Castles in the Sky

"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning,

and yet I'm happy.

I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?"
                                                              ~Charles M. Schulz

The leaves are off the trees, the snow has fallen, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and the herd beasts and I have settled into our winter routines. The dogs and I are chuggin' along toward the accomplishment of our goals - with one exception.

Three guesses who, and the first two don't count.

"I like to eat dirt."

It's not that things are going poorly for Rubi or that she's not making any progress. I just don't know where I'm going with her. Up until now, my only goal for her has been "Suck less." A worthy goal, and one we're making steady progress toward but not exactly measurable or timely.

When I first decided to adopt B, I had high hopes to get involved in an active sport like weight pull or agility. Unfortunately, I've come to the reluctant conclusion that she just isn't physically sound enough to do these things. I briefly considered dock diving - it's active and low impact - but I find my own strong adversion to water makes this option unappealing. There's always obedience and/or rally. B already has all the novice rally exercises down, but I just don't feel that this is something she would enjoy. Be able to do, yes; title at, sure. But it'd be like jamming a square peg in a round hole - uncomfortable for both of us. And of course, there's a therapy title, but right now that's so far into the future as to seem impossible.

Whenever I pick a sport for my dogs, I try to pick something they have a natural aptitude and enjoyment for. Maus loves nose work; Piper Ann can't find treats if you point to them on the floor. Piper Ann loves obedience; Allister despises anything that involves sitting still. Could I force any of them to do these things? Sure, but why? And to whose benefit? Certainly not the dogs'.

So what is Rubi good at, and what does she enjoy?

At the core of her, Rubi's reactivity and other "problems" arise from her passion for, well, everything. Rubi lives her life with gusto, do ALL the things, ALL at once! Joy! She's thrilled to be anywhere, doing anything, enthusiastic to the last hair on her body. Everything she does, she does with all that she has, even sleep! (Trying to wake B up in the morning is always an adventure - she sleeps like she's hungover. Possibly due to being drunk on life the during her waking hours). She is her own furry deity of happiness.

Well. That's helpful.

Do they make titles in being good at life?

Actually, they do. A few years ago, the APDT created the Canine Life and Social Skills (C.L.A.S.S.) program. Unlike the AKC's Canine Good Citizen test, which was developed as an entry to comeptitive sports, C.L.A.S.S. was designed to test dogs on real skills important for dealing in a world that's crawling with people. As with many sports, there are three levels: BA, MA, and PhD. At the "novice" or BA level, the dogs (and handlers!) are tested on their ability to wait before going through a door, come, loose leash walking and attention, meeting an unfamiliar person, leave it, wait for a food bowl, stay, settle, and give up a treat. There are also bonus activities that allow you to pass "with honors."

All of these are activities that I feel are important enough that B is already familiar with them. Maybe not familiar enough to pass the test, but that gives us something to work toward. Working on these exercises will also give me a concrete measure of B's progress. I'm fairly certain that the BA level would give her a lot of trouble if we had to take it today. But with a few months of polish, I bet we do fine.

So, now I have a goal. All I have to figure out now is how to get from point A to point B.

"Point B" Get it? Ha! I'm punny.

Rubi's Threshold Continuum

Because sometimes it's helpful to write stuff down.

Stage One:
-sleeping or extremely drowsy
-requires excessive encouragement to move
-gives me dirty looks for touching her/talking to her/being awake
-occasional groans, does whine/bark in her sleep
-does not wag tail

Stage Two:
-tail wagging
-spine relaxed
-responds readily to requests
-learns new activities easily
-occasional paw raises
-mild panting
-occasional tongue flicks
-seeks out affection

Stage Three:
-tail wagging
-body slightly tense
-moderately difficult to teach new behaviors
-generalizes old behaviors easily
-pupils dialate
-frequent paw raises and tongue flicks
-2-3 closed-mouth whines per minute
-accepts all food rewards
-moderate panting
-interested in enviroment, but easily redirected to task at hand
-mild hypervigilance

Stage Four:
-tail wagging
-unable to focus on new behaviors
-generalizes old behaviors with difficulty
-pupils dialated
-frequent paw raises, tongue flicks, and closed-mouth whines
-1-2 open mouth whines per minute
-accepts only high value food rewards
-frequently distracted by enviroment, moderately difficult to redirect
-moderate panting
-mild whale eye and hypervigilance
-holds weight balanced in forequarters
-frequency playbows if interacting with new dogs
-aggressively sniffs the ground

Stage Five:
-tail wagging
-constant lunging into enviroment
-does not redirect from focus
-moderate panting
-near constant open-mouth vocalizations
-does not accept food
-pupils dialated
-unable to preform well-known behaviors
-mild whale eye

Opportunity

Rubi's had a busy November, and we haven't even hit mid-month yet.

Last week ARLP's Rott n' Pit Ed had to temporarily move from their nice, warm, cozy indoor space to an outdoor park. Rubi really needs work on "dogs outside on leash," so we braved the November wind to crash the party.

It went really well. Can I say how much I love that Rubi has a threshold? There is a distance at which she can see another dog and be pretty okay with it. I know I've mentioned it before, but it's like pictures of her relaxing on her mat around other dogs - it's cool every time it happens. We started out at about seventy-five yards away from the other dogs, and slowly worked are way up to the class over about forty-five minutes. We ended up close enough that we could've joined class, but at least two of the other dogs we mildly to moderately reactive, and I didn't want to disrupt them. Also, the park was crawling with other people's dogs, so we had plenty to watch.

RNPed's instructor, Jen, hadn't seen Rubi since before I adopted her (I think). Jen has B in class briefly before when Rubi was with on of her previous foster homes. After class, when everyone else had left and we had watched them leave, Jen turned to us and said, "Wow, I didn't hear her scream once. Nice job." This could be the best compliment anyone has ever given me about Rubi.

Saturday was ARLP's volunteer appreciation dinner (yum, pasta bar), and since I was speaking, I brought Rubi along as a demo dog. She proceeded to whore herself to everyone looking at her which, since she was demo dog, was everyone but me. The situation was easily remedied by increasing my rate of reinforcement and switching to higher value treats, but still, it's always a little disappointing when your dogs don't behave as well as you expect them to. I attribute most of her inattention to waiting so long to work and then how hot the room was. Rubi has never tolerated heat well. On the up side, Rubi was pretty happy to chill in her crate with a Kong in a room with 50+ people and a live band. That's a handy thing to know your dog is capable of. Rubi also got a nice certificate for our trophy wall for her participation in the Dog Safety Program (you should click on that link and go see the new, cute picture of Rubi on the website).

Late and groggy the next morning, Rubi and I packed up again to work with the dogs at RNPed. This day did not go as well as last week. She threw two tantrums. The first was entirely my fault for not having eyes in the back of my head and missing a dog behind us until it started barking. We went back to the car for a little while for a time out. I was really happy to see that B's car/canine behaviors are still excellent, considering how much we worked on them last winter and how little we worked on them over the summer.

Rubi's second tantrum was a case of not being able to control other people. I asked someone to keep their distance, and they did not. It's still my fault for not being able to protect my dog, but if I never wanted things like this to happen, we would be spending all our time in the basement where there are no strange dogs and no windows. Sometimes bad things happen no matter how hard you try to keep them at bay. It's simply the way of the world. That doesn't mean if I see a similar situation in the future that I'm not going to do my best to avoid it; I'm just not going to beat myself up over it this time.

Luckily for me, Rubi is not Maus, and is still able to function after having an "episode." Fifteen minutes after arriving, we were able to join the other dogs for class.

There are five new-to-Rubi dogs in the above picture. There are also two unknown dogs within twenty feet that aren't in the picture, plus one Andy a picnic table away. A new behavior that I've noticed recently is that B has been more comfortable sitting still and watching the other dogs than moving and watching the other dogs. So while before Rubi needed to be doing something around the other dogs or she'd find something to do, now she seems more comfortable sitting next to me doing auto watches or on her mat doing, um, mat things. I'm not sure what's causing the change, but I can't say I' upset about it. It's a lot easier to stay still around other dogs than it is to find an exercise that's moving but not moving too much and getting her more excited.

Rubi had a very good class by our standards. She was able to generalize a behavior to a new object - fetching a leash and targeting on a plastic lid. Rubi continues to have difficulty hearing other dogs. As you know, this isn't a new issue, but it's been sustained long enough without improvement that I think I need to find a new way of dealing with it. Maybe I should buy one of those dogs barking desensitization CDs? In addition to being able to learn, Rubi was also willing to play tug with me, although she wasn't as focused as she is, say, at home.

Training Rubi is a full contact sport.

 (photo by Paige Reyes)

All in all, we started out rough but finished nicely. Then on the way home, Rubi attacked and killed a giraffe. So I made a blanket from its skin for her. Thank you for reading the whole blog entry.

My dog is bad ass. 

Ken Ramirez: The Path to Enlightened Training

It's a really awesome time to be a dog trainer. There's so much new information coming out to improve not only behavior and training but also our relationship with dogs. Ken Ramirez isn't just a dog trainer. He's the executive vice-president of animal collections and animal training at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. He's in charge of about 3,200 animals (and people think I have a lot of critters), and he's trained not only marine mammals, but also snapping turtles, sharks, and komodo dragons. Ken says learning principles are the same across all species. "You can train a Harvard graduate the same way you teach an earthworm," Ken tells us.

Well, he should know.

On Sunday, Ken started by talking to us about two types of reinforces: primary and secondary. A primary reinforcer is "inherently reinforcing" like food, water, or sex. Ken also puts the "drives" into this category, so play, prey, social interaction, and so on. However, he adds that while the drives themselves are primary reinforcers, but the object of the drive must be learned.   

Huh, what?

Okay, take play drive: your dog has a natural desire to play. But he or she has to learn to play with a toy - the object of the drive. I personally think that play drive is fascinating all in itself. Play in predators is usually practice for hunting. So the same behaviors you see in prey drive tend to come out in play. Hunting in wolves is broken down into six parts: orient -> eye -> stalk -> chase -> grab-bite -> kill-bite (Coppinger, Dogs). Selective breeding of dogs has created exaggerations in the hunting pattern. Border collies, for example, have been bred with an exaggerated eye and stalk but little to no kill-bite. By knowing which of your dog's hunting behaviors have been exaggerated (note I said "your dog" not "your dog's breed"), you can better pick out an effective toy for training and engaging play drive.

So, let's look at Rubi. She a terrier, so you'd think grab-bite would be a big one for her. She does love to play tug, but more than that, she loves to chase. Squirrels, anyone? She'll drop any tug for the chance to chase her big red ball. Unfortunately, throwing a ball is not the greatest real life reward for training. It works, but once the ball is out of my hands, I have no control of it. Plus we don't always have the space for me to throw a ball.

Here's where Ken's method for teaching secondary reinforcers may come in handy. A secondary reinforcer "acquires its reinforcing value through association with primary reinforcers." So you can teach a dog to enjoy a secondary reinforcer of your choosing by associating it with a primary reinforcer. Ken uses the example of pairing food (primary) with clapping your hands (secondary). But I'd like to try increasing Rubi's desire for a tug toy. This has the benefit of engaging two primary reinforcers: play and food. I feel like this should increase the strength of the secondary reinforcer (aka, the tug toy), but maybe I'm just American and think that more is better.

Anyway, according to Ken's method, we first train the tug by pairing it with food. So, present tug, tug tug, food. This has the advantage of teaching the dog to release the tug  - always tricky - by having them drop it to get food. Lather, rinse, repeat through several sessions until the dog lights up when they see the tug. Then ask for a simple, well established behavior, mark the behavior, and tug. Do this a maximum of three times in a training session. Once the dog is working well for for the tug, ask for a harder, well established behavior. Work your way up until you're asking for harder, newer behaviors. Once you've generalized your new tug to all behaviors, then you can start gradually increasing the frequency of use.

The hard part about secondary reinforcers is that, well, they're less reinforcing than the primary reinforcer. This means that you should never use more secondary reinforcers in a training session that primary reinforcers. If you do, your dog will slowly become less motivated to work with you because the reinforcement just isn't there. Ken states a 20/80 ratio of secondary to primary reinforcers is about right. You will also need to regularly pair your secondary reinforcer with a primary reinforcer in order to maintain its strength. Ken also says to avoid using the same secondary reinforcer twice in a row.

So how do you decide what reinforcer is best for you and your dog? Here's the big R again: relationship. Certain rewards are going to more effective in different situations. Knowing and understanding your dog is the best way to figure out what is going to be most motivating for him or her in any environment. Not to mention that secondary reinforcers are useless without a personal history.

For example, "good" is a verbal secondary reinforcer in my house. If Rubi and I passed a dog on a walk, you can bet I wouldn't be telling her "good" - I'd be shoving food in her mouth as fast as she'd take it. But on the same walk, passing the same dog, with Piper Ann, a "good" would more than suffice. But if I were walking someone else's dog, I wouldn't even think of using the word "good"; to that dog, it's just another meaningless word. There's no history there. No real relationship. And relationship as we hear time and time again, is one of the most important parts of having a dog.

Patricia McConnell: Canine Behavior

First off, if you ever get the chance to see Patricia McConnell speak, do it. It takes an incredible speaker to keep people engaged and thinking for eight hours straight, and Trisha has got the gift. I could write an entire post on just what she had to say on dominance, wolves, relationship, emotion or any of the other topics she touched on, but I'll try to stick to the subjects that seemed most pertinent to reactive dogs.

Perhaps the most interesting part for me as the owner of reactive dogs was genetics and behavior. People often seem ambivalent to genetics and behavior, wanting the best of both with none of the disadvantages. Pit bull people in particular seem sensitive to the subject since so many people are trying to ban our dogs based on genetic generalizations. Fact: it's not all in how you raise them. That's just the way it is. But Trisha was also careful to repeat over and over again that environment plays a huge role. She used the analogy of cancer. In order to get most cancers, you need to have the genetic marker that allows various cells to mutate uncontrollably. However, on order to get cancer, you also need to have the right environmental trigger, like asbestos for lung cancer or HPV for cervical cancer. With canine behavior, not only do you need the right genetic markers and the right trigger, but that trigger must come at the right time developmentally. All of these factors need to come together in order to create a behavior, and that makes studying behavior really tricky.

Trisha divides genetic factors affect reactivity into five categories: shy/anxious, reactiveness, low frustration tolerance, predisposition to use mouth, and status seeking. Shy/anxious I think is fairly self-explanitory; it's neophobia. Reactiveness in this case is slightly different from what I mean when I talk about reactivity. In think context, we pretty much mean startle response. If you drop a book onto the floor, does the dog keep napping? Jump in surprise? Jump and start barking? Reactiveness is how extreme a dog's response to a stimulus is. Frustration tolerance is how calmly a dog is able to deal with not getting what it wants. Predisposition to use mouth is, of course, how likely a dog is to use it's teeth to solve a problem. Status seeking, according to Trisha in this situation, is not what most people refer to as dominance. Here, it means how controlling a dog is of the objects or living creature in his or her environment.

 So how do these factors impact unwanted behaviors? Let's look at my dogs, scoring the dogs on each of the five factors with 5 being a high level of the factor and 1 being almost no evidence (Trisha did not do this; this part is all me). Maus is very anxious; he gets a 5 on shy/anxious scale. He's also has a big startle reflex that is easily triggered, so let give him a 5 there as well. On the other hand, he's able to accept not getting what he wants easily, so he'll get a 2 there. He rarely uses his mouth to solve problems (his saving grace), so a 1 there. And he doesn't seek to control his environment too much, so there's another 1. These things come together to make a dog who is very neophobic, nervous, and neurotic. If you add all these numbers together, you get a 14 out of a possibly 25.

I've talked before about how different Maus and Rubi are although they both fall under the umbrella term "reactive dogs." You can see the differences clearly by mapping out the five factors. Rubi hits a 2 on the shyness scale; there are some new things that . . . confuse her, but for the most part, she takes new stimulus in stride. She also gets a 2 on the reactiveness. Aside from dogs and squirrels, there's really not many stimulus that she has an exaggerated response to. On the other hand, she has virtually no frustration tolerance - that a 5 for sure. She has a moderate predisposition to use her mouth: 3. I had to think for bit about status seeking, but I'm going to give her a 4 there; she tries to control her environment a lot, but I don't think she's as bad as she could be. So that's a total score of 16/25.

Next let's take the good one, Piper Ann. Shyness = 1, reactiveness = 2, low frustration tolerance = 1, mouthiness = 2, and status seeking = 1. That's a total score of 7/25. Does that mean that the lower the score, the less likely a dog is to be reactive?

Well, let's take a look at Allister: He's moderately neophobic, so he'll get a 3 for shyness. He always over reacts to things, so I don't have a problem giving him a 5 there. Frustration tolerance = 3, mouthiness = 3, and  status seeking = 2. That's a score of 16; the same total score as Rubi. And yet there aren't many places I don't feel comfortable taking him. New places, new people, new objects, he takes them all in stride. Aside from his inability to shut up, he's a pretty well-rounded, happy guy. How did this happen?

Answer: environment. Allister had an extremely different start that Rubi did. Rubi was left out on a chain for pretty much her first year of life. Allister came into my house at nine weeks - nine weeks that he spent with him litter mates learning valuable social and world-interaction skills. Environment is that important; so are genetic. Ideally, you would have dogs with good genetics and good environments. Luckily, though, a good environment can compensate to a degree for bad genetics. Conversely, good genetics can help make up for a bad environment. Dogs that have a bad environment and bad genetics are pretty much screwed (think puppy mill dogs that never make it out of the mill). The real variables are how bad/good of an environment and how bad/good are the genetics.

So what does this tell us about canine behavior? Well, not a whole hell of a lot. Us average dog owners don't have the ability to know if a behavior is occurring primarily because of genetics or because of environment. We don't know what a dog's genetics will allow it to do until we put the effort into changing the dog's environment. We know that pigs don't fly, but we don't know how high they can jump until we try. And as for me, I will keep falling in love with the mystery.

The Accidental Post

I didn’t mean to write a blog post for B’s second day in class. I didn’t think it’d be interesting. We’ve done lots of school day posts, and they’re all went to school, did stuff, came home. Not to mention all the times we went to class and I didn’t blog about it. Reactive dog training is boring (if you’re lucky) and time consuming and generally not worth writing about. But Rubi and I had a few good moments yesterday, and I wanted to share them with you.

The highlight of the day came before we even got in the car. When I got home from work, I took Rubi to our favorite park to run some energy off. I made a fifty foot long line a few weeks ago, and I’ve been using it regularly to take Rubi new places for “off leash” practice. Yesterday, I took Rubi’s squeaky ball along to practice fetch and rile/recovery and running around like a goon. Remember, never be afraid to look stupid for your dog.

This is my 50' long line. I am proud because I made it and it's awesome and I usually have all the crafting 

skills of a retarded monkey with no thumbs

While we were playing ball, a lab walked by the park with its owner. The dog was on leash and about a block away. Not being on the pass up a training opportunity, I stopped Rubi and had her sit in heel, our official dog watching position.

She looked at the other dog.

She looked at me. I gave her a treat.

She looked at the other dog.

She looked at me. I gave her a treat.

Then she popped out of heel position and pranced in front of me to lay down, which is B speak for, “PUH-lease, pleaseplease, throw the ball.”

Do you see how awesome this is?

Rubi turned her back on another dog to play with me. So I threw the ball for her. In the opposite direction from the other dog, of course. Rubi ran the ball down and ran back to me. The she ran passed me. She stopped about ten feet toward the other dog and paused to watch him for a moment (remember, Rubi had a whole fifty feet of line).

“Rubi,” I reminded her, “bring it here.”

She gives me a full body wiggle, and then she brings me the ball. And then we play fetch like there's totally not another dog anywhere near her.

How cool is that? She has a threshold. She can act like a normal, sane, relaxed dog. Just chillin', playin' some fetch, yo. This from a dog who, when I got her, couldn't see another dog half a mile away and not flip out and scream like a velociraptor (did velociraptors scream? they do now).

It's hard to top this little accomplishment, but Rubi tried when we went to class and Rubi didn't care one iota about there being other dogs in the room. Boo-ya. I know she noticed them. Every once in a while, she would twitch an ear when L would bark or glance over when she heard J's tags jingle. But she didn't let them distract her from her mission: getting ALL the treats. Even when I set her up to see the other dogs, she blew them off in favor of whatever behavior she thought would get me to interact with her more. She wasn't as chilled out relaxed as she was last week, but she was really into working, so I'm not going to complain. We still did a lot of the relaxation protocol, but we also spent a fair amount of time "finding things for B to do." This is the circumstance that usually leads to some of my dogs' most, ahem, creative tricks.

See exhibit A

Rubi is my experiment dog. I spend a fair amount of time training her to do things that I need the other dogs to do reliably. Things that I'm not sure the best way to train. So I practice on Rubi. As a result, Rubi can scoot (Allister - disc), follow a scent (Maus - nosework), do a formal broad jump (Piper - obedience), and a few other random sport exercises. For example, two on - two off (Allister - agility). Since we had a handy A-frame, we spent some time working on that. 

Oh, did I mention that we didn't use the Gentle Leader except to get in and out of the building? We also working on heeling, crating, touch and mat work, among other things. After class, we went to McDonald's because B is awesome and deserves good things. 

For the Love of Dog

I will never be famous. I will never be rich. I won't be a beautiful model or fancy actress. My house will never be clean - neither will my cars, for that matter. I have no great skill that is unique among people. There is nothing I do that someone else could not manage.

And yet, I am happy. I have my mission, my purpose in life. As a nurse, I heal. I help people to live longer, happier, healthier lives. In my off time, I ease the suffering of animals as best I can. I adopt; I train; I volunteer. I may not make any revolutionary changes to the world, but I do make it a better place. What I do may not be unique, it may not be huge - but it is important.

Photo of Mikey and me by Paige Reyes

This summer, I joined an army of A Rotta Love Plus volunteers at three Get Your Fix! fairs. We teamed up with MNSNAP and local vets to provide low cost or free spays, neutering, vaccination, and microchipping to inner city dogs, mostly rottweilers and pit bulls. Our year end totals included 156 rabies vaccinations, 189 DHPP vaccinations, 63 spays/neuters, and 110 microchips for dogs and owners who otherwise would have been unable to afford these basic care items. We also exchanged owners' old, worn, or inappropriate equipment for new leashes and collars. 

This picture of me vaccinating an East St Paul pit bull is from Sara Nick's camera

For those of you who might not know, Mikey is a product of the first Get Your Fix! fair in North Minneapolis. He had been thrown over the fence of the local "dog lady." Unfortunately, this sweet lady was elderly and not able to provide Mikey with what he needed. She brought Mikey to our fair, and luckily, we were in a position to help her out. It was fate. 

It's easy to judge the person who dumped Mikey over that fence, but mostly, I pity them. What a difficult decision! To understand that you can't provide for your puppy, but to not have anyone responsible to send him to, and to know that sending him to animal control would be an almost certain death sentence. How hard it must have been to leave him on the other side of that fence not knowing what would happen, but praying that you'd made the right decision. I wish I knew who Mikey's first owner was so that I could tell them that Mikey is safe. He is loved. He will be cared for and protected and happy as long as he may live. 

A picture of Mikey at his most recent adoption day by Paige Reyes

Because that's what you see at these fairs. These people may not have much, but they sure as hell love their dogs. And they're grateful for the opportunity to do right by them. We might not have a lot in common with each other, but we all love these dogs, and that's the kind of bond that transcends income, age, language, and race. Love is our lowest common denominator, and it makes us all allies. It may even make us friends. And that makes the world a better place. 

A boy and his dog at the St Paul fair from Sara Nick's camera

Me and a happy client in North Minnepolis by Paige Reyes

"How lucky are we that no one need wait a single 

moment before starting to improve the world."

                                                                         ~ Anne Frank