THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

On Friday I asked you what you thought was going on here, at least as best one could tell from a still photograph. I’m the first to agree it’s hard to say much from one brief moment in time, but it’s a great exercise nonetheless. It helps us all focus our attention and generate hypothesis about what might happen next. It would be perfectly reasonable to suggest several different scenarios…

Here’s the story in this case: These two dogs are great friends and play together often. The yellow dog is a 4 yr old GR/Husky cross, Tucker, who has a tendency to nip faces when he plays. The white dog in the red coat is Lily, a 2.5 yr old spayed female Dogo Argentino, owned by Katie Martz  here at McC Publishing.

Lily was responding to what appeared to be an inappropriate play action from Tucker (getting into her face in a way both Katie and I would call “rude.”). Katie’s interpretation of the event is that Lily, the Dogo, was irritated by the yellow dog’s behavior and was correcting him.

Immediately after this photo was taken both dogs paused, sniffed the ground and then resumed chasing and playing after a break. I take this as yet more evidence of the importance of pauses in healthy dog play… a chance to take break, take a breath, and decrease arousal levels.

Many of you were absolutely right on in your guess, good for you! (And to one commenter who bravely made a guess even though she was afraid she’d feel foolish if she was wrong… I love that you said out loud what many of us often feel. Good girl!) This is indeed play, as most of you guessed and Lily is, at least in my and Katie’s opinion, telling Tucker to back off. I think the most important visual signals here are the wrinkling over Lily’s nose and exposed front teeth, forward motion toward Tucker along with ears forward. Thus, I’d say she’s on offense and her wrinkled nose suggests some arousal and potential irritation. Tucker’s head is back and lateral, and his ears are back. He thus looks on defense to me, but note his high tail and hips leaning toward Lily… no shrinking violet here. I agree with some of you that he looks a tad surprised, (I want to say goofy but I suspect that’s not a technical term). It’s interesting that most of the responses on FB said the dogs were playing, but some said Tucker was on offense and some said Lily was. Given that the dogs are both pretty equally matched and that Tucker’s tail was high and he could have been hip slamming her at the time, not a bad guess!

Let me know if you think this is a fun exercise to do every once in a while. We could expand it to video… And I’d like to do some case studies here too. Like the idea?

Maybe not a 1,000 in this case, but what words would you put with this photo? What do you think is going on here? I’d love to hear what you all think. I know the dogs, the context and what happened before and after, so after I collect your input I’ll let you in on the story.

This might be a fun exercise for us to play every once in a while, yes? Let me know if you like the idea. I’ll write another post on Monday and describe the dogs, their relationship and what happened immediately after the photo was taken. But before that I’d love to hear how you evaluate what you are seeing.

And no fair cheating if you saw this on Facebook last week! It’s just such a great photo I couldn’t resist putting it out here. So… what’s going on here between these two dogs? What are the most likely things to happen next?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Glorious weather, lots of grass and happy sheep! And happy Willie too, because we’re managing the time to practice our driving skills (or lack thereof).  I’m thinking of entering him in a sheepdog trial this fall that will have a demanding course and difficult sheep, so we have lots of work to do. Tootsie is good too, although she wasn’t a fan of the thunderstorm yesterday morning, but she is already improving greatly with some counter conditioning and cuddles in the bed.

There’s a last chapter in the kitten chronicles too. You may remember that I spent weeks taming the wild things enough to trap them in a cage, took them into the house and began truly taming them in the bathroom converted to a kitty condo. Great homes were found right away for two kittens, and two others went to the good folks at Dane County Friends of Ferals. I kept Callie the Calico in hopes she could grow up to be a healthy, happy barn cat, and that her mother, who I trapped and had spayed, would stay around with her. You may recall I can’t have a cat in the house anymore and have a barn scurrying with rodents, so it seemed like a win/win. But, as often happens, life has other plans. Instead of staying around with Callie, momma cat began trying to lure her away into the woods. Callie, still a young kitten and too small to be spayed, was absent from the barn for increasing periods of time. Her mom was never in the barn anymore. Even when she’d been there with her kittens, she stayed in the upper hay mow and avoided the area in the lower level with the grain and thus, the mice. I actually was trapping mice for her and bringing them up to the haymow on the upper level of the barn and presenting them to momma cat. You may laugh out loud here, who could blame you?

After recovering from her spay surgery, momma cat began to move into the woods and lure Callie there with her. AT one point there was NO little kitten in my barn at any time during the day, except to come and eat dinner at nine o’clock at night. She came running down from the woods, presumably away from her mother, rubbed all over me and ate her dinner. (I should say here that I have no idea what exactly her mom was doing and even if she was still alive, I’m just guessing it was her mom who lured her away from the barn. I can’t imagine what else would have, and she always went in the direction her mom took in and out of the barn.)

That was enough for me. No way was I going to let a tiny, mostly white, hawk-bait of an unspayed kitten become yet another wild cat living in the woods and having litter after litter if she lived that long. The decision made, I went to the barn at 9 pm, ready to pick up Callie the Adorable, bring her back in the house and find her a safer place to live. No Callie. I called and called. No Callie. I walked back to the house, sick with worry, and back to the barn 15 minutes later. No Callie. This continued for a gut wrenching and endless 45 minutes, until she finally dashed toward me from the woods around 10 at night. I picked her up and carried her into the farmhouse, snuggling my face against her fur, allergies be damned. Dan Johnson, bless him, of Friends of Ferals came to pick her up the next day, and within  just a few more days she’d already found her perfect, forever home.

And here it is, with Veterinary Technician Jenny Maahs. She is as over the moon about Callie as one could be, and I’m thrilled that it has all worked out so well.

And here’s more good news: The remaining two kittens, the two little ginger girls Brava and Gabby, are available right now (Friday the 17th and Saturday the 18th) at the Catapalooza at the Dane County Humane Society in Madison, WI. Here’s my request: If you adopt one (or both?), please, please give Friends of Ferals permission for me to contact you and send you a present. If you’d like to come out to the farm and see where they were born I’m sure I could arrange that!

I’ve loved your comments about play styles after the last post. Keep them coming. One of the points that was made by many of you, that I think bears repeating, is that many dogs can adapt and learn new play styles from others. This is especially true of stable, well-adjusted dogs who aren’t overly reactive to something new or challenging.

Along with chase games and wrestling, several of you mentioned hounds (and English Shepherds!) who like to play “catch the prey” by chasing, play biting and then mock attacks at the throat. Another mentioned a play style that I’ve also seen, that I consider truly problematic. In this case, the dog chases another dog until he catches up, and then bites the chasee, often in the back leg, and brings him or her down. Eeeps. I’ve seen this quite often, and it often appears to me that the dog in question has not learned about the importance of “self-handicapping.”  Some of them even seem to have switched from playing to predation. Of course, that’s one of the tricky things about play–it’s actually hard to define because most of the actions of play are seen in the context of fighting or predation.

However, in healthy play, the participants exhibit “self handicapping” so that they don’t injure or scare their play partner. (See my post on September 10th, 2009 for a discussion and video of self-handicapping). When I see it happen I intervene without question. I’ll first try a loud, abrupt yelp, as if there had been an injury. That will often interrupt play, and I’ve seen some dogs adjust their enthusiasm as if it was their play partner who had been injured. However, I’ve also seen plenty of dogs who did not respond to a yelp. In that case I’ve tried, sometimes successfully, intervening by moving as quickly as possible between the two and body blocking the transgressor. I’ll look directly at them, use a low voice, say absurd things that the dog couldn’t possibly understand but that feel good to say (“You are one total loser dog and are going to be in big trouble in a minute…”) and back them up a good ten feet or so (depending on the dog).  That has helped with several dogs, in that I can then use a verbal warning (“AH!”) when they open their mouths to bite.

I can’t tell you exactly how many dogs that has helped, but many dogs do learn to adjust their play styles, and I’ve had good luck with it with lots of dogs. It doesn’t work on all dogs with this particular behavioral problem, but it’s worth a try.

There’s so much to say about role reversals, play styles and social status, (and yes, I do want to address the issue of ‘status’ soon), but here’s one point I’d like to bring up now: I talk more about role reversals in my Play Seminar DVD, but the research of Ward and Smuts found role reversals common in what they called “pushes, tackles, and chases.” They found almost no role reversals for “mounts, giving muzzle licks and receiving muzzle bites.”  There was (in keeping with some of your comments and with my observations over the years) no sex effect on type of play or on role reversals.  (However, female dogs did prefer to play with other females  within their own litters… interesting, hey?) They also found it common for one dog of a dyad to always be the one “on top” (in wrestling, for example), countering the hypothesis of some researchers that play always had to follow the “50/50 rule,” in which each player role reversed during each play session.

I think what’s most important is that play is a profoundly complex behavior, and that so much can be going on within it, depending on a dog’s breed predispositions, personality and experience. My favorite video of a play sequence, by the way, is from Pia Silvani, of two Terv’s meeting for the first time, and adjusting their play styles as they become more familiar. It’s truly a gorgeous example of healthy, appropriate play. It’s on the Dog Play DVD for those of you who haven’t seen it. I am ever grateful to Pia for letting me use it. (And it makes me all oxytocin-y too, it makes me want to get out some candles and a white table cloth for the 2 of them . . .)

Meanwhile, back on the farm: White white white. Snow snow snow. I’m about to take up luging. See that red sled by the barn . . . think I could make it down the hill behind the barn in record time in it?

In this next photo, Willie heard a truck on the road behind him. Interesting, I didn’t see his face as looking worried when I took the shot, but I do now. Humm, am I reading something into it?

A short post today, but with a pithy question generated from the last post on play. We all agree that different breeds of dogs tend to have different play styles, with herding dogs, for example, more likely to engage in run/chase games and bully breeds more likely to wrestle and body slam. Wrestling can include many behaviors, but a common goal of wrestling in any species is to pin another individual to the ground.

A lot of the wrestling/body slamming play in canines also includes chin over, leg over, vertical play and other movements that replicate the postures and gestures associated with high dogs seeking high social status.

So here’s the question: Do the dogs (in general of course) who engage in body slam/wrestle play tend to be individuals who care more about social status? I’ll add more to this discussion next week, but tease you with research that shows that you see a lot of role reversals in chase games (one dog in front, then the other) but very few role reversals in other actions more related to mounting and vertical play.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: I admit it, I’m an Olympic junkie. I’m getting sleep deprived staying up at night for heaven’s sake. Luckily, Will has had lots of entertainment during the day–we’ve been working the sheep a lot because all 3 groups are overweight (me, Will and sheep) and slogging up the hill in the deep snow is a great work out plan; we’re working on new tricks, he’s had lots of dog friends come visit and we’re doing lots of cuddling while I obsess in front of the television. We also went into town to do an applied ethoogy demonstration for my UW class, a good experience for Willie and although I’m sure not especially enjoyable for sheep, safe and relatively stress free.

I am also hereby declaring I am sick of winter. Not the snow, not the cold, I’m just starved for color and some change to what’s going on outside. I’d never make it in Antarctica! But there is still beauty: here are some trees covered in frost one morning, not long ago. I love the contrast of the dark trunks and the crystal white ice:

Here’s a video of Willie playing with a Lily, a 4 month old female Dogo Argentino. He has just met her, and after a brief greeting by the farm house, we walked up the hill to the Orchard Pasture.

I love watching videos of dogs playing; it seems that you can see so much if you watch them repeatedly. Here are the two main events I find most notable about this episode of play (along with the fact that Willie is playing so well with her! Yeah Mr. Will, what a journey we’ve been on together!)

One, notice how Lily’s play is so often on a vertical plane. Even as a young pup, she spends a lot of energy moving upward, and trying to get on top of Will. You’ll see that especially at seconds 17, 23 and 34. There are other examples, but those are the first three that I noticed.

Secondly, notice how Willie always backs away when she gets a leg on top of him, and dashes off, trying to elicit chase/race games with her. Watch carefully at second 59, how he approaches, gets her attention and then runs away. Willie loves to play race/chase games, and it looks to me like he is trying to initiate them with her. It appears to me that Willie is specifically trying to teach her to chase. Of course, she’s small and the snow is deep for her, so there is no way she could keep up with Will, nor is that a play style that she may ever enjoy.

In addition, I suspect that his reaction to her attempts to mount is more than just trying to elicit a chase game. Willie is very uncomfortable when other dogs try to chin over, stand over or mount him. As a matter of fact, when we stopped playing up the hill and went into the house, Lily began not only to rough house with Will, but began to try even harder to get her front legs and head on top of him. Will couldn’t dash away anymore in the close quarters of the house, and his ears flattened, his eyes rounded, his commissure retracted, and he began an offensive pucker at the distal end of his lips. I immediately stepped between the two of them and asked Will if he wanted to crate up. He sped away from Lily, ran to the study and lept into his crate. Poor Will, such angst. He gets so nervous about other dogs when he can’t maintain control. He is a classic “Alpha Wanna-Bee.” He wants to be in control of everything, but is an insecure nervous wreck about doing so with an individual bigger and braver than he is.

Yesterday he played chase/race with his Doberman girlfriend Mishka, and was totally relaxed even in the house until she lept onto the couch and loomed over him. He tensed up and then ran to the study and hid behind the door. He only came out when Jim came out too, and hid behind Jim’s legs. Then we walked behind a big rocking chair, and stayed behind it until I called him to come to me. Oh Willie. He is trying to hard now to stay out of trouble, but it is so hard for him. I am so proud of him, though. (For those of you who haven’t followed the story, Willie was pathologically afraid of other dogs as a puppy, and went through a very aggressive period until we could get it turned around. He will never be a ‘dog park’ dog, but he’s done so well given who he is and what he started with.

Here’s the video: I’d love to hear what you see in it. I’ve only watched it a few times, and focused on the things I mentioned, who knows what else is going on!