THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Well, this could be a blog about my as-yet-to-be-successful attempts to lose 10 pounds, but more on point, it’s a discussion about the value of a dog’s dinner in training and behavior modification. I am inspired to write this after seeing Kathy Sdao’s seminar last January in Orlando, and reading her new book, Plenty in Life is Free. It’s a really good book, in which her primary point is that the so-often-recommended “NILIF” (Nothing in Life is Free) programs recommended are based on a flawed assumption, and should be replaced with using Operant Conditioning to teach the behavior we want.

I say “Here Here!” to that. It’s just another version of dominance theory, and as Kathy argues, it can have a negative effect on the relationship between a dog and its owner. What I especially like about the book (besides perhaps the most endearing cover to a book imaginable) is its focus on teaching a dog what you DO want him or her to do, and how to use what she calls “Get SMART” to do so. SMART = See, Mark and Reward Training. In other words, first you focus your attention on your dog, paying attention to when he does something that you like. You Mark it with a clicker or a verbal marker, and then Reinforce it with food, play or touch.  No “commands,” just watch, look and listen… and use your increased awareness to reinforce your dog for behavior that you like.

Here’s a short list of some of the many things we can notice and reinforce (she recommends 50 times a day!): looking at your face, walking by your side, relaxing quietly while you work, staying in the crate. Besides being attentive, the key here is to use the dog’s dinner to reinforce the behavior you want. The example from Redstart Farm is Tootsie heeling when we walk to the barn. There’s no fence around the front yard and the driveway leads to a county highway. But I want Tootsie to be safe off leash in the yard, so without using any cue at all, I’ve taken part of her breakfast and dinner with me every time we walk past the driveway to the barn. She gets a treat every time she is in heel position on my right side. (Willie is trained to the left, so I thought I switch sides so that someday we can all walk together.)

She now walks with me from the house to the barn like an obedience trial champion, about 65 yards or so, in a kick-butt, eyes glued to my face, head and tail up, with a big grin on her face. Would it work in other contexts? Not yet, but on our walks anywhere I wait for her to choose that position and reinforce her for it. It makes her dinner bowl pretty sparse indeed, because she’s gotten so many treats during the day for training, but it works, it works and she still gets some good food every morning and night in a bowl, so we’re all happy.

What about you? How much do you use your dog’s dinner throughout the day? What behaviors have you found best to watch for, mark and reward? And have you seen Kathy’s book yet? It would be a great addition to anyone’s library. As always, I look forward to your thoughts….

Now, would someone please monitor the food in my bowl every meal? It would help if I hadn’t learned to make crusty-on-the-outside and creamy-on-the-inside French bread and if I do say so myself, the best berry pie you’ve ever had. Sigh.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Whew, I am sure that some of my friends will roll their eyes, but it’s cool and rainy and I’m so relieved. Now all the beautiful flowers will stay around awhile rather than burning up in a day or two, you can work sheep without overheating them or your dog, and the grass is so green it almost hurts your eyes. The storm last night brought cool temperatures and needed moisture, but poor Tootsie is seriously thunder phobic, so we’re all running on very little sleep right now. But the rain was good for many reasons, and the sheep held off from having their lambs in a downpour before I got them into the barn.  (I told them to wait until the weekend to lamb, so far they’ve been very obedient.) Even though it rained so hard last night you couldn’t have slept through it even if there hadn’t been thunder, the flowers seemed to have come through it without too much damage. Now we just have to cross our paws and hope for no killing frosts.

Here’s that green I was talking about. Yup, honest, it really is that green out here. The green strip you see if alfalfa, which has the most intense green of just about anything that grows in spring.

And here are the blossoms of our wild plum trees. More probably I should call them “feral,” not sure where they really came from, but I’m trying to help them spread because their fruits are fantastic. I combine them with wild apples and make Apple Plum Butter Sauce. Uh oh, there I go talking about food again. Bad Trisha, bad Trisha.

A blog reader asked a great question recently, in response to my comment that I couldn’t help myself and repeated “Stay, Stay, Stay” to Willie when in a dangerous situation at the side of a busy highway. We all know that repeated cues, like the ever popular “Sit, Sit, Sit” are not exactly “best practice” in dog training. And yet, they are commonly used, especially by beginners; just go to any Beginning Family Dog Training class and you’ll hear repeated cues thrown around like confetti at a homecoming parade. It was that very occurrence that helped inspire me to write The Other End of the Leash, about how the evolutionary backgrounds of people and dogs both help us (we’re both crazy social and insanely playful) and hurt us (direct facial contact is polite to people, rude to dogs). “Sit, Sit, Sit” sounds a lot like “Wooo Woo Woo” coming from a chimpanzee, and that is not a random association. But why? Why do we repeat ourselves like agitated apes, and why is it so hard to stop? We all know why it is a problem in training: If you want your dog to sit the first time you say “Sit” you are teaching the opposite if you say it three times in a row.  But besides wondering why we do it, might it be useful, ever, to repeat ourselves?

First of all, why do we repeat ourselves when it makes no sense? A look at the science of vocal communication is helpful here. We know that individuals who are emotionally aroused tend to produce short, repeated vocalizations. Think of repeated whines from a needy dog, whimpers from a child upset about something, and your own predisposition to repeat yourself when you are nervous. In The Other End of the Leash I talk about a good friend who had never ridden, and yet was inappropriately placed on a nervous, high strung horse. The faster the horse went, the more my friend said “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” and the more he did the faster the horse went and the faster the horse went the faster he said “Whoa Whoa Whoa”… You can well imagine that it did not end well.

This linkage between emotional arousal and short, repeated vocalizations is so common in mammals that some speculated that all animal vocalizations were nothing more than indicators of their emotional state. As arousal increases, so does the rate of vocalizing. Thus, it makes sense that when we are nervous we tend to repeat ourselves, and who isn’t nervous the first time they take a dog into a dog training class, no matter how kind and benevolent the instructors?

But there’s more to vocalizations than the internal state of the producer. An important aspect of my dissertation research was to shift the focus and look at a sound’s effect on the receiver. I had found that across language groups, cultures and species of receiver, people use short, rapidly repeated notes to speed animals up, long and slow ones to soothe or slow them and one sharp sound to stop a fast moving animal. And the study I did on puppies showed that they indeed were more active in response to short, repeated notes than to long, slow ones. That’s why I argued that sounds do more than provide information about the internal state of the producer (or predict future behavior), but can be used to influence the response of the receiver.

Go back now to the story I told in a recent blog about having to get Willie out of his crate beside a busy highway. Picture cars and trucks whizzing by at 65 miles an hour, a huge bleeding, flapping beast barely contained by Jim’s arms, and me needing to open the crate in the back of my RAV to get Willie out and put the turkey in.  Describing everyone as “aroused” is appropriate here: If Jim had lost the turkey it could have fallen/ran/flown just a few feet into the highway and caused a horrible accident. If I didn’t handle Willie right he could have been killed. Tom Turkey must have been the most agitated — injured and now captured by monsters, he must have been terrified.  Here’s what the scene looked and sounded like, as best as I can describe it:

I opened the door to the back of the car (the door to Willie’s crate facing directly to the back). While holding my out, palm toward Willie in the universal “Stay” signal, I began repeated “Staaaaaaay, Staaaaaay, Staaaasaay” before I opened the door to his crate. Notice there were two important variables the sounds I used here: I repeated myself, but I was using looooooong, sloooooooow notes designed to keep Willie calm and still. I was also consciously keeping my voice low, the better to sound confident and even somewhat inhibiting to a dog. Thus, there were 2 functions to my “cue.” One was using sound to inform Willie what I wanted him to do. The other, which over rode the first,  was focused on using sound to influence his emotional state and motor activity levels. This had an indirect benefit on me, in that speaking as I did acted to calm me as much as it did Willie. (Not a small benefit at the time, believe me.)

Was that a “perfect” use of sound in that context? Nope, I don’t think so. It was adequate, and it worked, but here’s a tweak that would have made it better. Ideally, now that I have time to think it through, it would have been better if I had said “Staaaaaaay” once, and then, as Willie did stay (which he did, bless him), I should have said “Gooooooooooood boooooooy” and repeated it as long as I needed to until I had him safely by the collar. That avoided repeating a cue (and thus undercutting the power of it when spoken once) but would, at the same time, serve to keep all of us calmer and safer.

Lots to think about here: First, think about what you say to your dog. Are you using vocal cues to convey information, or to influence your dog’s emotional state? And how do the sounds you use influence your own internal arousal levels? I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. Heaven knows I will never use sound ideally in every context (I have been known, on occasion, to shriek like a five-year old when truly panicked) but I find the more I understand about acoustic communication the better I am at it. You?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Welcome to July. It’s been in the 80′s most of the week. About six weeks of growth has occurred in 5 days. I’m serious, it is absolutely strange and weird and seems to be acting as a kind of ink blot test: The people that I know who are most connected to the land are both confused on some deeply primal level and frantic about how to get six weeks of gardening/farming/spring chores done in a few days. Others, who live less earth-bound lives, have fewer concerns and are thrilled with an early spring. This makes sense. It’s all good if you don’t have to worry about killing the thistles before it’s too late and they take over your pasture at the same time that you need to prune the raspberries, get ready for lambing, weed the gardens, worry about insect pests and parasites that didn’t get killed off over winter that usually do …… You get the idea. I have learned to smile and celebrate with my more urban friends and commiserate with my country ones and take it one day at a time.

Here’s some of the good parts of our early spring. And there’s lots of it. It’s gorgeous now: Tiny leaf buds that define the color “spring green,” cheerful, nodding daffodils, and carpets of my favorite spring flower, Scilla. We got some great rain yesterday and last night; it was getting terribly dry, so that was a good thing. We are also expecting a cool down… back to the 60′s (still 20 degrees or so over normal for this time of year) instead of the high 70′s and low 80′s. The only down side of the storm is the discovery that little Tootsie girl has Thunder Phobia (which I learned around 3 am this morning, our first thunder storm together). Poor kid. We’ll just add that to the list we all have of “Things to Work on For Our Dogs: Treating Thunder Phobia.” Oh well, what else is there to do, right?

Here’s hoping that you are enjoying your own weather….and perhaps some flowers as pretty as these daffodils.

Here’s a carpet of Scilla (or Siberian Squill) under a Dogwood bush from Tootsie’s perspective:

So Katie Martz, Client Services Coordinator at McC Publishing, came into my office this afternoon and said: “You’re going to hate me for asking, but would you mention the sale on your blog?” She knows that 1) I’d rather not mention business-related things on my blog and 2) that people really do appreciate hearing about a sale, and 3) I’d rather have a trust fund to support myself and my staff, but one is not forthcoming in the near future. Given all that, here’s official notice that 1) I could never hate Katie (she’s absolutely a joy to work with and, besides, what would I do without her?) and 2) There’s a March Madness sale on at McConnell Publishing for 20% off of everything, good through this coming Friday (March 23rd) at midnight. I hope it comes in handy for some of you.

Here’s my other news: (or Why Does the Title Say Tom Turkey?) FaceBook readers know this story, but I know everyone on the blog doesn’t read FB so I thought I’d relate it here. Last Saturday, Jim, me, Willie and Tootsie are in the car driving back from the market. Our plan is to spend most of Saturday cooking and cleaning for the Univ of Wisconsin vet students coming out to learn to do ultrasound pregnancy checks on my flock. Dr. Harry Momont of UW is a reproduction specialist, and each year the Ruminant Club comes out with him for ultrasound training, good conversation and my homemade pie. I wanted to make them a nice lunch too, so we were on our way home from picking up what we needed for Sunday’s lunch. (Menu = home made chicken salad made from one of our local, grass-raised chickens; cheese, kale and roasted tomato sandwiches with home made bread for the vegetarians, and most importantly, home made pie (this time a mix of strawberry, cherry, black raspberry & rhubarb).

We’re almost home on a local busy highway and run into a traffic jam. Cars are slowed because smack in the middle of the road is a turkey. He’d been hit by a car, but his head and neck were up, his eyes alert, and a string of cars veered around him as we approached. This was not something I could just drive by and forget, so I asked Jim to stop, and he pulled over right away. Extremely mindful of the danger (it is very dangerous to walk into the middle of a highway, please keep that in mind if you are in a similar situation), Jim took one side and I took the other and we stopped traffic completely. Thankfully everyone had already slowed down, so it wasn’t too difficult or risky. Then Jim, another man and I attempted to capture Tom. To our amazement, he stood up and woozily began to walk. So we herded him off the road into an adjoining corn field, and because he seemed pretty spry, decided to leave him there to recover. But as we walked back to the car I found myself unable to drive away. After we left he had crumbled down into the field, and was lying in the hot sun. We knew he was badly injured, but he seemed to be a long way from death, and I just couldn’t bear the idea of leaving him there to suffer.

“Jim….,” I began to plead. “I just can’t leave him there, can we go back and get him?” Without an eye roll or objection of any kind, Jim stopped the car, and we went back with a blanket to catch him. We had little trouble this time, Tom Turkey was not able to outrun us. His injuries were starting to catch up with him. While I cautioned Jim about the danger from his feet (huge nails for digging in the ground), he swooped a blanket over him and we paraded to the car. (Notice my brave, supervisory role here.) My biggest worry was getting Willie out of the car and putting the turkey into his crate; ever since Willie’s injury and treatment he’s been less obedient about not leaving his crate until I say. (He HATED me picking him up and carrying out of his crate, which I had to do for months.) He is much better now, but I wouldn’t say 100%, I’d say maybe 95% reliable. That wasn’t good enough now that traffic was screaming along at full speed right beside us. I told Willie to stay (and yup, I guarantee I repeated myself just like we’re not supposed to), while I pried open the crate door with my heart in my throat. He did stay, bless him, but I kept the door almost shut while I wormed my arm inside, took his collar and held on while he jumped out, pretty much into the wing feathers of Tom Turkey. I wish I had a video of Willie’s face when he discovered the turkey. Or maybe of the turkey’s face? Within about one second or less, I got Willie off the road and into the back seat of the car, (smack on top of Tootsie who was in a body harness attached to a seat belt), I lost my perscription sunglasses and Jim got the turkey into Willie’s crate. Everyone got re-arranged, the turkey settled down in the crate, Willie got off Tootsie’s head and we searched unsuccessfully for the sunglasses, then gave it up and drove home.

The rest of the story is a bit sad, but perhaps predictable. We took the dogs home, took Tom Turkey to a Wildlife Rehab Center in Madison, who promptly told us that Tom was too badly injured to save. I wasn’t surprised, I had heard him begin rattling with every breath on our trip into town. So we gave them the go ahead to euthanize him, and drove home again. Facebook readers have been so incredibly kind about what we did, but as I mentioned there, we did this as much for me as for the turkey. I just hated the idea of him dying a long, pain0-filled death. And as a zoologist, I should mention that in some ways it would have been better to leave him for the coyotes and hawks. They need to eat to after all. Perhaps it might have been kindest to kill him by the side of the road, but I didn’t know at that time how badly he was injured, and it’s probably not even legal anyway.

So we tried our best, and the house & barn got cleaned, and the food got cooked, but the dogs never got brushed. And, of course, I had planned to do a good grooming of the dogs on Saturday, but it never got done. Heaven only knows what the vet students thought. Ah well, what’s more important, an injured turkey or groomed dogs? So here’s to Tom Turkey, who made it through the winter but not the spring. The cycle of life… and so it goes.

Here’s a photo of Tom before he was euthanized; A handsome lad he was:

Julie Hecht, who holds a Masters in Applied Animal Behavior and Animal Welfare from the University of Edinburgh, gave a great talk at IFAAB this year that included a summary of the labs around the world that are studying canine cognition. Since I so often get inquiries about graduate level education in all things dogs, I thought some of you would be interested. Right now Julie is managing the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in NYC, teaches Applied Animal Behavior to Anthrozoology graduate students at Canisius College and writes for The Bark about canine science. And I love her blog, DOG SPIES, which is dedicated to getting solid, scientific information about dogs into the hands of dog lovers everywhere. I say yeah for her!

Here is her list of Canine Cognition Research Groups around the world, including links to their sites.

Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. Known as the “Family Dog Project,” founded by Vilmos Csanyi, currently led by Adam Miklosi, especially interested in evolutionary and ethological foundations of the dog-human relationship.

University of Vienna, Austria. “The Clever Dog Lab,” with Zsofia Viranyi and Friederike Range. They did the work on human and canine responses to growls and “inequity aversion” in dogs.

Max Planck Institute, Germany. Michael Tomasello, Josep Call & Juliane Kaminski (and previously B. Hare). They did much of the work suggesting that dogs innately understand human pointing gestures because of their long association with humans (but see M. Udell’s study on a previous blog!)

Animal Behavior and Cognition, Italy. I don’t know much about this group and don’t read Italian (although I wish I did… I think it’s got to be the world’s most beautiful language!). Any Italian readers out there willing to translate for us?

University of Lincoln, UK (England). Especially interested in behavior as it applies to animal welfare.

University of Bristol, UK. Here’s from their website: The Animal Welfare and Behaviour research theme encompasses fundamental studies of animal behaviour, cognition and emotion, strategic and applied studies of animal welfare issues, and the implementation of research findings and solutions, involving farm, companion, laboratory, zoo and working animals.

Anthrozoology Research Group, Australia. From their website: Anthrozoology is the study of human (anthro) and animal (zoo) relationships. In our work, we focus particularly on companion animals. When interspecies relationships work well, they provide terrific health and well-being benefits for both humans and animals. When they fail, however, animals can suffer terribly and so can humans. What we do is use a multidisciplinary approach to try to understand what makes our relationships with companion animals succeed or fail. We then use our knowledge to try to make life better for everyone, whether they have two legs or four.

Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. Simon Gadbois, especially interested in olfactory processes and learning, social behavior, stress and reproductive hormones.

University of Western Ontario, Canada. The link is to their FB page; lots of interesting information and studies discussed here.

Barnard, New York City. This is where Dr. Alexandra Horowitz studied what is often called the “guilty” look in dogs (showing that it is appeasement, not “guilt”). Ms. Hecht also did studies on this topic for her Masters, and now runs the lab at Barnard. Michele. Wan, whose work on people’s ability to ‘read’ dog’s emotional states I’ve discussed here, did her work at Columbia University, which Barnard College is associated with.

Duke, North Carolina. Now the home of Brian Hare. Here’s from their website: The Duke Canine Cognition Center (DCCC) is dedicated to the study of dog psychology.  Our goal is to understand the flexibility and limitations of dog cognition.  In doing so, we gain a window into the mind of animals as well as the evolution of our own species.  We can also apply our knowledge of dog cognition to improving programs in which dogs are bred and trained to help humans (i.e. service dogs for the disabled, etc.).

Eckerd College, Florida. Lauren Highfill. From their website: Are you interested in learning more about your dog’s behavior, personality, and thought processes? We are! The Dog Behavior Project conducts non-invasive behavioral experiments to try to answer these questions. We are always searching for new dogs to join our research team.

University of Florida. Home of Dr. Clive Wynne and Nicole Dorey, and where Monique Udell did her work testing Hare and Tomasello’s contention that dogs could innately understand pointing gestures. (Her works suggested that environment is more important than genetics.) Wynne and others have collaborated with Wolf Park in Indiana to compare wolf and dog behavior.

University of Kentucky, Comparative Cognition Laboratory. From their site: We are exploring the cognitive abilities of our canine friends. The goal is to define, measure, and distinguish dog behaviors. In the past it has been believed that the associations dogs make are based on either a positive or negative outcome. We are attempting to document the occurrence of more complex cognitive abilities through a variety of situations.

Here’s what I’d love from readers: Any of you who have worked for, at or volunteered for any of those labs, please let us know more! We’d all love to hear more about what’s going on around the world about what’s going on inside our dog’s heads….. And thank you, Julie again, for compiling the list.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I’m actually back on the farm, that’s the biggest news for me. Tomorrow will be my first day off in three weeks, and  my first weekend home since Feb 25th. Ahhhhhhh! My travels have been well worth it, but still, Dorothy (the girl in The Wizard of Oz, not the ewe!) was right. There really is no place like home.

This weekend will be especially fun; students from the University of Wisconsin Vet School will be out to learn from Dr. Harry Momont how to do ultra sound pregnancy tests on sheep. It’s a bit moot, since the flock is due starting March 28th or 29th, and every ewe is obviously pregnant (yeah to the new ram, King Charles), but still it’s a great exercise for the vet students.

Here are some photos from the last few days: First, here’s a wild javelina that one of my favorite authors, Sy Montgomery, and I got to see at the Tucson Wildlife Center. The center does fantastic work rehabilitating injured abandoned animals in southern Arizona. They rehab individuals of many species, including lots of raptors with broken wings, a now grown Bobcat who needs seizure medicine due to he and his litter being run over by a tractor and a tame Coati Mundi who has no idea how to make it on her own in the desert. The staff is almost all volunteer, and does amazing work. I loved how they pair adult animals unable to live on their own as foster parents of injured or abandoned young. That allows them to keep human-animal interactions to a minimum, so that as many animals as possible can be returned to the wild, having been raised by members of their own species. The wild javelina in the photo was attracted by the javelina’s in rehab. Apparently the wild ones stop by to chat on a daily basis. Sy is the one who arranged the visit, a huge THANKS! to her for doing so. It was a wonderful break from what was also a wonderful book festival. 80,000 people on Saturday alone? Amazing!

And back in Wisconsin, here’s Rosebud being shorn the day before yesterday by Jerry Rice, to whom I pay multiple times the going price because he is so very, very good with my sheep. He’s fast yet gentle, and left not a nick on any of my girls. I’m so lucky that he is willing to come out to shear my tiny little flock. Rosebud’s two ewe lambs are in the background, Oreo and Butterfinger. They are due beginning in a week and a half. Oh my, where did the time go?

Here’s an interesting study that came out in 2010 comparing the perceptions, behavior and training of larger versus smaller dogs (“Behavior of smaller and larger dogs:  Effects of training methods, inconsistency of owner behavior and level of engagement in activities with dogs.” Arhant et. al. Appl An Beh Sci 123 (2010), 131-142.)

There’s a lot in this study, based on 1,276 questionnaires, but the part I want to talk about today relates to owner’s perceptions of dogs of different sizes. I’m always suspicious of data from surveys about behavior, since what we think an animal does and what it really does is often not the same, but because these surveys were about perceptions as well as behavior they definitely have some merit.

The authors found that, as they summarize in the abstract, “.. smaller dogs are seen as less obedient, more aggressive and excitable… and more anxious and fearful.” Note that this doesn’t mean that they are, but that they are perceived to be so. They also found, no surprise here, that owners report doing significantly less “training and play activities” with small dogs.

As I read the results, I find myself thinking of Tootise, and how I treat her compared to all the other dogs I’ve had (all medium to large dogs). And there is indeed a difference. When Tootsie first came I obsessively worked on 1) a response to her name, 2) coming when called and 3) house training. She’s done absolutely beautifully on all three, and focusing on them means she can go outside in the yard without a leash (although I watch her obsessively), comes running when called, ears flapping, and is as reliably house trained as any dog could possibly be. She’s also stopped barking for her dinner and to get me up in the morning (food prep now results in tiny, mouse-like squeaks), but we still are working on barking while being restricted in space when I’m in the house (rather than having a small, food-crazed bundle of fur dancing on the equipment while doing Willie’s exercises, for example). And now she has a stunning heel on the way to the barn and back, taught specifically to ensure that she’d stay by me and not run off toward the road. She can do it for short periods during off-the-farm walks, but I’d never trust it off leash around distractions. But still, damn she looks good trotting enthusiastically, head and tail up as go to the barn twice a day to feed the sheep.

However, here’s what I haven’t done: taught her to sit, down and stay. REALLY? If you’re surprised, (shocked?) you’re not as surprised as I am. If she was a BC or a Great Pyr, (or a Lab or an Aussie or a Wheaton or a…. fill in the blank) I guarantee you we’d have started that on day one.  It’s true that I have worked on sit a bit, and she is gradually getting the idea (although much slower than any other dog I’ve had.. she is 7 year old mill dog after all), but the fact is there just seem to be more important issues. And that is, no doubt, in part because of her size. She’s tiny, really truly small, and there’s just no way around the fact that her dancing, leaping and charging around the house just doesn’t feel as problematic as it would with a larger dog. And yet, she clearly needs to work on what I call “emotional control,” so now that she’s settling in, I do indeed think it’s time to start focusing on some cues that require her to inhibit herself a bit.

Here’s the connection between Tootsie and the research: Perhaps smaller dogs are indeed more excitable, and not just perceived as such, because, in part, they are not as often taught behaviors that lead to emotional control. Willie, along with all my BCs, was taught to sit, down and stay early on in their training, all behaviors that teach dogs to inhibit impulsiveness and control their own emotions. Tootsie, if anything, is encouraged to run crazily around the house with her ears flapping because 1) when she came she was a bit shut down, and 2) in all honesty, she’s so damn cute when she does so. Encourage Willie to run around the living crazily? Eeeps, not necessary. More than that,  hyping up is the last thing he needs… Willie does best if you spend your energy calming him down, not hyping him up.

And so I’m interested in your experience: If you’ve had both small and medium size or large dogs, do you find that you treat them differently? Expect different things out of them? All this relates nicely to the last post, about how our expectations and unconscious cues effect our dog’s behavior.  What is the interaction between our expectations, training and the behavior of small dogs? (I suppose we should define “small.” That’s an interesting question unto itself. How small does a dog have to be for you to call it “small?” I’d say less than 20 pounds? Or so? Tootsie is about 14….).

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. As Facebook readers know, the week had a tough beginning. On Monday evening, just back from Arizona, I found my favorite ewe, Dorothy, down and unable to get up in the mud in front of the barn door. I spent the evening trying to save her, but even with an emergency farm call from the vet it wasn’t possible. She was ancient, 13 years old (the equivalent of being in her 90s if she was human), frail and thin, and probably had pneumonia.  Sheep with pneumonia often show no signs of it at all, no coughing or respiratory distress, and Jim said Dorothy was eating at the feeder Monday morning. She must have gone down very fast. I’m just thankful she didn’t suffer any longer than she did. She was a long legged, elegant and gentle ewe who produced 22 beautiful lambs for me, and I will miss her.

Here she is last spring, she’s the grey beauty on the right, with her 2 lambs to the right of her. Rosebud is to her left, with her triplets. I’ve kept the 2 pintos from Rosebud (or piebald ones) and they look like they will have their own lambs this year.

And here’s part of the flock now, looking at Willie on the other side of the fence in the background. That’s Rosebud closest to Willie in the back, with her lambs Oreo and Butterfinger to her right (one feeding, one also looking at Willie.) Spot, Rosebud’s daughter from 4 years ago, is the tan, wooly sheep in the back. You can see 9 year old Barbie’s wool while she chows down at the feeder, and just barely make out the muzzle of Lady Godiva on the far left. Without Dorothy it’s the smallest flock I’ve had in years, just six ewes, with King Charles the ram living at his co-owner’s farm. Lambing is set to begin at the end of March, lambing prep will be job one at the farm when I get back from the Tucson Book Festival on Monday. If you’re coming this weekend, please come up and say hi. (And notice the hill behind the pen in the photo? Anyone want some firewood? Geesh, we’ve had a ton of downed trees in the last year; one actually landed on the fence, but is only partially cleared. The chain saw will be a humming soon.)

You probably know the story of Clever Hans, the horse owned by a math teacher named von Osten who decided to teach his horse to do math in the same way that he did his pupils. After extensive training, Clever Hans appeared able to solve relatively advanced mathematical problems, including multiplication and long division. Clever Hans showcased his abilities around Europe, although von Osten never charged for an exhibition. His owner and trainer sincerely believed that his horse understood what he was being asked, and wanted the world to see it for themselves.

Scientists were so interested that a panel was formed, led by psychologist Carl Stumpf, which verified that no tricks were visibly involved, but passed the issue onto psychologist Oskar Pfungst. After an extensive series of tests, Pfungst found that Clever Hans was unconsciously being cued by his trainer. Hans could only answer questions if in visual range of a human who knew the answer. In other words, Pfungst found that Clever Hans was clever indeed, but in a different way than thought by his owner. The horse used subtle cues from humans (head tilt, eyebrow raise) to know when the correct number was coming, and thus when to stop pawing. (Hans communicated by pawing the ground; his answer to 2 + 2 was to paw the ground 4 times.)

I’m reprising this story, familiar to most of you, because of a great talk given by Dan Estep and Suzanne Hetts of Animal Behavior Associates at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior in Arizona last weekend. The owner of a dog named Sheba had asked for a “scientific investigation”  into his dog’s intelligence, and a local TV station asked Dan and Suzanne to look into it.

Sheba’s owner, Bob, was convinced that his dog was brilliant. Not smart, but brilliant. She knew just about everything about anything, and what’s more, she’d acquired this information all on her own; the owner swore he’d never taught her a thing except how to communicate. Sheba could answer yes/no questions with one paw or two, and multiple choice questions by pawing 1 to 4 times. Is it cold in the Arctic? Yup, answered Sheba, slapping her paw once onto her owner’s palm. Did the Green Bay Packer’s win the Super Bowl this year? Of course not, everyone knows that: Here’s two paw slaps for a resounding no.

Dan played the video tape of Sheba’s performance and we all watched, fascinated, while Sheba accurately answered question after question when asked by her owner. And then, predictably, it all fell apart when Sheba was asked to answer questions when her owner didn’t know the answer or she couldn’t see him.

But, of course, Sheba WAS brilliant, just brilliant at readings subtle cues that her owner wasn’t aware of. Imagine us at the meeting – a gloriously eclectic group made up of Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists, Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorists and some trainers brilliant in their own right – all straining forward, watching the video over and over, trying to figure out what cues Sheba was using to figure out the correct answer. We never did, and neither did Dan or Suzanne (although the best guess is a combination of tactile cues from his hand and visual cues from his face) because Bob refused them any chance to work with her some more. What a shame that instead of acknowledging Sheba’s intelligence, albeit not in the way he imagined, he sent them packing, insisting that they were wrong, that Sheba really did know that San Diego was south of San Fransisco. He also eventually admitted to them that Sheba was actually Albert Einstein reincarnated. Oh my.

There’s more to this than an amusing story. Dan used this case to remind us that the real Clever Hans taught us a lot more than “be aware that you might be cuing an animal in subtle ways.” Pfungst discovered not just that Clever Hans was astoundingly good at reading visual cues, but that it was almost impossible not to produce them. Once he figured out the cues that Hans was reading, he found that when he or others consciously tried their hardest to avoid creating them, they were unable to do so. In other words, even if you tried your hardest to stay absolutely still in every way, it was impossible NOT to cue Clever Hans if you knew the answer and he could see you. Wow. Think about that in relation to you and your own dog. (By the way, Pfungst’s book, Clever Hans, is available for free. I highly recommend it, it’s fascinating.)

As Sheba reminds us, it’s not just horses that read us like a book. Note a study by Lisa Lit that found that dog/handler scent detection teams reported finding scents 260 times (18 teams, each run 6 times) in areas in which there were NO scents planted. But the handlers had been told that scents had been planted, and that one room even had a red symbol marking its location. Mark Hines, who works with scent detection dogs all over the world (he works for Kong, encouraging the use of positive reinforcement in the training of military, detection and protection dogs; I call him The King of Kong) was in attendance at the meetings and said this was a common problem in detection dogs. Really good handlers and trainers are well aware of the problem, but it’s more extensive than you might think.

Those of you who studied psychology might be remembering the study by Rosenthal & Fode in 1963 in which experimenters were told that some rats were “Maze Bright” and others “Maze Dull.” That wasn’t true, the rats were actually all the same. And of course, when the rats ran the maze, the ones believed to be “bright” really did run the maze faster. (It turns out the experimenters handled and interacted with the “bright” ones more often.)

Now… think about your own dog, his or her behavior and your own expectations. How many times do you think you are unconsciously cuing your dog? Eeeeps, the mind boggles. How many tiny pupil dilations, head bobs or changes in scent do we make every day that communicate with our dog?  How many times do our beliefs about our dogs and our expectations of their behavior influence it?

I’d love to hear examples from you of when you think this might be relevant in your life. I’ll tell you when I think I most have to be aware of it: knowing Willie’s history with unfamiliar dogs, I have to be extra careful not to set him up to be tense during greetings. Perhaps this is why I’ve seen clients (and myself) have the best luck with classically counter conditioning both the handler and the dog to have a different response. Replacing an action on our part (rather than trying to just stand still like Pfungst did) with another behavior like signaling “Watch” or doing BAT or “Look at Me” changes our behavior as much as our dog’s.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I wrote most of this on Sunday afternoon on a plane from Denver to Madison on my way home from IFAAB, but now it’s Monday morning and it’s lovely to be home. Especially since I leave again on Friday for the Tucson Book Festival.  But as much as I love home, IFAAB was wonderful this year: interesting, interactive, inspiring and supportive, sort of an academic slumber party. I’ll write more about some of the other interesting talks I heard there as the weeks go on.

Here’s a little contrast for you: First, the colors in Arizona on Sunday:

And here’s the colors here in Wisconsin: