It's not a drug deal....really

The little female rottweiler puppy looking for a permanent home is on her way to Florida!

Here is how it all worked out, thanks to the power of the internet. I posted her pic on Facebook and Mike, one of my former SAR teammates in Vermont, knew someone in Florida who had just lost her 12 year old rottweiler and she wanted a pup. However she was 13 hours away - too far to drive in one day.

I then posted the dilemma on a private rottweiler discussion forum and Kathy, who had just been in Texas showing her dogs, knew a dog handler headed to Florida. Ashley was leaving this morning from Dallas, headed to Orlando and said she would be happy to pick the pup up on her way through Jackson.

So the pup's "foster mom" delivered her to me this morning and I arranged to meet Ashley south of the city at a Mc Donalds off of the interstate.  I arrived about 20 minutes early and after a few laps of the parking lot (it was also a truck stop) settled in a spot where I could see the exit ramp. I had no idea what kind of vehicle she was driving but I knew it was big enough to hold a lot of dogs - so I was guessing motor home or big van.

I am sitting there with the engine running, watching the interstate, when I notice some activity across the parking lot. Three guys wearing body armour over their civilian (undercover) clothing, firearms in holsters, were walking a handcuffed woman to a nondescript vehicle.

So having been in law enforcement for a while, I got to thinking about my situation....

So you're waiting for a woman to pick up a puppy?
Yes.
Where does she live?
I am not sure....
What is her last name?
I don't know....
What kind of car is she driving?
I am not sure.
Who is getting the puppy?
A woman named Penny who lives in Florida.
Where does Penny live?
Somewhere near Venice....
Have you ever met Penny?
No.
Have you ever met Ashley?
No.
How do you know Ashley?
A woman named Kathy gave me her number.
Have you ever met Kathy?
No.
Is this your puppy?
No. It belongs to a woman I met in a vet hospital parking lot...
Is this your car?
No it's my boss's.

Add that to the scrap of paper with people's first names and random phone numbers on the console and the fact I probably wouldn't be able to find the registration or insurance - I am so stuffed into the back of that camry in handcuffs. I mean seriously, who would believe such a story?? Lucky for me I obviously got there AFTER the undercover surveillance was over....




I am headed to Florida....Lucy is going to jail....



Amber Update

An update and a little bit more about Amber. She is a 2 year old Belgian Malinois. For those that aren't familiar with them, malinois in general are like german shepherds on crack. They are high energy dogs in a fast, athletic body. Amber is the offspring of two outstanding detection dogs. Her momma, Chuna, lives at the training center and is the boss's demo dog for detection classes. Her dad, Chico, used to live here but is now a drug dog for the Hinds County Sheriff's Department.

Momma Chuna - no she is not ignoring that ball,
she is just waiting until it is EXACTLY on the odor source.

Then this happens....

And Daddy Chico in action....

Amber has lived here at the kennels since she was born. Amber is very sweet and inherited all the socialness of both of her parents. However when she was tested she was much more interested in visiting with us rather than showing any interest in tennis balls. So she was not trained as a detection dog. She also is a bit environmentally sensitive - she has not seen a lot of things and often needs to check them out carefully before deciding that they are harmless. It is hard to know how much of that is because she has not been out in the world too much but there is a definite genetic component to that as well.

Since she was deemed as not having enough drive for detection work (we want VERY high drive dogs for that) the plan was to find a home for her. However that has not happened and since I liked her (I almost took her home as a puppy) I decided to take her with me and my dogs on recent training trip to VA and SC. It was good for her to get some socializing and see the world and my hope was that she would meet someone that would fall in love with her and want her.

My master plan (someone falling in love with her) backfired a little in that I really liked her and everyone who met her thought she should stay with me instead.  Amber didn't really do anything to convince them otherwise. She is pretty reserved with strangers - those of us who know her practically end up wearing her but she is barely willing to take food from strangers. She is a fun little dog though and I have been working her through her environmental sensitivity, she is learning a little bit of agility and obedience and has amazed me with how well she has taken to tracking.

She is still looking for a home but in the meantime I am learning what works best with a shy dog - quite the opposite o what I am used to, which is pushy obnoxious dogs who wont leave people alone! In the next post I will give more details on what specifically I am working on with her.

More of what I am used to! The opposite of shy and reserved!



Amazing creativity

I had planned to add another installment with the "critter quiver" in action (for dog training that is, not coyote hunting). However the weather did not cooperate with my plans but I will try to get video soon so you can all see poor Steel's eyes bug out of his head!

Over the weekend I went to a big crafts festival at the fairgrounds. "Crafts" covers a multitude of things, from someone making birdhouses in their garage to people carving beautiful bowls out of wood. This craft festival was a lot of the latter, over 200 amazingly creative people. Lots of jewelry, woodworking, all kinds of pottery and other unique things. It was like being in a museum; especially since most everything was pretty expensive!

However the best exhibit was the artist that created this:

Quite pretty but what is even more impressive is that the whole thing is made of metal, primarily tin and copper and then hand painted. The photos do not do justice to the level of detail in the sculptures. You cant help but touch them and even then it is weird because what you feel in your hand is nothing like you expect. You just can't believe that they aren't real plants.

They were amazing. Here are a few more:

The artist is William Wood, he lives in Clinton Mississippi. Sadly no website otherwise I would post the link.

The timeclock in his head?

Maybe it is the scientist in me but I find one of the most enjoyable things about dog training is is when the dog does something "wrong" and, as a result, shows me that he is smarter than I thought and that he is doing exactly as I have taught him. Take Steel's training session today as a simple example. He is doing very nice attentive heeling, very animated and prancey with great eye contact. Okay he forges a tiny bit (by AKC obedience rules) and I need to work a little on that before it becomes a habit but his animation is often so beautiful to watch (I mean cars sometimes slow down to watch as they are going by) that I hate to mess with it.

Below is Steel heeling without a major distraction nearby. Please note - Although I am posting this I am well aware that he is not yet "perfect", however I guess that would depend on how I personally define perfect. This is training, training is a process, something to be enjoyed in my opinion. Videotaping is an excellent way for me to determine what I want to emphasize and work on. You wouldn't think I would need to say that but apparently I do....

Since he is getting pretty solid with the behavior and has had a lot of rehearsal time, today I decided to add a distraction. The distraction I used is called a "CRITTER QUIVER". It is basically a battery operated stuffed bunny that sits on a spike and has a little seizure in the middle of the training yard. Yea that's right.... I happened to see it as I was wandering through Dick's Sporting Goods. It is for coyote hunting, presumably the coyote thinks it is a real bunny???

"critter quiver"

Steel quickly reminded me that although we have not done much official sport obedience training, he is well used to distraction training in many other contexts. As soon as he spotted that bunny he was ready to go (those of you have met his father will have no trouble picturing this). However he also immediately saw it for what it was. It was A DISTRACTION. So he did not look at it, he just offered me VERY animated heeling. As if to say "how well do I have to heel to get you to release me to go play with that thing?!" After about 20 seconds of heeling his animation would drop just a bit and he would start making motions to go toward the distraction, without losing eye contact.  Why? Because this is what I had taught him. I have played similar games with him since he was a puppy - asking him for a behavior that required him to ignore what he wanted (person, toy, decoy, food) and then, when he is offering me the behavior that I want, releasing him to go to it. This is how all of his narcotics training has been. I show him the reward object, he finds the narcotics, he gets the reward. See the decoy, ignore it, get released to get a bite.That is the way it has always worked. And, like the rest of us, I am a creature of habit and Steel clearly has an idea in his head of just how long to typically offer a behavior before expecting to get what he wants. Everything in his behavior today told me just how well he understood the game according to the rules that I had clearly taught to him.

As an exercise when teaching I often ask my students to picture what the dog would write if he sat down with a piece of paper and a pen and described the exercise.  Steel's answer to the above exercise would go like this (he would write in bold with all caps and exclamation points because that's the kind of dog he is):

"WHEN I SEE SOMETHING I REALLY WANT, I DO THE BEHAVIOR THAT LUCY ASKS FOR  REALLY REALLY WELL FOR 22 SECONDS. THEN SHE RELEASES ME AND I GET TO HAVE IT!!!!"

I am guessing on the exact amount of time but I bet it is that precise. So you can see the points of confusion in this exercise - I was expecting him to hold the behavior indefinitely and I was not releasing him to the bunny. Was this a major problem for the training? No. It did make me laugh while I was training though when I realized just how well Steel understood the game by the rules that I had taught. And also how well the clock in his head worked. He would do about 20 seconds of prancing heeling with a big goofy grin on his face, then make a motion toward the distraction, then offer about another 20 seconds of prancing heeling (like perhaps I had not noticed the first session), then a motion towards the bunny. It was, to be honest, pretty funny to watch.  It also did remind me though how much dogs can teach us when we look at behavior a little bit deeper and don't immediately assume that they are wrong.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science
, the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'  -Isaac Asimov

Puppy looking for home!

I pulled into the driveway at home/work (they are the same thing) yesterday after doing some training with Jill and Steel. As I got out of the car I noticed this lady walking a little rottweiler puppy over to me. She picks it up and says "Do you know anyone who might want her? I found her on the side of the road." Seriously? I am looking around thinking this has to be a setup. Like I dont have 2 rottweilers, a german shepherd and a malinois in a tiny apartment. She is cute and feisty (but not in a bad way) and certainly seems none the worse for wear in spite of her rocky start. She was found dumped about a month ago (at probably at about 5 weeks old). She has goofy puppy ears and she also has a tail (very similar to Jill's). Here in the south there are no shortage of people wanting rottweilers or pitbulls and males are much more popular than females with those same type of people. In fact the woman fostering her has had several people call wanting the pup, but only if it is a male - which (rightfully so) raised a red flag with her.

Fortunately it is much easier to find a home for a cute rottie puppy than it is for a shy malinois girl so I have a few possibilities that I am working on.

Happy Birthday Noscha!!

This is Noscha! She turned 13 years old today and except for being a little bit slower and a lot more grayer, she is still going strong. She was buddies with both Dugan and Bevan. She is a retired police dog and also shared a lot of trainings with Calix.  He was too much of a jackass though for her to consider him her buddy, she likes men with a little bit more sophistication and better manners.

I always thought she looked a bit like Yoda....now she REALLY does!

Her handler Kim is a law enforcement officer for the US Forest Service and she now lives in Washington State. We worked together in Vermont, half of my Town was National Forest lands so we saw each other quite often.

Noscha didn't get a lot of deployments over her long career but she was with Kim on every shift while they worked alone out in the middle of nowhere. Noscha is a sweetheart but did not hesitate to announce her presence in Kim's vehicle when necessary. Noscha was also more than willing to show that girls could to be police dogs and bite just as hard as the boys to anyone who wanted to be her decoy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOSCHA!!! You are a teenager now!



Who are you calling old??



Dugan and Noscha hiking to spruce peak together years ago.

Horses and Cowboys...what's not to like?

Another thing you wont see much in Vermont - today I watched the US Team Roping Championships. I actually meant to go to a crafts festival and do some christmas shopping. However I had the wrong weekend for that so I went to the Farmers Market which was also at the fairgrounds. And then I noticed lots of horses (and cowboys) so I went and watched horses (and cowboys) compete in team roping.  A speedy little calf wearing a helmet (seriously, it is to give him tiny little horns I guess) is released from a chute. One guy ropes him around his "horns" and the other gets him by the heels. I am not sure when the time starts (they are required to give the calf a head start) but it ends when they have both ropes on him and both horses are facing the calf.

Being the animal trainer, I would love to know how much of this depends on the skill of the horse vs. the guys doing the roping. Obviously you have to have some precision "steering" to get the horse in the right spot to throw the rope? Anyway it was very entertaining. I wasn't sure about taking pictures because no one else watching was, maybe they are just not from Vermont and see this all the time? I grabbed some pics though, without using my flash of course, and no one yelled at me or gave me dirty looks so here they are.

That horse looks like he has a plan:

Stand-off: "You move." "No you move."

 Is it just me or does it seem like it would be easier to rope the horns rather than the back feet? Easy is probably a relative term.

Coming from the land of over indulged, catered to horses who are practically wrapped in bubble wrap it cracked me up how these guys left horses pretty much anywhere. This guy jumped off of his horse in order to get a calf through the gate. Look at his horse waiting patiently....

Same with this guy. I swear his rider said "stay" as he left him tethered to the fence.