Tuesday, December 18, 2012

There is No Crying in Dog Sports…

A friend and I were recently commenting on people who cry while competing with or training dogs. While not prone to crying in public - EVER I guess I can sort of understand where the emotions come from. Dog training is challenging on so many levels. You are attempting to communicate with another species. Sometimes the stakes for success are high. We often invest a lot in our success financially, timewise and emotionally. We put lofty expectations on ourselves and our dogs. We unfairly compare ourselves to others who may or may not have the same challenges. However it seems that many people who participate in dog sports forget the most important part - it’s a “sport”. Something that we do for fun (even if we get paid for it, if you are getting paid and still not having fun then that is whole 'nother conversation). Crying tears of frustration or unhappiness is taking the sport way too seriously, I don’t care what level you are competing at. If a failed start line stay or crooked heeling or a missed weave pole entry are our biggest problems then I think we are fortunate. Fortunate that we have the time, money, health and knowledge to focus on training our dogs. 
I recently drove to Chicago to compete for Steel’s VST title. Given the low odds of passing the test, making the long drive was a gamble . I am far from well off financially and had to plan my trip carefully (hotels that offer free breakfast are also providing a free lunch whether they know it or not). It would be nice to not have to pinch pennies quite so tightly. However I am also thankful to be well off enough to be able to buy food, put gas in my car and participate in something that I love doing. Having not passed would have made the drive home much longer but it would not have been the end of the world. Winning is nice but certainly not worth tears when it doesn’t happen. Being relatively new to dog sports, I am amazed at how cranky and unhappy people sometimes seem to be. I pretty much always think this but am particularly reminded of it this week. I was going to include one of my favorite movie clips – Tom Hanks screaming “There’s no crying in baseball!!” but thought I would add a few things instead that should make us cry....







Saturday, December 15, 2012

It's not really that complicated....

Suddenly having an unexpected new "training project" has resulted in my recently watching some training videos and giving a lot of thought to planning the details of my project. Thanks to the internet there is a vast amount of very useful information - not a lot is new to me at this point but some of the information serves as reminders or hints on how to tweak my own training. Note that I usually only access information from people that have a training philosophy relatively similar to mine. Open mindedness is good in some things but I am comfortable in the choices I have made regarding how I will or will not train. There is a HUGE amount of training information out there. Given human nature it is easy to make things very very complicated; sometimes to astonishing levels.

I teach dog training to a lot of great people for a living - not pet dog people but police and military dog trainers, search and rescue dog trainers, professional dog trainers etc. People at the top of their game and who usually really want to be in our classes and are passionate about learning to train better detection dogs. That in itself makes my job fun. The other bonus is seeing dogs learn in a clear manner, we don't complicate things but just allow the dog to channel his drive and teach himself how to satisfy that drive. And they continue to impress and amaze us in their ability to do just that - if we dont confuse them by making things complicated. Yes detection work is important. If it fails things blow up, people die, large amounts of drugs get missed etc. However the teaching is very simple - I merely explain through a series of steps that if he gets to the source of the odor then I will give him something that he badly wants. We need to take steps to ensure that the dog does not use other clues besides scent to be successful but otherwise all we need is a dog with the correct drives. We then get out of the way and let him work.

Below Steel demonstrates this concept. Notice in particular his response to the tennis ball when I start working him. He sees it and immediately starts searching. He knows the fastest and most efficient way to get the fight that the tennis ball symbolizes. He also incidently demonstrates that I am about as relevant in narcotics detection as I am in tracking....


Thursday, December 13, 2012

"Puzzles"

I have been slacking off at blogging lately. It is ironic that the times when I do the most thinking about dog training are also the times when I am too busy to write about it. I have just finished teaching two great tracking clinics, one in NC and one in SC. In addition we currently have a three week long detection trainers course in session here in Jackson. Really fun group of people and they have made some great progress with the dogs they are learning to train. I also have a few other dog training projects and updates that I will cover in the blog in the near future. While our schedule is not yet completed it is looking very likely that the dogs and I will be “on the road” for the first half of 2013. Should be a fun and interesting year!
In the meantime, although he is now an official AKC Champion Tracking, Steel is not about to kick back and let me get away without tracking him. Problem is that although I am not really concerned about “titles” or winning; I am very goal oriented and am sort of struggling with how to keep Steel entertained and happy without a current goal to work toward. I have also been tracking some young dogs so can’t spend as much time aging his tracks right now, at least not the three to five hour old tracks that he was working. To keep him happy I have been setting up tracks with little weird scent pictures for him throughout the track. Stealing a term from detection training, I call them “puzzles”. Our goal is to challenge the dog and expand his skill set by setting up a puzzle. However the dog needs drive for the puzzles to be effective, the more they want to succeed the quicker they will progress through working the puzzles.  However we don’t want to overface the dog and create in his mind about whether he can solve the puzzle. We want the dog the enjoy the challenge and to go away from the puzzle having gained knowledge and confidence solving it.  Steel is at that point in his tracking and gets a big thrill working through tricky (at least for his current skill set) scent pictures. Here is a clip of a short track we did a few mornings ago. For those that are interested I have listed the "narration" below the clip.

0:00 The Start Routine. This is important and something that I really harp on when teaching. It has many purposes. Initially it gives the dog important clues about what is going to happen. It also creates a habitual mental state in the dog - they then have the attention and drive to do the task at hand. Through management and channeling drive in the proper direction I have a dog that comes out of the car, does his business and then charges over to demand to be harnessed and directed toward the start.
0:33 Starting the track facing the wrong direction and article not exactly at starting point.
1:28 Right hand turn was made in a stairstep pattern. If you look carefully you can see Steel do the stairstep.
1:52 Isn't this a cool shot??

1:55 road crossing. This is an access road to the marina. Lots of vehicle traffic, people etc. A steep berm on one side, a rock slope and water on the other. Steel successfully crosses and then decides to double check other options, then obviously convinces himself that his choice was right.
2:33 You can see him start to correctly cross the road here. He then loops back and works the area more heavily before crossing. Do I know why? No. I DO however know that the only way to progress is to let him make his own decisions. With both detection work and with tracking I have observed that as the dog gains experience (on his own) the "wasted motion" decreases. That step cannot be rushed.
3:30 Article!
3:57 track runs to left along edge of ditch. Scent is likely to be pushed down into the low lying area.
4:23 This part was fun. There are a series of berms that run to the right of the ditch. The track winds through the berms, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right and then sometimes up on top.
5:30 The End....


Friday, November 23, 2012

The Accidental Agility Dog - Chapter Four

I am home briefly between seminars – we just completed detection seminars in TN and IN, last weekend I was in NC for a tracking clinic and I have another one in SC next weekend. I have also been busy with another “project” but I can’t talk about him, at least not yet….In the meantime a bit more about Amber....
After taking her into my house and socializing her and spending time with her I have become rather attached to the little space alien. She is not overly outgoing with strangers but she is VERY bonded with those people she knows. However, having three dogs already, I was determined to find a good home for her. A person came along who I thought would work out and took her home for a trial visit. That didn’t work out so well for a variety of reasons so she ended up being returned to me. Sort of like a little boomerang.... she keeps ending up with me.
I am still looking for a good home for her, provided it is the right one. However I have not been working very hard at finding one. She is a tough dog to place because it is hard to get to see her real personality initially and she needs a LONG time, like weeks, to settle in. I left her with my friend Dawn for three weeks while I went to Australia. I guess initially she was beside herself but Dawn wisely ignored her and let her retreat to her room/kennel whenever she wanted to and after about a week she decided that since I was gone she had better align herself with the new leader!
Without actively seeking a new home for her though the question is – what am I going to do with her? Along the way, although she hasn’t completely overcome her environmental issues, she learned to channel her inner Malinois and discovered she has DRIVE. This development along with her high energy level meant that I needed to do something with her.
Since we were teaching a course at the time I took her through one of our detection trainer’s schools and trained her for narcotics detection. Although her role was to be an example of the problems with training improperly selected dogs (environmental confidence is our most important trait when selecting dogs) she didn’t do half bad. She continues to perform very well as we travel around the country teaching detection classes. We have had numerous people attend our detection seminars who are interested in the sport of nosework and I am considering adding those odors to her repertoire and titling her in that venue. While teaching tracking clinics I also started her tracking and she quickly picked that up as well.
Amber detecting narcotics:

Amber tracking - first hard surface crossing:

However there is one sport that she both LOVES and seems to be naturally adept at and that is agility. So the plan, until a new home comes along, is to train her for agility. It is also a bit of an adventure for me because, although I have trained a lot of obstacles for other reasons, I have never trained agility with the intention of competing in it. So the goal of the "The Accidental Agility Dog" blog posts is to chronicle our journey into the sport of agility. In the next post I will clarify the "rules" of our little adventure and provide a synopsis of where we are so far....

Thursday, November 1, 2012

It's that time of year again!!!

We have an annual tradition every year a few weeks after Steel's birthday. The start of this tradition is a long story involving a $14.00 plastic pumpkin, lots of driving in circles, Tylenol with codeine and a tiny little puppy that I had no intention of taking home....That day ended with this pic...I was toast and the puppy went home with me a few weeks later.


So it has been an annual tradition to update the original pumpkin picture.
This year, in light of our achievements over the weekend I came up with this brilliant idea:



Steel however, being his father's son, was less than amused.
To him this was a waste of a perfectly good pumpkin (and ribbon).
Don't you just love the pained look on his face?

He did hold his stay though and of course I had to reward good behavior
(plus take about 200 pictures)






Wednesday, October 31, 2012

"Champion Tracker"

I will get back to Amber’s story in a day or so but thought it was only fair that Steel got a little bit of “press”. This weekend, after a long drive north, Steel and I participated in an AKC Variable Surface Tracking test in Wheaton IL. Steel passed the test and is now officially “Champion Tracker" Esmonds Will of Steel. For those of you familiar with the sport you know that the VST has a very low passing rate. The odds of actually winning the entry lottery in order to even make the attempt are also low.
My happiness with him passing the test has very little to do with many of the reasons that people compete in dog sports. I did not do it in order to brag about him; although I think I am justifiably pleased with his performance. I did not do it for my own ego. My biggest feeling following the test is gratitude to Steel for cheerfully being the perfect “laboratory” and allowing me to experiment with training techniques on him. There is a saying “when the teacher is ready the right student will come along”. This has been so true during my career as a dog trainer and I have been fortunate to have numerous students come along at just the right time.
Another saying that has stuck with me was the following "There's are three ways to do something; the wrong way, the proven way and a better way." I have always been dissatisfied with the traditional ways to train dogs to track. Especially for tracks that are aged and/or the scent conditions present challenges to the dog. I have trained a lot of dogs to track (mostly for search & rescue or police work) and also taught tracking to a lot of handlers. However it is not easy to take chances and stray too far away from traditional methods when working with client dogs. Steel on the other hand, was mine, and also provided the perfect amount of raw material to the endeavour. He was not however a “freebie”. He was willing to become what I wanted but it still required no small amount of effort and planning to get him there. He tolerated my analyzing and over analyzing my training methods; striving to find a better way to teach and train and using him as the guinea pig to do it. I will never forget once making a radical change in handling him and the first day he stopped in mid track and looked over his shoulder at me. Giving me a “what the hell!!??” look and then I am sure he went down the track muttering to himself “there she goes again”….
He also taught me several important lessons along the way which effect not just how I train tracking dogs but training in every venue.  We likely could have succeeded without those lessons which makes me even more aware of what a gift they were – almost as if he did it on purpose. Just when I thought I had everything figured out he would open my eyes yet again and show me a better clearer way to train.
This weekend was our second attempt at the VST – we tried at the Rottweiler nationals in May of this year. We drew the alternate position so thus went last in the lineup. By the time we got our turn it was well over 90 degree F. Steel started great and was progressing well but overshot a 90 degree turn on pavement and made the turn on the (much cooler) grass. In no way was I disappointed with his performance although how cool would it have been to pass at the Nationals, with his breeder there and him not being even four years old yet? However he performed the best he could given the conditions and I could not complain.
It did mean however that I would have more time to spend training, not knowing how soon I could get into another test. So I had the freedom to look at my training further and experiment with some things. It is quite common for people to refer to this level of training as a “partnership” or requiring “teamwork” on the part of the dog and handler.  This goes against how we train our dogs for detection. In that case we do our best to teach the dogs to work independently of the handler. We don’t do this by abandoning them but rather shaping their training so they learn that they can successfully solve problems on their own.
So using that premise I looked at my tracking training critically. My goal was to get him to the level of training where I could allow him to run a VST type test basically off leash. This would require him to demonstrate that he had developed the understanding of the unique scent picture “puzzles” that might come up during the test and also have the skills to work through them. So I made some minor but important changes to my training and discovered an amazing thing – my dog knew what he wanted to accomplish and, with me out of the way, was so much better able to self teach himself how to handle weird scent pictures. He has always been a strong and eager tracker. However following that change there was a noticeable change in his demeanour – as if a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. This was so noticeable that I almost felt like I had to apologize for my previous training. And it not like I was a heavy handed handler in any way! I just over thought things and in my desire to teach him the correct method just got in his way - probably more mentally than physically. Although my intention was to "read" him and handle accordingly, thinking I was being part of this so called "partnership", I was in fact in the way and a distraction.
I am not able to fully explain the significance of how grateful I am to Steel for putting me in the position to have that (as Oprah would call it) "ah-ha moment". Fortunately for me he doesn’t require such gratitude or explanations. I do however have to thank my good friend Mary Davis for our long, open ended philosophical discussions of dog training. But most of all I thank Steel for being the right student at the right time. Steel just barely turned four years old so we are a long ways done from training and learning and I can only anticipate what else he has to teach me....
Below is The Superhero following his successful track. The one where I spent 13 minutes hanging on to the end of the tracking line watching him do his thing.  Speaking of that tracking line, I think  I could have easily dropped it on the ground  and walked with the judges
for all the help that Steel needed from me.


Saturday, October 27, 2012

The Accidental Agility Dog - Chapter Three

OK one more post and then I will get to the fun training stuff – at least fun for me and Amber. It might be like watching paint dry for readers….
From the start my approach with Amber was that she was allowed to avoid and/or retreat from anything that scared her. I know the logic initially sounds weird but in hindsight it worked. Knowing she had the means to get herself out of an uncomfortable spot gave her the courage to stick around to appease her curiosity. It was not that she didn’t like people - she just didn’t trust them. Conventional wisdom would have suggested that I give lots of people treats and let people feed her.  The theory being that this would make them less scary. There were a few problems with that. First she was too nervous to eat from people – if she won’t approach then it is hard to get the treat. Secondly I am not sure how well that actually changes the dog perspective – I suspect their new outlook is that sometimes the scary people dispense food. If they offer food then they might be safe enough to approach.
This also gets back to my discussions about reactivity – threshold is very important. If the dog is over threshold then they are overwhelmed by the scary thing and anything that we do is relatively useless. Yes they might be responding to a correction or be eating a treat but their ability to connect either of those events to the trigger (what they are reacting to) is limited. Similarly if they are way under threshold then the “threat” is gone and they don’t learn from the experience. I have some tools that work well with reactivity but in Amber’s case I pretty much allowed her to control her own threshold. Too close and she was free to move away. However what I did not allow her to do was to bolt in a blind panic – if she tried I stopped her. Once she collected herself for even a second we moved away from the fearful thing. We can retreat but we have to do so gracefully….
I also avoided setting her up to have to “deal with” her fearful things. We just went out into the world for travel or training or whatever and if something was spooky then we dealt with it. In a lot of training venues I think people can go crazy with the proofing and I have an issue with it a lot of times. If a dog is reactive (whether it be prey drive,fearfulness etc) how does it help them to teach them that the stimulus that makes them reactive is going to be there each and every time they perform the task? All too often I think proofing goes to a place where the dog feels like he is being setup to fail.
Anyway, getting back to Amber. She has made amazing progress in her ability to cope with the world. She will always be a little environmental “twitchy” I think. She is not crazy about strangers although she can handle them under the right circumstances and on her terms. Like a cat, her first instinct when encountering something suspicious is to retreat to a safe distance and assess the threat level. She also travels like a trooper, going in and out of strange houses, yards and motel rooms willingly. She even spent two weeks hanging out in the van while we were at the FBI Academy. Why was this impressive? Because the van was parked alongside  firing ranges – lots and lots of firing ranges. I don’t think there was a caliber of firearm that did not get shot while we were there. She even did some narcotics detection in the yard while that was going on. Pretty impressive for a girl who freaked out when some kids set off firecrackers last new year’s eve near our yard in MS; if she could have got out of the yard I don’ t think I would have seen her again….
The brave little munchkin alerting on narcotics in a big scary warehouse...

Friday, October 26, 2012

Things that continue to amaze me....

Another Amber installment tomorrow, I promise. However I just had to share this clip of Steel tracking. I have watched a lot of dogs track - but it is one of those things that continues to amaze and impress me.  I remember doing Steel's TDX track and watching him thinking "wow! look at him go!" Calix's first live finds was two kids that had run away from home in the middle of the night. No one was more surprised than me when we came up over the crest of the hill and there were two eight years olds trudging down the side of the road at 3AM. I understand the whole evolutionary basis for tracking and obviously predator species evolved to be able to determine the direction of travel of their prey. However it is not exactly WHAT they do that amazes me - it is trying to figure HOW they do it.....

In this clip Steel is approaching a track from the right. The track goes away from the camera, crosses the sidewalk and goes halfway down to the water and then turns right. He is going to come in from the right, hitting the track perpendicularly and then, within inches, determine the direction of travel. And you can see from his behavior , it is cursory check and then he makes his decision without a doubt.



Monday, October 22, 2012

The Accidental Agility Dog - Chapter Two

In working with people and their dogs “reactivity” is a common problem and one that many people seek help with. My rough working definition of the cause of reactivity is a broad one and encompasses anything that causes an excessive reaction on the part of the dog. I don’t dwell overly much on whether the reaction is “reasonable” or not because it doesn’t change anything; the reactivity is still there and diverts attention from focusing on performance. Likely due to her lack of socialization Amber was reactive to a lot of things. However unlike most of the reactive dogs I work with, her fear response was to panic and run away. If that was not possible she would  turn in tight circles , looking for a “rabbit hole” to drop down in. It would be a challenge to list all of the things that made her fearful, uncomfortable or alarmed when I started working with her. However she also possessed a high degree of natural curiosity for many things.
I would like to say I had a carefully planned out training approach to her rehabilitation. One based on learning theory and dog behavior etc etc. However I pretty much did what seemed right at the moment. One training concept that has always stuck into my mind over many years was a training concept regarding dogs who were uncomfortable on agility obstacles. Often the way to reduce their discomfort was to first teach them how to get off of the obstacle.
This piece of logic has stuck in my head for a long time and I always keep that in mind when working with dogs. It helped me years ago with one of my dogs who was uncomfortable swimming as a young dog. Water was no problem but no way were his paws leaving solid land. Letting him run and play with the big dogs didn't help. Neither did coaxing or throwing coveted toys into the water. Since he was supposed to grow up and be a SAR dog he really needed to know how to swim! I finally determined that with THIS dog I was going to have to teach him to swim. I stood in the water just at the point where his paws would leave the ground and coaxed him to me with food. As soon as he got to me I fed him and while he was eating I gently turned him in a tight circle around my legs (causing his paws to briefly leave the ground) and I pushed him back towards land. I repeated this, gradually moving out into deeper water. In just one session he was comfortable swimming out to me; confident that he had the means to return to land. Once he knew how to save himself he could learn to swim without worrying. As an adult he loved to swim more than any of my other dogs and it always made me so happy to watch him, knowing that he would have missed out on something he loved.
Boy on a mission. Now that he can swim!
Without really thinking about it I applied this basic approach to Amber. The thing that we often fail to realize with behaviors is that there is rarely a lot of thought involved and a lot of emotion. This is true with aggression, fearfulness reactivity; whatever. This is not just true for dogs but that starts to get outside my area of knowledge. These emotions have a physiological, visceral element to them that often does not respond well to reason. Knowing that your fear is not rational does not usually help you get over it! Forcing a dog to "get over it" without giving them coping tools is also relatively ineffective; especially long term. What also helped Amber was that she is my “accessory dog”. She was not a dog I raised from a puppy or paid a lot of money for – I had little invested in her and no big plans for her so that effected how I handled her fearfulness. I even gave her a name that I was relatively ambivalent about; as I was not expecting to keep her. To be honest, this approach probably improved my likelihood of being successful. She could be brave. Or not.
To Be Continued (again)....

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Amber's Story - The Accidental Agility Dog

Almost three years ago I was visiting my current employer here in MS for a trainer’s course. During the course there was a litter of Belgian Malinois puppies, I think they were about 4 months old. There was a little female that caught my eye and right before the end of the class Randy offered her to me. I then spent several days paralyzed with indecision (people who have gone shopping with me for boots or cars or paint know this state well). However since I had three dogs at the time I decided to forgo adding another dog to my group. Upon returning home I lost Dugan unexpectedly to a brain tumor and I then acquired Jill as his potential replacement. 
Amber and her Siblings...

Fast forward about two years and I returned to MS to work here. The little female malinois was still here. Older but essentially a kennel dog and had hardly been off the kennel property. Although she and her siblings were the offspring of two extremely high drive detection dogs, they themselves appeared to have practically no drive. Amber was the only one even remotely interested in a ball and was a half hearted interest at best. During her evaluation she was much more interested in visiting – but only with the three people she knew and trusted and only in her secure home environment.

So I decide to get her some socialization and find a pet home for her. Last December as I was heading out to a training clinic I threw her in the van with my dogs and took her along for the ride. I’ll never forget that first night when I stopped at a hotel and she was terrified of a fire hydrant. Then she was afraid of the flags blowing in the breeze. Having never left the property she was basically afraid of everything and everyone. The next night we arrived at my friend Dawn’s house in Roanoke which in turn brought on a whole new set of novelties. Turning on the TV caused her to bolt for the kitchen. Her natural curiosity overcame her alarm though. First the pointy little head and ears peered around the doorway like a hand puppet and then she very slowly tiptoed back out into the living room. That may have been partly because of another initially new but much less alarming novelty that she had discovered though....

Dawn's Living Room Couch!!

To Be Continued…..

Monday, October 8, 2012

Soda bottles and other "training techniques"

I spent Saturday with Jill at an obedience trial. There were two trials in one day – I had one class early and then one late in the day. So in the meantime I made myself comfortable with Jill and Amber (who went along for the ride) in their crates and relaxed with my nook reader. This nice lady approached me with a cute little golden and asked if I mind helping her. “Sure!” I said, looking for something to do. I quickly came to regret my answer. She proceeded to explain to me that her dog is bad about going to people.  I assume that she was referring to the judge and people in the ring. An overly friendly golden, who woulda thought?? She then handed me a soda bottle full of rocks and instructed me to smash it on the ground if he tried to approach me. I was still standing there in stunned silence, clutching the soda bottle in disbelief, while she attempted to convince him to go to me, encouraging him and telling him “okay”.  Basically setting him up to fail and teaching him that she can’t be trusted. He of course does not make any attempt to get to me. This was clearly not his first rodeo and I am sure he knows better than to approach anyone holding at soda bottle.

This dog, being an obviously resilient golden, went on to compete in the utility ring and did relatively well. I can’t remember if he qualified or not but overall he performed okay; if not a bit robotically.  All I could think about though was if this woman was willing to treat him in such a manner at a trial what is his training life like at home?  It is a shame that there is not a direct correlation between such training techniques and poor performance – while dogs have certainly been treated more cruelly and unfairly, it certainly says volumes about the type of relationship she has with her dog.

In my career as a police dog and SAR dog handler, my dogs have done some amazing things. Things that required them to think and problem solve. They had to perform completely independently of me. If they had not been successful I would never have known. Dugan alerted on a drowned person who was under 134’ feet of water. He found a person who had been missing for over 24 hours. Calix tracked two boys who had run away from home. He located a murder weapon that had been tossed from a moving vehicle into weeds on the side of a highway. Nothing drives me as nuts as seeing people, like this woman, treat dogs like mindless dumb animals.  I find in the competition obedience environment that I have to turn a blind eye to a lot of that.  People seem to have tunnel vision when it comes to the exercises and fail to see the big picture. Like the person I watched at a run through who had to block the gate to keep his dog from running out of the ring. I wonder if he ever considered the reason why his dog was wanting to bolt from the ring?

While Jill is not yet exactly perfect in her performances we were approached by several different people at the trial who commented on how much they loved her attitude. Many of the “pros” argue that enthusiasm and attitude will lose points. I can name several people (i.e. Denise Fenzi among others) who are obviously able to get attitude AND high scores. However even if it they were not – does that justify using other training methods for a sport? Isn’t that pretty much admitting that it is more about the ego than the relationship with the dog? I  did not mean to turn my blog into a rant against competitive obedience, it is proving a good outlet for Jill’s energy now that she is no longer doing SAR training. However I think next time I go to a trial I will take my headphones along with my e reader!

Jilly Bean btw managed to achieve a second and a third place in her respective obedience classes. And I didn’t even need a soda bottle full of rocks to train her!!
Here is a ribbon that I won for you.....

Monday, October 1, 2012

Keeping a dog from chewing a bandage: Patent Pending...

Like everything in life, there is always more to learn in dog training. At this point I don't feel like I am coming across brilliant new ideas on how to do things but rather constantly considering (but not always accepting) the way people do things and then determining if they fit my training goals and philosophy. You can learn something from almost everyone, even if it is seeing a perfect example of how I won't train or how I don't want my dog to look while he is working. Interestingly I find that it is quite common to come across people who have independently had the same "original idea" that I had. This is particularly so when I share a training philosophy with someone.

However I do have one original idea and have yet to see anyone else use it. A little background first though:

While I was away in Australia Jill, in her boredom developed a small little lick granuloma on her front paw. Whether she did something to the paw and then created the granuloma by licking it, or she was just bored and felt the need to lick her foot, I am not sure. However once it starts it is easy and tempting for the dog to keep licking it. Even a super good girl like her. This required a bandage to keep her from messing with it while it healed (which it is doing nicely).

Step One: the Vermont staple for all injuries. Bag Balm. My ex-father-in-law once practically cut his thumb off with an axe. His doctor was amazed at how well it had healed - to which he admitted to a liberal use of bag balm on the injury.I don't know exactly why but its magical....


Step Two: non stick pads to keep the bandage from sticking

Step Three: strips of vet wrap go over the pad. Then covered by adhesive tape strips.


Step Four: And finally the secret ingredient. Baking Soda and Peroxide Toothpaste.
DOGS HATE IT.
Dab some onto your fingers and wipe it over the top of the adhesive tape.

Don't ask how I discovered this but it works very well keeping dogs from messing with bandages and anything that allows them to avoid the "lampshade" is a good thing!



Sunday, September 30, 2012

What I think veterinarians need to know about dog training: Part Two

In addition to understanding dog body language we also need to recognize the influence that breed has on the dog’s personality and behavior. Different breeds are not just dogs that look different. Selection has acted upon a great many of the natural characteristics of the dog, enhancing certain traits for the benefit of man.  However some of these characteristics also influence how well the dog adapts to living with humans. Take guardian breeds for example - german shepherds, rottweilers etc. They have been selectively bred to look after a “flock” of some type. It would be a pretty poor guardian that, when faced with something unfamiliar and potentially risky, just discounts it as not worth worrying about. However this illustrates the importance of strong leadership and extensive socialization in this type of dog. The former creates deference to the leader in dealing with a potential threat and the later allows the dog to recognize things that are familiar and not worth alarm.
Notice that I said leadership. Distinctly different from dominance. People respect a leader; they fear and are intimidated by someone who is overly dominant. Dogs perform behaviors because they are reinforcing in some way. They live in the moment and if they can do something and get reinforced for it they will. Much of a dog’s response is a manifestation of emotional state – aggression is often coming from a place of fear and insecurity. Training and behavior modification methods that address the symptoms rather than the cause are merely suppressing the behavior and creating a potentially more dangerous animal. However in talking about breeds and traits in individuals it is also important to recognize that, sadly, it is NOT always about how the dog was raised. Indiscriminate and irresponsible breeding must take its share of the blame for a great many problems, including problems in temperament and behavior.
This leads into the last section – “how dogs learn stuff”. Dogs learn in one of two ways – classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Classical conditioning – the dog learns to make an association between an event/stimulus and another stimulus. For example Pavlov’s dogs learned that the ringing of the bell was associated with food. A primary conditioner is one that the dog reacts to without conditioning. A secondary conditioner is one in which the stimulus has no initial meaning – such as Pavlov’s bell.
Operant conditioning – the dog develops an association between a behavior and a potential outcome.  Most of us rely on operant conditioning in order to train dogs (and kids and husbands for that matter). However there is a vast variation in HOW people take advantage of operant conditioning.
Operant Conditioning: the options and their pros and cons: 

REWARD
PUNISH
POSITIVE
(we are adding something)

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
(i.e. dog gets a treat for a behavior). Requires good timing, the reward has to have value over other options, dog has to be in correct mental state to see association (not over aroused or stressed), satiation may occur with food.


POSITIVE PUNISHMENT
(i.e. a bad consequence happens as a result of an action)
Requires good timing , alternative behavior is often not clear (suppression only), can be associated with other things beside the behavior (place, person), hard to control the scale, dog has to be in correct mental state to understand association, inhibits independent thinking 

NEGATIVE
(we are taking something away)
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
take away something bad that is happening (i.e. release stimulus from e collar when dog performs correct behavior). Causes stress, inhibits experimentation, difficult to keep dog in mental state to understand association
NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT
Remove something that is good. The good has to have a very high value.


Following my “Reader’s Digest” version of dog training and behavioral modification I spoke for a bit on how all this applies to police dog training. Steel happens to think K9 demos are just an opportunity for people to celebrate his birthday (after all everyday is his birthday!). So he was only too happy to demonstrate his drug detection skills and, true to character, elicit a few laughs in the process. If anyone thinks that dogs don’t have a sense of humor then they have never met Steel who stands a little bit taller and smiles a bit bigger when he gets a laugh from an audience.
Behold the scary police dog during his last K9 demo to a group of 5th graders:

Friday, September 28, 2012

What I think veterinarians need to know about dog training: Part One


Recently I was asked to give a presentation to the Mississippi State Veterinary School’s Behavior Club. I spoke to about 90 vet students on dog behavior and training. It was a challenge to distill down into two hours the things that I think are most important about dog training and behavior. This a topic after all is one that I can, and have, spent days talking about! Having worked at a vet school for a great many years I also know that there is a surprisingly very wide range in the degree of animal knowledge and skill amongst veterinary students. This is especially true in regards to their understanding the non-medical aspects of our interactions with animals. In the first part of my talk I wanted to make a brief overview of training and behavior and then get to police dog training and demos.
So here is what I consider most important for the former part:
First, dogs are not wolves. Comparing dog behavior to wolf behavior is a flawed way to understand dogs.  There is a very wide genetic divergence in the canid family tree between wolves and dogs. Dogs have been selectively bred for a great many characteristics and traits that make them compatible with humans and pretty poorly functioning wolves. Much of the wolf observations that have led people to apply wolf behavior to dogs were based on observations of captive wolves. These were often unrelated animals existing in an artificial environment.  Don’t get me wrong; I think wolf behavior is fascinating, but it should not be depended on to interpret domestic dog behavior.
Second, people are not dogs. We cannot interact with dogs as if we were a wolf or another dog – they can learn our communication skills and we can learn theirs. We can find some common bonds – I can understand their distance increasing signals and they can figure out sarcastic humor. However we have to acknowledge that, no matter how good our communication skills are, we are still interacting as two different species. I suspect that dogs regard some of us who try to emulate dog body language as akin to the person who goes to a foreign country and tries to speak the language very slowly and much louder than necessary. Just hang a big “I ain’t from around here” sign on your neck.
Third, it IS extremely important to understand the dog’s body language. But learn this from a person with a proven knowledge base, not a self declared expert without real credentials at training or behavior modification. Veterinarians especially need to understand the behavioral and physiological effects of stress. At a minimum they need to learn to recognize distance increasing signals – behaviors that dogs exhibit in order to avoid a confrontation, the “please don’t make me have to bite you” behavior. A good resource is Brenda Aloff’s Photographic Guide to Dog Body Language; it is excellent and should be on every dog trainer’s book shelf.
To Be Continued….(See I said there was a lot of information! I had to talk really fast!)

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I hear voices.....


One of the things I like about dog training is that even though it is not exactly rocket science, there is an art to it. You are constantly learning and tweaking what you do and trying to figure out better ways to do something. All dogs are different, for most tasks I have a certain process for training them but it can’t be so set in stone so as to not be flexible based on the specific dog I am training.
One of the things that can be maddening about dog training is all of the above…  Even after a great many years of dog training, at relatively high levels in a number of venues, there are still lightbulb moments. Moments when some brilliant observation pops into my head while training. Immediately following that is the other voice in my head (what? You only have one??) that says “Well duh! Took you long enough to figure that out!”

Working with Jill has provided some perfect examples of this. Jill initially started out her career with me in training to be my next SAR dog. However since I took my new job and am not doing SAR, she needed some other outlets for her drive and energy. One of those is competition obedience; she has been to a total of 7 trials now, qualifying in all and placing in all but one. Most importantly she LOVES to do it and seems to enjoy trialing.  She has been interesting to train because she is my first personal dog who came to me as an adult. While she had very little training and no formal obedience, she does have a VERY high desire to work and to please. The combination of her being an adult and so eager to please makes it easy to assume mastery immediately after she learns something and performs it well. She skips steps on her own and you can chain behaviors together faster that with a younger dog. Every once in a while however I notice a spot where I need to go back and reinforce a single aspect of the exercise a little more heavily  - such as the automatic sit while heeling. For a while I noticed Jill was treating it as an afterthought. She did it but it was not sharp and did not match the crispness and enthusiasm of her heeling. Then I realized I was treating it as an after thought too. Then the voice in my head called me names and made fun of my training. Well no…not really on that last part. But close….A few sessions of heavy reinforcement for the sit then gradually decreasing the rate and now the automatic sit presents the same animated picture as her heeling in motion.

I hate it when the voice in my head is right……

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Their greetings match their personalities....

I rarely leave my dogs for any length of time. Actually, up until these past few weeks, I NEVER leave my dogs for any length of time. However with the exception of Amber I would have been surprised if anyone had any issues being left with Dawn. First of all they are used to going there often, so often that Dawn should start charging us rent. Dawn also works from home and has the skill and experience to manage them along with all of her dogs. They are also easy going, low maintenance dogs (again except for Amber) so I was pretty certain they would adjust just fine; which they did. Their responses upon my return however were quite different - which should not have surprised me, given the difference in personalities.

Jill of course was over the moon with happiness. Her greeting was effusive and prolonged. She did not let me out of her sight for the rest of the night, slept on top of me on the bed and is still, several days later, making sure she stays as nearby as possible. Her demeanor is not upset or needy, just very very happy. So happy in fact that she nailed a first place competing in obedience today, after us not having trained in practically a month.

Jilly Bean with her first place medallion


Calix's response was also typical to his personality. He is the loving but rather self centered GUY of the group. He came racing over, jumped on me, vocalized his happiness and then went about his returned-to-normal life. As a friend described it, it is a bit like when you lose your wallet and then find it. Your are happy and relieved and then you pop it back into your purse or pocket and go on with your life. I think I am a wallet to Calix.....



"You mean it's NOT all about me??"


Amber, unlike the rest of the gang, has trouble coping with normal everyday life. She tends to cling to routine and look for predictability in her day - something that is rare in my life. She needs careful management in order to avoid developing separation anxiety or other behavior problems. I have to keep her mental state in mind but not cater to her issues. She also isn't comfortable with people outside of her inner circle and while she had met Dawn it was only in association with me. She was pretty freaked out for the first few days and then adapted to looking to Dawn for her needs and decided that Dawn could be trusted. She was VERY glad to see me, however if I am away for a few hours I get the exact same greeting.


The little weird girl.....

Steel, had a hard time with the greeting because there was something else in the room that was almost as good as my arrival. He apparently developed a strong attachment to Dawn's boyfriend, who was kind enough to pick me up at the airport. So he was like "MOM'S HOME!" "But MARK'S HERE!" but "MOM'S HOME". As usual it was as if we planned all of that especially for him, Mr "Every-Day-is-My- Birthday".  He did come sneaking up to me at bedtime and press his forehead against me to get some snuggling. After all, when you are a big tough police dog with muscles you have to maintain an image in public. It is hard to be tough when you work for your mother though....


Momma's Boy, just don't tell anyone.....