THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Wow. What an amazing experience for me, and I hope for the 250 participants in the Madison Seminar. We spent the weekend immersed in hot-off-the-press research on canine behavior, (I was worried it would be too wonky but apparently I’m not the only one starved for intellectual stimulation about dog behavior!), and Ken Ramirez’s inspiring wisdom about training, well illustrated by compelling videos and stories. You just can’t listen to this man talk and not be a better trainer for it. We were even honored by the presence of David Wroblewski, the author of the deservedly best-selling and instant American Classic, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I’m basically brain dead today, able only to mumble monosyllabic nonsense, but I’m looking forward to lots of posts inspired by the weekend, from articles about some of the research I talked about, to some of things we learned from Ken, to answering some of the many questions I was unable to answer, and even to posting some data from an experiment we did on Saturday. But here are some photos from the weekend.

Here’s just some of the participants before we got started after lunch on Saturday.

Here I am torturing Meeka, one of our cover dogs from Love Has No Age Limit. Like all the dogs in the book she was rescued (found as a stray in this case) and adopted by Shannon who brought her to the seminar. What a treat for me to meet her.

And here I am with Ken, attempting to have his training skills flow into me in some kind of magical transfer… I’ll let you know if it works.

A study on training frequency by Meyer and Ladewig (Applied Animal Behavior Science 2008) is getting some attention lately, and I thought it’d be useful to mention it here. It’s a great example of how a ‘rose is a rose is a rose…’ (but not.)

Cutting to the bottom line, the authors found that dogs “learned better” if they were trained only once a week to touch a target rather than five times a week. They divided the dogs into 2 groups and one group received only one training session once a week. The other group received 5 training sessions each week. The results showed that the “once a week” group did “better.”

Wow. Really? What about those short, multiple sessions scattered throughout the day that I and many others recommend? Uh oh, have we all been wasting our time?

Nope, God is in the details here. Here’s the study in depth: First off, the dogs were laboratory beagles who lived profoundly different lives than pet dogs. Most importantly, look at how the authors defined “better.” It turns out that “better” means that the “once a week” group learned to touch the target (using shaping and clicker training; the training methods look pretty good) in fewer sessions than the “5 x a week” group. For example, the Once a Week group only needed from 5 to 9 sessions to reach criteria. The other group needed more sessions–from 6 to 12.

But wait. If the Once a Week group only had one session a week, then the fastest learner in this group (5 sessions to criterion) took a minimum of 29 days or almost a month to learn to touch a target. However, the fastest “5 x Week” dog only needed 8 days, because the 6 sessions it took him to learn lasted from Day One to Day 8. (It’s best to figure this out with a calendar!). I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in needing 4-5 weeks to teach a dog to touch a target when most of us can do it in a few days, right? The issue here is one of definition: the authors were looking for how few sessions one could manage in a laboratory setting and still have the dogs learn something. That’s how they defined “better learning performance.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not how I’d define it. I’m interested not in how many individual sessions it takes, cuz I can run them off easily as part of daily life. Three sessions a day is nothing when we’re training something new and easy to do, right? Waiting weeks and weeks for a result? Not priceless, not at all.

What is interesting for the general dog owner however, is how well the “Weekly” beagles retained what they had learned from week to week. This supports my somewhat informed (and somewhat intuitive) belief that it’s important to give dogs some days off to “process” what they’ve learned.

I’m curious what you think? What is you favorite training schedule? Does it vary depending on the task? The dog? Your mood (smile)? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. The sheep are stuffing themselves with wild apples, the kitchen is overflowing with squash of all colors and the Sandhill Cranes are congregating just a few miles from the house. We spent an hour on Sunday watching them; how lucky we felt to be able to get so close and watch them for so long. What elegant and beautiful creatures. I’m glad we got it in since I’ll be inside all weekend at the seminar this weekend. Small price to pay though… I’m truly excited about seeing everyone (We have 240 people coming!). All blog and FB readers come up and say hi! (And if you aren’t coming to Madison, come see me in Orlando in January… I’ve got the greatest videos for us to watch and evaluate!)

Here are a few of the crane photos. They are magazine cover good,  the light was pretty dim, but you can still see how beautiful they are. (For scale, they’d come up to your hips.. they are TALL critters!)

When I was quitting smoking everyone told me how much better my nose would be at smelling wonderful scents. (Yup, I smoked two packs a day in my twenties and thirties. Hard to imagine now.) “Flowers will smell better!” they said. “Just wait until you smell cinnamon buns once you stop smoking!” They were right, things that smelled good smelled better. But they didn’t add that bad smells would smell worse. Sort of like the noontime moon no one talks about in the Arctic. Midnight Sun, yes. Noontime moon in winter? Not so much. Little did I know how aversive were the smells of engine exhaust, moldy hotel rooms and, argh, fox poop.

I also began to notice that different smells seemed to have an effect on my mood and cognitive ability. Engine exhaust made me grumpy, and moldy rooms made it hard for me to concentrate. Lucky for me, that phenomenon also worked in reverse. I learned to carry tiny inhalers with me when I traveled that counteracted some of the aversive smells. I sprayed lavender on my pillow in hotel rooms, carried tiny inhalers in taxi cabs and spoiled myself in scented bubble baths when I needed something special. One person’s experience is only that, but I can say that controlling my aromatic environment has had a huge effect on my life. I wasn’t randomly using scents just because I liked them (although that doesn’t seem like a terrible idea). I knew that lavender was said to calm and relax (vaguely remembering a study on newborns that found infants on lavender scented blankets slept more and cried less), grapefruit to stimulate and lemon to rejuvenate. These are just a few examples of the effects scents are believed to have on mood and behavior in humans.

This is not new, people have been using scents to influence mood and behavior for centuries. The Egyptians are famous for their use of scent to not only affect internal states, but also as medicines to heal disease and injury (not to mention as aphrodisiacs). These beliefs are now being confirmed by research. According to an article in The Herb Companion (Nov 2011), researchers have found that some oils (rosemary, basil) stimulate beta brain waves that indicate heightened awareness, while others (lavender, jasmine, neroli) produce more alpha and theta waves which are correlated with being relaxed. Scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center found that the scent of heliotrope significantly reduced anxiety during treatment, while a study  published in Lancet found that lavender helped the elderly fall asleep quicker and sleep longer than prescribed drugs.

But aromatherapy for dogs? Really? Well, on the one hand, why not? They are scent driven mammals, and have every reason to be effected by their sensory environment as are we. The question arose after I received bottles of room mists for dogs from a friend and now producer of essential oils for dogs, Nancy Tanner in Bozeman, Montana and The Scent Project.  Hearing that Willie was going to be crate restricted for many months, she sent me a large bottle of Calm, a blend of High Elevation Lavender and Chamomile. It was wonderfully thoughtful of her, and I greatly appreciated it. Did it help Willie? I can’t say definitely, I have nothing to compare it to. But I can say that he was calmer in his crate than I expected him to be. I can also say that Nancy sent bottles of all the scents in the project along, including (among others) OOMPH, to cheer and heal, ReFresh to sooth but stimulate, and I’ve tried them all. Do they help Willie? I don’t know. I think so, but a one-dog anecdote is hardly research. Do they help me? The heck with Willie (just kidding), I love using them. It seems as though they have an effect on me (and if it’s placebo who cares?) and suspect that they do on Willie too.

One of my questions, though, one I’ve asked for years when this has come up, is how do we know that a scent that calms us would calm a dog? After all, they love the smell of fox poop and aren’t usually big fans of perfume that people pay hundreds of dollars for? Could it be that by calming us, lavender indirectly calms our dogs? Or does it work directly on them, even though they perceive scents differently than we do? Any thoughts? I’ll ask Nancy to chime in, along with other people who use aromatherapy on dogs.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Brrr, parka, hat and gloves time. Frost on the grass much less the pumpkin. The color is mostly gone, but it’s still a few weeks before the world turns brown, grey and white here. There’s a bounty of food everywhere. I made more apple butter last weekend, and will spend a few hours processing a plethora of broccoli (thank you friend Harriet!) for the freezer. Willie, Jim and I now have broccoli for the year. We picked up our local, organic chickens, and the freezer is beginning to bulge with fruits, vegetables and local chicken, pork and our own lamb. I’m already working on a menu for a special dinner for Jim this weekend–roast chicken with sage stuffing, local organic sweet potatoes and home made apple pie is on the menu. All from no more than a few miles from here, that makes it feel especially sweet.

Willie is doing pretty well, but is a challenge right now. As expected, his extra freedom has stimulated him so when he’s out of the crate he’s super active. (Just occurred to me to use Calm room mist before I let him out.) Watching him be off leash, although still in the hobbles, is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the first time I let him play with a toy a few days ago I got tears in my eyes. I wish I could show you a picture of his shiny eyes. I do not remember him ever looking so happy. But as he played he charged around the room in ways I’ve spent nine months trying to prevent, and even though he has on the hobbles it’s not clear if it is going to set him back. I have to try, but argh, it’s scary! We’re experimenting, given him a little freedom here and there, trying to find a balance between sanity for him and not too much stress on his shoulder. Cross your paws.

Here are the trees behind the barn right before the sun dropped behind the high pasture’s hill. I took that when I started writing this, now it’s pitch dark. Time to go rustle up some dinner…

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you on Thursday night at the Wisconsin Humane  Society for a fund raiser and talk, “Dogs Have Owners, but Cats Have Staff.” I don’t get asked to talk about feline behavior as much as I’d like to, so this is a special treat for me. I find it interesting that although cat lovers love their cats dearly, in general, as a group, they tend to be less likely to read books about their behavior or go to talks about cat behavior. However, I hear that almost 150 people are signed up, so join me and others to celebrate all things feline.

Willie and I were reminded of the importance of reading feline postures and expressions just a few days ago. We were visiting my yoga teacher Scott Anderson, to get some exercises for Willie (more on that later!), and Scott’s 2 cats were in the room. “No problem,” Scott said, they’ll leave the room when Willie comes in.

The cats apparently hadn’t read that particular script. Buddy, an orange tabby laying a few feet from the entrance, went stiff and still as Willie and I walked into the room. Running up the stairs away from Willie was apparently not in his playbook. We walked past him without incident, and focused on the greeting between Willie and Scott, who acted like long lost friends re-uniting after an extended absence. It was the yowl from a second cat that caused all three of us to turn around. And there, like characters out of a movie, stood two cats in full attack mode, bodies like inverted U’s, fur raised, and pupils dilated. They both stared straight at Willie, yowling like animals in a horror movie, and began advancing toward him with their heads down, and their eyes laser focused.

People don’t seem to believe me that one of the most frightening cases I’ve ever had as a behaviorist involved cats. Not Rottweilers or Dogos or “Pit Bulls”, but two little cats who behaved exactly like the two described above, except in that case they were after me. The hair went up on the back of my neck as they stalked toward me with the  hair-curling yowls that only cats can produce when they are angry. Very very angry. I picked up my large canvas briefcase and held it between me and the cats as I exited the living room.  Rarely have I been so sure that I was in serious danger.

Willie apparently felt the same way. Although Scott got the cats out of the room as quickly as possible and they never got within ten feet of us, the cats literally scared the crap out of Willie. While licking Scott’s face after he returned from removing the cats, Willie’s back began to round in that “Oh-my-god-he’s-about-to-shit” kind of way and I ran him outside and within seconds he spurted diarrhea within a few feet of the door. Poor Willie. We did a series of exercises that helped to relax him and he seemed none the worse for wear that evening.

But what a reminder how important it is to be able to “read” an animal. I have to admit, the aggressive yowl of a cat is hard to mis-interpret. There’s little that can get your attention better than that. But here’s another feline vocalization to get your attention. This video of a cat being brushed is, at the moment, my all time favorite cat video ever. And I’d love to hear your opinion of the emotional state of this cat…

What about you? Ever had a use it’s “yowl” vocalization on you? I’m happy to say that I’ve never heard Sushi come even close. Just like most dogs never go hard in the eye and threaten us with the potential of injury, most cats don’t become as aggressive as the one Willie encountered. Let us know, a few readers asked for more conversations about cats, and I say “Meow” to that. (Sorry.)

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie had a set back last week that was tough for all of us. Back on the leash and in the crate all the time, after working his way up to a few hours loose in the house in his hobbles. The good news is that he is better after 3 days of rest. The bad news is that I am still struggling with the opinion of his surgeon and physical therapist that Willie simply will never be a sound dog. The surgery repaired his bicepital tendon, but he has two medial ligaments that were badly damaged, probably years ago in another incident, and he’ll most likely always have trouble with them. I haven’t given up on more treatment, whether it’s Reiki or Laser or, or, or ….. But right now I can’t add anything else to our treatment plan; we spend 2 half days a week going for PT and underwater treadmill work, his PT at home takes a long time each day and if I told you what I was spending on him right now I’d have to kill you.

So we’ll go one day at a time. After all, I have some physical issues that will never be “cured” that I manage, so Willie and I will just do the same thing. Willie got to be off leash in the hobbles last night for 2 hours. Granted I spent all the time on the living room rug cuddling with him to keep him relatively quiet, (it was a sacrifice) but still, one step forward. I was hoping to let him start working sheep by mid November, now it’s by the end of the year. And the first day I can bring out a toy? Oh my, be still my heart. Sushi, on the other hand, has loved Willie being on leash for all these months. Maybe she’s sneaking in when I’m gone and opening his crate door?

One of the most enjoyable parts of doing seminars around the world is talking to people from a variety of countries about their countries’ and culture’s attitude  and regulations regarding dogs. A group of us got to talking in Edinburgh about the dog-related laws of their own countries, and what a range of regulations we found. In Sweden dogs are allowed off leash in many areas, but must be “under control.” (Very sensible!) I was told when I was in Sweden that keeping a dog in a crate was illegal–any Swedes want to confirm or deny? Sweden has very strict animal welfare laws that also apply to domestic pets. For example, all indoor animals must be able to see out a “sunny window.” This is especially interesting to me, given that I’ve advised many a client to keep their dogs AWAY from windows when they leave the house because the activity outside often overstimulates and/or frustrates them. I’d never leave Willie loose in the front room with big windows facing the driveway; when I tried it earlier he was a stressed out wreck when I came home.

Sweden has no country-wide breed related bans, but lots of European countries do. Several countries ban “Pit Bulls,” but as best I can tell no one over there knows who they are either. In the UK I was told the “breed” designation is based purely on looks, and any dog who is reported to look like a pit has to be evaluated. In Germany, some breeds (from Akbash to Staffies to Dogos) must be muzzled in public, unless they have been evaluated for safety. One of the Edinburgh participants was from Poland and she reported that all dogs over medium size must be muzzled in public. She also reported that the law wasn’t enforced and most people ignored it.

Regulations aside, in general my experience has been that Europe and the UK are much more dog friendly than the US. We ended our trip in southern England, and there were dogs, off leash, in all the parks in London. (Which has more parks than one could ever imagine! Gorgeous!) We saw dogs all over the UK, many off leash and many on leash, some in pubs and buses, both of which would never be allowed in the US. Sigh.

What about where you live? There are 16,000 readers of this blog (yeah!) and they live all over, from Alaska to Afghanistan. I’d love to hear from you, and I expect our colleagues around the world would too. How “dog friendly” is your community? What kinds of regulations are there restricting their behavior? What kinds of welfare-related laws are there? (Our animal welfare laws are insufficient here in the US, to say the least. If they were better we wouldn’t have puppy mills…..). What would you like changed?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I spent most of Sunday NOT cleaning the house (very much needed) or weeding the garden (also needed) but rather collecting wild apples with friend Harriet and Jim, washing and then cooking them up into what I call Apple Butter Sauce. Here’s what them process looks like:

Here are some of the apples we picked. Wild apples vary tremendously in size, shape, color and taste. We picked the ones we liked best, about the equivalent of 4 big supermarket bags worth (sorry, I can’t think in bushels.) I don’t worry about the small blemishes on the skin, they won’t hurt you and they come off anyway in a later stage.

After you wash the apples, cut out any bad parts, cut them into quarters, put them in a large pot and simmer them for about 20 minutes until they are soft.

Once the apples are soft, drain them and put them through a Foley Food Mill. I’d never heard of one until my friend loaned me one, and what a difference they make! You just cook the apples and then turn the crank. The skins and seeds are retained in the top and the soft cooked apple comes out the bottom.

This is what it looks like after it’s been through the mill… add a little sweetener and it’s great as it is. But I go one step further and turn it into Apple Butter (Sauce… it’s still a bit soft once it’s done.) I add tons of cinnamon and allspice and cook it at 325 for hours. Hours. Really. Like 6 of them. Stir every hour or so, and once it’s about half the size it was it’s ready to be put into jars as Apple Butter Sauce. By that time it’s much darker in color and thick and sweet and spicy and yummy yummy yummy. It’s fantastic on toast and even better with a meat like pork if you do eat meat. Definitely one of my favorite parts of autumn!

The sheep love it too, cuz they get all the left overs. Yummy all around. Yeah nature, that’s all I can say.