Nat’l Dog Training Month, or, You and 54%
Maggie loves dog poop. Eating it, that is. She is an obsessive coprophagic, especially in winter, when any poop not found and picked up becomes a poopsickle. It’s considered a normal behavior in dogs, and a disgusting behavior to us primates, whose only use the feces of others to throw it when angry, or fertilize our fields if no other alternative. A few days ago, Maggie was gulping poop, I said “leave it,” which has worked less and less often, and she just gulped faster. I was tired, no, exhausted, sick to my stomach with stress about Skip, (more on that later), cold, and out of fuel. Maggie also loves to kiss us on the face, while I am averse to poop breath and shit smeared on my cheek. A recipe for a break down in good dog training.
So I grumped at her, went back to the house feeling sad about it and like a failure as a dog trainer. And on National Dog Training Month, no less. However, the next morning I read an article about the graduation speech of tennis great, Roger Federer. Federer has won every major match he’s played multiple times, and was the #1 ranked player for 237 weeks in a row. He’s considered the tennis GOAT by many. Given that, how many shots do you think he won to win those matches? Answer? 54%. That’s not a lot. Just barely over half. Somehow, that information buoyed me. Perhaps the greatest tennis player of all time barely wins the totality of his attempts. The message was simple: Failure is inevitable. What matters is to learn from it and move on.
Granted, dog training is not like tennis. Dogs are not our opponents. We are not supposed to be “winning” anything, except perhaps a great relationship with our dogs. Nobody counts up points at the end of the day. Or, do we? How often do we float on the magic carpet of a fabulous recall, the perfect agility run, the kickass work your dog did at the sheepdog trial? But how often do we castigate ourselves for messing up–giving the wrong cue, not being who you want to be, every second of everyday?
All of this feels especially relevant, because it is National Dog Training Month, “a campaign started by the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT) to promote positive reinforcement training for building communication, confidence, and a strong bond between dogs and their owners, especially useful after holiday adoptions.”
Every good trainer and behaviorist knows the value of positive reinforcement, R+, but we still have a long way to go to spread the word to the general public. Trends come and go; right now there is a tendency where I live for people to find quick fixes–board and train companies that use electric collars, for example. What can be done with R+ is no less than miraculous. Here, for example, is Skip getting his Optimmune ointment to treat his panus, an immune-related eye disease that can cause blindness without treatment, every day for the rest of his life. Ointments are not drops–it is far harder for a dog to accept an ointment than a liquid you drop into their eyes. And it stings a little too, at least did when I tried it on my eyes.
But treating Skip is easy, because I used R+, super-powered by Chirag Patel’s Bucket Game.
Nothing about this is particularly impressive. No fancy tricks, just the use of R+ in husbandry and management training, using what we know about learning to create a good relationship between members of two species who sometimes struggle to live together in harmony.
It reminds me of two things related to January as “Dog Training Month:” One is the importance of taking a breath when your dog does something problematic, getting out of your head (“I’m a failure!”), thinking about the context (or antecedent), the behavior itself, the consequence of the behavior, and then brainstorming what to do about it instead of feeling frustrated, or worse, helpless.
Maggie’s coprophagia provided me an opportunity to do just that. After a morning of reflection, I realized I had all the tools I needed to deal with the problem. Maggie has a great nose and loves using it to find toys, and anything she can find to eat on the ground. Her favorite reinforcement is food, by a mile. I am a dog trainer. I can have great food in my pocket at a moment’s notice. (When do I not have food in my pocket?) Scent detection dogs are trained all the time to seek out scents, alert their handler they’ve found it with some easily observable action, and then get rewarded with a high value reinforcement. Thus, my training adventure for the month: Maggie is learning to alert me when she finds poop. (I’m asking for a sit right now, but I may modify it if she shows me a different behavior that comes naturally). When she does, she gets high quality treats finding their way into her happy, clean mouth. Once I have the behavior established, I’ll put it on cue, and there you go, Bob’s your uncle.
There is another benefit to this for those of us who live in the country and can spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for poop to pick up, perfectly camouflaged in brown leaves as it is. Skip’s is especially hard to find, so… “Maggie! Find the poop!” This all sounds too cool for school; I’ll let you know how it’s going in my next post.
The second issue this brings up, related to Dog Training Month and Federer’s 54% winning shots, is that most of us are doing the best we can, with the skills we have, at that particular moment in time. And, sometimes we will come up short. I wasn’t able to use the best part of my brain last week with Maggie, until I got some rest, and was reminded by Federer that the best of the best aren’t perfect. All I needed to do was take a breath, get out of my own way, and use the skills I had to think about the problem objectively. Once I gave myself some grace, I was able to find a way out of the problem.
Grace. I think we all need a lot of that right now. If something you’ve worked on with your dog hasn’t worked out, give yourself some grace. If you see someone doing something to a dog that you feel is less than ideal, give them some grace. Life can be hard and scary and full of challenges. Let me restate that: Life is hard and scary and full of challenges. Let’s let January be a good time to be good to ourselves, to be good to others, and to use our skills and knowledge to solve problems that are often solvable, if we can take a breath and think it through.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Skip doesn’t have bladder cancer!!! Please leap out of your chair and celebrate with me, because we spent five days with, first from our vet, “the most likely explanation for his symptoms is bladder cancer,” to “well, it’s one of many things he could have, maybe 25%.” Skip has been urinating like a race horse (ie, for endless periods of time), his urine looks more dilute than usual, and a urine sample found an atypical amount of cells from the lining of his bladder. Cancer was the primary potential, but an ultrasound showed no signs of a mass! Yay! Of course, now . . . what is going on? One potential, scary enough, is leptospirosis, a bacterial disease, ubiqutous around here, that can lead to kidney failure. It is what killed my beloved Cool Hand Luke. Skip doesn’t have many of the usual symptoms (lethargy, vomiting), but we put him on Doxy until we can get more information. I’ll keep you posted, next vet visit and blood tests of kidney function coming soon.
It’s been crazy busy out here, what with all the arrangements for publicity for the novel. So far I’ve had the pleasure of doing six podcasts, including Your Family Dog, Dog Fostering 101, Science Matters, Behavior Buzzzzz, Barks from the Bookshelf, and Unleashed. There are six or seven more to be recorded. I’ll let you all know when they are released, nothing yet but coming soon!
Still on the novel topic, there are still some autographed copies of Away To Me available from Arcadia Books. You can order it from anywhere in the U.S., I’ll sign, and then it will be shipped out to you on the release day, February 24th, or soon after.
But if you can come to an event in person, (please come up and say hi!), you can go to my website for the dates for my Wisconsin and Texas tour.
Skip’s troubles, an injured hand that makes it painful to type (good timing body!, and a firehose of work on the novel’s publicity has prevented me from getting many photographs around the farm this week.
But here’s a fuzzy photo of Skip that I only post because he is ADORSABLE. I rest my case.
Here’s the guy himself trying to get Maggie (out of the photo to our right) to play with him. I don’t know about you but I can hear his engines running. Think red convertible sports car gunning its engine outside of the bar.
We had some lovely new snow--this is from a few days ago. Now it’s sunny, and gorgeous, and very, very cold. Was 5 degrees F this morning (-15 C).
Sorry I have to stop here, my hand is screaming at me. Ah, wait?! A good time to give myself Grace?
Grace to all of you dear readers. May your week include as much of it as you can muster.
20 Comments
SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL
About the Author
Patricia B. McConnell, PhD, CAAB Emeritus is an applied animal behaviorist who has been working with, studying, and writing about dogs for over twenty-five years. She encourages your participation, believing that your voice adds greatly to its value. She enjoys reading every comment, and adds her own responses when she can.
LEARN MORE FROM PATRICIA’S BOOKS & DVDs!
Patricia is known the world over for her clear and engaging books and DVDs on dog training and canine behavior problems. You can also “meet” Patricia in person on her seminar DVDs, from The Art & Science of Canine Behavior to Treating Dog-Dog Reactivity.
I’m interested in a signed copy of the book. How do I indicate “signed copy” when I order from Amazon?
Celebrating with you regarding Skip not having bladder cancer!! Doing circles!!
Sorry Sandy, signed copies are only available from Arcadia Books at http://www.readinutopia.com. I will be driving to the bookstore and signing maybe 100 copies at a time, go home, rest my hand, and then drive back the next day for 100 more!
I love this video. I work in a prison, and we train Leader Dogs for the blind. The incarcerated men are the dog handlers. There are times when we need to put salve in a pup’s eye. This video will be an effective training session for them
Love your posts! Stressing relationship building as well as giving your pup agency vs. solely focusing on immediate compliance./ human control, is a real lift.
Ooh I would looooove to hear the detailed breakdown of the poop-scent-detection training protocol… Georgie has become a bit of a poop eater in the last couple of years—not the worst but pretty annoying. Deep down I’ve known I could probably train it out of her with something even more delicious…but I confess I’ve been too lazy to try, and I pretty much stopped carrying treats on walk a few years ago when we changed from off-lash to long-leash… You’ve inspired me to give it a try!
I’ll keep you posted Nina, you do the same! I’m starting with asking for a sit just while on walks, and if she finds poop and starts to eat it, I’m asking for a sit or, calling her name with CHICKEN in my pocket. A bit sloppy, but I don’t want to pollute the other cues, and want to keep it positive.
Great message this morning! I can’t wait to meet you in Lake Geneva!
Super Amy H! Come up and say hi!
Thanks for this post. I’m going to print it and tuck it in my desk drawer as a reminder that grace is sometimes just what’s needed — for me and for others. Thanks for the words that I needed to hear this morning — coprophagia and all! (Here’s hoping that your protocol works with two dogs!)
Our youngest Lab, not quite 2 years old, has copraphagia and a fabulous nose, so our local trainer has had us using the technique you mentioned re: having her find the poop (hers and the other dogs’) and showing us where it is. It’s often hard to find in all the leaves and ground covers, even if I’m nearby and see them poop! If I’m following her, she’s pretty good at “leave it” and waiting for her HVT while I pick it up. If I miss some poop and she is out there alone, however, she’ll usually eat it. It’s a work in progress: management + continued training.
Love the R+ video! What a great example. I had an old dog that loved his poopsicles and the warm stuff as well. He was so single-minded about it, I didn’t bother to do any training, just put a basket muzzle on him. This completely prevented ingestion in the winter and mostly prevented it in the summer when he could squish the muzzle into a warm pile and lick what came through. His breath smelled a ton better and he lost some weight. The only downside was his affectionate rubbing of his poopy muzzle against my legs.
Poop eating is one of the more frustrating habits to deal with. I love this idea of working on an alternate behavior for it. My golden does it, I think when she is stressed, so providing an alternate behavior may help calm the stress as well. And giving her something to do with her very busy brain ( finding more) is double benefit.
I ordered my copy of Away to Me the other day. YAY! Can’t wait to read it. Meanwhile, sending the best vibes for more good results in your quest to find out what’s going on with Skip. He’s such a beauty (err, I mean handsome!) and one of the luckiest dogs in the world to be living his life with you. Lasty, wishing you speedy healing of your hand and lots of energy to get through this busy time!! You’re the best and thank you for your wonderful blogs, books and all the work you’ve done and shared with the world.
I will keep in mind your suggestion of grace with one of my dogs, a Pomeranian who I took in at 6 years old, now about to turn 13, who drives me to distraction with her barking and her propensity to urine mark and sometimes poop in the house. I continue to work with her but confess that I’ve turned more to management as training as been minimally successful. A regular schedule, which she never had before, has helped immensely with the soiling issues, but it is not resolved completely. So she spends more time in her crate than I’d like and has much less freedom in the house than any dog I’ve ever had. And the barking means that she spends much of my working day upstairs in the house, rather than downstairs in my office (she even barks every time my other dog moves!). But at the same time I also know she’s living so much better a life than she ever has. So I give myself grace for that as well and try to concentrate on how cute, funny and affectionate she is.
Wow, this post could not have come at a better time. We are alone-training our 7-mo old puppy and had a bad experience this weekend (barking and crying when we left). I’ve been really unable to let go of the negative thoughts, even though this is just a setback and not the end of the world. I will make a special effort to step back and look at the situation more objectively to see how I can better set my pup up for success. Really appreciate you and all that you do!
LOL I just did a blog about my perfect 90 pound puppy suddenly deciding he wanted to stalk, lunge and chase passing vehicles while we were on walks. Yes. sometimes it’s our dogs that give us the teaching moments!
Olive was a poop gourmand. Hers, theirs, whomevers. We developed the habit — that is still with us even though Daisy has not shown any taste for excrement — of going with the dog outside when it was time to eliminate and poop scooping immediately. Removing the temptation before it got close to being a snack.
I hadn’t thought about asking for a find and then rewarding while cleaning it up. Brilliant. Although, I know Olive would have immediately alerted false finds, gotten a treat, and left me searching for the nonexistent pile while she went and ate up the real pile of poop!
Yay for Skip’s what-it’s-not diagnosis. Paws crossed for good news and for quick healing of your paws.
Grace — and I’ll add grit — is what’s needed in these truly tumultuous times.
LisaW: Love the Grit! And your comment about Olive false alerting had me laughing out loud. And then wondering about Maggie . . .
Hello, I just finished reading two of your books (love has no age limit and the other end of the leash) both of which I loved very much. I am currently reading for the love of a dog (and enjoying it too!).
Especially the focus on primate vs canid behaviours! I thought it was great and funny because my dog Maya (who sadly passed away from cancer a year ago) didn’t like touch at all and we used to joke that she grumpily thought to herself that we were annoying monkeys with annoying, grabby hands.
We just adopted a 4.5 year old dog from a shelter and she is great! Very sweet and very loving and she is adapting very well, but we live in a big city and sometimes bad people leave poisoned food out for dogs to eat. Sometimes she grabs random things from the road and eats them. I wonder if it is possible to train her to point (like you are doing with Maggie) instead of eating it?
I am very happy that your dog doesn’t have cancer and I hope that everything goes well!
All the best,
Gabi
Gab, absolutely you could teach a behavior that means “I’ve found street food!” I’d suggest working with a positive reinforcement trainer, even just to get you started. You could start with “leave it” and give her FABULOUS treats when she turns her head toward you. {Start when there is no food to get the cue established.] Good luck!
Thanks for reminding me to give myself some grace. My dog can sometimes be reactive to other dogs when they display a behavior to him that he disagrees with. He may be a wanna be alpha, and/or I am just not catching the behavior from the other dog quickly enough before my dog reacts. (My dog does not react to every dog he sees, so it can be tricky to anticipate) Anyway I can be just as reactive in my response which certainly doesn’t help! I often say to myself “would you have behaved that way if Patricia McConnell was here?” This kind of gets me in line to think about what just happened, and what I could have done differently. So thanks for saying to give myself some grace, and for “being there” to get me to re-think the situation. (PS: just to be clear, my reaction is purely loud vocal reprimanding – no physical abuse, but silly nevertheless. My dog seems to brush off my goofy behavior )
My husband pre-ordered your book for me as a Christmas present and I am looking forward to the read!