THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Yippee! After months of hard work (no kidding), Katie finally convinced our website that it could handle shipping to North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. We partnered it with a big discount on packages of books and/or DVDs for folks who would like to begin a “library.” We’ve had lots of inquiries from folks in Canada, the UK and Australia especially, so we’re sooooo happy to be able to accommodate!

You can get more information on the website. Meanwhile, here’s a photo of Willie moving up on “The Camel Sisters” from earlier this year. As soon as I post this we’re going out to work sheep some more. Oh boy.

Recently I asked the question, “Can Dogs Tell Stories?” I didn’t mean stories in the sense of fictions we tell children to help them go to sleep at night, or novels about sexy spies, but stories as internal narratives that describe the “who, what and where” of an event in the past. In other words, can a dog have thoughts like “The last time I came to this dog park a big, dark dog ran up to me and play bowed and we had so much fun running around together.”

Readers, as usual, had some truly thoughtful answers to the question, and if you haven’t read them I encourage you to do so. It turns out that many others have been pondering this question for quite a while, and I thought you’d be interested in what they have to say.

Not surprisingly, given the complexity of this issue, there is not a definitive yes or no answer, based on the research that’s been done. Scientists don’t agree by any means, but… we are getting closer to an answer.

The technical term for an internal narrative of a past event is “episodic memory,” or an autobiographical event that is remembered as happening to one’s self. It has been argued (primarily by Tulvig, for those of you who would like to pursue this), that three things are required to be able to have episodic memories: 1) “Conscious recollection,” (titled “autonoetic awareness” — hey, don’t blame me for some of these terms) or an awareness of remembering a past event, 2) a subjective sense of time and 3) a sense of self (as in, these things happened to me). Tulvig and others argue that animals are not capable of episodic memory, that the ability to construct mental sequences of events is uniquely human, requiring self awareness and language at the very least. However, for a long time it was argued that animals had no capacity for long term memory, a belief long disproved by innumerable studies on a variety of animals from Bonobos to Blue Jays.

Some neuroscientists are questioning the arguments of others than animals are incapable of recalling, in journalistic fashion, the who, what and when of an event. The challenge is to investigate if animals have episodic memory without the luxury of being able to ask them. To summarize a coma-inducing stack of research reports[1], Neurobiologist Richard Morris suggests that there are at several reasons to suggest that some animals might posses an “episodic-like memory system.”  First, several studies have shown that rats, mice and some species of monkeys are able to solve tasks that suggest the existence of episodic memory. In addition, both similar brain structures (especially the hippocampus) and similar physiologies related to the storage, retention and recall of memory are found in non-human mammals, suggesting that both structure and function could lead to similar abilities.

A review article by E. Dere et. al. (2006, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 30) also argues that evidence suggests that animals can create mental narratives. In one study cited in the paper (Menzel 1999), a language-trained chimpanzee observed a caretaker hiding a food beyond the fence of the enclosure, out of reach of the chimp. Sixteen hours later, the chimp recruited a different caretaker, who did not know where the food had been hidden, indicated the kind of food hidden and directed the caretaker to the food itself.

In another study on Scrub Jays (a highly social bird that lives in the southeastern US), the birds were given both preferred and non-preferred food to cache somewhere in their enclosure (this species commonly stores nuts in tree bark for the winter months, much like squirrels bury acorns in the ground in fall). They had learned that after 28 hours, the preferred food spoiled if left where they’d put it but the non-preferred food did not. The question was: when allowed back into the enclosure with the hidden food, which food would they go to? Sure enough, the jays choose to first retrieve the preferred food if allowed back less than 28 hours after it had been hidden, but the non-preferred (and still palatable) food if more time had gone by.

Some argue that this is indeed good evidence for episodic memory, showing that the jays recalled “what, when and where,” and used this informative to guide their future behavior. However, not all animals have proven equally adept at solving the same problem. Rats, given the same choices, did not respond in the same way, and appeared unable to modify their foraging behavior based on past experience of whether food had had time to degrade or not. Other studies have found that mammals are often not particular adept at performing in ways that suggest episodic memory, so it is important not to cherry pick through the data to confirm what one wants to believe. If you’d like to read about more studies that flirt with answers about how close animals can get to a human-like narrative description of the past, read the review article by Dere et al that I mentioned earlier. It’s not bedtime reading–I had to read it in two sessions because half way through my mind began to smoke–but it you’re interested it’s a great resource. (Thanks to Julie Hecht for directing me to it!)

Here’s one more set of facts that might shed light on the topic: The importance of the hippocampus in episodic memory. All mammals have a hippocampus, the structure in the brain most responsible not just for memory, but in humans, for episodic memory. We know that people who have had damage to their hippocampus’s can remember many facts, but can’t remember narratives. In other words, they lose the ability to remember events as a series of related ‘who, what and where’s.’ In some experiments, rodents with a damaged hippocampus do not perform well on tasks that require a memory of past events, although they are able to use their “short term” memories to solve problems.

Dere and co-authors conclude that the evidence is strong that “animals” (which ones?) “are endowed with episodic memory.” They argue that current research suggests the ability to form mental narratives is yet another example of an ability with an evolutionary history, and that perhaps we should be not be asking  “yes/no” questions, but rather looking at cognitive continuities. I find this approach most reasonable, so here’s my best guess at an answer: Dogs can’t “tell stories” as richly as humans, given their restricted cognitive abilities and lack of language, but they can probably think about the ‘who, what and where” of past events in a way that is at least somewhat similar than not to human narratives. And that’ll just have to do until we have more information, or someone teaches their dog to talk.

[1] Here’s a representative quote from Morris’s 2001 paper: Put together (see Figure 5), the input specificity of transient or lasting synaptic change is determined by the pattern of glutamatergic synaptic activation that, in addition to causing transient potentiation, also sets synaptic tags.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I came home from Denver to a massive thunderstorm and cloudburst, and another amazing inch of rain fell just yesterday. It was good to be home, although my trip to the Institute of Human Animal Connection at Denver University was an absolute joy. More about that in another post, because it deserves a lot of attention.

This weekend is supposed to be mostly sunny but chilly, so hopefully I can get in more work in the garden. Willie and I can’t wait to work sheep again, the clinic we attended last weekend was great for both of us. (More on that in a later post too. And a then there’s that case study I want to talk to you about, and another video… so much to talk about, so little time!)

Next week I’ll be in Milwaukee for an evening speech, the first time I’ve given Lost in Translation as an evening talk versus a full day seminar. (FYI, I’m hoping to be doing the full-day version in Chicago next August, details to come soon.) The week after I’ll be doing the Texas Tango, one night in Austin (sorry, it’s full at 300 but I think there is a waiting list…) and San Antonio on Nov. 14th (still room!).

Here’s a favorite recent photo of Mr. Willie boy, happy and relaxed after his lesson at the Shannahan clinic. He’d just had his lesson and is watching the next dog work sheep. You can’t see the other dog working very well, but part of what I love about the photo is watching a dog, completely off leash, lie down quietly and watch other dogs work. So very grown up of them. I posted this photo on Facebook but just couldn’t resist posting it here too…

And here’s a fall color photo I took a few weeks ago, just to keep all those luscious hues fresh in my mind:

Wow. You all are amazing. So far there have been 165 answers to the question posed two weeks ago, “What’s Your Favorite Non-Traditional Cue?” I’ve read through every one of them with great interest (and often amusement). My plan was to go through all the comments, list every cue mentioned with it definition (some people included as many as 7 or 8), and see if I could  find some patterns.

Several hours later, and less than a fifth through all the cues mentioned, I suspected that a smart person might want to modify the plan. So that’s what I’ve done, whether either out of laziness or wisdom, I couldn’t tell you. I’m using the list I’ve generated so far as a sample, and have re-read all the rest of the comments that have been so thoughtfully provided.

Here’s what I’m seeing so far: First, the most common “non-traditional” cue appears to be “Wait.” It has several variants as to its exact intention, but in all cases the dog is being asked to pause or not move forward. Much more casual and less directive than a stay, I find this an invaluable cue that I myself use every day–at the door, at the car, while walking down a trail, etc. etc. It’s part of the curriculum in Family Friendly Dog Training, so I guess it’s clear that I think it would be good if it moved from “non-traditional” to “traditional.” It’s just so darn handy.

Another category of commonly used cues not often seen in standard dog training is the set of cues telling a dog either that an event is over (“Enough, All Done, All Gone”– ie, no more ball play, no more treats) or to go entertain him or herself (“Settle, Go Settle, Go to Your Place, Chill, Go Pass Out!”) These also seem to me to be incredibly useful cues that all dog owners (and dogs) would profit from knowing.  I use “Enough” several times a day, usually meaning that object play is over, but I as I’m writing this I realized I use a variant, “That’s Enough,” to mean “No more petting.” At first I assumed that Willie didn’t know the distinction, (since I only noticed it while writing this), but perhaps he knew it long before I did?

Notice that, in the variants of Settle, the dog can either decide him or herself to find a place to settle down, or go to a specific area taught in the past. I use Settle myself, meaning go anywhere you want, but for the love of all things good and true, please lie down and chill out for awhile.

The other most common group of cues relate to moving in space: “Turn Around, This Way, Up, Move Over, Back Out, Beep (my favorite!), Go Around,” etc. etc. These strike me as extremely useful as well, although more specific to individual owners and dogs.

One cue, mentioned by a few and one that I have discussed before is “Ready.” I truly wish more people would use this as a way of helping a dog understand what is about to happen. It can be used to prime a dog for action, as it often is in Agility, but also as I use it more often, to let a dog know that something is about to happen, especially if it involves being touched or handled. I use it for Willie when I am about to do something to him, like pick up a paw to dry it off. This gets into another conversation we could have about the balance between keeping cues short and sweet (very valuable at times) and not overwhelming a dog with meaningless chatter AND, at other times, using words to have interchanges with dogs that are more like conversations than a set of “commands.” I’m a fan of both…. Hummm, I’ll have to think about when and why I use different approaches.

While we ponder that, here are some of my favorite cues from the comments about non-traditional cues:

Whoopsie What you just did wasn’t what I wanted, try again.

Who’s a Goof? Roll in the Grass.

Be Bad (Okay, that’s mine, for jump up and put your paws on my chest.)

Who’s a Brave Girl? Go stand between my legs.

Use Your Words or Tell Me Your Story Bark

Sweetheart, can you put your Stagbar on the rug please? Self explanatory!

And What Should You Be Doing? Go lie on your rug

Watch Out for the Panty Hose! 4 on the floor

Chip! Really? As in, did you really just go into the garbage? Dog now puts his paws over his head.

There are a gazillion more, I encourage you to read through them if you haven’t, but it seems appropriate to end on the most unique one I could find:

Gheresh Bede or Farsi for “shake your booty”

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Two inches of rain last weekend! Amazing! Some people got even more (and northern Wisconsin got snow, lots of it. Oh my.) Everything is so green now it’s hard to imagine it was ever brown. My pasture is still in rough shape, but the front lawn looks like it sprung to life except in a few places. All I can say is that the sheep are very, very happy.

Last Friday Willie was in his last sheepdog trial of the year. I’d say the results were mixed. I purposefully only ran a partial course with him in order to protect his shoulder. I leave tomorrow for a sheepdog training clinic with Patrick Shannahan, and I wanted to be extra sure that Willie was sound enough to work in the clinic. I also wanted him to leave the course wanting more, since the last two trials he was in were exceptionally difficult and stressful for all the dogs. This time his first run didn’t start well: Although he’d appeared to focus on the sheep in previous runs, when we walked to the post he kept looking in the direction of another group of sheep. (Your first job at a trial is ensuring that your dog can find the sheep where they are set out. This is harder than you might think. There are two other groups of sheep, and novice dogs often focus on those rather than the tiny little specks out in the distance.) Willie looked at everything but at the sheep he needed to work, and we messed around for what seemed like forever at the post until I finally just gave up and sent him in the belief that he’d go to the wrong group of sheep.

Nope, he did a perfect outrun to the right group, but by then the sheep had broken away from the dog and handler trying to hold them in place (who must have been cursing me, justifiably, believe me).  Willie didn’t get them back on line until he was pretty close to me, but he did, I stopped him, settled the sheep and said “That’ll Do.” He left the field happy and grinning and his shoulder looked good, so we did our second run a few hours later.

This time I sent him right away, and he did a perfect outrun again. Again the sheep broke from the handler  before he got to them, this time not our fault, but probably not the set out handler’s either: they were extremely flighty sheep. Again, Willie didn’t “cover” them, or flank around them far enough to get them back on line. He had no excuse for that, except his nerves: That’s what you see in dogs without enough confidence to directly confront a flock of sheep dead set on thundering back to the barn. He did get them to me however, pacing nicely as he got closer. We did a little drive which went relatively well, and then on the cross-drive Willie stopped, like a 1960′s civil disobedience protester, and stood still while looking at me and ignoring every signal I sent his way. Honestly, it was almost funny, except I’m quite sure Willie stopped because he was too anxious to continue. The sheep had to be moved directly toward the barn, exactly the direction in which Willie knew the sheep wanted to take off and run to. It’s very scary for dogs to feel in control of sheep if the sheep are moving AWAY from them and from their handler, and it takes guts and courage for dogs to learn to drive unfamiliar sheep on unfamiliar courses at a good distance from their handlers.

Ah, you know how much I love my Willie Boy, but I’m afraid “guts and courage” are not words one would use to describe him. The “Woody Allen of Sheepdogs” would be more like it: brilliant but ridden with angst. We’ll see how the clinic goes this weekend. I don’t want to run Willie in trials if they just distress him, but I would like learn to help him be as good as he could be. Even though his work at the trial had some serious flaws, we did well enough that we didn’t leave feeling badly. He seemed upbeat and happy all day, I had a good time and got some good experience under my belt. I can’t wait for the clinic, it should be lots of fun and very interesting. And to those of you who were there, I still can’t stop singing “Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, keep them doggies rolling, RawHIIIIIIIDE.” Sigh.

Things at the farm are good. It’s still gorgeous even though many of the leaves have fallen. We got another half inch of rain yesterday… will wonders never cease? Tootsie is a happy girl, except for this morning, during which she spent part of the time in the kitchen sink because she had diarrhea all over herself. And me. You all know how that goes. I think it was just a glitch, that she’ll be fine in the future, and am oh so grateful that I can wash her off in the sink. Very handy at 6 am in your bathrobe.

Nellie and Polly are good. Too good. Polly took one look at her momma being put into a carrier crate in order to go to the vet clinic for vaccinations, and darted up a tree. Here she is: Wanna play Find the Kitty? (And don’t worry, she was down the minute we came home and I let her mum out of the crate.)

I’m working on a section of my new book right now about stories; about how stories are integral to the way we humans make sense of the world. Story telling is so important to people that to some, the ability to tell them defines us as a species. One writer asked “Who would we be without stories?” Even young pre-verbal children begin to tell stories with their hands, and good parents not only tell stories to their children, they help them learn how to tell them themselves by alternating statements and questions: “And then what did the little duck do?”

Our stories are both a blessing and a curse. We can use them to navigate through the challenges of life like past or current heroes (think Odysseus and Harry Potter), and they can bind us inside boxes that both contain and constrain us (“I always knew I was stupid.”)

We tell stories all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. Not surprisingly, we tell stories about our dogs. These are often constructive, useful narratives that help our dogs lives better lives. “I won’t take Martha to the dog park because I know she wouldn’t like it” is a story based on Martha’s history that makes her life better. Assuming she truly doesn’t enjoy the dog park, it’s good to avoid it. However, sometimes our stories aren’t as constructive. “He’s afraid of men because I’m sure he was beaten” is not only often inaccurate, but adds the underlying story of one’s own (“Men are dangerous”) is not going to help a dog who is genetically shy and under socialized.

Here is my question for you: Can (and do) dogs tell stories? If a story is a description of a sequence of events, can dogs, without the use of language, tell itself stories to help make sense of the world? Stories, the way humans use them, usually have a “theme” or a point to them. Otherwise we would not be able to use them to “make sense of the world.” Stories are our way of explaining the universe: non-industrial people use stories to explain thunder and drought and the origin of mankind. What do dogs do?

I have some thoughts on this issue, which I’ll add in a few weeks, but here are some questions we might ask, to prompt any of  you interested in this topic.

- What would dogs have to do to suggest to us that they can tell themselves stories?

- Is there research on non-verbal humans or other species that could add to our inquiry?

- What cognitive ability is necessary to ‘tell a story,’ and what do we know about the cognition of dogs that we can use to inform our study?

I look forward to your answers.

FYI, last week’s post so far has 133 responses to the question “What are Your Favorite Non-Traditional Cues?” I wanted to categorize and summarize them for you this week, but I have to admit I never imagined there would be so many. And they continue to come in. (I love it!) I’ll continue categorizing and sum up what I’ve found in next week’s post.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Rain! First time in 4-5 weeks, although barely enough to measure. But oh, the earth smelled so sweet and it was such a joy to see even a tiny bit of moisture fall from the sky. We are supposed to get some real rain on Saturday. Paws crossed, it will make such a big difference not just to the surrounding plant life, but also to the wildlife. Already things are so different from typical years: There is virtually no wild apple crop here at the farm, and the local deer usually come in every year to eat the ones that stay on the trees until winter. I suspect it is going to be slim pickings for many species besides deer, including the small rodents who eat grass and seeds (there is almost none of either) and the larger mammals and birds who depend on rodents and wild fruits and seeds.

But today? Oh my, today is glorious. As pretty as it could possibly be. Here is the flock in the late afternoon sun.

Although most of the color is gone now in the woods, here are a few snappy bushes that I have nurtured with water throughout the summer.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the cue “Get Back,” which is one of my favorites because it is so useful in so many contexts. Katie Martz, Communications Coordinator here at PMcC, video taped Willie getting back in a variety of contexts, and we noticed that every time I said “Get Back” in a context in which he’d rather not, he tongue flicked. That led to a very interesting discussion with readers about why he was tongue flicking, but distracted us from the reason we did the taping: the usefulness of “non-traditional” cues in dog training. Yes, we all need Come, and Sit and Stay; I can’t imagine what I would do without them. But there are a variety of cues that are equally useful, but not as common or well known. I thought it would be fun to canvass readers to learn about their favorite “non-traditional” cues, and perhaps add to the vocabularies of all of us. Here are just a few to get us started:

ENOUGH: Along with “Get Back,” I also love “Enough,” no doubt in part because I have had dogs (and still do) willing to elicit play or petting until all the entire Antarctic ice pack melts and we are all paddling to work. There’s a video of Enough training in the Reading Room on the website, it’s the Second from the Top. I use it when I want to focus on important issues, including whether Castle and Beckett will ever have a relationship like normal people, when I am done playing with toys with Willie, and when I simply can not stroke Tootsie’s adorable little round belly pooch for one more minute.

TAKE IT/DROP IT: I teach Drop It as the flip side of Take It, and I find I use both of them often. As in: Please drop the dead bird you found, or please pick up your toy and bring it back in the house. I know these aren’t especially ‘non-traditional’ but they often aren’t taught in training classes and I wish they were. Far better to teach Drop It as a fun exercise rather than reflexively shouting DROP IT! in an angry voice and teaching your dog to swallow as fast as she can when she hears it. That seems to be the default of most dog owners, an understandable primate-like response, but not a good way to establish a good relationship with your dog.  I’d love to see it as part of dog training curricula and have included it in The Puppy Primer.

READY? This is a standard signal a lot of serious trainers use, but I wish again it was more common place. I love looking at Willie and asking him if he wants to engage with me. The key here is asking. It’s not a command or even a cue really, in the sense that I’m simply asking Willie if he’d like to start training something new or practicing something old. Any answer is acceptable and I have no expectations of his response, except as information. If he doesn’t turn to me, eyes shining, then he’s not ready, and I change my behavior until he is. Because the sound so often leads to working sheep or doing something that elicits treats or play, Willie seems to love the word as much as I do.

OUT: Katie Martz uses this with Lily, her beautiful Dogo. She uses it when she’s chopping vegetables in the kitchen, to prevent Lily the 90 lb white wonder from dancing on the counters in delight. Out means either go to another room or another surface (floor to carpet for example) or, essentially, stop bothering me right now. She taught it by tossing treats into the other room and body blocking her from coming back in. Lily seems to define it the same way Katie does (often rare in training, right?), because she will respond correctly to it in a new house or apartment.

WHAT’S YOURS? This is just a partial list, and I’d love to hear what “Non-Traditional” signals you use with your dogs that you especially love. I envision a very interesting discussion about it, thanks to all our thoughtful readers. I fully expect I’ll be teaching Willie a new cue by the end of the weekend….

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: It’s gorgeous but desperately dry. I am watering the trees in the yard, but who knows what will happen in the woods and the prairies. But it has been stunningly beautiful, one of the prettiest autumns ever. Dry conditions, followed by sunny days and cool nights are apparently ideal for fall color, and that has been the case here to a T. The sheep are doing well, although that’s not the answer you would get if you asked them. They are confined to the pen because the pastures are little better than dirt. It’s sad to see, but I have had excellent advice from a pasture specialist (thank you Laura) and have a plan to rehabilitate starting next spring. I’m taking soil samples in this week to get that part done now anyway, and we are, one by one, ridding the area of the thistles we didn’t get this spring. (Thistles appear to be drought proof apparently, such a shame they are not edible.)

However, thanks to Jim, who is the primary portable fence mover, the sheep are able to get some grass from selected areas in the front of the farm. In the photo below they are eating the lush grasses right alongside the road. This is the best grass on the farm: it’s a low area that gathers rain run off from a culvert, is shaded much of the day and is mowed by the county on a regular basis. There is a tiny bit of grass in other areas of the front lawn, and thanks to Jim, Willie and the portable fencing, the sheep will be able to get some of it. Most of their ration is the hay we purchased for winter, which we are going through at an alarming rate. But it’s good, rich alfalfa and the sheep are actually doing well on it.

Last Sunday we all got out for a lovely fall walk in the fields and woods close to a good friend’s house. Willie’s shoulder has improved enough so that he is now off leash again. When I had to put  him back on leash, both inside and out, he became as depressed as any dog I’ve seen. It was, in a word, heartbreaking. Now that he can run free again he is back to his happy, happy self. We saw his physical therapist on Monday and she strongly advised that we go very, very slowly trying to bring him back to training for competition. It’s clear that his shoulder simply may never be able to handle the wear and tear involved in training for driving on a perfectly straight line, something that requires a tremendous amount of lateral stress on shoulder joints. If he can’t ever trial again I don’t think he’d care at all, as long as he can work sheep at home. It’s me that wants to trial, so although it would be a great disappointment to drop out now that I’ve caught the bug again, if Willie is happy, that’ll be enough for me. I’ll get over it, and Willie will not care one little bit. I’ll see how it goes, going very slowly and carefully.

Here’s the gang on the wooded part of our walk: Willie, Jim, Tootsie, good friend Beth Viney of Great Pyrenees Rescue of Wisconsin and her lovely lady, Tundra. Willie and Tundra did beautifully when they were re-introduced at the beginning of our walk (they had met once before, I have a video of it on my Dog-Dog Reactivity DVD and we all had a grand old time. Tootsie did get carried by me or Jim part of the way, the grasses were pretty high in some places and what was a path to us was a jungle to her. Short of teaching her to use a machete, we picked her up and carried her. But she was a trooper and still did a lot of walking, and we all had a wonderful time. Then Jim and I went back to doing farm chores, worked outside most of the afternoon, and ate a yummy dinner of local, organic pork, roasted root veggies and home made bread. We fell in bed about 9 o’clock and slept as if we’d been drugged. Hopefully there will be more of the same this weekend (the walks, farm chores and good food, we’ll pass on the “as if drugged” part.)