THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

See the dog, not the story. This is a quote from one of your colleagues, a blog reader who sent this in as a comment about dogs in rescue. (And who I should credit, but because I’m in a time crisis, I can’t right now, but THANKS! and I will find your name when I can get more time.). I was reminded of the value of that saying by Kathy Sdao at Clicker Expo last weekend. She did a presentation on being a truly good observer of your dog, something we all know the value of, but she made it special for me by suggesting that we toss away our ‘stories’ about our dogs, and work with who we have. I truly took that to heart. I have a story about Willie, about how he was such a mess when he was young, about how he had projectile diarrhea and was pathologically afraid of other dogs and so sound sensitive I couldn’t socialize him, etc etc etc. There’s value in knowing that history, and in acknowledging how far we have come together.

But there is also value in being able to let it go, to look at who is standing or sitting right in front of you, right now. Not the dog as a container of all he or she has been, but simply who he or she is now.  I’ve been doing that with Willie these last few days, and I can’t report any clear and obvious change in our relationship, but it does feel like there is a subtle shift in my perception of him. It’s almost as though I feel a little bit lighter, in some vague, hard to describe kind of way. I think I have to mull on this a few more days to be able to articulate what I’m feeling.

And so, as I so often do, I’m reaching out to you to ask what you think of this, what “looking at the dog, not the story” might do for you. I’ll be off line quite a bit in the next 4 days, spending time with family during a difficult time, but will check when I can, and am extremely interested in what you have to say. I suspect many readers will be interested as well . . .

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Scrambled all last night to find a house sitter so that Jim and I could leave town. I have 5 possibles on a list and all five are out of town. What are the odds? But at the last minute I found a wonderful couple to sit, and I’m simplifying things for them by bringing Willie with us. He’ll spend a lot of time in the crate in the car, no way around it. Last I checked most hospitals aren’t going to welcome him into their ICU. Another dear friend will check on Rosebud. She is the ewe due to lamb on Friday, that is if Rosebud has read the chapters on when she should deliver.

Here’s a photo, that I snapped in New York with one of those throw away cameras (having forgotten my own) on the edge of Central Park. [And here was a fun surprise: I knew lots of people in NY had dogs, but dogs were EVERYWHERE!]. But here’s a shot of one of the horse drawn carts, during a quiet moment on a sunny day.

Here’s one of the great lessons Ken Ramirez had for us at the Clicker Expo in Chicago last weekend: The basics aren’t really all that basic after all. In his experience, one of the most common mistakes he sees in even experienced trainers is forgetting the importance of some of the basics. Here are some of the reminders he shared, and believe me, I am taking them all to heart.

Precision: Yes, we all know it, timing is everything, but no matter how obvious it is, it is often forgotten. This is relevant whether you are using a marker (like a clicker or ‘yes’) or not, often because we don’t do the following:

Clean Delivery: Ken reminded us that dropping the treat on the ground or fumbling the delivery can be very aversive to our dogs. Say we are on a roll, clicking and treating at a good pace, and then we drop the treat on the ground. The dog has to sniff around and find it, and that might not be so much fun for him. At worst he may feel frustrated, and at best he has completely forgotten what he got the treat for by the time he found it. Not a crisis, of course, but a little bit of frustration can have a lot of effect. Ken reminds us to practice delivery WITHOUT our dogs around (supporting my belief that dog training is a science, a sport and an art.)

Where Reinforce? Are you thoughtful where you reinforce your dog? Do you do it where the behavior occurs (say your dog lies down, so you move the treat down to her on the ground) or, in a location set up for the next repetition. There is no right answer, it depends completely on what you are doing, what’s important is to be thoughtful about your goal and consciously choose where to reinforce your dog rather than doing it randomly.

Stationing: If working with two or more dogs, also be thoughtful about who is stationed where. You can avoid a lot of trouble between dogs if you always set them up to work with one on left, other on right for example. Or take a trick from prof’l performance trainers, and teach each dog to go to a station to work. That avoids the potential of competition or veiled threats from one dog to the other.

Fairness: If working multiple dogs, you must recognize how each animal perceives the session. Is each getting her fair share? What if you have two dogs sitting looking at you, and you ask one to lie down. Who do you reinforce? Just the one who lay down? But the other also did what you ask (stayed in place), why not reinforce him too?

These are just a few of things I pondered on the way home, and that made me glad I was able to catch some of the talks at Clicker Expo in between my own. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this… what are the basics that you think you’d be wise to review?

Such great food for thought. If we could all just live on Ken’s shoulder for a week we’d all be better trainers, I’m sure of it. Check out his website, he really is a great resource. I’m even more excited than ever now about him coming to Madison this October.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Here’s the good news — we know what’s wrong with Willie’s shoulder. Besides an inflamed bicepital tendon, his has a bone chip floating around in his shoulder, probably from an earlier injury when part of the tendon was torn and pulled a piece of the bone away. Here’s the bad news — he will need surgery, but I’ve put it off until May because this time of year is the worst possible time imaginable for me to have a dog recovering from surgery, and Dr. Susan Schafer at UW  (who is just as wonderful as everyone told me she is), said the surgery wasn’t urgent in any way. The timing is especially relevant because we got some painfully bad news the morning we arrived home. Jim’s sister has been in a valiant battle with Stage 4 Ovarian cancer and it looked a few weeks ago like she might come out the victor.  But things changed fast while we were gone, and she’s not doing well at all. Jim will be up with her as much as he can in the weeks to come, as will I, although I’ll have to stay home more because of lambing, teaching, etc.

So May it is for Willie’s surgery. Dr. Schafer will take out the bone chip, sever the tendon, drill a hole in the bone and screw the tendon back into place. (She has gone back to this method, as have several other experts, after finding that truly athletic dogs don’t do as well with a simple severing, which is commonly done now.) This is the same exact surgery that Jim had about the same exact time last year. Good grief. That means all trialing is out for this year, we won’t really be able to work sheep until August or September. But it does mean he can be off leash a bit, no herding or hard play, but at least some freedom after five weeks of no fun at all.

Here’s Mr. Will, with his shaved shoulders, a mohawk down his chest and still slightly sedated goofy look. This morning I got to take his leash off! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

This weekend I visited a wonderful woman doing rescue for small breeds, mostly bichons from puppy mills. I had somewhat randomly discovered that she lived close to me, and went to visit in hopes I could help out a bit. I also had a selfish motivation: as many of you know, Karen London and I are writing a booklet on adopting an adolescent or adult dog, and we are always looking for input from people in shelters and rescues.

There were 4 or 5 dogs from puppy mills that were terrifically shy; so much so that they ran  away from people, even after being there for a very long time. Obviously, this is a very common problem in dogs who grew up in almost total isolation, and was one of the challenges she was facing I hoped I could help with. We had one session, and it looked like it might be very helpful to use the methods described in The Cautious Canine. We put all the dogs away except 2 of the cautious ones, and I sat on the floor and tossed treats toward the dogs, who started a good 15 ft away from me. At the end of 20 minutes, the dogs were within 3 or 4 feet, and most encouragingly, they followed behind me when I got up and moved toward the door. Of course, this is going to take a long time, but we were both encouraged at how well they responded.

In my experience, how the dogs ultimately respond depends on their genetics. All of them have had no socialization (at best, at worst been abused by people) and how they cope with a new environment is mediated by their genetics. If they are naturally shy they are probably never going to be comfortable around strangers, but could learn to be comfortable around their ‘family.’ If they are naturally a bit bolder, who knows how far they can go?

The key to getting this to work is to not go too far at any one time. I never leaned toward the dogs, never tried to pet them, and never threw the food too close to me. If they had to stretch to get the food, back legs planted and body ready to bolt, the food was too close and I’d be careful to throw it further away the next time.

I suspect it also helped to have 2 dogs there at once, acting as a bit of competition, and perhaps also as a bit of a role model. As one dog would come closer, it encouraged the other to do the same. Too many dogs would probably end up causing trouble, and of course you’d want to avoid 2 dogs who were aggressive over food, but I like the “model/rival” aspects of this. We’ll go back when we get back from NY and Chicago (Clicker Exp, oh boy!) and keep it up.

I’d love to hear your stories about helping dogs from neglectful or abusive situations: Besides patience (we mention that so often in the draft of our booklet we are afraid people will lose patience with us….), what did you find most helpful?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie got to be off leash a bit on the weekend; based on the vet’s instructions to let him move a bit more before his appt at UW on Monday. Oooooh, what a joy to see him finally free, eyes shining, body spinning and mouth happy. But all that ended after our PT appt on Monday: the PT was able (yeah for her) to see him favor his left leg and she advised that he go back on leash for a long time. We still don’t know what’s wrong, so I am getting a second opinion from UW’s orthopedic shoulder specialist (oh yes, I am very very lucky to have all these resources close by!) That appt is for March 21, so we’ll have to wait til then to see if the condition is surgical or not in her opinion. Even if it’s not, best estimate is it’ll be 3-4 months before Willie is recovered, and lots and lots of leash restrictions until then. If surgical, could be longer.

Tough news for Willie, he looked absolutely miserable when he came back to the house and had to stay on leash. Tough news for me; I don’t need to tell you how hard it is to not be able to explain to your dog why you are taking away all his fun. And I had entered him in a wonderful herding dog trial (the Bluegrass) in KY in May. Been wanting to enter that with my own dog for 20 years. No chance for that, looks like trialing is pretty much out for the season. And Jim and I have agreed to start fostering again; we actually had a dog lined up to come to the farm any day. (No, not from the place I mentioned above, but who knows someday? Every farm needs a Bichon? But for right now, that’s out too.)

Yes, you bet, we’ll play lots of games with Willie and I’ll figure out new tricks to teach him, but his greatest loves in life are 1) to run, 2) to play with toys (which he does so vigorously that we have no choice but to take them away, and 3) to work sheep. Ah, I know that soooo many of you have been through this; we did this for 5 weeks when Willie was 10 months. We’ll get through it. But ouch. So, it’s on leash and PT, acupuncture, chiro, supplements and meds (western and eastern) for 2 weeks, then hopefully we can at least figure out what we are dealing with.

Here’s good news though: Saturday was great fun. 10 students from the UW Small Ruminant Club came out and learned how to use ultrasound to do pregnancy checks on ewes. The shearer also came out, so they also got to help with that, along with hoof trimming and vaccinating. The ewes are all well along (first one due 3/25)  so it wasn’t a mystery that they were bred, but still there was lots for the students to see. (Me too, it’s a fascinating technology.)

Here’s Lady Godiva being ultrasounded, and illustrating something related to the fearful puppy mill dogs discussed above. In person she actually looked quite  ‘relaxed,’ which is typical for sheep in this position. As did she, they often stay still on their own, relax their forelegs and heads and look almost sleepy. But outward appearance isn’t always a good indication of internal state, and research at UC Davis found that sheep in this position are flooded with cortisol, suggesting that they are in ‘tonic immobility’ rather than relaxed. That can also be true of our dogs; they seem ‘calm’ but are actually frozen with fear. Very typical of puppy mill dogs I’m sad to say.