THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I’ll start with the bottom line. I don’t use the word “dominance” when talking to people about training their dogs. There’s just no profit in it. Even given that dominance is about “priority access” and “social freedom,” but not about how to get it, I still see nothing but the potential for confusion and misuse. Given that in general parlance dominance means “total control,” and that it is so often it is equated with force (completely inappropriately), I avoid the term as if it were toxic.  Which is exactly what I think it can be in this context.

Look at all the absurd uses of the concept sent in by readers. “Expressions of dominance” include: A dog sitting with its back to you, forging in front on walks, jumping up on people, pulling washing off of a clothes line (one of my personal favorites), acting scared when someone approaches, a “refusal to be potty trained,” (did the dog hire a lawyer?), using signs of fear or appeasement to manipulate their owners (no kidding), and another personal favorite–dogs who are good retrievers as youngsters should be avoided because they are acting as alphas by provisioning the pack (bringing back a chicken in this case) and are thus predisposed to be dominant. Oh my. Oh my my my.

Thank you all so much for adding fuel to my fire that we need to drop the concept of dominance in relation to dog training. However, if we put aside the issue of training, and take an intellectual look at the issue of social relationships in depth, the waters can get a bit muddy. Independent of issues related to training, the questions still remain: How DO dogs perceive us? Is there any possible relevance to social hierarchy in our relationship with dogs? One reader responded to an earlier post that if dominance is about priority access to resources, we need to acknowledge that most of us inherently have that. We control the doorway, the food, the toys, when dogs potty, etc etc.

There are good arguments on either side of this question. On the one hand, social hierarchies are always between individuals of the same species, so how could they relate to relationships between people and dogs? On the other hand, why do dogs use the same social signals to people that they do to other dogs if they don’t see us as part of their social units? Why do some dogs grovel with appeasement displays, and others go stiff and hard-eyed when we go to pick up their bone? How do we describe those dogs? Because I think the issue is so complicated and so easily misunderstood, I tend to use terms that avoid the D word.  I might describe a dog as being “on offense” if it goes stiff and presents what is called an “offensive pucker.” I’ll talk about a dog with an appeasement display that includes flattened ears and a retracted commissure or “submissive grin” as it is often called. (I realize, as I am writing this, that I am still more likely to describe a dog’s posture as ‘submissive,’ perhaps because I find it so descriptive and because I don’t see people abusing that term like they do “dominant.”)

Personally, I do suspect that there are some aspects of social hierarchy that relate to our relationship with our dogs. However, I also think it is exceptionally complicated and easily misunderstood. I think we have a lot to learn about how dogs perceive us, and how they categorize us in relation to other dogs. We clearly are not dogs to them, but then… we clearly are members of their ‘pack.’ I have no definitive answers to this question, but I love pondering the question. It’s a little like thinking about how many stars there are in the sky….

Soon I am going to write about another aspect of our relationship with dogs that I think is important, and that’s the concept of “leadership.” I know that some of you will disagree, but I truly believe that because dogs are so completely dependent upon us, they are happier and more secure if their humans exemplify the best of what we think of as being a good leader. You know: the person everyone wants to stand beside, and automatically wants to be chair of the committee even though he or she never volunteers for it. I talk about being a “benevolent leader” in some of my writings, although I deeply regret that even the term “leader” has been co-opted by some to be equated with “dominance.” I don’t think it is, any more than good parents or good teachers are ‘dominant.”  Stay tuned for more …. but I gotta go now and get more milk for the bottle lambs.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, and speaking of bottle lambs, it is still all about the lambs at the farm. Explodo ewe is still holding out, and Truffles bag is still full and hard and giving almost no milk. Her triplets are bottle junkies now, and feeding them 5 times a day is getting a bit tiresome. I’m leaving now to go get more milk and set up a self feeder, which will help tremendously. I was hoping my Chinese medicine vet could come out, because western medicine has not been successful in clearing up Truffles’ udder, but my vet is booked solid for the next 10 days. Still have my paws crossed though, optimistic that I am. Truffles triplets are flourishing, at least the 2 Bl & Wh ones are. The little white ewe lamb is a fussy eater, and isn’t getting as much milk as the others, but she’s hanging in there. I tried to get a picture for you, but I can’t get them far enough away from me to get much beyond this:

Apologies, I seem stuck on pictures of lambs and spring flowers: Here’s another spring ephemeral, called Pasque Flowers, from Walking Iron County Park outside of Mazomanie. A gorgeous set of prairies and native wild flowers….

If you’ve been following the bouncing ball, we’ve been talking about how the concept of “dominance” and social status may or may not relate to dog behavior. Now I’d like to summarize a bit and discuss how we might handle conflict between dogs within the household. After all, whether you buy into it or not in relation to dogs, the proper use of the term “dominance” is as a form of conflict resolution. First, some comments of my own in relation to your excellent additions to this inquiry:

WHO CARES? A few of you mentioned that you don’t care about labels, and so why waste time worrying about what to call a behavior? Why not just reinforce what you like and train out what you don’t? I can see the logic here, but as a few others mentioned in the comments, I just can’t leave it at that. I am fascinated by all aspects of behavior, including the inner life of a dog. How do dogs see the world? How is that different, or the same, from how we see it? Can understanding “dogness” help us relate to them better? It’s true that BF Skinner and others made tremendous strides in our understanding of learning by only focusing on observable behavior. And it is also true that we can get into trouble by reading too much into the actions of non-verbal animals. Believe me, as an ethologist, I’m all about accurate, objective observations. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a rich internal life inside every sentient being, and I can’t help wanting to know as much about it as I can. And so do most dog owners, so the more we understand about behavior, the better we can help them understand how to relate to and train their dogs. I think there’s value in understanding all that we can about animals, for both their sake and our own.

IS THE ‘D’ WORD RELEVANT OR USEFUL when evaluating interactions between dogs? Well, here’s my answer at the moment: I almost never use the term “dominance” any more when talking about relationships between dogs. The term is so loaded and so mis-understood that it rarely feels useful in any way. However, and this is a big however, I still think that the evidence suggests that the concept of “social status” is relevant to domestic dogs. As in our own species, social status is interwoven with issues related to personality, context, reactivity, resource distribution, etc, etc, and is only one of many factors that influence and explain behavior. But as members of complicated and complex societies in which all the bells and whistles of social hierarchies are evident (visual displays, some dogs with unquestioned priority access to some resources, living in an environment with “clumped, high quality resources” etc.), it seems reasonable to argue that status is relevant, in varying degrees, to domestic dogs. That in no way takes away from the importance of different levels of desire, confidence or a lack of it, an individual’s charisma, an obsessive need to control the world in order to decrease anxiety, etc.

I suspect that part of the confusion about status (and the D word) is that people want it to mean too much. It’s simply a way of describing how others in a group view one individual, and how that one individual would like to be viewed in relation to others. This makes it a much more general term than “priority access to a resource.” One could get priority access because of one’s status in the group, but they are not the same thing. Make sense? Surely social status could only be relevant in complicated societies, in which individual animals have complex perceptions of the role of others in the group. Dogs and wolves appear to fit within that category, and in my mind their advanced sociality is one of the reasons that dogs and people have developed such profound social bonds. I also think this shared social structure is part of why the “dominance” model of training is so seductive. Not only is it sometimes successful (for a variety of reasons, as pointed out in the comments), but it plays to our inherent understanding of the power of social status within our own species’ interactions.

[Note: A quick comment about the problem of a word, like "dominance," having a different definition in science than in general use. Ah, yes, it is so frustrating, but it is not unique to this issue. "Positive" and "Negative" punishment" are great examples also related to dog training. "Positive" means "good," right? "Negative" means bad, right?  Argghh, no wonder people struggle to learn the true definitions in operant conditioning paradigms! Perhaps the most problematic example is the word "theory," as in the Theory of Evolution, meaning in science a "model of reality" or an underlying fundamental process explaining a variety of phenomenon. In general parlance, "theory" means hypothesis, which is something completely different. But I digress...]

WITHOUT THE ‘D’ WORD, WHAT DO WE CALL DOGS who greet all other dogs tail up, head up, body elevated? Who stare hard and stiff-bodied at another dog over a bone on the ground? Confident? Rude? On Offense? Several of you have asked great questions about how to describe different types of dogs, and I think therein lies one of the problems. The word “dominant” provides a short, handy way of describing a particular way of behaving around others, and we are all hard-wired to try to find terms that allow our brains to sort the world into categories. But again, that word is so loaded and defined differently by the general public) that I think it is best avoided. That’s why I am more comfortable talking about “high status” dogs or “status-seeking” dogs if it seems relevant to the conversation.

For example, Luke was a high status dog who never had to work for his social position. He was benevolent, loved other dogs, calm and confident. He had what one commentator called “charisma,” which is a great way to achieve social status around others in both species. (And why the training techniques of those that have charisma often don’t work with those who don’t?)  His nephew Willie is a status-seeking, anxiety-ridden dog who attacked my seemingly super “submissive” adult dog Pippy Tay when he was 9 weeks old over a piece of food on the ground. (And, argh, there’s that word problem again, this time ‘submissive”… sometimes it is SO useful to describe a dog with this kind of term…you all know exactly how Pip behaved around other dogs now, right?)  When Will went after Pip his commissure was forward in an offensive pucker, and there wasn’t one sign of fear in his rude, little body. If anything, he looked angry. My evaluation of him now is that, at his worst around other dogs, he is status-seeking, easily frightened and easily frustrated, sound sensitive, reactive, and controlling. Thank heavens, he is also incredibly biddable, smart and truly seems to adore many other dogs once he gets over the evil twin that sits on his shoulder. I get the strongest sense from him that he desperately wants to do the “right” thing, that he understands that there are “right” and “wrong” things (in some simplistic doggy way) and that he finds great relief in learning that he can get what he wants by being patient and polite. I am the first to admit that I might be reading things into him, but all my gut says that he desperately wants to be thought of as way cool by other dogs, but that he doesn’t have the confidence or serenity of his uncle.

BUT FOR NOW, WHAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE in terms of the way we manage multi-dog households? There’s no ultimate truth here, but I’ll give you my perspective. Remembering that there are many ways to get what one wants, here’s what being high in the social hierarchy gets a dog in my house. Nothing. Or, not much anyway. I’m not saying that I could somehow manage the environment such that two status-seeking females of equal power and intensity could get along, but I can create a world in which dogs learn that they get what they want by being patient and polite, not by throwing their metaphorical weight around.

For example, when Luke used to push in between me and another dog when I went to pet it, I’d quietly ask Luke to “get back and wait” while I continued to pet the other dog. Luke learned that he’d get a food treat as well as attention IF waited his turn, but being pushy resulted in a being backed up in space and told to sit and stay. When I had 4 or 5 dogs in the house, all the dogs learned to sit and wait while another dog was eating out of a plate on the floor (see a video of this in the Feeling Outnumbered DVD, including Tulip’s hysterically funny inability to keep from licking the air after being told to back away from the plate.)

I describe teaching dogs to be patient and polite in detail in the booklet,  Feeling Outnumbered, which Karen London and I wrote after working with so many clients whose dogs weren’t getting along. I used it on a daily basis with Will. Right after he went after Pip over food I’d dropped on the floor I said “What did you do?” and backed him up into a sit. I told him to sit and stay (he knew sit and was just learning a “puppy stay”) and fed Pip some more food. As I did, I praised Will (I’d conditioned him to like the sound of praise already), gave him his own treat for staying in place and then released him. We repeated that 2 or 3 times and I spent the next 6 months teaching Will that if he sat and waited his turn while I fed/petted/played with another dog, something wonderful would happen. He’s been wonderful with my other dogs since then, (though he did always take Lassie’s Kong away if he’d finished his first) but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when a new dog comes to the farm. I suspect I’ll be right back to reminding him of the benefits of being patient and polite. Thus, I take a very functional approach, using both operant and classical conditioning to shape the behavior I want. (And I can understand why some would then say… then why worry about labeling it? Why even bring up issues like status, etc? My answer goes back to how I started this: because to me, it’s not enough to be able to manage and control their behavior, darn it, I want to understand it!)

Can this solve all the conflict between dogs in a household? No, not at all. Personality is just too, too important.  Some dogs just hate other dogs. Some dogs have serious issues with emotional control and impulsivity (a topic for another blog soon!) Some turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control everything but doesn’t have the chops to do a good job at anything. But teaching dogs to be patient and polite seems to be the best solution to dealing with what can at least be described as “competition” for resources.

Soon I’ll talk about this in relation to dogs and people, but I thought we should work our way up to it in a logical manner, first looking at the issue in terms of one species before we throw another one into the mix!

Meanwhile, back on the farm: We had one of those barn-busting thunderstorms last night, complete with hail and rain so hard and plentiful it looked like water coming out of a faucet as wide as the sky.

Amazingly the flowers seemed to make it through. Here are some Bloodroot flowers, a native ‘spring ephemeral,’  just before opening early this morning.

And best news of all: Willie is back to playing with his frisbee outside, and worked sheep last night when I let the ewes without lambs out onto the front lawn. No sign of any lameness still, but I am still holding my breath!

Last week I wrote about that ever-so-controversial word, “dominance,” and how it might or might not relate to dog behavior and dog training. To refresh: In animal behavior, dominance refers only to “priority access to a limited resource,” has little to do with controlling the actions of another in any other context, is highly dependent on context and the distribution of resources and is maintained by species-specific displays that act to avoid conflict rather than create it.

In decades past, it was assumed that classic dominance hierarchies existed in domestic dogs. After all, drop a pork chop between two hungry dogs and in short order, one of them is going to get it more often than not. Dogs greet one other in classic “dominance/submission” displays of ears up/tail up versus ears flat/tail tucked. “Submissive” dogs greet others with the same appeasement behavior of puppies, ears flat, body low, tail tucked, foreleg cocked, licking another’s muzzle with a submissive grin, even urinating in some cases.

In addition, dogs are not only derived from wolves, they are so close genetically they are now considered sub-species of Canis lupus. And wolves used to be the story book species of dominance/submission social relationships. We were told that only the alpha male and female mate, that extremely strict social hierarchies existed between each member of the pack, and woe unto an omega wolf who tried to usurp power from a dominant member of the same sex.

Ah, but that was then, and this is now. First off, as we learn more, it is clear that social relationships in wolves are a tad more complicated than previously believed. We’ve learned from following packs in Yellowstone National Park that, in some packs, several females have litters. Nor does the hierarchy seem to be as strict in wild packs as it does in captive ones. And several authors have questioned the concept of dominance in domestic dogs: To name just a few: the Coppingers in the book Dogs said they saw little sign of it in the free-ranging dogs that they observed around the world; Bradshaw et. al. wrote in the J. of Veterinary Behavior (2009, Vol 4, 135-144) that learning and ‘subjective resource value’ are better explanations for agonistic behavior than ‘dominance.’

And so, is the concept of a social hierarchy and dominance even relevant in domestic dogs? I think yes, but then, I think no. Here’s the beginning of this potentially profoundly unsatisfying answer:

DISPLAYS: There’s no getting around it. Dogs are the poster children of visual displays that have historically been used to describe signals of social hierarchy. What are we to make of two dogs greeting, one with her tail flagged forward, the other with tail tucked? We can call lip-licking and flattened ears appeasement displays, but what do we call the opposite? Dogs who are flagging their tails, and giving hard direct stares over a favorite toy should be described how? Well…. there are other terms. We could describe them as “on offense” or “threatening” or “confident.”  We can label the opposite postures as “insecure” or
“appeasing” or “on defense.” I should mention here, however, that I’ve seen a gazillion dogs with extreme versions of what are usually called ‘submissive displays’ who appear to be full of confidence around other dogs. File this away for a moment, and continue pondering:

PRIORITY ACCESS TO RESOURCES: There also seem to be a plethora of examples of multi-dog households in which one dog is “more equal than others.” (Remember the famous quote from the book Animal Farm?: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”) The resource may vary, from access to their human, to access to the great outdoors to access to the pig’s ear, but there are a gazillion examples of groups of dogs in which one dog appears to priority access to what it wants.  But, of course, (of course!) there are complications:

What of the issue about “wanting something equally?” Several of you have asked in your comments about how one can determine if two individuals desire a resource equally. Could all “wins” simply be an example of an individual who wants something more than any other? It IS a complication, and is yet another reason why the concept of “dominance” can be a tricky one. However, I don’t think it’s always impossible to make this judgment. Luke would let any dog take food out of his bowl, because he just didn’t care much about his dinner. Figuring that out was trivial, because sometimes I had to encourage him to eat. But he never, ever let another dog pick up a tennis ball that was between the two of them. His intensity around tennis balls was best illustrated when he was an adolescent and first became interested in fetching. I threw the ball and little Misty, a tiny, fox-faced BC of mine, got to the ball first. As she ran toward me with it in her mouth, Luke rushed up behind her, grabbed her tail in his mouth and flicked his head to the side. Misty, being attached to her own tail, flew threw the air and landed so hard the ball popped out and dribbled through the grass. Luke snatched it up and proudly brought it over to me (at least, until I, coming out of my shock, said WHAT ARE YOU DOING? and body blocked him backward about 10 feet. FYI, that is all I did, and he never did it again.)

Possession is the law: The concept of “priority access” is often confounded by a lack of understanding of what it means. It is often said that “possession is the law” in wolf society, and I have found it often true in dogs. If a dog who normally behaves submissively/appeasingly (etc etc) has a hold of a bone, a dog who would be called “dominant” by many does NOT have priority access. Often, he who has the bone gets the bone. “Dominance” was originally used to described two individuals who do not have possession of a resource. Given that scenario, when two individuals do NOT have possession of something yet, who gets it? That’s partly why Luke was being such a jerk in the example above. As an adolescent, he hadn’t read that memo, and was breaking all the laws of canine custom, as well as just p….’g me off.

Resources Vary: In biology, the word “resource” can refer to a wide range of things. Common zebra males compete for females, as the limited factor in passing on their genes. Grevy’s zebra males compete for good waterholes, an indirect way of competing for females who are attracted to the resources necessary to provide for their young. Cavity nesting birds compete for territories with old, dead trees that can provide good nest sites. Etc. Etc. Dogs can compete for a favorite toy, or access to outside or sitting next to their favorite human.

Resource Distribution Varies: Did you notice from my descriptions above that social hierarchies seem to be less strict in wild than captive wolves? And that observers watching free-ranging dogs see less evidence of “dominance” displays than others have reported in other contexts? Ah, I wish more people had taken Ecology, because here’s what all ecologists know: social systems, in the same species, vary tremendously, dependent upon the distribution of resources. “High quality, clumped resources” tend to create stricter social hierarchies, while “Low quality, evenly disbursed resources” tend to create looser social organizations.  Hmmm.  Which would describe house dogs?

PERSONALITY MATTERS: Besides an interest in status, the personality (that’s temperament + life experience) of each dog surely makes a huge difference in their behavior around other dogs. There are dogs out there who are what I call “alpha wanna-bees” — status seeking, controlling BUT insecure and nervous. They turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control all the resources but doesn’t have the chops to do much of anything with confidence. Other dogs, my Luke was one, are what some people call “natural alpha’s.” Luke was an intact male, he met hundreds if not thousands of other dogs, some of whom were dog-dog aggressive. He never got into a fight, not even a skirmish.  Not once. Luke was accepted by all dogs who met him as being . . .  dare I say it? A leader? He greeted other dogs with his tail flagged and his entire body elevated, but he also broadcast a benevolent, Gandhi-esque-like aura that appeared to calm all who met him. Granted, there were a few client’s dogs that I did not let him meet, so I’m not saying that Luke was magical in any way. Dogs who were still seriously dog-dog aggressive did not get a chance to interact with Luke, but Luke was the vehicle for curing hundreds of aggressive dogs, in part because he seemed to make everyone, dogs and people alike, feel better standing next to him.

In reality, there is no such thing as a “dominant personality”. Dominance is a relationship between individuals, not a description of a temperament. However I DO think (and I know some will disagree) that one component of personality in dogs is whether or not they are “status seeking.” I use “social status” to describe the general phenomenon that some animals are more equal than others. This is as true in our society as it might be in dogs. The actress gets the best table at the restaurant because she is famous and fame in our culture gives one social status. In my opinion, some people care deeply about social status, while others don’t seem to care at all. Status simply means ones position relative to that of others, and surely it is an obvious feature of human interactions.

But some dogs just don’t seem to care about social status either, do they? And here is perhaps one of the reasons why this issue can become so confused and confusing. I suspect that dogs vary tremendously in how important social status is to them. This makes sense: dogs are neotonized wolves, meaning that there’s been selection for a regulator gene that basically keeps them in eternal adolescence. This interference with development also creates ideal conditions for tremendous variability–not just in size or coat color, but also in behavior. Perhaps you’ve known some dogs who just couldn’t care less about who’s who in the social register, and others who are obsessed with being king or queen of the mountain? And then there are others, the equivalent of a gold digger who is always looking for power–and who may or may not get it, depending on a myriad of other factors.

SOCIAL STATUS IS JUST ONE WAY to get what you want. Here’s another problem I have with the way the concept of “dominance” is used. Somehow, if an individual is “dominant” it is presumed to be able to get everything it wants every time it wants it. But that’s just not the way complicated societies work. You might get a better table at the restaurant because you are more famous that I am, but what if I slip the Maitre D a hundred bucks? What if he’d seen your movie and hated it? My super submissive/appeasing BC Pippy Tay got a chew bone out of Queen Tulip’s mouth one night by lip-licking and tail thumping so relentlessly that Tulip finally got up and walked away. Pip was brilliant, and yet, I assure you: Tulip would’ve gotten a pork chop lying between them every time, but I’d bet the farm that Pip wanted it more than Tulip did.  Pip never, ever would’ve ‘won’ a piece of  yummy food off the floor if Tulip was around, unless she’d had 15 minutes to work her magic as she groveled her way toward Tulip, grinning, licking and tail thumping like a fool. And no pork chop was going to last in Tulip’s mouth for 15 minutes. Take my word for it. “Priority access” may mean that a higher status dog has gets the goody more often than not, but it is NOT the only way to get what you want in a social group.

Just to confuse things (or to clarify?): There’s one other phrase used by a wolf ethologist (Zimen) that I really like: Dominance simply means whoever has the most social freedom. Is that the same as priority access to a preferred resource? Hmmmm. More food for thought.

THUS, MY ANSWER IS YES AND NO: Here’s what I meant by “YES, the concept of “dominance” is relevant to dogs, and NO I don’t think it is relevant”. I think the concept is relevant IF AND ONLY IF it is understood that it is merely a way of describing one aspect of the relationship between social individuals. And I think NO, because once you use the word “dominance” all other aspects of personality, context, and the complexity of social interaction seem to fly out the window. I could write on and on, but this is becoming something of a book, and I need to get something else done today and you are probably getting sick of reading . . . I’ll take this topic up again soon, because it deserves it, and so do you, dear reader. In it I’ll address some of your very thoughtful (and considerate!) comments.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Busy weekend. One new set of twins, but still nothing from Dorothy, now 9 days late. Best guess is that she didn’t get bred the first round, and will deliver lambs from the next cycle, 8 days from now. The lambs, all 9 of them now, are doing wonderfully, fat-bellied and playful. Even better, Will got to run free for the first time on Saturday. I even let him work sheep for about 6 seconds! What a joy for us both. So far, so good. Cross your paws.

Yesterday we visited a friend with a litter of 4 week old Border Collies. Puppy rapture on all counts:

Heavenly rain on Friday, sunny and cool Saturday and Sunday; grass and flowers lifting upward toward the blue sky. Good golly I love spring.

Ah, here I go into the fray. Picture my loins girded. In some ways I’d love to avoid this topic altogether, because as most of you know, conversations about “the D word” can sometimes turn into arguments that make the American health care debate seem like a day at the spa. (I was going to say “like a tea party,” but then . . . )  But I think the issue is important, and deserves consideration. So EEEEE HAH! here we go.

This post will only be a beginning, because the topic of “dominance” and social relationships is actually a big one, and I’d like to facilitate a thoughtful, meaningful discussion about it in dogs. As you all know, some people think that just about all of our problems with dogs relate to “dominance” and advise owners to “be the alpha dog.” At the other end of the spectrum, some argue that “dominance” and even the concept of “social status” are completely irrelevant to a dog’s behavior, and that the terms should be struck from our vocabulary. I don’t agree with either extremes of the spectrum (but I’m a lot closer to one than the other!), so hang onto your hats, here we go . . .

First of all, it would be good to start with a definition. The simple definition of ‘dominance,’ as the term is used by the general public is something like: “control or command over others.” However, (and this is a huge “however”) that is NOT the definition as the term is used by people who study animal behavior, the ones who first coined the term to describe a certain kind of social relationship in non-human animals. In ethological terms, “dominance” refers to “priority access to a preferred, limited resource“. In other words, if there’s only one really great table open at a restaurant, who is going to get it? You, or the famous actress standing beside you?

Relating this to dogs, if someone dropped a pork chop between two dogs, who would get it? If you repeated this numerous times and the same dog got it every time, that dog was described in the literature as “dominant” over the other IF both dogs wanted the food equally.  The “dominant” dog could get priority access to the food in a variety of ways; s/he could simply look toward the other dog with a hard stare, could try to be the fastest one every time, or could fight for it. The problem is that fights are dangerous if you are a predator who can rip open elk hide with your mouths. (For a reminder of the power of the canine jaw, try making a gash in a leather purse with your teeth. If you are successful, please send video….heck, send one if you’re not successful!)

The potential of injury in social predators, is the reason that many argue why social hierarchies developed in animals like wolves. (Yes, I know dogs aren’t wolves. Bear with me here.) If every time one had to fight for what one wanted, the genes that predisposed an individual to fight would be eliminated out of the gene pool. That’s the explanation for the existence of social hierarchies: they allow individuals to get ‘priority access’ without having to fight for a resource every time it was available. Note that serious fights do happen in some species: In many ungulates (hoofed animals like elk for example), the males fight every breeding season for priority access to females. They are continually challenged by other males, and spend so much energy guarding their females that even if they aren’t killed or injured in a fight, (it happens, but not commonly), they sometimes die over the winter, having been unable to spend enough time feeding in fall to put on body fat to get them through the winter. However, before they are mature,  young male ungulates often spend years in “bachelor herds,” in which they may play at fighting, but no one individual has priority access to anything else during that period. Their food is widely dispersed and the only ‘resource’ they need to compete over is females during a breeding season. As this Elk examples shows,  a ‘resource’ can be many things, from a pork chop, to the best sleeping place, to a female in heat. But, remember, the “D” word is about “priority access to a resource,” not about anything else.

Here’s what “dominance” ISN’T: It has nothing to do with decision-making about the actions of a group or one other individual. There is no relationship in the literature between who decides when to move on, where to go or what to do. Period. (Bookmark this point!)

It has nothing to do with “who’s in front.” (In prey animals, the ‘dominant’ member of the group is often found in the middle of the herd if the group is in an area that might be dangerous.)

It is not fixed and immutable: Who “has dominance” can vary in time (as one individual ages for example), in space (one individual can have it in one area and not another) and in context (perhaps one individual with dominance doesn’t like pork chops.) In some species it appears to be linear (as in chickens, for example, in which if A is over B, and B is over C, then A is always over C). In most social mammals, it is non-linear and much, much more fluid and complicated.

It is highly influenced by resource distribution: “Clumped, high quality resources” tend to exaggerate social hierarchies, which probably explains why captive wolves appear to be absolutely obsessed with hierarchy, while wild wolves appear to be more relaxed about issues related to social status. (Keep this in mind for later when we talk about studies on feral dogs versus owned dogs.)

It is usually maintained by visual or chemical displays that are innate and are species-specific. It can be achieved by an initial fight in which one individual wins and the other backs off, or, more commonly, by nothing more than the types of display specific to that species. (Think high tail, erect ears and forward posture of a captive wolf). If the individuals continue to fight over a resource, then there is not an established hierarchy.

It is not a relationship desired equally by all individuals in a group. In complex social societies, not everyone is equally motivated to be first in line for the goodies. In our species, for example, some people would love the status associated with being famous, while others would consider a guarantee of a great table at a restaurant to be a poor trade for losing their privacy and would avoid it at all costs. In some species, high status is associated with increased responsibility, which can be dangerous and burdensome.

That’s a good starting place for our discussion. In my next post, I’m going to write about how all this might relate to domestic dogs. But I will say here that the misuse of the term “dominance” in dog training is so pervasive that it causes ethologists like me to want to poke pencils in our eyes. The examples are endless: “Your dog won’t come when you call unless he accepts you as alpha!” (Uh, not relevant, see above.) “Teach your dog a “Dominance Down” and he’ll respect you in the morning!” (Uh, not relevant, see above….). I suspect that much of this comes from the two different definitions of dominance used by the biologists versus the general public. I also think, although I admit to just guessing, that our species loves the idea of control, and anything that suggests we can get it easily is seductive. Whatever the reason, the mis-use of the concept of “dominance” is pervasive.

I’d love to hear your examples of the misuse of the term. I suspect there are some egregious ones that will allow all of us to have a good laugh… and then move on to talk about whether the “D” word is ever (ever!) relevant to dog behavior. Do be considerate please, and don’t assume that everyone believes that way you do. Remember, thoughtful and considerate . . .

Meanwhile, back on the farm: UW is on spring break and besides running the business (and writing blogs!) my life is full of two other things: grading term papers (right now it’s the ones on: “Biological Issues Related to the Use of Non-Human Primates in Biomedical Research” — both ‘sides’ must be covered objectively; next it’s Cloning Pets) and of pacing the barn floor. I have 4 ewes who are overdue, one by 5 days. A day or two is, of course, meaningless, lambs paying no more attention than babies to when they are supposed to arrive. But 5 days? Jeeeez, Dorothy, have your lambs already!

Here’s the first of the lambs: A twin boy and girl from Lady Godiva. The all-black ram lamb is lying behind Lady G and the ewe lamb with the white body and black eye spot. I’m calling her the Lassie Lamb.

Here’s the first flowers of the season, crocus. Color! Whaaa Hooo! Daffodils are JUST starting today…

And lest you think it’s all lambs and flowers out in the country, here’s a photo of just a few of the hundreds of Asian beetles that invade my house for 2 weeks every spring and fall. They were brought over to control aphids, and the person who made the decision to import them wouldn’t last a day in southern Wisconsin. They are a scourge, somewhat akin to locusts. What you are seeing was taken about 10 minutes after 30 minutes of vacuuming, which followed another long session of vacuuming earlier in the day. They look like our native “Lady Beetles,” but they have no natural predators, bite when they’re hungry, smell horrific, land in your drinks, fly into your food and generally make life miserable. You can spray for them, but the active ingredient makes me sick and and is not safe for cats. Now you know why I went out for dinner tonight.

xx

I’m just back from participating in grant reviews for NIH (Nat’l Institute of Health), and what a process it was. 36 people, from all over the country and a vast range of fields, were charged with reviewing a large number of grant proposals for scientific merit. The proposals were administered through the Nat’l Institute of Child Health and Development and related to Human/Animal Interactions. I can’t tell you anymore about the grants themselves, or they’ll shoot out my kneecaps. Well, probably not, but the absolute hardest part of the process is that we all pledged to keep virtually any information about the proposals themselves completely confidential.  That means never, ever talking about them to anyone, ever, outside of our two days of meetings in Washington, D.C. As the Scientific Review Officer said: “The statute of limitations is forever.” She said it would be the hardest part of the process, and it is. I’d say more, but then I’d start going down a slippery slope.

What I can tell you is this: First, the initial phase of the process is something like sitting on a beach in the warm sand, and then looking up to see a wave about 30 feet high looming toward you. Once you agree to be a reviewer, the amount of information that one is sent is, well, overwhelming. The process is clearly much less time consuming once you’ve done it before , and considerably less confusing, but as a newbie, wading through the reams of information sent through the mail, email and internet is daunting. It took me I don’t know how long just to figure out what COI (conflict of interest) and SRO (Sr. Review Officer) meant. Well, I do know how long it took, but I’d rather not say.

In brief, 3 people are charged with carefully reviewing about 6 grant proposals each. Once that is done (8 million hours later-although the process is actually clear and straight forward once you’ve got in figured out, some of the grants are over 200 pages long), the entire panel of 36 people meets for 2 days to discuss and eventually rate every proposal that the reviewers agree has merit. We met from 9 am to 6:30 pm on the first day (1/2 hr for lunch, in the room) and started at 8 am the 2nd day. We finished around 1:30 pm, which was a boon to those of us who wanted to fly home that day. I managed to book an earlier flight, and got home at 9:30 instead of midnight. What’s most important to know, if you are a tax payer, is that the process was done with meticulous attention to giving every proposal a fair and equitable hearing, that the room full of reviewers (from child psychiatrists to CAABs like me) had enough IQ to lift the building off of its foundation and that everyone worked hard and appeared to care deeply about the process.

Before I left I must have said “I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN” at least 25 times and after I came back I said “Wow, that was amazing.”

But the primary reason I bring it up here is because the review process reminded me of a ‘simple’ but not easy aspect of dog training: starting from the beginning. Let me explain: The SRO (see, now you know the lingo too!) asked us to let her know if they could do anything to make the process simpler and easier for first time reviewers. I will write her next week, because there is. What I most needed was someone to give me chronological instructions. “First, do A. You do A this way. Then, do B. The way you do B is this….”. It seems so simple, but it’s actually very difficult to pull off instructions that are that clear IF you are involved in a complicated process and IF it’s hard to remember what it is like to start from the beginning.

I think learning to train a dog has the exact same challenge. So many trainers are so good at what they do that they can’t remember what it was like when they first started. There are great dog trainers who are brilliant at training dogs, and there are great teachers who are great at training people to train dogs. Sometimes that gets combined, but they are two different skills, don’t you think?  Great dog training teachers are able to both empathize with dogs (as best one can with another species) and also with the beginners that they are working with. I am still touched and saddened by how many people have come to my office in the last 22 years and said “I left dog training class/another behaviorist/the vet’s office in tears…”. I think it happens less than it used to, but it still happens too much. One feels so vulnerable when starting something out, and unless information is provided in a way that begins at the beginning, it is hard to learn much.

But it’s tough to start at the beginning when you were there many, many  years ago, isn’t it? It’s challenging, but it’s actually one of my favorite parts of my work–working with people who don’t even know where to start. In part, it requires a clear understanding of where the beginning really is, which is not always an easy place to spot when you’ve traveled far away from it yourself. So here’s the question of the day: What is the beginning? What are the very first things that people need to know about training and behavior when they first get a dog?

Here’s one of mine, just to prime the pump: Dogs can learn to respond to dozens or hundreds of words, but first, they are watching you. Learn to pay attention to how  your body moves when ‘talking’ to your dog, and you will automatically beocme a much better trainer.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Before the farm, here’s a shot taken close to my hotel in Washington, DC. Trees in bloom, OH MY!

And here are some of the girls (and Redford in the middle) at the feeder, with careful attention paid to their nether regions. Butt checks like this happen three times a day now. I have 3 ewes who were/are due to lamb between yesterday and tomorrow, and I am obsessively looking for signs of imminent action. The one who looks closest here is Spot, 2nd from the right, with her slightly enlarged bag and swollen vulva. And of course, there’s piggy Brittany standing in the feeder getting everyone covered in hay, as usual…

But nothing yet. Jim, Will and I are about to go on a long walk (it’s sunny and gorgeous) and I’ll check again when we get back.  Will is still on leash, but I let him run free to the barn and back yesterday (he is crazed with joy to be outside off leash or off heel, I got tears in my eyes watching him flip and spin joyously). I’m still taking it slow, we’ll keep him on leash for the long walk, but I’m becoming a bit optimistic that he might be able to go back to working sheep or playing with other dogs in a week or so.

Some of the recent posts have brought up the question that many of us live with on a daily basis: how much training and attention do our dogs need every day? I get asked this a lot, and as I wrote in my essay in Tales of Two Species, I suspect that there’s another fundamental question driving it (she says, speaking from  experience.) How much exercise, training and attention do our dogs need for us not to feel guilty? Fess up, don’t you sometimes wonder if you are doing enough for your dog, and don’t you sometimes feel guilty about not doing as much as you should?

I am sure that many of the people reading this blog will say no, they don’t feel guilty, and for good reason. I know that many of you take your dog out to classes several nights a week, take long walks in the country with them twice a day, teach them new tricks on a daily basis and cuddle with them all night long.  But I suspect that many of the readers are more like me: sometimes feeling pleased about the physical and mental exercise we’re providing for our dogs, other times feeling guilty and inadequate.

For example, yesterday was not a good day for Willie. First off, he’s on exercise restrictions: leash walks only outside, no toy or ball play outside, no sheep herding, limited play inside, no running up the stairs. Secondly, I was on campus much of the day, so he spent from 11 am to 6 pm in his crate. It’s rare he’s in his crate for longer than 4-5 hours at a time, but life isn’t always the video tape I thought I rented. I would’ve felt guiltier if I’d been getting a massage and eating chocolate all day long, but still, I didn’t like it.

I was also slammed with the grant reviews I’m doing for NIH, so I spent most of the morning and part of the evening glued to my desk.  All Will got beyond times to go outside and potty was heeling to the barn and back twice (which gets him lots of treats, and he seems to love), another heeling session when I got home (I’ve tried for 5 times a day–only managed it some of the days since I committed…), a small amount of trick training in the evening, and a long cuddle time in the evening with lots of belly rubs from me or Jim. Not a great day by a long shot.

But Wednesday? Oh, happy day for Willie. A 45 minute long walk in the country (on leash, but lots of good new smells) 5 sessions of heel work with lots of treats in 3 different contexts, interactive play with 2 new toys, a car ride to his chiropractor and all morning in the office with me and Denise (who he worships), lots of trick training and cuddle time at night. I went to bed feeling happy that Will had had a great day.

All this feels especially relevant because I haven’t had just one dog in decades, and I am so aware how different it is if your dog can’t play with others or entertain themselves outside. Lassie still played with Willie twice a day up to a week before she died, and the burden of ‘entertainment’ falls completely on my shoulders now. Of course, I live in the country and  have sheep for Will to work, but none of that is relevant at the moment with him on leash restrictions (9 more days to go!)

So what DO our dogs need from us if they can’t entertain themselves? I remember growing up and letting our family dog, Fudge, out the door in the morning, when she’d pick up other canine companions and explore the neighborhood until we came home from school. The idea of entertaining or exercising our dog never entered our mind.  But that was then, and we can’t and shouldn’t go back to it. So, here’s some thoughts about what dogs need from us–I look forward to hearing your thoughts too.

PHYSICAL EXERCISE: Yes, dogs need it, but how much varies so very much depending on the dog’s nature, age, etc etc. Just like people, dogs are simply healthier if they get in a good long walk every day, or better yet, a chance to run and romp off leash. I would love to provide some formula of how much exercise a dog needs, but it varies so much there’s no way to do it helpfully. In an ideal world, my 3 1/2 year old Border Collie would get long (45 to 90 minute) off-leash walks in the country at least 6 days a week, along with a good session working sheep, but it’s rare that happens more than 2 or 3 days a week. Ideally? I’d love it if every dog could get 2 sessions of solid exercise in every day, the definition of “solid” depending on the dog.

A few thoughts about the type of exercise that I’d be interested in your reaction to: I think some types of exercise tend to hype dogs up rather than calm them down. Ideally I think all our dogs would profit from lots of long, off leash (or long line) walks in which they aren’t fetching balls or discs or obsessing about objects in some way. One of my clients has a problematic BC who didn’t seem to be calmed after ball play, but rather hyped up by it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t play ball, or that many dogs don’t adore it (it’s Will’s absolute favorite game to play, paws down) just that some types of exercise might be more relaxing than others. I always like to see dogs have time to make their own choices and just be dogs–sniffing here, sniffing there, while performing the kind of consistent, aerobic exercise that creates relaxation in humans (think runner’s high).

MENTAL EXERCISE: This need for this kind of exercise is my favorite soap box, in the belief that many pet dogs suffer from boredom and too few chances to exercise their brains. I’ve found, as have many trainers, that learning a new trick or working on problem solving can ‘tire’ out dogs as much or more than physical exercise. One dear friend just sent Willie 2 new Ottosson toys (am I feeling SO grateful to my friends right now! What would we do without them?), and one of them has Will completely baffled. He tried to work it, couldn’t figure it out even with lots of encouragement from me, and then lay down and slept like a rock for an hour. Stressed? Absolutely, but not in a bad way I don’t think, and good for him in the long run.

All the research on neuroplasticity and brain function makes it clear that “use it or lose it’ is relevant to the brain, and that a healthy brain can lead to a healthier body.  I’m reading Sharon Begley’s Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain right now–it’s another great book, and provides continuing inspiration to keep our dog’s brains busy. New tricks, new problems to solve,  reviewing old training exercises little used now–surely all of these things are as good for dogs as they are for us.

NOVELTY: This is something that I don’t think many people think about it, but I think it’s crucial to a dog’s happiness and overall health. We know that novelty engages the brain in all kinds of ways that nothing else can, and leads to new connections between neurons (usually a good thing) and enhanced enthusiasm for life in general. Here’s an example: Because Will is on leash restrictions we came into town a few days ago and went on a 30 minute walk through neighborhoods that are completely new to him. Although he couldn’t go faster than a walk, he was completely engaged in new sights, sounds and smells, and slept for hours afterward. Compare that to a dog who took the same walk, same route, every day, year after year. How stimulating would that be? I’ve noticed that Will is far less engaged in our walks in the pastures above the farm house than other dogs who come to visit, and why wouldn’t that be true? Same ol’ same ol’ for him, a potpourri of smells and excitement for the newbies.

Psychologists know that experiencing novelty is one of the keys to keeping human relationships vital and preventing partners from becoming bored with each other. Why wouldn’t the same be true for us and our dogs? The good news here, and with mental exercise as well, is that a little bit of effort can have big pay offs for our dogs. You don’t need to devote an hour every evening to teaching a new trick, which provides both mental exercise and novelty. You can take your dog to a new place for 20 minutes and get the same effect as if you’d taken an hour long walk in a place that is becoming old hat. Of course, the benefits depend on many factors: a new place that is frightening to neophobic dog isn’t going to enhance your dog’s life.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE: One the books I’ve been reading on brain plasticity mentioned increased dendritic branching (connections between neurons) when caged rats were allowed to voluntarily exercise. That’s a good thing for the brain, and can lead to all kinds of positive benefits, not only enhanced mental function but also to a better ability to handle stress, for example. But here’s the kicker: there was no effect when the rats were forced against their wheel to exercise, even if it was for the same amount of time. Forced exercise may be good for physiological health, but not necessarily for a healthy brain.

I thought of this after working with someone whose dog was never off leash, and had almost no choices about what to do or when to do it in the house. Surely that’s big price to pay for having your food and medical care guaranteed. The dog (a young, sweet, soppy Golden) had begun growling at her owner when he wiped off her paws as she entered the house. The house had wall to wall white carpeting, and the dog was only allowed to lie down on a few towels scattered about. The dog’s behavior was so carefully managed that the poor thing literally had no choice about where to lie down, when to potty, where to sniff outside, and what to play with. Granted, this example is extreme, but it’s a good reminder of the value of choice. Since our dogs, most of them, are no longer able to spend considerable periods of time outside on their own, we need to be creative to find ways to let them manage their own lives for part of the day.

Speaking of our own dogs: I need to get home and get Willie some physical and mental exercise that provides novelty and choice! I could go on and on on this topic, but I’d rather hear your thoughts….

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Jim will farm sit while I’m in DC doing grant reviews on for the Nat’l Institute of Child Health and Development in NIH and appearing on the Diane Rehm show on Monday. She is a breath of fresh air, so I’m looking forward to Monday and very interested how Tuesday and Wednesday (reviews) will go. Needless to say, I can’t say anything about the grant proposals, but I can tell you that the process is interesting, exhausting and yup, novel!

Next weekend the first lambs are due! Can’t wait. Bulbs coming up (in unnaturally warm weather, is almost weird) and lambs coming. I’ll send photos of the first lambs as soon as I get them. First ones are due a week from tomorrow, Saturday the 27th.

Here’s Will with a favorite toy.. this toy has lasted for over a  year, and is still one of his favorites. I love how the toy is in focus and Will’s is not. Good thing, cuz he looks downright crazy in this shot!

And here’s the view on the way to the farm when the snow was melting and the world was soggy with mud and melting snow and fog:

Clients often tell me that their rescue dog must have been “beaten by a man” when the dog was younger, because the dog is afraid of men and not woman. However, people in the training and behavior field know that almost all shy dogs are more afraid of men than women, even if men have been nothing but kind to them their entire lives. We’ve always speculated that it had something to do with the way men walked (more assertively?) or their bigger chests, larger jaws, and/or deeper voices. But we’ve never really known for sure what it was–perhaps it is related to scent: obviously men smell different than woman, and it could be that just ‘maleness’ is more intimidating.

A recent study reported in Scientific American Mind might have shed some light on this topic. (Actually, I read it and jumped up exclaiming OH WOW and then had to tell Willie that everything was alright.) Research published in Current Biology asked volunteers to guess the direction of motion of figures that were represented only by points of light placed at critical joints. (Similar to the motion capture process used to make movies like Avatar in which a real person moves around with points of light attached to hips, elbows, shoulders, knees etc, and a computer records the movement of the lights.)

When watching the points of light that represented a moving figure, the volunteers said that the figures made by men were approaching, while the figures made by woman were retreating. I haven’t read the study yet, and am a bit confused by the report in Sci Amer that “neutral and masculine gaits” were perceived as coming closer, while “feminine walks” were perceived as moving away. What is a “neutral” walk? Did they not use men and woman walking normally, but asked them to exaggerate how they “thought” men and woman walk?

All this can be answered when we get the study, but assuming the methods were sound, what an interesting piece of information for us. If the critical points of men are seen as coming closer at higher rates or stronger intensity than women, no wonder dogs are more afraid of males than females. Fearful dogs are ALWAYS more afraid of something coming at them than they are at approaching something themselves.

Interesting, hey?

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s all about Lassie now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind and supportive comments. I’ll keep anyone who wants to know about her progress updated in the comments section of the Lassie post. I don’t want to burden this blog with my private soap opera, but I also know that many of you have seen and read so much about Lassie that you feel connected.

Here’s a photo I took a few days ago, of what it looks like when it gets warmer and the snow starts sliding off the roofs. I love the designs it makes:

This is an authentic question: ie, I don’t have the answer. But it’s a great question, posed by a seminar attendee, and also by someone who reads the blog. Do dogs think we are mutant dogs? Pathetic replicates who never grow out of our flat, puppy faces (we never grow muzzles) and can’t use our mouths but make up for it endearingly with our cute, floppy paws? And surely they believe we can’t smell–at all. My guy Jim speculated that just as people often assume that animals can’t [fill-in-the-blanks: think in abstractions or strategize or be conscious) because they can’t do it with the depth of skill that we do, perhaps dogs assume we can’t smell anything at all, because we are so horrifically bad at it.

On the one hand, you could argue that dogs behave toward us as they do other dogs: they signal us in ways that are exactly the same as they signal other dogs (not that many dogs don’t behave differently around people as they do around dogs, but that the signals they use are the same signals they use to their own species.) They lick our muzzles, they stare cold and hard into our eyes, they growl and posture using all the same movements and expressions that they use around other dogs. One could argue that this suggests they categorize us as some kind of dog-like creature.

On the other hand, we tend to use the same social signals with dogs as we do people (which gets us in no end of trouble, see The Other End of the Leash!), and we know that dogs are a different species. In addition, dogs have no trouble differentiating different types of dogs (I’m always amused when people ask if dogs can tell a Black Lab from a German Shepherd. Wouldn’t it seem that if we can, they can? They are, after all, dogs, and surely they can tell one another apart more easily than we can! They may not use the same categories as we do.. I highly doubt they separate one another into “Herding” and “Sporting!”, but surely it is obvious to them how profoundly different we are from dogs.) Wouldn’t it be obvious to dogs that we’re NOT dogs? Just our smell alone would make it profoundly obvious.

But, if we’re not disabled dogs, who are we to our dogs? How are we thought of? Ahh… and here’s the real question… Do dogs think of such things at all? Perhaps this is a question a dog has never asked? Perhaps we are just who we are, and dogs have no need to put us into some taxonomic category that makes our brains happy but might be irrelevant to theirs…. but, then, surely they must have some way to identifying living creatures in the world around them. Friend? Foe? Prey? Weird, monster like thing that can not be explained?

This could get circular, but I am very interested in your thoughts on this….

Meanwhile, back at the farm: The birds are emptying the feeders at a heck of rate, I can barely keep them full. Now that it’s gotten colder and many of the insects are gone, the suet and black oil sunflower seed are especially attractive. We have many species coming daily now, the usual Southern Wisconsin mixed species flocks of Black capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice (don’t look at me, I didn’t give them a common species name), White Breasted Nuthatches, Downy, Hairy & Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Goldfinch, Purple or House Finch (have to check, we have had both, haven’t paid enough attention last few days), Blue Jays, Cardinals and Doves. More will come as it gets colder, including the Red Breasted Nuthatch (oh so cute).

Here’s a Chickadee… I thought this photo looked like a painting as much as a photograph:

Here’s the Tufted Titmouse, perched and then with a sunflower seed. Notice how s/he holds the seed on the branch with the feet, and then pecks through the shell and extracts the seed.