THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

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.)

As if any of us REALLY knows “what it all means,” right? But thank you for your interesting and thoughtful comments about the previous post’s video of Willie and the “Get Back” signal. They were great.

I’ll cut to the chase about my own interpretation. Here’s the data: Willie tongue flicks when I ask him to back away from somewhere or something he wants to go toward: the outside of the house, into the car, or toward the toy. All of these have been taught using lots and lots of reinforcement with food and play and “life rewards,” like going outside after I say “Get Back” or getting the toy as soon as he backs up (But  I don’t reinforce every single response every single time once he has a cue down pat. That would be unnecessary in my opinion, not to mention completely impractical.) But back to the tongue flicks:

The only time in the video when Willie doesn’t tongue flick after “Get Back” is he is directly facing the sheep, who are backed into a corner. Two highly relevant facts that can help us interpret his behavior are:

One, I’ve never used food to teach it in that context (sheep), I have in all the others. Is it possible that he has a classically conditioned response to the cue because it so often resulted in food? I thought that was an interesting comment from a reader. I think this bears considering, but, see # Two….

Two, (and I think in this case MUCH more relevant) Willie dislikes what is called “contact” with the sheep (not physical, think metaphysical) and is stressed by face-to-face confrontations with them. Did you see how quickly he backed away (see second 120) when I said “Get Back” in that context?  That’s because he is relieved. In this case he’d be likely to tongue flick when I said “Walk Up,” not “Get Back.”

Thus, I am inclined to agree with those who argued that Willie’s tongue flicking is displacement behavior. In all the cases in which he tongue flicked, he wanted to go forward, but couldn’t, so he did something else. What he did could be interpreted as a sign of low-level anxiety, stress or frustration, or as appeasement behavior. I experimented (have you with your own dogs yet?) and looked for tongue flicks in a variety of contexts and after a variety of cues. Lie Down and Sit all got tongue flicks. Come forward and touch my hand, pick up the toy, come to me, find the toy, and high five did not.

Willie appears to tongue flick when he wants to move forward but is asked to do the opposite. Is he stressed? I could well be wrong, but I don’t think so, at least not in the way the term is usually used. “Stressed” on Willie’s face is easy to read, and involves pinched facial muscles, ears flat and a look in his eyes somewhere between Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s The Birds and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. Is he thrilled about being asked to back up? Nope.

Notice how immediately before and after the tongue flicks, Willie’s body stays loose, his mouth open and he generally has on what I call his happy face. Would he rather go forward at the door, into the car, toward his toy? Yes. Would I rather eat ALL the chocolate in the cupboard right now? Yes. Am I stressed because I am not allowing myself to do so, with some inner voice firmly saying “Trisha, Get Back?” No. That’s my interpretation. Now that we all know more, what do you think?

A few more points in relation to your comments, and a reminder of what a great exercise these videos can be for us all. Several people commented about Willie, at second 24, sliding under my legs toward Tootsie as I am about to lift her into the car. There were some interesting guesses about what is going on here, but I can tell you with confidence that Willie is taking the opportunity to sniff her butt “under the radar.” He still primarily pretends that she doesn’t exist (and vice versa). They can eat off of the same plate if offered to lick our dinner plates, and she can dance on his head when greeting us and he has no visible reaction. He is remarkably tolerant of her (and her him). But they still do not acknowledge each other, and sneak in sniffs in rare moments, only when the other’s head is busy.

Some of you also commented about Willie’s dash away from the car door after I put Tootsie inside (second 40) and interpreted it as fear. Not a chance in this case, he was running in joy to the barn. Willie has learned that unless other cues have occurred (Tootsie’s car harness on, his travel collar on), Tootsie going into the car crate means we are going to the barn to work sheep.  Even though I think he often finds it stressful, he appears to love working the woolies as much as life itself.

And one last quick comment, just by way of explanation: Willie’s Stay signal means “Stay in place (not posture) until I give you a release.” Willie’s Wait signal means “Pause momentarily and then do what you want.” If he is still not moving once I’m ready for him to move on, I’ll say “Okay” just to get the ball rolling again. But it’s his choice, Wait just means pause. If I want him to not move until I give him a release I say Stay. I find that useful, myself. You?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: We began last weekend with a rough day on Friday. Willie was entered into our second “big” sheepdog trial on Friday, and did the worst he’s ever done. It was, granted another really tough trial, with a tough course, tough sheep and with wind and rain blowing into my face. Willie improved tremendously on our second run, but I did the worst I’ve ever done and made two ridiculous mistakes. Ah well. But then we gloried in a perfect fall weekend: blue sky, dry air, ideal temperature &light breeze. I’m talking calendar cover weather, here, and boy did we deserve it after such a brutal summer. I planted asters and dug weeds and cooked, Jim cut down tree-sized Ragweed to help my allergies, finished a new wagon to transport the sheep and we generally puttered and watched sports on TV and relaxed. Heaven for us all.

I originally called this post “Barbie’s Not Always a Nice Girl,” but then I thought about what the title would look like on Google and the kind of people who’d click on it. Hmm, not really my “brand,” as they say.

I thought though, that you’d be interested in yet another interaction between Barbie, my cantankerous, lead ewe and Willie. Barbie, as you may recall, is the only sheep who has ever seriously challenged Willie. She won a few times when she had three-week old lambs this spring, literally chasing Willie away, her anvil-like head down and ready to bash Willie into the ground. He ran away like a frightened chipmunk, because Barbie was serious, and because we all know she can be a witch, and because well, he’s just not the bravest dog in the world. That’s partly why I love him so much, because he’s not perfect and neither am I, and he still tries his best, and when I’m being who I want to be, so do I.

Here are photos I took just a few minutes ago (Willie is still panting rapid fire at my feet.) First we found the sheep lolling in the shade of the woods on a steep hill between the barn and the main pasture. Barbie was lying by herself under a dead tree.

Soon after I took this photo she grudgingly got up (who could blame her? — it’s mid day and hot outside) and trotted down the hill with the others toward the barn. Willie picked them up (eventually, more on that later) and we moved them into the Orchard pasture and practiced driving a little bit.

In this next photo you can see, as is often the case, Barbie being the last to move away from Willie and turning  her head toward him. I imagine her saying something like “Your mother eats kitty litter.”

Willie stood his ground, good boy, and here’s the result: Barbie turned away and began walking forward.

You might ask yourself at this point: “I get the Barbie and Willie title, but what’s with the mad dogs and Englishmen in the title? Simple: Remember “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun?” (Words in an old song for those of you not familiar.) We were working in the noonday sun, and I’m wondering if I had a mad dog. Not “mad” as in with rabies, but “mad” as if angry.

We all know how often people wrongly assume their dog is being disobedient because they were “mad” at them. Usually it’s confusion or mis-understandings or pain or fear or anything beside the fact that some dog is ticked off at its owner. But, here’s my question to you: Can it EVER be true, even if rarely? Are dogs ever truly irritated by their owners, especially while doing difficult work? I wondered this while I was working/photographing Willie for this post. He behaved atypically: he didn’t listen as well, he seemed slow and disconnected. But more than that, he gave me a look a few times that was hard to interpret as anything but some canine equivalent of a finger. There are several reasons he could have been off his game: We’ve been working on driving for an upcoming trial, and it’s difficult, tiresome work. I think it’s stressful to dogs (constant whistle signals given out 2-3 to a second), and especially to dogs like Willie who don’t like being in constant contact with the sheep.

In addition, during the “photo shoot” the sheep got all the way back to the barn before Willie could round them up again, in part because I was busy taking that first photo of  Barbie. It’s hard work running down the steep forest floor, going into the small, enclosed area of the barn and forcing the sheep back up the hill. He wouldn’t have had to do it if I’d been paying more attention. Hummm.

It’s far more likely that Willie was tired from our work of the past few days, or maybe his shoulder was hurting. But that look he gave me started me thinking: Although most attributions of anger as a motivation for disobedience are undoubtedly incorrect, are they always? Have you had an experience in which you had good reason to believe that your dog was irritated by your behavior? I’m curious.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Today is all about wrapping up work and leaving for the WWSDA herding dog trial up in northern Wisconsin this weekend. Willie and I run in our first big Pro-Novice course  against some of the best dogs and handlers in the country. The outrun will be 250 to 300 yards, the drives through 2 drive panels ridiculously far away and over my skill set, and the sheep have never been worked by dogs until the day before. If we get numbers (ie, a score) versus letters (ie DQ for Disqualified or RT for Retired) I’ll be satisfied. If we get in the top half (there are about 42 entries) I’ll be thrilled. If we do any better than that I’ll be over the moon. Tonight I’m going to work Willie when it’s cooled down, and just ask him to do some simple, easy outruns. Then tomorrow he won’t work all day, so he should get a good rest. He deserves it.

I know several of you compete in a variety of dog-related sports, from Agility to Sheepdog Trials. You’ll understand then when I say that all I really want is to not let my dog down.  I have worked with dangerous dogs for decades, but standing at the post about to run my dog is a million times more nerve wracking to me. I am basically a lousy competitor because I get so nervous, but yet some strange compulsion is getting me back into the sport. So cross your paws that I don’t throw up at the post in front of all the other handlers, and am able to keep my senses about me enough to handle my good dog Willie as well as he deserves.

Some wonderful things to report today. The first is that I had a restful and relaxing vacation. I saw lots of friends, gardened, cooked and got back to working sheep with Willie (more on that soon). I took an entire three weeks off, which felt terribly indulgent, but also desperately necessary. The last two years have included many wonderful things, but they’ve also included some major challenges, including Jim’s snapped bicep, surgery and recovery, my badly smashed knee, a summer raising a puppy who was (and is) better off another home, the death of Jim’s sister, moving his mother to Madison three weeks later, the out-of-the blue death a month later of Jim’s brother, Willie’s shoulder injury, surgery and year-long recovery, and a raft of my own health problems that I’ve been fighting in 2012. Among some other issues, I’ve been lame with an “about to snap” achilles tendon since January, and have worn the infamous “boot” for far too long. Living in hilly Southwestern Wisconsin in an old farmhouse with steep, narrow stairs is not ideal for healing an achilles tendon, just in case you were wondering. So it was truly glorious to take the time off, focus on my own rehab and be able to start working Willie again. Now I’m back in the office, excited about the new website we’re working on, getting back to writing a memoir and working on a series of fund raiser speeches for shelters this fall.

But enough about me. Willie is the one who deserve the attention here. Last weekend we entered our first sheepdog trial since his injury a year and a half ago, outside of Pigeon Falls, Wisconsin. In a way it was his first trial, since the only other one we went to was a “Fun Trial” in fall of 2010. So it’s our second attempt at working in a competitive environment, although both events were low key and very relaxed (and yeah for that). Willie did very well in the first fun trial, but he lost a tremendous amount of confidence after his injury and long period of restraint. Like many sheepdogs who have big, beautiful outruns and are easy to handle, Willie hates confrontations. His injury and endless period of inactivity just exacerbated it. Even at the fun trial in 2010 he refused to take the flanking whistles I gave him on the fetch, clearly preferring to follow the sheep along and not put himself in a position where the sheep would put a lot of pressure on him. This spring my flock leader, Barbie, chased Willie a good twenty feet when we first started working again. Gradually, over the last 2 months, I’ve been trying to build up his confidence, but even recently there have been times when he wouldn’t “cover” the sheep (meaning he wouldn’t move to where he could stop them from going in one direction or another.) But he loves to work, lives for it really, and I love working with him.  I will never forget Willie’s physical therapist saying to a vet student after his surgery: “We’re working on increasing Willie’s shoulder stability so that maybe someday he can work sheep again.” I blurted out “Oh no. That’s not what we’re working on. Willie WILL work sheep again, it’s just a question of what we have to do to make that happen.”

Life doesn’t always work out that way, but it did this time. He here is, working sheep again. As I’ve said before, I have accepted that he’ll never be truly sound, but I can manage him so that he can work sheep with little or no pain. Yes, our sessions are short, and yes, I wince when he slams to a stop on a downhill, and yes, he’ll need exercises for the rest of his life. But so what? I’m not in such great shape either, so we’re in it together.

Jim video taped Willie’s run, here it is for you to watch. For those of you don’t know sheepdog trials, a ProNovice course is as follows: The sheep are set out and held by a person and dog from about 200 to 600 yards away, depending on the class. (About 250 yards in this case, we ran in what’s called ProNovice.) Once the sheep are settled (as best as possible anyway), you send your dog to the left or right, your choice. Ideally your dog runs in a big, wide semi-circle that keeps him away from the sheep until he gets on the back side. Then he does the “Lift,” which is the point in which the dog makes “contact” (not physical!) with the sheep and takes control over them. Next is the “Fetch,” in which the dog brings the sheep straight to the handler, through 2 gate panels called the Fetch Panels. The sheep are then to be wrapped around the handler as close as possible and then driven away through the first Drive Panels, about 100 yards away. After going through those panels (theoretically anyway), your dog begins the “Cross Drive,” moving across the field to the second set of Drive Panels. You attempt to get the sheep through them, then straight back to you and into a free standing pen. Most trials are won or lost at the lift and fetch: Your dog needs to put just the right amount of pressure on the sheep to take control of them, but not panic them. Lots of trials are lost by dogs who go too fast and create wild, out of control sheep.

Willie couldn’t have done much better at managing some pretty difficult sheep. They tried their hardest to push to the left and get back to the barn, but this time Willie covered them perfectly. You’ll see we were working Suffolks, famous for not flocking and confronting and fighting the dogs, so I was extra happy about his work here. He made one major mistake in the outrun: he stopped about twenty yards out and looked backwards and then at me. I think, just guessing, that he was looking at sheep behind him, asking “Don’t you want me to get those sheep?” He’s a very strong-eyed dog and its hard for him to leave sheep close to him. But that’s just part of trialing and part of being an experienced dog. I said “Come By” again, and off he went. If you’re trial experienced, you’ll see that Willie did a lot right, and made very few mistakes. On the other hand, I can name several mistakes that I made, but I’m not beating myself up about it. It’s only my second attempt too after all. And I learned a lot, had a wonderful time, and left feeling so much love for Willie that it’s practically embarrassing.

It was a small trial, but there were some good competitors, and I’m truly pleased with how we did and what we learned. We even would have gotten first if (ah, those “ifs!”) I’d gotten the pen gate closed one second earlier, or they hadn’t changed the allotted time from 7 to 6 minutes partway through the runs. Being able to say you won is fun, but what mattered far more was me and Willie having a great time. And my good friend Donna and her lovely little dog Shae won the Novice class, so we all drove home happy and glad we had gone.

A million years ago, my first Border Collie Drift lept up and nipped a man’s nose at the Wisconsin State Fair. Even though the man was clearly not injured, with virtually not even a red spot on his nose, I was shook up and appalled. He was furious. “Your dog attacked me!”

Well, he did. Just because the man wasn’t injured didn’t mean he didn’t feel attacked. And it didn’t mean that I didn’t feel horrible. Drift and I were about to perform in front of huge crowd by doing a sheep herding demo, and found ourselves jammed into a crowd against the building wall. The gentlemen in question charged up to Drift, grabbed his face in his hands, and yes, you guessed it, bent down to kiss Drift on the nose. It was the same exact context in which newscaster Kyle Dyer was bitten by a Dogo a few months ago. In some ways, everything was different: Kyle was badly injured and it was recorded on video tape for all the world to see. And in one way, everything was the same: A stranger holds a dog’s head in his/her hands and looms over to kiss a dog on the nose. Just like David Letterman was bitten on camera years ago. Just like how many people are bitten every year?

I find myself thinking of this before the beginning of Dog Bite Prevention Week, which runs from May 20 to May 26. It’s an important topic and I’m in complete support of efforts to raise awareness and prevent dog bites. The figures bandied about are that there are almost 5 million dog bites every year in the US (but see Dogs Bite but Balloons and Slippers are More Dangerous…). Given that that figure appears to include events in which there was no injury whatsoever, the number is undoubtedly on the high side, but no matter how many there are, we all should be working to decrease them.

There is lots of good, standard information out there about preventing dog bites. The AVMA has a good website on bite prevention, as does the ASPCA and HSUS. There is lots of good advice on all these sites, especially related to keeping children from being bitten (the most common recipient of a dog bite appears to be a child from the ages of 5 to 9). However, much of it is general: pick a good puppy, train your dog, have a fenced yard, teach children to ask first, etc.

This is all good information, but we all know that no list is enough to prevent many of the bites that occur. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep up our efforts. Here’s my list, which builds on the standard advice and adds my own observations and experience, I’m counting on you to add to it:

1. Leashes Aren’t Muzzles. (Neither are muzzles for that matter.) In other words, keeping your dog on a leash won’t prevent him from biting someone. Sometimes leashes can precipitate bites if a dog is nervous and feels trapped. I’ve been overwhelmed by clients who believed that if their dog was attached by a leash, or even if they were close to their dog, that they could prevent a bite. We can prevent lots of bites from happening, but not always with leashes and proximity. When people miss signals of discomfort or tension in their dogs, they end up trying to stop a bite after it has begun. Stopping a dog in mid-air, within the micro-second required, to observe, evaluate and respond is far beyond the skill level of most people. People rarely say or think “I”m being bitten.” By the time you figure out what’s happened, it’s over.  Far better to understand both context and behavior to prevent a bite long before your dog even thinks about it. And my comment about muzzles? Dogs can still hurt people, even with a muzzle on. There are lots of ways to lower the risk, but there’s no magic out there. Based on all this, you can predict my next point:

2. Learn to Read Dogs, and Teach Others What You Know. Recall Michele Wan’s research that showed the dog owning public is not very good at reading signs of negative emotions in dogs (fear, anxiety, etc.). Thus, we all need to do what we can to help educate everyone around us. It’s not helpful for us to pull our hair and roll our eyes about how bad people are at reading dogs, and how often they behave in ways that simply beg a dog to bite them. That just makes us right, and being right gets us one thing and one thing only: Being Right. That’s not going to decrease the number of dog bites out there, so we need to use our knowledge to help others. If you’re a trainer, get yourself on television, give out handouts, refer people to materials and websites that will help them translate dog. There are tons of them. Needless to say I have my own at my website, (and FYI, I have a new DVD coming out this coming Monday titled “Lost in Translation,” a day-long seminar on how dogs use sight, sound and smell to communicate) and there are many other great books and DVDs available through Dogwise and Tawzer Videos.

3. Understand Context: This contains a vast range of issues, from what tends to scare dogs in general (strangers grabbing their heads and trying to kiss their noses, surely a problem we can all understand–want a strange man to grab your head and smash his face into your own?), what scares each dog as an individual, and how the context itself can add risk. My Border Collie Drift was trapped and overwhelmed, as was the Dogo that bit Ms. Dyer. I’ve had numerous clients whose dogs bit someone after a long, exhausting day. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard about dogs who were “just wonderful” with all the children at the picnic all afternoon and evening long until … In hind sight the owner’s tell me “They should have known how tired their dog was…”. Yes, they should have, but we need to help spread the word that even good dogs can get grumpy too when they are exhausted. And when they are overwhelmed. Or scared. Or a tad tweaked about life at the moment.

4. Practice Interventions and Use Them When Necessary. This is where I went wrong all those years ago. If I was in that same situation now I would have never have allowed that man get that close to Drift. I would have moved between him and Drift before he could have grabbed Drift’s face and leaned down to kiss him. Body Blocks work really, really well on people, and can be used to avoid a great many risky situations.

Just a few days ago I was at a pet store that allows dogs and saw an owner use one perfectly. He had an adult Rottie, a lovely, happy-faced dog, who was approached by a squiggly, squirmy Golden Retriever puppy. The puppies’ owner let her dog dash toward the Rottie until they sniffed nose to nose. We were in tight quarters at the check out line. The Rottie had no where to back up into, and the enthusiastic puppy was about to jump onto his head. Wisely, the owner stepped quickly between the dogs, moved toward the puppy a step or two to move him away and then turned and smooched to his dog to follow him.

I turned to the pup’s owner, who had appeared surprised at what had happened and seemed a little bit put out. I thought perhaps I could use this as a teaching moment, and explained “I think the Rottie might have been a tad bit uncomfortable with your pup.” I hope she understood my point, but I can’t say, because the Rottie’s other owner turned to me and said, defensively, “He is a LOVELY dog, he is NOT aggressive.” Ah, and I thought he was a lovely dog myself, but I also noted that owner number one was wise enough to know that any trouble might react to a rude pup in that context, and quick as a wink did a body block. Huzzah! and Yeah! for him I say. Even lovely dogs have contexts in which they are uncomfortable, and more power to us when we know what they are.

5. The World’s Most Dangerous Words Are “I Think It’ll Be Okay.” I asked a salesman once if the hardware I was about to buy would stay attached to a wall if a 150 pound dog lunged against it with all his power. “I think so,” the guy said. This is when red flags should fly and noises generated by the security systems of nuclear power plants should start pounding into your ears. “Think it’s okay” is just not good enough when you are talking about a potential dog bite. I tell clients whose dogs are at risk of biting that we first, before talking about treatment, need to create the kind of risk management system included in submarines and power plants. If your not sure if your dog is 100% stable in a situation and you find yourself saying “I think it’ll be okay” without a careful and thoughtful risk analysis, I want you to hear AH OOOGA, AH OOOGA blasting in your ear. You want to hear “I KNOW it will be okay,” or given that life is never 100% predictable, “The probability of my dog hurting or scaring someone is less than .01 of one percent, and I’m willing to take that risk.” Whatever you decide, it should be very thoughtful, based on a lot of knowledge and be very, very conservative. Bites can be horrible for everyone, including the dog, and once they happen you’re in a entirely different context, and it’s not a good one.

And you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I expect they will be both thoughtful and thought provoking, as usual.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Spring sweet spring. Well, sort of. Summer, sweet summer? It’s in the low 80′s, sunny and warm and already I’m worrying a bit about when it will rain next. It’s been awhile.

But 8 of the 9 lambs are thriving, filling out with muscles and frolicking in the dappled shade of the woods. Spot’s twin ram lamb, who I’ve been supplementing with goat’s milk (mom’s udder is only giving milk from one side), was a voracious vacuum at first when given a bottle, but now he’s fussy and hesitant and only takes a few sips and then stops. This started after he was vaccinated and banded (and thus he lost trust in me), but the other bottle lamb, one of triplets, needed only a day to get over it. Spot’s boy, however, has remained hesitant and cautious.

His tiny twin sister, who I was most concerned about originally, continues to remind me that size doesn’t matter. She’s the pushy one. And although she refuses to take milk from a bottle (“Ugh, ugh!” she indicates by curling her lip and turning away), she’s filling out like a tick and has begun mounting the two ram lambs every time they start to drink out of the bottle. I’m speculating that with only one teat working, she’s dominating it and her brother is losing out. He doesn’t look bad, he’s just not gaining like the others, so I’ll keep working on getting him more milk. I tried a self feeder, which has been successful in the past, but I started late and because they all get milk from their momma’s they had little interest. I’ll keep you posted, we’re going to look at him more carefully this weekend for any physical or medical problems.

Willie and I just moved the entire flock up the hill to the orchard pasture so that my handy neighbor could bring in his bobcat and clear out the barn pen. May I be forgiven for saying that Willie’s work on the sheep was paw perfect? And where was the video camera when I needed?

As you can see, right now at the farm it’s all about lambs and flowers and working Willie and weeding weeding weeding.  And, oh yeah, rhubarb & strawberry pie. Did I mention weeding?

Here’s the only bloom on the new Tree Peony we planted last year. I almost didn’t include the photograph because the focus isn’t crisp, but decided to anyway because it is still lovely in a kind of smear-petroleum-jelly-on-the-lens-for-the-aging-actress kind of way.

And here’s the Iris in front of the please-paint-me-this-summer porch. You can see Willie boy in the background, watching the sheep in behind the electric fence in the front yard:

It makes me so happy to say that Tootsie is doing great. Right now she’s sleeping in her crate beside my desk. The door is open, but she loves it there. The only places she likes as well are 1) being in bed with me, 2) being on the couch or 3) being by herself in the crate in the back of the car. She likes it so well in the car crate that I am actually having to train to leave it. I’m assuming this is baggage from her puppy mill days and that she feels most secure and comfortable in a small, confined space.

She’s progressed so well in so many ways: I’m especially taken with her flipping around mid-air when outside after I call her to come, ears flying like a furry dumbo, her open, happy mouth taking up half of her tiny little Cavalier head. As I mentioned in an earlier post, now that house training is behind us (wheee!), she can be outside off leash as long as I watch her like a hawk and keep her close to the house, she no longer barks to wake us up and produce her dinner, so it’s time to continue work on standard training. We’ve gotten started on sitting on cue, but I thought it would be fun to start her on clicker training at the same time.

I’ve worked on sit off and on, never with much diligence, but she is getting the hang of it. I started with lure training–using the smell of a great treat to ‘lure’ her body into a sitting position. Now that I’m going to start her with a clicker, I find myself thinking about the two different methods of training: luring and clicker training. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but I find that combining the two of them can be especially effective in some contexts.

Luring has the advantage of initial speed: In the case of sit, a la Ian Dunbar, you hold a tiny, tasty treat at the crown of a dog’s head and move it back toward their tail (not up, straight back.) As a dog’s nose follows the treat straight back toward their tail, their body finds it hard to stay standing, and so the hips automatically collapse and voila, your dog is sitting. Bingo, the treat gets popped into the mouth and your dog just got rewarded for sitting. Once you have the behavior established, you turn the motion of luring into a visual signal, and then bring in the verbal cue and start minimizing the hand motion.  (For a more detailed description, see The Puppy Primer.)

Luring also has a disadvantage: If you’re not careful to drop out the lure and the visual signal early on, the movement becomes the cue. You can end up with a dog who only sits when you move your hand, not when you say “Sit.”

Clicker training has the advantage of creating razor sharp precision, which helps you communicate clearly with your dog. It’s a great thing to teach a dog that their behavior can influence your own, and in a good way at that. I especially like that in most cases, the dog initiates the action, rather than you ‘helping’ him or her. However, strict operant conditioning suggests that you don’t do anything to initiate the behavior, you wait until the dog initiates him or herself, then click and treat to reinforce it. But truth be told, I’m not someone who is going to wait for a dog to sit when they feel like it, click opportunistically and then wait again for the next time. Not when I can lure a dog into a sit, get 15 reps into one sessions, and then take over with a clicker once I’ve got the behavior started. I tend to mix methods for actions that are easy to lure and for movements or behaviors that dogs do naturally. I should warn you: some trainers feels strongly that methods should never be combined, but I’m an equal opportunity employer, and so have no problems doing so as long as you know how to use them together without confusing your dog.

[10 minute break while Trisha goes to work with Tootsie]

First I used a lure/hand signal (with treat) to raise her chin and get her to sit down. My hand was just inches from her mouth and head. She responded well, and I repeated it 3 times.  Then I moved my hand 2 feet from her head, moved it with the same motion as while luring her (just farther away). She responded well until I moved my hand farther away. Now my hand was so far away from her head its motion probably  looked like a completely different signal. I stopped there because I wanted to  move on to clicker training.

I “loaded” the clicker with 25 click/treats (small dog kibble, which she adores… she adores bird seed shells for heaven’s sake, so finding a motivating treat is not a problem with Tootsie.).

Then I lured 3 times relatively close to her head (to create a success) and click/treated when she sat. I then proceeded to disappear the visual signal, added the word “Sit” and in 20 trials had her sitting just to the word “Sit.”

Ah, but here’s an important lesson: I noticed that while saying “Sit” I held both of my hands behind my back. Wondering if that might in itself be a visual signal, I moved the position of one of my arms. Sure enough, she looked at me as if completely confused. When I put both hands behind my back, she sat again when I said “Sit.” But the cue that she was responding to wasn’t the word, it was the position of my hands. Easily fixed, I just began moving my arms and hands into different positions, saying “Sit” and waiting up to 3 seconds for a response, and clicking immediately when she responded correctly. By the time we stopped she was sitting to the word sit no matter what I did with my hands.

And then… experienced trainers can predict the next stage…. I moved three feet backward into the kitchen. Now I was in a different room. Tootsie again looked completely befuddled. Easy to fix; just critical to remember that any action, any posture, any context, any location can be a relevant cue to a dog. In just a few trials she was sitting just to the word in the kitchen as well as the living room. We stopped so that Tootsie didn’t become a Tootsie roll sausage and I could finish this blog.  We’ll take it up again tonight and tomorrow, and start on some tricks this weekend. Ain’t training grand!!!

Question for you all: I know that some trainers are true purists, only using one method or the other. I’m a fan of mix and matching, as long as one understands the potential pit falls. You? [And fyi, I haven't forgotten about following up on the clicker study I wrote about earlier (clickers versus just food as reinforcement): I'm playing phone tag with the author, but I'll let you know as soon as I know more.]

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie and I have 3 new sheep to work. I don’t like working him on my small ewe flock now, because they have young lambs and huge bags of milk that have got to be miserably uncomfortable when they flap/slap around whilst the poor ewe is being pushed by a dog. Willie and I try to work them slowly and carefully, but there are times it’s just not possible to keep them from speeding up. There’s another reason: Willie has lost a tremendous amount of confidence since his surgery and confinement, and my most aggressive ewe, Barbie, has gone after him and won several times now. I hate having a dog fight a ewe with a young lamb but I don’t want her winning over and over again and continuing to erode Willie’s confidence. So I have 3 new Katahdin ewes with no udders and no lambs. They are flighty and easy to move and will be great for Willie while he builds up his confidence. Jim, Willie and I just split the 3 newbies off and put them in the orchard pasture high behind the farm house. It took split second timing and quarter-horse short stopping by Willie, but we got it done. Everytime I see him slam his forequarters into the ground I wince: cross your paws for him that he’s not lame tonight, I can’t help but worry. I’ll do some stretching as soon as I’m done here and ice him if his shoulder feels hot.

Here are the new girls, as yet not named (though I’m leaning toward Chili for the red one in the middle). Okay, they aren’t bathing beauties, but they will have a good life here this summer and will be perfect for Willie and me to get our paws back into the game. Those of you who work sheep know that the one in the middle is going to be the challenge: see that lifted chin? Oh my!

Here’s a wider shot, showing you the only reason I could get a close shot of the sheep! Good boy Willie.

Balance is a term used by sheep dog handlers, but I find myself thinking of its value in so many other contexts related to dogs.

In sheep herding, “balance” refers to a dog’s ability to place itself exactly where he or she needs to be to take control of the sheep without frightening them. It refers to two things really. One is the distance between the dog and the sheep. Too far away? — no control, no pressure. Too close? — forces the sheep to run away in a panic, or to turn and fight. Just right? Exactly at the point at which the sheep will turn and move away from the dog without panicking.

The other aspect of balance is side to side, left to right. For example, does the dog stop at exactly the right place on an outrun to move the sheep directly toward you once he begins to walk directly toward them? Novices tend to believe that a dog should always stop at 12 o’clock, but that’s not always true. If the sheep want to go to your left (as you face the dog and the sheep), then the dog needs to stop at 1o or 11 o’clock, not 12.

Dogs can learn better balance, but there’s little more valuable than a dog who just “has it,” and early in training, finds for him or herself that perfect position to manage the sheep. The perfect position is different for every flock, in every context and even at different times of the day, so it’s not easy at all. It just looks that way when a dog is really talented, just like great dancers and ice skaters make it look effortless.

But easy it’s not, it takes skill and experience. And while thinking about balance (see the photos below), that finding it in many other contexts isn’t so easy either. That’s as true in dog training as it is in sheep herding (not to mention the rest of life). And as with sheep dogs, some balance is innate and some can be learned. Over twenty three years of working with aggressive dogs helped me find a balance between reinforcing good behavior and practical, humane ways of inhibiting ‘bad’ behavior (often just management, but if we’re talking about biting people, the word “just” should be deleted).

Here’s another example: I’ve learned that Willie needs a balance of quiet time and exercise, more so than any of my other dogs. Too much fetching, for example, not only hurts his shoulder, but it makes him overly aroused, rather than relaxed. Too much stimulation (for example, leaving him loose to bark at noisy trucks passing by when I’m gone) makes him crazy; too little makes him fearful and neurotic. Granted, Willie will always be my special needs dog, but I think this general concept applies to all of our dogs in some ways.

I also need to balance my voice with Willie. Sometimes Willie needs me to use my voice to quiet him down, and so I speak with a low voice, either quiet, long words like “Slooooooooow” or “Eaaaaaaasy”. Other times I need to speak sharply to stop him (“Whoa!”) because, well, he’s being an idiot and about to get himself hurt. Other times, he needs encouragement, and I’ll use a completely different voice, higher pitched, more modulated and often short, repeated notes.

What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: Take the word balance and play with it awhile: What have you found you needed to balance with your dog? Yourself? Your methods? Open ended I know, but sometimes that leads to the most interesting conversations. (And if you have figured out the whole “work-play balance thing,” let me know how you found it.)

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: The unseasonal heat has left (yeah) but now the frosts are back a few nights a week. It got down to 24 F last week, low enough to cause some serious damage. But it’s lovely even in the rains we’ve had lately, and feels very spring-y indeed. The lambs make it even more so, here’s Rosebud’s triplets a few hours after birth. I’ve just dipped their umbilical cords in iodine, you can see them still attached:

And here’s Willie (if he’ll forgive me for advertising his error), illustrating a glitch in the balance I was talking about. I sent him around to the right to bring the flock to me. This was the first time I’d worked him on the flock since they lambed. I don’t work a dog on the sheep for the first 2 weeks after lambing, the ewes are understandably too protective around their lambs and it causes fights that I think are unnecessary. The ewes below have lambs over 2 weeks old, but are still willing to give Willie a hard time. He knows that, and in addition, Willie has lost confidence on sheep since his injury, surgery and lack of work for over a year.

Is that why he stopped short here? I don’t know, but you can see that he did. I sent him and waited to see if he’d pick the right place to stop and walk in on the sheep. He didn’t. He stopped short; see how the sheep are still heading toward the left? Some have turned their heads at least, but the dark one in the  middle, Lady Godiva is still facing left, and she and Barbie are the 2 leaders.

I stayed quiet, and Willie balanced himself, moving counter clockwise to get into the correct position. You can see how some of the sheep have already begun responding.

And here’s where he choose to walk in again. This time it was perfect. See how the sheep are facing me head on and walking directly toward me now? Good boy Willie.

You might have noticed that 2 of the sheep have their heads down grazing. That’s because I asked Willie to stop so that I could get a photo. His stopping took the pressure off, so they put their heads down to eat. Always a good choice (eating) as far as I’m concerned. Time for me to go do that now! As always, I look forward to your comments.

Last  Saturday my teenage ewe, Butterfinger, had her first lamb. I found her in the barn pen, licking off a slippery package of skin-covered bones covered with tiny whorls of wool and placental slime. Even though she was a first-time mom, she was a good one. She attended to her lamb just as she should, licking off the sack and clearing her head and nose first, nickering to her repeatedly, and standing patiently during the lamb’s first wobbly attempts to find the faucet. After I had seen that things were going well and the lamb looked hardy and healthy, I dipped the umbilical cord in iodine, and my guests and I left them alone and walked up the old farm road to visit the rest of the flock grazing in the breeze at the top of the hill.

When we came down the lamb seemed a bit weak; she’d stand up to nurse and then lie down before getting any milk. It was sunny and warm, and because young animals don’t thermoregulate well, I wondered if she was getting overheated. So I picked her up and and moved her and mom into the shade inside the barn. My guests and I went into the house, and I didn’t get back to check on her for over an hour. When I did, I found the lamb dead, sprawled on the ground beside her mother, who was still nickering and nudging in a futile attempt to rouse her newborn.

It’s hard to articulate what it’s like to walk into the barn and find that one of your sheep is dead. It’s a shock of course, but there is so much more that I struggle to translate. It was alive, and now it’s dead, and “dead” is just too damn final to deal with when it comes out of the blue. “Wait!” I want to say… roll back the clock a minute and I’ll come to the barn sooner and do something to save the lamb and then this won’t have happened and the little life that spent five months growing inside Butterfinger will still be here…. If only, If only, If only.

But that way lies madness, and I know it.  I’ve raised sheep now for over 20 years, along with ducks and dogs. I’ve been a zoologist for just as long, and have thus seen numerous animals dead or dying and in all states in between. And although I felt physically sick for the rest of the day, I also realized that is this is why I love my farm so much. I imagine that sounds strange, at best, and at worst, an indication that I have indeed gone mad — “I love raising animals because they die” is not an easy line to explain. Bear with me.

It is easy to be disconnected from “life” in our culture. I mean “life” in the sense of “life on earth,” or the complicated all- encompassing web of soil and worms and birds and pollen and dogs and pine trees and streams and flowers that surrounds us whether we focus on it or not. And after living in the country and raising animals, I know now at some primal, atavistic level that you can’t separate out “life” and “death.” They are part and parcel of the same thing, two sides to the coin, the night that defines the day. And as hard as it often is, there’s something about this awareness, this being forced to deal with the shock of a dead newborn lamb along with the joy of watching healthy ones frolic, that gives me comfort. It helps me to feel centered, with the earth holding me up and the land surrounding me, with something bigger and better than my own little life.

And this is also part of why I love dogs so much. What better animal to keep us connected with other species, other realities, the joys and sorrows of biology? Here’s how I expressed that in The Other End of the Leash: “We humans are in such a strange position–we are still animals whose behavior reflects that of our ancestors, yet we are unique–unlike any other animal on earth. Our distinctiveness separates us and makes it easy to forget where we come from. Perhaps dogs help us remember the depth of our roots, reminding us–the animals at the other end of the leash–that we may be special, but we are not alone. No wonder we call them our best friends.”

Last week I spent many hours trying to save my perennial flowers from the inevitable hard freezes we all knew would come after the unseasonable warmth caused them to grow as if it was May instead of March. One evening, as I piled on mulch and covered plants with old towels, I groused in anger about having to spend my time doing this, when what I really wanted to do was “garden.” And then I began laughing at myself, because how else would you define what I was doing, except by calling it gardening? Of course I was gardening, but the weather and the plants got to define what that meant, rather than me. Gardens, and dogs, and the sheep in the barn have their own agendas. We are wise to understand where each of us, just one little life on earth, fits in. Sometimes we get to write the agenda, or direct the traffic. Sometimes we are merely along for the ride. It’s good to remember that, no matter where you live.

Here are some photographs taken by one of our visitors on Saturday. He is a far better photographer than I (and Jim and I lusted after his 500 mm lens), and he graciously agreed to let me post his photographs. Thank you, Rob, I love being able to post these pictures.

This is Butterfinger and the lamb that died a bit later. Butterfinger is doing well, by the way, she called for her lamb for about two days and now is quiet. She stays close to her mother and her sister, Oreo, who has a two-week old, healthy lamb. I’m afraid I am going to have to change her name: although I’m not giving her any supplemental food, Butterfinger is downright fat. After a few more days of sympathy, I’m going to start calling her Butterfat. (And by the way, just in case you’re not used to seeing them, newborn lambs come out little more than bones and skin, so this little lamb looked perfectly normal compared to the rest.)

Here’s her sister Oreo and her black and white lamb. The other 3 lambs are solid white (2) or black (1), it’s just this one who is replicating a Border Collie. We’re still waiting on Spot and Rosebud, who must not have been bred the first time they mated with King Charles. He was a young ram and I suspect his sperm just wasn’t up to it. Ewes cycle every 17 days, so we’re hoping for some more lambs this weekend.

And here’s a photo of me and Willie boy. He’s a bit out of focus, but after a year of his severe exercise restrictions, it still makes my heart sing to see him run.

Today, it’s all about the farm. I had a blog written about the effect of acoustic environments on us and our dogs, some new products available for us to use to calm our dogs, and some new results of “calming” music that Katie and I have seen with our dogs. And then I erased it all with one key stroke. I’m sure that has never happened to you….

So I’ll save that topic for later (and promise to catch up in the next month or so on other topics I’ve promised you, like exercises to calm the sympathetic nervous system, and the methods of the clicker versus no-clicker study ). Right now I have to get home to the dogs and work on the talk that Karen London and I are giving at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior next week in Phoenix. So here’s the second half of the blog, which I somehow magically managed not to erase:

BEST. NEWS. EVER. Willie worked long and hard in an unplanned emergency sheep herding session at the UW Stock Pavilion last Tuesday, and he came out of it none the worse for wear. I’d been easing him back into herding with 3-4 minute sessions and easy work, but had to quit 2 weeks ago when I sprained my Achilles tendon and couldn’t get up my own hill to work sheep. I tried to find friends to help with the sheepdog demonstration I do for my University of  Wisconsin class (“The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships”) but none could bring their own dogs. So I planned to do a shorter than usual demonstration with Willie to ensure that I wouldn’t set back a year’s investment in getting him sound again.

Everything went according to plan (famous last words) until it was time to put the sheep back in the truck. There’s no loading ramp, so this is not the easiest of maneuvers. You have to get the sheep right up to the truck bed while preventing them from going under the truck or squirting out the sides. A good number of students stayed to help, but I had put Willie in the truck to protect him from over-using his shoulder.

Long story short: After loading 2 of the larger ewes into the truck (not so easy without Willie to help), Rosebud and her lamb Oreo escaped between the fencing and the truck. Oh shoot. No way could we get her back without Willie, so I let him out and we set to work again. Even with him working hard, it wasn’t easy; Rosebud had little interest in coming back toward the truck and the students surrounding it. But finally we got her in the truck (I say “we” in the sense of nurses saying “It’s time for us to take our medicine again” — Jim and some very helpful students hefted her into the truck while I and my stupid ankle stood by uselessly). Whew, okay. Four down, one to go.

Now the only sheep left outside of the truck was Oreo, who promptly jumped the fence like a Dutch Warm Blood. And now I had a single, panicked ewe lamb in a dirt arena surrounded by cement bleachers. Not good. Single sheep are so frightened they are unmanageable; and it was clear that Oreo was considering a Mission Impossible suicide run up into the bleachers. I once watched a demonstration in which a single, panicked ewe died when she ran herself into a cement wall and broke her neck. Not a good image, but a good reminder to never, ever, ever try to work a single sheep who is truly panicked. Leave it alone, and go get the rest of the flock to pick her up like velcro.

With that in mind, Willie and I managed to cut off Oreo’s consideration of a Tom Cruise like escape, and keep her on solid ground.  Once we had her stopped, I yelled to Jim and others to “Let Rosebud out of the truck.” Believe me, “Let Rosebud out of the truck” is a figure of speech. At this point Rosebud had no interest in leaving the rest of the flock, so after the understandably stunned reaction of “You want us to WHAT?”, Jim lept into the truck and pushed poor Rosebud back out. As expected, Oreo ran right to mom, and calmed down considerably. But it took a tremendous effort from Willie, who was then joined by Jim and students to get the two back toward the truck and back inside.

The entire time my heart was in my throat. If a sheep was badly injured or killed I’d probably never do the demo again, and the students tell me it’s a highlight of the course. I’d never forgive myself if a student was injured. But Willie? Willie was cutting right, cutting left, working like a quarter horse to keep Rosebud & Oreo coming toward the truck. They’d dash one way and he’d have to counter, none of the rest of us was fast enough to stop her. It seemed to go on and on… was all this work going to set him back? Once we finally got everyone loaded, I drove home with my stomach twisted into knots.

Willie, on the other hand, sat in his crate on the way home with what I can only describe as a face radiating joy. His tongue stayed bright red for an hour after we got home, but his happy, happy face stayed on all night long. And I won’t say all that hard work didn’t affect his shoulder: he was reluctant to do his stretching exercises that night. But no limp, no favoring, no hiking of his shoulder, and the next day he stretched his leg out like a gymnast. He looks great, strong and sound, and he’s never looked happier.

I’ve got my dog back. My dog has his life back. Happy Dance.

Here’s a photo that shows Willie and the Stock Pavilion. Class hadn’t started yet, Willie and I were putting the sheep into the pen for safe keeping.

The truck is out of sight to your right. When we went to load them up Jim backed the truck up to the pen’s opening. The fence that Oreo lept over was the back of the pen. She ran to the other side of the arena, and stood on the right, eyeing a break in the railing that led up to the bleachers. The railings weren’t a barrier anyway, she easily could have gone under them.

Here’s the group during the demonstration: Rosebud is in the front, and her ewe lamb Oreo is the pinto in the middle, with the black forequarters and white hind. I’m thankful that they all seem none the worse for wear as well. They are all due to lamb at the end of March and early April, so I’m especially glad that they seem to be doing well once home and settled at the farm.

There is a new book that just hit the book shelves, John Bradshaw’s Dog Sense. I just started reading it and think it is a book with a lot of value. Here’s a summary from the back of the book of some of its messages: “Don’t be an Alpha,” “Dogs can feel love but not guilt,” “Avoid punishment,” “Look beyond breed,” Respect your dog’s sense.” All good, absolutely. The question, of course, is what does the book add to the conversation, there being a good number of books on the market that say the same thing.

Here’s something, from just the first chapter that I think makes the book worthwhile: Bradshaw begins with a valuable discussion about the genetics of canids and the derivation of the domestic dog. I love his inclusion of the entire group of canids (not just grey wolves) and his important point that just because two species share most of their DNA doesn’t mean they behave in a similar way all the time. Case in point: Common Chimpanzees and Bonobos share 99.6 % of their DNA, yet their social behavior is very different. The social system of chimps is based on male-male coalitions and no small amount of coercion, force and fighting. Bonobos tend to resolve social conflicts through sex — pretty much everyone has sex with everyone else. A primatologist once said it’s like Sweden on steroids (I’m just quoting!). Obviously, individuals of the two species share more than they differ behaviorally, but they are not clones and look and behave more differently than you might expect with a .4% difference in DNA. He uses this information to remind us that wolves and dogs may be the same species, but they are not behavioral clones.

Bradshaw compares the canid genome to a “swiss army knife,” a wonderful way to describe a flexible set of predispositions and tools that can be taken and used when needed (e.g. “faculatively social” coyotes who can live alone or in groups, depending on their prey base.) If you are interested in comparative behavior, this is a valuable section. The book includes chapters titled “Why Dogs Were–Unfortunately–Turned Back into Wolves,” “Stick or Carrots–the Science of Dog Training,” “Canine Brain Power,” and “Emotional (Un)sophistication. I’ll keep reading away, and let you know what I think. Sorry I can’t provide a full book review now, I’m a tad behind what with personal issues, grading exams and finishing up the new book.

Anyone read it all yet? Any other good books you’ve discovered of interest to us all?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I gave the word to the vet and sitter to put my ewe, Brittany, down on Friday evening.  There was simply no saving her, she had “twisted gut” which is not treatable in sheep (it is in cows, but not sheep and goats) and so my great sheep vet (Dr. Jeff Kunart) came out and eased her away. The farm sitter, vet student Anna, said she was ready to go. A dear friend who raised dairy goats for years brought out goat milk for the lambs (thank you Donna!)  but as we expected they would have no part of being bottle fed. They’re just too old to learn a new way of feeding. But they had become partially weaned as Brittany declined, and they are just cutting their teeth, so I have hopes that they’ll make it. Other dear friends came over and disposed of Brittany’s body so that Jim and I didn’t have to come home from a funeral and bury a body. Thank you Barb and Dave, we owe you one. It takes a village. And thank all of you for your kind comments about the death of Jim’s sister. The services were beautiful and heart breaking and very special.

Brittany’s orphan lambs won’t grow at the same rate as the other lambs, but they are eating “creep” feed (an area in which the lambs can enter but the ewes can’t) specially designed for young lambs. I’m thankful that I still had some of the ‘baby lamb’ food; they seem to love it and are also eating grass well. I let them out with the flock on Sunday, and they seem to be hanging around my old, noble ewe, Dorothy. I doubt very much she’ll let them nurse, and even if she did, she has barely enough milk for her own twins, but at least they have a ewe to follow.

Willie is wonderful, seems brimming with health. I’m gradually weaning him off his medicine and gradually introducing regular food back into his diet. No sign of GI trouble yet, all paws crossed because his surgery is next Tuesday. The farm is gorgeous right now. I admit I yearn for more time to enjoy it, but I’m savoring every minute I get. The birds and flowers are ridiculously colorful, the yard looks like some 1960′s psychedelic Beatles movie.

Neither of the photographs below are high quality, I had to shoot them through the kitchen window (okay, so it’s not all that clean), but you can still get a sense of how much color there is at the feeders now. There have been as many as 15 Goldfinch, 4 male Indigo Buntings, 6 Rose Breasted Grosbeaks plus Cardinals, Blue Jays, Chickadees, House Finches, Titmice, Wh Breasted Nuthatches, Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, White-Throated and White-Crowned Sparrows, Orioles, & Red Bellied Woodpeckers at the feeders at the same time. I suspect I’m leaving some out too… After a long winter of little but white, brown and grey, you can imagine what a joy it is to see color again. Between the birds, the tulips and the daffodils, the farm is saturated with color. A magical mystery tour all on its own.

Here are 3 male Indigo Buntings, one of my favorite birds. They are common here in Wisconsin, but tend to sing high up in trees and often don’t look that colorful without the sun on them. The two gold birds are, not surprisingly, Goldfinches. I don’t know why, but our yard is seems to be Goldfinch magnet now.. . we’ve never seen so many at one time. I expect the numbers will dwindle when they get serious about their territories.

Here’s Mr. Flashy Boy, the Red-Breasted Grosbeak with a male House Finch in the background. The RBGs are gorgeous in person, with high contrast black, white and red radiating around the feeders.