Here’s the post I thought I’d lost! (Will my viral-hazed brain ever come back to normal?)
Hey, I am back among the living. Not much energy, pretty slow in the head, but actually eating real food again (well, still can’t eat chocolate, which along with fresh spinach and warm bread is the only real food there is). Willie is back to dropping toys in my lap (even when I’m lying flat on my back on the couch, so I think it was much more than lack of movement that changed his behavior. I’ll write more in the comments under the last blog.)
I wanted to say a few words about Des Moines, and the Animal Rescue League of Iowa who sponsored it. First off, Paula Sunday and all her staff were wonderfully accommodating, even changing the plan and letting in over 200 people in by the time 9:00 rolled around Saturday morning. I asked the folks that came to say hello:
They were a great group of people, I enjoyed spending the day with them immensely.
In the morning we focused on dogs who are reactive to unfamiliar dogs (I put the word “aggression” in quotes in the title because so many dogs who look aggressive actually have no intent of harming anybody or anything, but all that barking and growling sure can look scary.) We worked with a Corgi named Vadar who had come into Angie’s home with lots of lots of “issues.” (I just love that way to describe a range of trouble! As in: “I have “issues” with computers when they don’t work right for me.”) Angie and family have done a great job with Vadar, and things are good at home but Vadar is your basic bark/lunger at dogs on the street, especially ones bigger than he is. We taught Angie and Vadar an “autowatch” in about ten minutes (it was scary, he learned it so fast) and had a great first session reinforcing him with treats when he looked at Angie as another dog approached. Here’s Angie and Vadar (and me), Vadar with his “I am the perfect dog” look on:
After Vadar we worked with a Golden cross named Casey who fit into the ‘reactive’ mode in that when he sees another dog that he can’t get to, he begins to spiral up into being frustrated and emotionally overloaded (at least that what it looks like to me, obviously I’m just making my best guess about his internal state, but Casey gets SO excited over SO many things and his response to other dogs seemed to be as much about arousal as anything else). Casey also did a great job with “watch” (look at your owner instead of barking at the dog) and also learned the “Emergency U-Turn” that owners can use when they get surprised by a dog who shows up unexpectedly.
Obviously, all these types of issues deserve lots and lots more time and attention than I can write about now (see the booklet Feisty Fido for more about teaching some of these techniques), and we talked about so much more than the few things I’ve mentioned here (including CAT, teaching “Where’s the Dog?” and reinforcing for looking versus looking away) BUT, here’s a wonderful email from Casey’s owner that came a few days later:
I wanted to tell you that I practiced some of the information I learned yesterday with Casey (the golden mix demo dog) and they worked! I was clicking through TV channels and the Animal Planet had some dog dancing show which he reacted to like always – running to put his face against the screen and bark at the dogs. Sometimes he is so wound up he even turns around in circles but he wasn’t doing that yesterday. I can call him away from the TV so I got him over by me and said “Do You Want a Treat?”. He gave me the quizzical, cocked-head look that he often gives when I ask him questions and followed me into the kitchen without a backward look at the TV.
I thought I would try “watch” and started in another room. It was going well so I moved closer and closer to the TV until we were about 3 feet from the TV and I even moved so my back was mostly toward the TV so Casey could hardly help but see the dogs. Except he wasn’t looking at them — he was staring at my face so intently that he would barely even glance at the dogs on TV to give me the opportunity to say “watch” – he was already watching!
I couldn’t believe what a difference happened so fast. Usually he will run from anywhere in the house to bark at the TV if he hears or sees ANYTHING from there that even remotely might be a dog or other animal. It gives me hope that it might work with other live dogs when we’re out walking. Thanks so much. Julie
Yeah, positive reinforcement, hey? Now Julie’s job is to be sure that Casey only gets the treat for looking at the dog, so that the dog itself is the precursor to the treat. (If your dog won’t stop staring, take your eyes off him or her, move around, etc.) Keep up the good work Julie!
We spent the afternoon on a too-cute-for-words Jack Russel Terrier (mostly?) who came to Sundie and her daughter Lucia with lots of problems, including serious resource guarding. They’ve solved a lot of problems by keeping up toys and treats, but every few months Buster goes after their other male, and the fights are serious. After getting a solid foundation of information, we broke into groups and brain-stormed some treatment suggestions, which included lots more mental and physical exercise and lots more training that will give them control over all the dogs, including having Buster (and family) MASTER a few essentials cues like “Enough,” “Get Back” and “Stop,” all taught with positive reinforcement as if they were circus tricks. There was lots more of course, including clear cautions that this kind of issue (there’s that word again) is difficult to completely turn around, but it was a very interesting and rewarding day. Look at the reinforcement Animal Rescue of Iowa arranged for our afternoon break:
All in all, a wonderful day!
Shannon says
I belopng to a livejournal group that discusses positive dog training and a member attended your seminar and gave us all the play by play here as well: http://community.livejournal.com/dogsintraining/533792.html?view=5526304#t5526304
Kelly Ladouceur says
Sounds like an awesome, awesome day! I wish I could have been there. Thanks for the report 🙂
My dog worth a million buck says
Lol. The dogs biscuits look delicious. I have never send my dogs for any training before, just train them according to what I have read in the book and base on past experience. Anyway thanks for the information shared.
Judy Norton says
I would be interested to know where to find more information about treating dog-dog resource guarding. I have a friend with a 6 month old border collie whose resource guarding with certain dogs is getting worse. (He’s an only dog, but the problems are with friends’ dogs.) All the information I can find is about dog-human guarding. I’m finding the dog-dog problem to be so much more complicated.
trisha says
Thanks
Shannon for the tip about the post. Boy is Crystal good at taking notes! I should hire her!
And thanks to her for the generous comments about the seminar, they mean a lot. I am always full of thoughts about what I forgot to do, didn’t do, shouldn’t have done after a seminar, so it’s great to hear good things!
One comment about the chinese medicine diet: I too am skeptical. We all should be good critical thinkers about everything, including things “proven” in western medicine. The fact is the world is just much more complicated than we wish it was. I DO feed my dogs based on chinese medicine. Willie gets cooling foods like duck and turkey, Lassie too but she gets more beef. Does it do anything? I don’t know.. I do know they get a good balanced diet, including added cooked veggies and other proteins like eggs, and that Lassie plays frisbee and tug of war with Willie at 15 years of age. She looks amazing and has fought off kidney failure and a number of other challenges. I suspect we’ll know a lot more about healthy, diet and behavior in the next 20 years… stay tuned?
Judy: I agree that resource guarding between dogs is tricky. I’ve had the best luck with what Karen London and I call “The Belle of the Ball.” Basically, you teach a dog that if they let another dog get something (petted, food), then they get something even better. My Pyr, Tulip, was horrendously food aggressive to my Border collies when she was an adolescent. I used a kind of classical conditioning to teach her to feel good when another dog approached her food bowl (I set it up safely, and as the BC approached I tossed a piece of meat into Tulip’s bowl. Between that and teaching a group ‘leave it’ (see my Feeling Outnumbered video), Tulip
became much much less probelmatic around food and toys. As usual, there was still some management involved, but very little.
jenny woodruff says
i have alpha problems with my two large (70&90lbs)male dogs. they have been best frinds for 2 years. we left town on nov.1st,leaving our 4 dogs and one cat in the care of our 17 year old son. that afternoon he called to say they were fighting(the two big boys)we said to seporate them for awhile. that seemed to work for 5 days when wegot the second call that there was blood, i told him to take them to the vet and leave them until we got home. i was hoping that this was an annomaly, things seemed to be back to normal 10 days later when a bloody dog jumped up in the window to great me. back to the vet, off to buy muzzels. the nilon muzzles that i bought localy were’nt enough. thay got them off when i stupidly left them in together while we went to a movie, there were some ramin nooldes for my sons lunch in the kitchen, this was the first time food was involved that we know of, we walked in to a crime sceen,they were over it. they had gotten the muzzles off and once agin the biggist one had the most damage another week in the vet and surgery this time. i have ordered and aquired wire cage muzzles and am maintaining a strict policy of seporation when i’m not in the same space. can i keep them both? i haven’t been able to do much besides try to get them healed at this point. we love them both so much, each are so special. the both just showed up, noodel when he was about 8 weeks,tried to find a home for him, then he came down with parvo, a week in intensive care and 800.00 later he was ours,that was 4 years ago,(he is for the most part a relentlesly happy junk yard dog). timmy wondered up with no collar or tag or chip the fall before last,we put posters up, an add in the paper, nothing, we fell in love, timmy as far as we can tell is a wolamute(90lbs). he was about 8 monts when he showed up, they are both nutered,have never been agresive in any way before; do you have any sugestions? i would apresheate any sujestions. please forgive the spelling, thanks so much, jenny P.S. i have writen npr about calling all pets, i realy hope they reconcider, you are a wealth of information,intertaining too.
Claudia says
My dog, Ginger, was a poster child for dog-on-dog reactivity when I adopted her at the age of four. She was a public embarassment. She’d lunge, scream, bark, drag me through the dirt on my belly (she’s a tall, very strong lab/golden mix) if there was only a silhouette of a dog on the horizon. She’d been dumped and abandoned by 5 (!) previous owners, because they couldn’t deal with it. I was her last chance. She’d been in a bunch of brawls with other dogs, though, to her credit, she never put her teeth into any of them – she seemed to think brawling was some sort of contact sport; aggression wasn’t really her intention.
With the help of my friends and their dogs we helped Ginger. First, I’d take her on walks with my friend and just one other, very calm and friendly dog. After so much lunging and screaming, Ginger was able to quietly accept the other dog’s presence. That was our first breakthrough. Then we’d let them loose together at the dog park in the middle of the night, when there was no one else there. Jethro was her first friend, and then gradually we added others. I also took her to an obedience class where she was a foaming barking mess the first few times – but then she settled down and learned to stay in control around strange dogs. She learned lots of tricks, and we did the watch-me with food treats.
Mostly, being such a high-energy dog and always having been so confined, ahe was in desperate need of exercise. But how to exercise a dog who was so strong and too wild and reactive to be let off-leash? I found the perfect solution: skijoring! This way, we could run for hours and hours on our beautiful Alaskan trails, but she’d be under some control and leashed to me, and when we ran into a dog team and se’d go into her hysterics, I could simply drag her off the trail, if necessary. Ginger was a natural skijorer – 90 miles an hour and never looks back. Poor me. The first winter, I “skied” more on my butt than on my feet, mowed down countless trees, got banged up and generally prayed for my life. But the monster got her exercise and gradually settled down.
Today, she’s simply the world’s best dog. We still skijor every day, and bike and hike all summer. She has many doggie friends, has calmed down to the point where I can let her loose among strange dogs and she plays and runs and gets along. No more hysterics when we pass dog teams on the trails. She has a whole repertoire of tricks that she performs readily to any one who wants to watch.
She’s the love of my life and proof that reactive dogs can be made better!
BTW, Ginger is on the calling-all-pets website as the featured pet. go to callingallpets.org and look at her pics in the lower right corner of the page. Yep, that’s her jumping up like a yoyo. My big yellow noodle!
🙂
trisha says
Yeah Ginger! And yeah for Claudia for working so hard on this. You make me want to get outside and go snow shoeing! And to Jenny, so sorry, there’s nothing I can say about your dogs without doing a full consultation. I hope you can find a good animal behaviorist in your area who knows how to use positive reinforcement… you definitely want someone to come do a house call and meet you, the dog and the environment.
Sonja says
I feel like a big loser pants posting for help. I won’t be offended if you ignore me. 🙂
First, I live in Madison and have seen you speak in person. You’re generally my first reference on canine behavior. Thanks for the help, even if the two of us have never spoken. 🙂
My dog is a 1 1/2 year-old, spayed Australian Cattle Dog mix (mixed with what? Who knows. There are definitely some skinny genes in the mix, though). She came to me as an undersocialized, reactive adolescent puppy. She’s always been very dog social but barks maniacally at stranger humans. We hired a behaviorist and read “The Cautious Canine.” She’s made a lot of progress, but I’ve not been as consistent as I know I should have been.
Lately, she’s been reacting badly to small dogs and puppies. It isn’t
every small dog or puppy. It often seems to be the particularly timid
ones. In any case, it really worries me, and I’d be interested in any
help or advice you can give.
Also, Zoe can become so emotional that it’s impossible to gain
control of her. She’s so frantic that she doesn’t hear commands,
doesn’t smell treats. It’s as though only she and whatever is
threatening her are all that exist in the world at that time. What can
I do in the moment to gain control of my dog if needed?
Thanks for all of the great information! 🙂
Lana Chandler says
We had Chelse come last Nov to our home. We took a 8 yr Great Pyrenees at the request of a groomer who had been asked to find a home for her. The owner brought her to visit first, then to leave the next day. She gave us an art piece she created calling us angels for taking her dog she could not longer take care of and had euthanized her mutt, but was willing to let the Pyrenees go to a home if it could be found. We have had her for almost a year. We adore her and have made adjustments as she does run-aways and altercations with other dogs. On day 3 this also occurred with our male and female Great Pyrenees (now 4 yrs) and then no more. They are bonded together. She had been abused for two yrs until rescued by her previous mom, who left her with us. She obviously is attached to the dog, but still could not do the basics as she was dirty, had dred locks and was undernourished. She gained 15# in six wks. She now wants her back or would like to visit periodically. We have reservations about this as it seems she is more concerned about herself than our dog. Feedback for us?
Allison says
i have 2 neutered male dogs.
– Stone, a 5 year old, st. bernard/mix
and……..
-Hooch, a 4 year old purebred great dane.
stone’s story
stone was born in the alaska state pound. we had had a german shepherd, koda, (who we put down about a month ago for health issues) so he was good with a new dog. any way…… he was fine with strangers and other animals. he was really good with little kids. there was moose every where and a group of young kids were outside and they bull was staring them down. as if he were going to charge. then the moose did. stone didn’t go around on a leash so he took off and chased the moose. and nobody was hurt. stone was really spoiled in AK by the ice cream man. he would get a free ice cream cone any time the guy came buy. then he would start getting in the habit “ice cream man music….. be good sob up to alli then score with the ice cream……” so he would grab the leash and he ould sit down at the stairs and bark until we went on a walk. but that was in alaska now we are in Des Moines, Iowa. and we noticed he was running into objects more offten. like he couldn’t see them. and then he started getting aggresive about alot of things. other dogs, strangers, not cats though he is still fine with cats. he especially doesn’t like adult men. and then we introduced him to hooch.
Hooch’s story
i don’t really know much about hooch except. they gave him to my uncle who, i guess, they didn’t really know much about taking care of this big of a dog. so i took him as my responsibility and walked, bathed, trained, fed, etc. but i had only decided that. until i had answers. i asked my uncle
-is he good with other dogs? = no he attacks dogs when he can get loose
-what is the worst thing he has ever done to get an other dog? = he had jumped out the top window
-how many dogs has he attacked? = a pit bull twice, a Neapolitan mastiff once, and killed a yorkie.
so i started walking him about 5′ either way of my house at night when none of the dogs are out. then it escalated. 10′,15′,30′, then it went so good i started walking him about a mile. with dogs around. and we did that for about 5 months then i started walking with the leash on his back without me hanging onto him. and he did pretty good. we had stone at the same time and they were getting in constant fights about food or when i’d try to play with one the other comes up and they start to fight. then they would fight over the food so we had to get them separate bowls to they didnt fight and we would place them in separate rooms. but they would fight when they were done.
so i moved in with my dad and he allowed my dog, stone, to come with. that was about 5-7 months ago and there has only been 2 fights between them since. but i can’t live in one house without the other. and my dad goes on trips about a week or 2 at a time, not often but he does, and i have to bring stone and put him in the garage in a kennal and he’s all alone
how do i get them to cooperate with each other?
how can i get hooch to be good with other dogs?
how can i get stone to be good with both other animals and people?
thank you, allison