THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

As many of you know I recently presented a seminar on animal assisted therapy in Naples Florida. (Yes, it’ll be out as a DVD later this winter. Happy Dance!) One of the motivations for doing the seminar was the number of clients I had who wanted me to help them prepare their dog for therapy work. Sometimes it was like swimming downstream on a warm, cozy river. Their dog was a perfect fit and ended up doing wonderful work in the community. Other times… well,  it was reminiscent of trying to paddle up a cold, frothy waterfall. The fact is, therapy work can be hard work, and it takes a special kind of dog to be both good at it and to enjoy it. The directors of AAA and AAT (AAActivities and AATherapy) will tell you that one of their greatest challenges is working with people who want to volunteer but whose dogs just don’t qualify. Here’s a summary of the characteristics of a good therapy dog prospect, in hopes it will be helpful for those who are interested in doing this wonderful work:

Affiliative: This seems like a no-brainer, but the fact is that many dogs are presented for therapy work who really don’t like strangers all that much. They love their owners and good friends, but aren’t all that interested in other people. Good therapy dogs need to be the kind of dogs who ADORE people, all people, and want nothing more than to connect with them. It is, after all, the emotional connection that is often the therapeutic part of AAA and AAT.  It seems to me that dogs sort into 4 categories: 1) adore people, care little for other dogs, 2) adore dogs, care little for unfamiliar people, 3) adore members of both species and are thrilled to meet new ones and 4) adore neither dogs or people, except maybe their owner. Needless to say, only categories 1 and 3 are good therapy prospects.

Physically Calm: Many of the dogs who think all people hung the moon regrettably don’t fit into this category. Leaping, licking, pawing and body slamming just don’t work in senior centers and hospitals. This is why so many dogs don’t qualify when they are young, but could be great prospects when they are older. I wrote a chapter with Aubrey Fine for his great book The Handbook of Animal Assisted Therapy, and we had a long discussion about how many dogs would be GREAT for therapy work when they are six. Or eight. Or ten, but their owners get them evaluated at the age of two, the dogs are not “passed” and their owners never try again.

Psychologically Sound and Non-reactive: It doesn’t matter how much training or conditioning you do, therapy dogs need a certain level of rock solid soundness to be good prospects. Of course, the context does matter: some dogs are great in senior centers but are uncomfortable around children and would be disasters in a children’s hospital. It’s important to remember that AAA and AAT include a vast range of experiences, so every dog must be evaluated based on what they are going to be doing.  But it’s still essential to keep in mind that although your job is in part to protect your dog, once you are inside a facility you will have limited control over what happens. And what can happen (someone grabbing your dog, weird noisy medical equipment coming on, a medical crisis that results in tremendous chaos) is sometimes enough to terrify a sensitive dog.

Included in this category, although albeit somewhat different conceptually, is the state of being “emotionally mature” or able to handle frustration and deal with the world with a calm, measured demeanor. Again, just as in people, sometimes this takes several years to master.

Ridiculously clean and healthy: Unless you work in health care facilities it is easy to forget how differently sanitation needs to be handled in facilities and hospitals than it does in your own home. Pet Pals here in Madison, which organizes visits to the Children’s Hospital through the UW Vet School, requires that all dogs in the program go through extensive veterinary evaluations twice a year. This includes an entire day of testing for a vast range of diseases, from salmonella to MRSA. In this case the dogs are visiting children who are often immune compromised, and so their requirements are more stringent than some, but any facility, from a senior center to a hospital, is a very, very different place than your home. Germs love the kind of places that therapy dogs go to visit, and they can move around like wild-fire within very vulnerable populations.

Aware of their Job? This is gravy, pure gravy, but the fact is that some dogs do more than happily sit with strangers or participate in structured therapy treatment plans, as beneficial as that can be to some people. These dogs seem to sense why they are there, and seek out people who are especially needy, and make an emotional connection with them that changes their life. These connections happen, and hearing about them is enough to make you all gooey-eyed. Special stuff indeed.

I’ll leave the training and evaluations required to be a registered therapy team for another blog, but I thought it’d be interesting to ask all of you to add to this list–specifically, what type of personality do you think a therapy dog needs to be successful? If you’ve either had a working AAA or AAT dog, or been the beneficiary of one, I’d love to hear what criteria you’d put on the list. FYI, I’ll write another time about what the handler at the other end of the leash needs (a list too often ignored!), and some good books for people interested in getting involved, but right now I’d like to think about the dogs themselves. Aside from training for specific cues and conditioning to things like medical equipment, what traits do you think good therapy dogs need?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: It was eight below (Fahrenheit) when I got up yesterday morning, three below today. I think the high is expected to be around eight or so, and we’re expecting 2 to 7 inches of snow tomorrow (2 to 7? that’s a big difference!).  I wish I didn’t have to drive to town to get ready to start teaching at the university (“The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships”), but still it’ll be sort of fun to get the snow. If it had been snowing all winter I’d be tired of it, but we’ve hardly had any winter at all til now, so it feels sort of good in some strange, possibly masochistic kind of way.

The great news is that Tootsie, who began her life here explaining to me that her paws did not participate in wet or cold, now trots happily outside in the worst of weather, does her business and then runs, ears flapping and tongue lolling, back into the garage. When we got her as a puppy mill dog she understandably had no concept of going outside and eliminating on cue right away, and then going right back in if the weather was inclement. She’d stand at the end of the garage and look plaintive and miserable, but refuse to go out. And even in great weather, once out she’d sniff and sniff and sniff and sniff… you get the idea.  What a great reminder of how handy it is to put peeing and pooping on cue.

And now you should see her! Out she runs, does her business and then runs back in… while Willie stays outside and looks at me like “WHAT? Go back inside now? Whatever for?” So Tootsie goes back inside and Willie and I play outside for awhile. I should tell you though that yesterday there was one time, during the coldest part of the morning, when she did refuse to go out. But she’d been outside to pee recently, and I took it as “Truly, I don’t have to go at all, and it’s really, really cold. Would it work for you if I stayed inside this time?” And indeed it did. Honor your dog, right? The next time I took her out her bladder was fuller, and out she went, did her business and ran to me for her treat. Now, I just have to work on her barking if she sees me and Willie outside through the window… One thing at a time!

Willie is good good good. His shoulder seems good (almost afraid to write that) and he’s loving everyone he meets lately. He still isn’t buddies with Tootsie. They STILL ignore each other, it’s a bit strange sometimes, but he is very tolerant of her and the only sign of problems I see is when I come home she has taken over our greeting rituals. Rather than being all over me, Willie runs to get a toy and lets her get the first attention. I’m not liking that, I think he is a bit frustrated, but doesn’t like competing with Tootsie for attention, and unwilling to get into any conflict about it… I’ll be working on that in the near future too. Never a dull moment with dogs, hey?

Why do I live in a place that can be colder in the winter than the inside of your freezer? Here’s the reason: Sunrise yesterday.  Eight below. And a sky simply too beautiful for words…

Surely you’d agree that both you and your dog can be frightened, but what about feeling jealous? Guilty? Ashamed? Ah, now it gets trickier, doesn’t it? Emotions like jealousy and guilt are called “secondary” emotions, and many biologists, psychologists and philosophers believe that non-human animals can’t experience them. The argument is that they can’t be experienced without a relatively high level of cognition, particularly the ability to be self aware and knowledgeable about the mental state of others.

I’ll talk in the next post about research related to whether dogs feel guilt or jealousy, but for now, I’d like to replicate another piece of research that asked people what emotions they think animals experience. [If you came to the Madison Seminar, no fair answering after you saw the research results!]

So here’s your question: Which of these emotions can animals experience? (I ask the question as it was asked by the researcher. I’ll ask next about dogs specifically.)

Fear, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Guilt, Jealousy.

Answer by copying that list into a comment and force yourself (sorry) to say Yes or No after each of the 6 emotions listed. We’ll total up your answers and compare it with research done a few years ago, and with the answers we got from the audience in Madison at the Advanced Seminar.

Here are the same emotions:

Fear, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Guilt, Jealousy.

Now answer Yes or No if this time we’re asking about Dogs. Then answer for a different animal, a Hamster. We’ll report back on your answers and how they compare to the general public, the Madison audience and what the research says in about a week’s time. No fair writing about the research yet if you know about it, we’ll all talk about that after the ‘survey’ comes in.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Brrrrr. First real snow, along with bitter winds, sleet, rain, the whole nine yards. Tootsie has already explained to me that she couldn’t possibly walk on just plain old wet grass, so cold, snowy grass, she explained to me this morning, is out of the question. But we’re making huge progress. Here’s what has worked well so far:

1. Obviously, the best treats in the house came out once the rain began last week. Tootsie learned she gets cooked lamb heart for walking on wet grass, instead of commercial dog treats if it’s dry. She taught me it was much more effective to drop the treat on the ground rather than hold it in my hand, so I learned to drop a trail of treats from the garage to the grass to lure her out. (Thank heavens Willie has a great “leave it!” Boy has it come in handy lately!)

2. Treats helped tremendously, but I think the biggest factor in getting her onto wet grass (which she does now willingly) was that she wanted something even more. Tootsie was obsessed with cars when she came to the farm; I have absolutely no idea why. Does she associate them with her escape from the mill? Did someone drive up to feed her every day? (The Amish don’t drive but they often will be in a car that someone else does.) So I “Premacked” it. If she came out and peed on the wet grass (a low probability behavior) she got to run to the car and leap and dance around it, and even get put inside (a high probability behavior.. she’d do anything when I first got her to be allowed to run to a car.)  Why she loves this so much I may never know, but it clearly was what she wanted more than anything in the world–so much so it was hard to get her past a car for the first 2 weeks, so I just used it as a reinforcement.

So we’ve got wet grass taken care of, and house training has been going exceptionally well. Now on to the next challenge: walking on snow and ice. Oh my, poor little girl, this will be a challenge for her, what a switch for her after living all her life inside. Picture me cooking up lots and lots of extra good treats for snow falls…

Willie is being SO good with her. I would not say he is happy she’s there, but no more snake face and mostly he looks happy and content. Every once in a while I think he looks sad, and I assume it’s about her, but it seems less and less, especially as he gets more and more freedom and he’s learned that our belly rub sessions on the living room floor are still part of our day. She’s also getting a little less pushy (although we have a long way to go there, but one day at a time.)

Here’s Tootsie imitating Andy Rooney (note the eyebrows), considering put paw to snow for the first time:

Success! I lured her out with raw meat dropped on the ground. She paused at the border, so I gave Willie a bunch of treats as she watched.  Ah, the power of another dog!  Finally she ventured out onto the snow and got 3 treats for it. Then, bless her, she sniffed around and finally squatted and urinated. This got her 1) pieces of lamb kidney, 2) much clapping and ridiculous celebrating from me, 3) the chance to run back to the car and dance around it and 4) the chance to go back into the house (whence she also got more food, more excitement, and belly rubs.) I’m sure we’re not done with this, but she’s making great progress, none-the-less. I’ll be buying her a little coat soon. (I can not believe those words came out of my mouth. Me? Buy a dog a coat? Really? But she is truly so frail right now, I just can’t imagine her dealing with 30 below weather.)

Here’s TOOTSIE!

Also known as:

Little Bit, Mini Me and my favorite, Mop of the Woods.

There’s a new kid on the block, or at the farm I should say. Meet Tootsie, a 7 year old King Charles Cavalier who was rescued by Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue from an Amish Puppy Mill, after the owners had used her up. Her mouth and ears were horribly infected; she had twenty teeth extracted.  She also was fat as a tick, so you couldn’t say she was starving. She weighed 22 lbs (now she weighs 15 and is still a bit overweight).

And what, you might ask, is a Cavalier doing at Redstart Farm? Doesn’t every farm need a Cavalier? (What, you think we farmers don’t have laps?)  Seriously, there is logic to all this. Here’s a brief version of the back story:  If you have been following the blog for awhile, you know that after Lassie died I had my heart set on getting back up to 3 dogs–Willie, a little lap dog from a shelter or rescue, and another Border Collie. I had wanted the lap dog first, but then a litter of BCs came along that looked too good to pass up, so last summer we raised Hope, a Border Collie pup with great herding lines.

It’s a long story, as you know if you followed the bouncing ball last year, but it turned out that Hope and Willie brought out the worst in each other, and I decided it was in both of their best interests to place Hope in another home. It was a brutally hard decision for me to make, and I was roundly criticized by some for it, but I did what I believed to be right for both of the dogs, took some deep breaths, and went back to looking for the next dog. If you know Willie’s history (extremely uncomfortable, and at one time aggressive, to unfamiliar dogs) you know that picking the right dog for him was a challenge, and not as easy as it would have been with any other dog I’ve ever had. But early in the year, a dear friend and I found a little fluff-ball-oxytocin pump from a rescue who sounded perfect, and was about to come out to the farm when Willie was badly injured.

And so, the next dog was put on hold for many, long months while we worked through Willie’s injury in February, his surgery in May and his first 5 months of PT. Once Willie was able to have a bit of off-leash time I began looking again. One of the places I looked was at Cavalier rescue, because Willie has had some great experiences with them. One of my sitters has two females who come to the farm often, and Willie gets along beautifully with them. In addition, one of his best friends when he was younger was Brody, a sweet little male Cav, who used to love to wrestle play with Willie on the living room floor.

After consultations with two wonderful women in rescue, Nancy and Leslie, and two super rescue groups, Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue and Greater Chicago Cavalier Rescue, we all agreed that Tootsie might be a great match. She is a small female (least likely to make Willie nervous), quiet (good again), deferential to Willie (good again) and great around cats (and yet again). After a trial period Tootsie became a  permanent member of Redstart Farm and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. She is great for us–she does need a lot of training, but she’s going to be a good, good little dog, and will fit in well. It also feels good to finally be able to bring a needy little dog to the farm. I’ll talk in a later post about how this adoption relates to my concerns about the problems that occur when breeding dogs for our sake rather than for theirs, but for now, it’s all about integrating Tootsie into the farm.

As you can imagine, Willie’s feelings about all this are paramount to me. I am happy to say that so far things are going well, given how little time has passed. She and Willie are not buddies, and I don’t know that they ever will be. But that’s okay; he can’t have a playmate now because he is still on a great many restrictions, so I couldn’t bring in a dog he wanted to play with. At first he was a bit uncomfortable about her in the house, but less so than he normally would be with a new dog in the house. Willie does well with unfamiliar dogs in the great outdoors (a huge change from his behavior 2-3 years ago) but he is nervous with new dogs inside the house. As expected, he was not 100% comfortable with her in the house at first, although he was still pretty darned polite. Mostly he made what I call “snake face,” hard flat eyes, flattened ears and a sour look that made it clear he wasn’t thrilled with the addition. But he was appropriate, and in very few days he appears to have accepted her presence. He still seems happy and relaxed and seems to think of her as part of the ‘new normal’ of life.

Of course, I’ve worked hard hard hard on counter conditioning him around her getting food and petting, and now he’ll even let her eat out of the same plate when they get snacks after our dinner. Resource guarding was one of my primary concerns with Willie, and that is going extremely well so far. She pushes in between us for petting and he puts up with that too, although he clearly doesn’t like it. Who could blame him? She’s the one who needs work here; she is super pushy and will be learning some manners soon. (Thus the name, Mini Me.)  A good sign I think: he is starting to sneak in sniffs when he can, as if pretending he just happened to find his nose in the area of her belly and groin. “Oh my, did my nose end up under your tail? I have no idea how that happened.”

She, on the other hand, pretends he isn’t there. She is an especially small Cav (her legs are ridiculously short) and he must look like a giant to her. I suspect they will become more and more comfortable together, and who knows, maybe they will learn to be buddies. It’s very very early …;

I’ll write updates about how things are going when I can. Weeks one and two have been all about:

1) House Training: She is a mill dog after all–but Leslie at Lucky Star made a GREAT start. I took her out every 10 min for the first 2 weeks. Seriously. She is still in shock that she gets a treat every times she pees. She’s doing great, but I am still on it all the time.

2) Teaching her to respond when I say Tootsie. That was her name when she was in foster care, but she had no idea what it meant when I said it. Around day 15 she literally had a Helen Keller moment when (I think) she realized that the noises I made meant something. I would give a lot to have had a video of her face when she made the connection.

3) Leash Manners: Not charging away at 20 mph when on a leash. I never trust her off leash now, so we worked hard on teaching her to stay close to me when the leash is on. It’s taken a lot more treats, but she’s making fantastic progress.

4) Barking: I was warned she barked in the morning at 5:30 until she was let out of her crate. Oh my, not good for me and Willie and our super sensitive ears. We’ve worked very  hard on this too (began by setting the alarm for 5 am, then slowly later etc etc.) She does NOT bark in her crate in the morning (the goal is no crate at all, but the house training issue with a mill dog takes priority) YEAH! But she does bark at other times when she wants out, sounding something like a huge, operatic mouse. We’re working on it and she’s making progress on that too.

Best of all? She is super friendly and is much less shy than most mill dogs. She loves people, men and women both. She has some health challenges; a minor heart murmur and subluxated knee (also minor), and of course there’s her heart to worry about given that she’s a Cav. I don’t know how long her life with us will last, she is already seven years old, but she’s found a home at Redstart Farm, and in my heart forever.

Here she is:

And on one of her first walks in the country, my goodness this exercise stuff can tire a girl out!

Karen London and I are working on our edits to the new booklet on adopting adolescent and older dogs, and something hit me as I was writing that I thought was worth talking about. After considering my own experiences bringing “non-puppies” into my home, talking with folks in rescues and shelters, and working with clients for so many years, it strikes me that one of the biggest problems people have when they adopt an “older” dog (not old, but not puppy either) relate to unrealistic expectations.

I don’t mean that in the usual sense, say, for example, expecting a dog to behave perfectly on day one, but more in the sense that we have certain expectations of adults that we don’t have with puppies. Take house training, for example. Everyone expects puppies to have “accidents” in the house for a few weeks or so, but people are often shocked and angered when an adult dog urinates on the rug just hours after arriving. But of course, most dogs aren’t “house trained” in the sense that we define it (always go outside, never inside) but are trained not to go in a particular place. That doesn’t mean that they can generalize what “house” means, given that they don’t have access to our brains and can’t download the way we see the world.

In my experience people don’t realize how important basic house training is for the first few days when an adopted dogs enters the home. This is especially important for dogs who haven’t had much experience in a variety of houses. If they were taught to potty in one specific backyard and not in a specific living room, why would they generalize that to another location? The fact is, some do and some don’t, so it’s job one to pay attention when you first bring a new home dog. This doesn’t seem like rocket science, but I think it’s not intuitive, and I suspect that our reactions to an adult dog urinating in our houses are more like those we’d have if an adult human peed on our living room carpet. (Yuck, what an image, sorry!).

Staying close by and coming when called seem to present a similar disconnect between “puppy versus non-puppy.” Young puppies have an inherent follow response, and we don’t need to do much when we bring them home to keep them close by. Of course, we’re wise to start recall training right away, but it’s seductive to forget that and imagine your pup will follow you everywhere forever. All this relates to one of the biggest problems that I see owners, shelters and rescue group deal with: dogs who are either let outside off leash intentionally, or escape out the front door or through a hole in the fence and can’t be called back. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this causes no end of grief for the dogs, the fosters and the new families. Yet, it seems ever so common to expect an adopted dog to behave like a puppy and follow you everywhere, leashes be damned.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: What did you find surprising, or important to remember if and when you brought home an adopted dog who was well beyond puppy hood? I’m sure your stories will be helpful to us all.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Brrrr. Snow, sleet, hail, thunder and a ridiculous amount of stuff in between fell yesterday, but at least we escaped the damaging storms that plagued so much of the country. I hope you and yours are all safe and sound. Anyone out there need some sympathy?

This weekend some dear friends came to help with the sheep chores, and then we all got reinforced by being able to let the lambs out of the barn and go up the hill for the first time in their little lives. The day was warm and sunny (very rare this spring!), and we soaked up the breeze, the sun and the green grass like sponges. As you can see, the lambs seemed to like it too.

xx

Wheeee! I’ve been working on an updated version of the Puppy Primer for six months now, and it feels SO good to finally hold the finished product in my hot little paws. In it, co-author Brenda Scidmore and I emphasize the benefits of positive reinforcement, of letting dogs initiate the correct action themselves when possible, the importance of realistic expectations and of going step-by-step in training. That last issue is such a big one to me: so many of the problems I see people having with their dogs relate to them jumping from Step 1 to Step 25, without knowing that there should be many steps in between. For example,  there’s (Step 1) sitting on cue in the kitchen while holding a dinner bowl and (Step 25) sitting on cue when 5 people come to the door and there are 3 other dogs barking their heads off….  Don’t you think that one of the most important things you’ve learned (or are learning!) is how many steps there are in between?

I’m also happy about how the book is divided into 1) Special Topics, 2) New Exercises and 3) Practice Makes Perfect, because it helps people understand that you’re not ‘done’ with training once your dog will sit in a training class when you’re holding treats in your hand, and gets them started on a building a foundation for years to come.

The special topics include: Socialization, Positive Reinforcement, House Training, Crate Training, Handling/Collar Touch, Stopping Unwanted Behavior (so often not mentioned and such a common problem!), Helping Puppies conquer their Fears, How to Play (and how Not to), and What to Expect in Adolescence.

The exercises taught are: Sit, Down, Stand, Come on Cue, No Jumping Up, Walking Side by Side, lots of games like Fetch, Find the Toy etc, Take It/Drop It, Puppy Pause (as a foundation for Stay).

We worked really hard to keep the book user friendly and easy to read, but thorough enough to cover the most important information needed to get a puppy started out right. But, I would LOVE your feedback. There’s always a second printing . . .

Is it perfect? Oh heaven’s no. I already decided that the title to Chapter 2 is just stupid (this morning I noticed that and said “Who wrote this anyway?), and I’m sure I’ll find more that I want to change, but in general, just between us, I’m pretty excited about it. Truth be told, she says sheepishly, I am in particular a total mush bucket about the cover.

Intro Sale: I like to keep business separate from the blog, but I think some of you might like to know that the book is on sale for a week at a special introductory price. Just check out The Puppy Primer on my website. Thanks for bearing with me on this, the new book might not be of interest to some of you, but it’s really fun for all of us to have the finished product delivered from the printers.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Still living as if on the top of a wedding cake with white frosting, snow snow snow everywhere. This Sunday a group of Univ of Wisconsin students are coming out to learn how to do pregnancy checks on sheep (not from me, I couldn’t read a sonogram if my life depended on it; I still think they are making it up when they point to something and say “See! See the grey area there.. that’s a …”. ). I’m also getting straw delivered; if I’m lucky it’ll come when the students are there and we can fill up the barn in just a few minutes! Nothing like lots of strong backs on a farm!  This all is reminding me I’d better get my lambing supply orders in. Can barely believe they are due in a month. Shearing happens next week too; it’ll be interesting to see which ewes take each other on afterward (there always seems to be a challenge between two ewes after shearing, I’ll try to get it on tape again as I did last year.)

Willie and I are loving having lots of time together, and working on some new tricks, but oh I miss having another dog around for Willie to play with. Even in the last weeks of Lassie’s life she and Will would play together a little, and I am sure that he misses it. Going to borrow some dogs from friends this weekend!

Every morning I start my day writing a list of things that I am grateful for. Sometimes they are big things (Jim, my dogs, opportunities to learn, grow and improve relationships between people and animals) and sometimes they are small (the plaintive Wooo Heee song of courting Chickadees, the deep, purple blue of the first spring flowers). This morning I surprised myself, by adding:

I am grateful that none of my dogs potty in the house.

House training and elimination control is like health, isn’t it?  If everything is fine, you don’t really think about it much. But when it’s not, it can be overwhelming. I went through two years living with old dogs who simply couldn’t control themselves. Pippy Tay lost control of her anus in her last year of life (at age 15) and I picked up poop at least five times a day. Tulip had Irritable Bowel disease and problem with her pancreas, and a variety of unwelcome substances decorated my house with alarming frequency. (One of the things I am grateful for is that Jim never once complained about living in what felt like a litter box.)

Years earlier, when Luke was alive, I had to keep the door shut to an upstairs bedroom. The orange and  yellow shag carpet that was there when I moved in had clearly been anointed by other animals, and Luke never missed a chance to mark it until I finally ripped it out. (One could argue that a yellow and orange carpet deserves nothing more than to be urinated upon.. oh, the 60′s!)

A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get an email or phone call from someone who is having trouble house training their dog. Isn’t it interesting how simple house training feels once you get it, but how terrifically un-intuitive it is before you’ve done it repeatedly?  When Karen London and I wrote Way to Go, we were struck by how many people resisted giving their dog a treat for eliminating outside, and how common it is for people to give the treat long after the dog is done, and after she trots back to the house. Once you face the fact that you just have take your dog out every time you turn around,  give them the treat immeditely after they potty, and prevent accidents in the house… well, it usually goes so smoothly.  That’s not to say that some cases can’t be difficult: dogs who grew up going to the bathroom where they live, dogs who had health problems when young that interferred with training, etc. I am very sympathetic to the difficult cases, and I’ve seen some tough ones as you can imagine.

But for now, THANK YOU Willie and Lassie!  Lassie is susceptible to bladder infections, so I always look for a puddle in the dining room first thing as I enter the house (a sign her infection is back), but it’s been over a half of year since I’ve had to clean anything up.  Wow. Life is good.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. No new lambs, although I’m going to leave the office as soon as I finish this to check on the flock. Barbie and Dorothy are due any day, so they are confined inside the barn (and are none to happy about it. Barbie smashed into poor Willie as he was leaving the pen yesterday–this after he stood up bravely to an attack from Redford, I was SO proud of him). She went after me this morning. I guess if I was as big as she is I’d be in a bad mood too. She gets huge.. we call her “Explodo sheep” before she gives birth.)

I didn’t get any pictures taken this morning, started grading term papers at 6 am. But I did take the time to  write that I am grateful for the opportunities to travel to amazing places through my work, and to meet wonderful people all over the world. Here are two of my favorite photos from our trip to Sweden, thanks to Natasja at Hundens Osterlen, who hosted the seminar.

The Swedish “Stonehenge”

Isn’t this church gorgeous? It makes me happy just to look at it. That’s Jim at the end… it makes me happy to look at him too!