d be doing rocket science by the time he turned five. I’ve rarely had this much fun training a dog, and especially now that we’re over the worst of the early puppy stages (including having to pee every eight minutes), he is a joy.

He’s also competitive, and that has become the basis of his relationship with Willie. As Hope matures, Willie has stopped greeting him when we come downstairs in the morning. They have stopped playing tug games, I suspect because they were never games to Hope. He’d work his way up the toy until he was an inch from Willie’s mouth and do all he could to get the toy and run away with it. Unlike other dogs, he seemed serious about it from the first time he played. Not so some other dogs: I have a video of Lassie playing tug with Willie when he was a puppy, and she continually gave it back to him if she pulled it out of his mouth. But at nine weeks of age Hope  wanted the toy, period. Willie and Hope don’t play much wrestle play anymore either. They do on occasion, but it’s much less frequent and doesn’t last very long. Some of this could be related to Hope’s age, he is getting older after all, but he’s only 5 months old, not exactly in his dotage.

Hope is not the only problem. Willie, who wasn’t able to play with dogs outside of the house until he was almost one and a half, turns out to be no fun to play with outside if you are a young puppy. As the strongest eyed BC I’ve ever had, Willie loves to herd other dogs, running around to the front of their forward motion and stopping them by diving in and either nipping or just plowing into them. I hadn’t seen too that much of this until I got the pup, because usually  Willie has played with older dogs who are as fast as he is. Wilie plays “let’s race!” and the dogs run shoulder to shoulder, sometimes I swear slowing down and then speeding up on purpose to keep the game going. However, he has tried herding other dogs before. Once he tried herding one of his BFF’s, Mishka the Dobbie bitch, who, with the power and confidence of a canine Serena Williams, told him in no uncertain terms never to do that again. He got all flat-eared and grinny-faced after she disciplined him and he got the message. He’s never done it to one of his other friends, a year-old BC, who is as fast as he is and who loves to play “Let’s be race horses!” along with Willie. But Hope is just a puppy, and can’t possibly keep up with Willie, so sometimes they play well outside, Hope running after Willie or Willie running circles around Hope, and sometimes, more and more often it seems, I have to call off Willie because it starts to look more like harassment than play.

Willie also seems to have a V on his forehead for Victim. When Hope was younger, Willie never corrected him for the usual things that rude, young puppies get disciplined for by older dogs. Instead, Willie would  hang his head and look oppressed, or look as though nothing had happened while I was thinking “Willie! Stand up for yourself!”

And so, here I am, in the process of deciding whether Hope is the right dog for Willie. He is a great dog, but I am not looking for “a dog.” I’m looking for a friend for Willie, and although you can treat and manage a multitude of behavioral problems, you can’t force a friendship if it’s not there inherently. {Added later today: I don’t need them to be best friends, but Hope’s competitiveness and adult male behavior as a young pup might be a red flag that could be some serious problems between him and Willie down the road.}  My loyalties have to first be to Willie, and I have to do what I think is best for him. Nothing would make me happier if I decide that Hope is the right match. Hope is smart and fun and probably will be brilliant on sheep and damn it, has gotten drop-dead gorgeous as he’s grown up. He is not perfect: he is a resource guarder (he is already 50% better, yes I think there’s a genetic basis but I totally disagree with some who say it can’t be treated), he’s a tad pushy (barks for attention, jumps up and slams against you) but no pup is perfect and all of his ‘issues’ are things I not only know how to treat or manage, I enjoy doing it. The problem is that this isn’t a training issue; I wish it was because then I could better deal with it. The fact is, no one can make two dogs into friends if they don’t want to be, any more than you can force two people to love living together. {Again, they don’t need to be best friends, but I’ve seen dogs living in constant states of vigilance and anxiety and that’s not a life that is good for anyone.}

Cross your paws for us. I haven’t decided what is best yet, but thought I should let you know where things stand. This issue does bring up an interesting question related to all of us: that of friendship between dogs. I’d love to hear from you about the dogs in your life who have either become best friends, or not… and why. I think the issue of relationships between dogs is often not addressed at the right level: we talk about resource guarding or appropriate play, but what about true friendship? Camille Ward’s research on play found that as dogs mature they seek out the same play partners more and more, and she suggested we need to think more about whether our dogs need BFFs of their own species. Your thoughts?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Sad news from last night. We lost another lamb to a new worm in the area that is resistant to worming medicine. It was our best lamb, a ram lamb I kept as a potential breeder. He looked fine two days ago, and then I found him dead last night. I talked to my vet and he said that 3 other farms in the area have been losing lambs right and left; one farm lost 20 lambs before they could blink. I’ll be trying a new medicine tomorrow after the sheep are kept off food for 12 hours (we’ve learned that worming meds work best on an empty stomach), so tomorrow before I fly out Jim and I will be cowboying sheep in the barn at dark-thirty in the morning. (And thanks friend Kathy for helping with the dead lamb. Never a fun way to spend an evening.)

Happier  news: here’s Hope playing with a new friend, a four month old BC mix pup who came over and played non-stop for almost an hour and a half. Hope played beautifully with him… he always does with other dogs it seems. The younger pup was always on top by the way, and look at that tail!

A quick post today, trying to catch up before I leave for Toronto on Friday.  Sunday at the BFF conference was great, I’ll write a post soon about Pam Reid’s talks on cognition, her talk about stress, and Emily Levine’s talk on compulsive disorders in dogs.  All of them were great, very valuable. I thought this conference had the highest level of talks I’ve seen, and many others seemed to agree.

Although it’s hard to pack up and go before you have your paws on the ground, I’m very much looking forward to meeting folks in Toronto, and to traveling to Seattle to speak in mid-September. It is hard to turn around this fast when you’ve been traveling, leaving the farm and the dogs, sheep and Sushi, I won’t pretend it’s not, but I do meet such interesting people and always learn so much.

I get all the benefits later in September when I give the same talk I gave at BFF on “The Power of Pets” in Madison WI on September 23rd, a fund raiser for the Dane County Humane Society. I get to meet lots of great people in my own backyard (no airports!) and talk about a topic I love: the biology and psychology of why we love our dogs soooooo much. Please come up and say hi if you are a blog reader (and thanks for all of you who did in Pennsylvania, I LOVED meeting you and seeing real faces behind the people out there in cyberspace.) You can get tickets from DCHS for just the evening talk or, you can also come to the reception beforehand. The numbers are limited so we’ll all have enough time to talk. If you come to the  reception, PLEASE bring a photo of your pet, nothing would make me happier than to coo over your dog or cat!

Here’s a photo from BFF of all the speakers and the organizers, Dana and Carolyn. I am using the one in which we are all cracking up, because that’s pretty much what we looked like when we went to dinner together every night. I suppose this is where I should thank Suzanne Hetts and Nancy Williams for introducing me to a Peachtini. Always glad to add one more fruit serving to my nutrition for the day. (Not to mention adding about 3 pounds. My only complaint about the conference is that if you add Pia Silvani, Suzanne Hetts, Nancy Williams and Pam Reid up together, you would still barely manage a Size 2. I said I was representing the cows of Wisconsin.)

From left to right, back row: Dana Crevling, conference organizer queen who lost her soulmate dog the same day that Pia lost hers. Together they decided to do something to honor them. Next is Carolyn Barney who was a invaluable help in the  organization, Nancy Williams, Pia Silvani, Trish King, yours truly, and Vinnie Castalano. In the front is Suzanne Hetts, Pam Reid and Emily Levine. Not pictured are the legions of wonderful people from St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in NJ, who did tons of work. It looks like we raised lots of money for St. Hubert’s and that felt great to all of us.

I’m at the Best Friends Forever Conference in Pennsylvania, taking a quick break from the talks. I have to say that this is one of the best seminars I’ve attended: the quality of the talks is outstanding. Suzanne Hetts gave one today that was fantastic: absolutely the best organized and most informative talk on what dominance is and isn’t that I’ve heard. I couldn’t begin to summarize it all, but here is some especially useful information from it, based on common mythologies that people have about dominance.

Common Underlying Assumptions about Dominance, from Suzanne Hetts:

I. Most (all?) interactions between dogs are competitive (going out the door first, who gets the toy, etc.). Is this true? No, it’s not. The fact is, many interactions between dogs are not competitive. A great example is the tug game. Some people argue that you have to ‘win’ or the dog won’t respect you, yet many dogs love to play tug for the sake of playing tug and will give you back the toy if you drop it. Suzanne showed a video of one of her dog repeatedly giving the toy back to her husband, Dan, clearly in hopes that he would continue the game. That’s exactly how Hope plays with me BUT not how he plays with Willie. I don’t think Hope is “playing” tug with Willie, I think he simply wants the toy for himself. He grabs it closer and closer to Willie’s mouth, and if he gets it he takes it away. However, Willie and Lassie played tug for long periods of time, both holding only the very end of the toy, giving it back to one another if necessary.  Conclusion: some interactions may be competitive, but lots and lots of them aren’t.

II. Dominance is about Control and “Obedience.” The confusion between ‘dominance’ and ‘obedience’ is pervasive, but they are NOT the same thing. “Dominance” is about who wins a competitive interaction over something that both individuals want, not about responding to a cue or “command.” Calling your dog to come has absolutely nothing to do with ‘social dominance,’ whether the dog comes or not! Confusing those concepts has caused a lot of problems in the dog training world, not to mention to lots of dogs.

III. All dogs are social climbers and are always ready to challenge others (humans or dogs) for social rank. Not true again. First, many people argue reasonably that we know little about “dominance” between 2 species. As used in science, it is between animals of the same species. Second, Suzanne argued, that if anything, most domestic dogs are predisposed to take a subordinate role to humans. We could talk about this aspect for hours (and pages), but she made several excellent points in relation to it. If this hangs you up, ask anyone if they would take a real bone away from a wolf. And as importantly, it is simply not true that all animals of a social group “want” to be high ranking. There are many costs to being in a high social rank, and many benefits to being a subordinate.

IV. Some dogs are just “dominant.” Whoa, careful here again. Dominance is a descriptor of a relationship, not a personality or an individual. If you have 2 individuals and a piece of food between them that they both want, one individual would be described as “dominant” if he or she gets the food 20 out of 20 trials. That’s all the concept meant as it was and IS used in science. What’s often not considered by the general public and advocates of “getting dominance” over your dog, is that it is context dependent. Indiv A might get the bone every time, but Indiv B might get the sleeping place. Motivation and context is everything, and behavior in one context does NOT necessarily predict behavior in another.

I could go on, but better get back to the conference. Most importantly, Suzanne did an excellent job of advocating for people in the dog world to be able to talk about the concept knowledgeably, to avoid polarized conversations that only divide and confuse, to use terms with precision and knowledge, and to avoid repeating assumptions. She advocating for people on both ends of the extremes on this issue to take a deep breath (my words) and educate themselves about what science tells us about social relationships. Here here.

Before I go, here’s a photo I took the day before I left, of Hope’s new friend, Lily, a young Dogo Argentino (sp?), who tends to lie down every time she meets puppies and young children. Clearly she is trying to exert her dominance here!  Lily and Hope couldn’t play, because she had just had minor surgery, but I suspect rollicksome play is in their future.

This is a great question, one that none of us really know the answer to. Of course, it actually includes several questions: Do dogs learn to associate a smile with good things? Or a frown? And/or are dogs inherently able to “read” our faces because their expressions are so like our own? Or, do none of our expressions have any effect on our dogs? Do they take cues about our internal states and future behavior from other clues, our voices, our posture?

A friend and colleague sent me information from the just concluded Canine Science Forum in Vienna (thank you Julie!!!) about a study done on that very topic. Anais Racca, from the University of Lincoln in the UK, showed 21 dogs 6 images, two each of a person and a dog looking “negative” (we’d call the human’s face angry), “neutral” and “positive” (classic smiling-faced human, open-mouthed, slap-happy dog). They measured what’s called a “Laterality Index,” or how often the viewing dog’s eyes went left, right or stayed on center. In human research, there’s a suggestion that more negative emotions are processed in the right hemisphere (or left eye) and vice versa.

Their primary question was whether the dog’s would respond similarly to the expressions of the people as they did to the dogs. A summary of their conclusions was that the dogs were more sensitive to the facial expressions of their own species (not surprising) BUT did show different responses to “positive” versus “non-positive” (negative and neutral) expressions in both humans and other dogs. Interestingly, they noted that prototypical “neutral” faces in humans are still evaluated in a negative way (cold, threatening)–thus we tend to lump “neutral” in a similar category as “negative,” and so did the dogs.

Of course, this is a small study, and there are all kinds of issues that it brings up, but it is interesting as far as it goes. Based on my experience, it appears to me that many dogs are adept at reading human facial expressions. Just like people (who we know from Paul Ekman’s research vary greatly in their ability to ‘read’ faces), some dogs are a lot better than others.  It would be great to see a study that continued the one above, and that also tried to tease out learned versus inherently correct interpretations of the facial expressions of another species–us.

I’d love to hear what you think… have you had dogs who seemed much more attuned to your facial expressions (or other indicators of mood or future behavior)? If you say yes, tell us how you think you can separate your facial expression from body posutre, voice, etc etc. Just to get you started, I’ll mention that I call Willie “Trisha’s mood ring,” but I suspect much of his response is based on extremely subtle changes in my voice. As soon as I’m done here, though, I’m going to go smile at him!

On another note, I had a great time spending a morning at the Int’l Society of Human Ethologists. Wish I could’ve spent more time there. I especially enjoyed a talk about how people perceive facial structure… (turns out that wider faces, measured at the top of the cheekbones, are considered less trustworthy than more narrow faces. Love this kind of stuff!). I had to leave before a study about the benefits of bringing dogs to the workplace, darn, but will try to contact the author of the study directly sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s hatefully hot here, I feel so sorry for my sheep. No air conditioning for them. It’s making exercising the dogs rough, I’m not good in hot, humid weather, and neither is Willie (he had a heat stroke one summer when I was out of town, and like many dogs, he’s never been the same–though he was always especially heat intolerant. But then, so am I. Me and Willie: peas in a pod.

Here’s Hope and Will playing chase a few minutes ago. Look at Hope digging in to try to keep up. Wow can that little dog haul . . .

Needless to say, I didn’t let them play long. Here’s where they ended up after just a few minutes: