THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.