Dec 07 2012
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Finding Time to Breathe

Thanksgiving in Florida - not too shabby.

Thanksgiving in Florida – not too shabby.

I know, I know. I am so overdue for a post. I am so sorry. Honestly, I don’t even have much to say right now (watch, this will turn into a pages-long yarn about something random, I’m sure), but I ran into a Bulligerent reader yesterday — hi, Sampson! — and was reminded that I have been severely neglecting this blog.

I was in Chicago!

I was in Chicago!

In my defense, I have been absolutely swamped, and not with anything that makes for good blog posts. My poor bulldog is getting fat and lazy from too many days hanging around at home while I work on school work and work-work. I finished (I think) my Masters in Public Health, took my second comprehensive exam, went to our annual professional conference, went away for Thanksgiving, submitted a journal article (for the second time, ugh), ran around interviewing for one project, ran around doing some note-taking for another project, started prepping the class I’m teaching next semester, and started working on a grant proposal due in January. I kinda dropped the ball on the dog training thing in the midst of all that.

Cerb had to be boarded twice — the horror! — this month because my husband and I had to travel out of town. That was an expensive little endeavor, let me tell you. I think one of the biggest inconveniences about having a, um, “difficult” dog is that you can’t indulge in any of your wonderful friends’ offers to watch him for you. I just stress about it way too much. Perhaps it’s an ego thing — do I truly think I am such an exception dog handler that I am the only person capable of caring for Cerb? It’s a bit ridiculous when I think about it that way, but the truth is that I would just feel absolutely awful if he was a burden on someone. Plus, most of the wonderful friends who offer to watch him have dogs of their own, and while I’m sure they would faithfully crate-and-rotate and Cerb would probably be on his best behavior, I just… can’t. I just feel a lot better leaving him at his vet’s office, where the techs and kennel attendants absolutely adore him, he doesn’t have to interact with other dogs, and I know he’ll get immediate medical care if he needs it.

Which he inevitably does, because for some reason he chafes his, um… “delicates” whenever he’s boarded. It happens, to some degree, every single time. The only thing we can figure he’s doing is rubbing them on the concrete floor of the kennel, because he’s been under observation and he’s not obsessively licking himself or anything like that. I think next time he boards the kennel staff are going to set down some mats for him and see if that helps. I don’t want him to be uncomfortable, although I will admit to getting a laugh out of their follow-up emails a few days after we bring him home: “How is Cerb’s scrotum?” Classic.

Anyway. Moving right along.

Chicago again - unseasonably warm!

Chicago again – unseasonably warm!

So things have been pretty quiet on the dog-front. In lieu of working with my own dog, I’ve been assisting Karen with her classes at AnnaBelle’s (sporadically, because my schedule was so awful in November). I think one of the difficult things about being a trainer is not taking over from the owners. I guess this applies to any kind of teaching, actually – the impulse (at least for me) is to just take the leash and do the task for them, but that doesn’t help them at all. I mean, yes, you should demonstrate once or twice, but then you just have to let them do it, bumbling mistakes and all. For a control freak like me, that’s difficult. I just have to remind myself that I bumbled along, too, and still do. I am sure it would often be easier for Karen to take my leash and teach Cerb how to do things properly, but instead she has to stand by and watch me screw him up again and again until the handler-dog connection finally clicks and we both perform the task well.

Another training topic weighing heavily on my mind lately is that you can’t help people until they’re ready to be helped. This is an issue in my family right now and I guess my feelings are carrying over into training. Without going into too much personal detail, there’s someone I love very much who is heading down a dangerous path and I am very concerned about him. When I first realized it, I flew into a panic of “Someone has to do something!” I wanted to seize control of him and make him change his behavior, and it took a stern reminder from my mother to remind me that this person I love won’t change until he is ready. A few days after that, I went to Control Unleashed class and was talking to Karen about handlers who don’t realize their dogs are headed for trouble – handlers who are ignoring dog body language or troubling behavior like staring, growling at people, reacting fearfully and explosively, and other things like that. In some ways, I guess I was lucky: Cerb’s noisy, embarrassing reactivity left me absolutely no doubt that I needed to change his behavior. It was obvious, in-my-face and upsetting. For other people, the problem might now be so blatant. A lot of people laugh off a dog’s extremely fearful behavior as just “shyness” or a personality quirk without realizing that, if that dog feels cornered, it could become very dangerous very quickly. Beyond being dangerous to others, it’s not funny or “okay” for a dog to live in fear its whole life. Even if the dog is avoidant and its fearful behaviors aren’t a problem to the people in its life, it’s still… afraid! It’s still a very stressed and anxious dog, and I think we owe it to our dogs to help them with those problems for

I bought Cerb this plushie when we had to board him and he treated it like his baby. It was adorable. I think he killed it yesterday, though - Cerb is a fickle parent.

I bought Cerb this plushie when we had to board him and he treated it like his baby. It was adorable. I think he killed it yesterday, though – Cerb is a fickle parent.

the sake of helping them, rather than out of any personal desire for a performance dog or something like that.

Anyway, the point of all that rambling was just that I realized you can’t force people to take their dogs’ problems seriously until they accept that there is a problem. You can try, of course — you can point out that the behavior is a problem, you can describe how it might become a more serious or dangerous problem in the future, you can appeal to their love of the dog by explaining how the dog must feel, appeal to their love of their families by explaining how the dog could be a ticking time-bomb around kids… You can try all these things, but if the owner isn’t listening, you won’t get far. I’m not sure what it takes to get through to people. Sometimes I worry that it really takes a tragedy or near-tragedy to force people to wake up and get help. I don’t want my family to experience a tragedy before my relative decides to change his behavior, and I don’t want dog owners out there to face tragedy, either, especially not when it is (often) so easily avoided with some management and some rehabilitative training.

Though things have been a bit of a madhouse around here lately, I think I’ll be able to find a bit more time for Cerb next semester. My schedule will be a little bit more flexible, allowing me to make more use of the limited daylight hours with Cerb and do school/office-work later into the evening. We’ll be taking Rally lessons with Karen to prepare for a trial in march (*gulp*) and I’ll still be helping with the Control Unleashed classes on Thursdays. I’m also eagerly anticipating adding a second dog to our family in late spring or early summer — madness, I know, but sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. I’ll write more about that as the time draws nearer.

Okay. Back to work!

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Oct 15 2012
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Bravery through “Control Unleashed”

Okay, I am lazy.

I know, I know, I am lazy. I haven’t written anything in… well, weeks.

It’s not so much that I’m lazy, just busy — busy with things that don’t make for very interesting blog entries. It’s getting cold and gross outside so I haven’t been on many adventures with Cerb, and school has been demanding a lot of my time and emotional energy. At the end of the day, I just feel like coming home, curling up in a blanket and staring vacantly in the direction of the television. I know, I’m so exciting.

I really do want to write more, though. And I want to read some fiction. I have all these awesome bookish friends who are reading exciting new novels and doing read-a-thons and I am jealous! I feel guilty reading anything other than school stuff at the moment because I’m trying to prep for my next comprehensive exam, prep a course for next spring, and read a lot of background information to ready myself for the dissertation process. I don’t trust myself to get a new fiction novel, because then I will get absorbed and not be able to put it down (I know myself well). I can easily gobble up multiple novels in a day, yet dragging myself through a 20-page journal article is some sort of Herculean feat.

ANYWAY.

Cerb’s Control Unleashed work is progressing in a most delightful fashion. The system works, people. Last week was Week 5 (out of a 6-week term, though the program is such that you could really keep going on forever). The course begins at Week 1 with the dogs gated in their own areas with sheets over the gates so the dogs can’t see each other. For many dogs (including mine), just being in the room with other dogs puts them over threshold. Cerb was fired up that first night, set off by other dogs barking, people moving around outside the room, the sight of his beloved Auntie Karen, and even just being touched. I had to drag him into the hallway outside the classroom a few times just to get him calmed down and thinking again. If the sheets hadn’t been blocking his view of the other dogs, he would’ve had an absolute meltdown.

Back to Week 5, last Thursday. Over the last few weeks we have worked on Cerberus being calm on his mat, doing some “box work” (heeling and attention games in his gated area), and gradually drawing the sheets back so that the dogs can catch glimpses of each other. I played the “Look At That” game with Cerb, clicking and rewarding him whenever he looked calmly at the other dogs. Eventually, he would look at them and then immediately turn back to me for his treat – looking at other dogs, once triggers for his reactivity, eventually becomes a game that the dog voluntarily plays without being asked.

On Thursday night, we arranged Cerb’s gated area as a long rectangle running side-by-side with another dog’s area. The dog next to us, Stella, is a stunning blue brindle pit bull who seems very calm and biddable, but apparently gets a bit stare-y and fixated on other dogs. So we pulled some of the sheets back and Cerb played “Look At That”, and then Karen asked me to do some heeling with him while Stella did restrained recalls between her human parents. Right next door. On the other side of a stretched-out piece of X-pen.

Gulp.

You know what? He nailed it. He freakin’ nailed it. Cerb tucked himself into heel position, wrapped his neck around my leg to look up at me, and heeled perfectly down the length of his area while Stella trotted back and forth between her owners barely six feet away. He didn’t even look at her. He barely looked at the third student in the class, a little bat-eared pit bull named Annabelle who is scared of strange men, and when he did, he didn’t have an explosion — he just checked her out as we did a 180-turn at the end of his area and headed back towards his mat. At the end of each heeling pattern, he voluntarily retreated to his mat and waited for the next task.

Mind: blown!

I mean, with progress like that in just five weeks, imagine what we could do in another semester of class. Imagine what we could do if we kept working on this and took his mat to competitions and trials. The sky is the limit. Cerb may never be able to play with other dogs, but I have more confidence now that he will be able to co-exist with other dogs at trials and keep his brain in working condition.

What’s more, we did it all force-free. We clicked and treated our way to calmness. Cerb wasn’t punished for reacting, the way I’ve seen other trainers address these issues. He wasn’t choked or pinched for exploding at strange noises. I’m not a “cookie dispenser”, either. Cerb ignored those other dogs and heeled the whole length of his area because he knew it would pay off in the end, not because I was bribing or luring him along with a treat in my hand. When we returned to his mat I paid him well, of course, but that’s just fair: You do for me, and I do for you. He had earned his treats with good behavior that he offered without being threatened or compelled.

I said GREAT THINGS.

I feel a lot more optimistic that Cerberus and I can achieve our goals in competition. The change in attitude plays a big role, I think. Feeling despondent or defeated about your dog’s problems is natural but unproductive. I won’t lie to you, I have spent (more than) my fair share of time wallowing in my grief about Cerb’s reactivity, but it didn’t really get us anywhere, right? It made us a couple of shut-ins, looking at the world outside as a fun and exciting place for “good dogs” that we could never fully experience because of Cerb’s “issues.” Taking the Control Unleashed class has changed my attitude about that. Now, I feel like I have the tools to keep Cerb safe out there, be it a walk through the city streets or the competition ring at a Rally-O trial. Yes, my dog has some issues, but what sets us apart is that we’re working through them rather than letting them hold us back.

Listen to me, all brave and confident from the safety of my office. Okay, so I’m not 100% cured of my anxiety about Cerb having an Incident at a trial. I doubt I ever will be — it’s just not my nature. I think I’m getting better, though, and I’m determined to get out there and get the titles my dog deserves for all his hard work in training. I know he is capable of great things. It’s up to me to help him show it.

Oct 08 2012
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Gulliver and Brock at the Dog Park

Sep 30 2012
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You Can Learn a Lot of Things from the Flowers

Sep 28 2012
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Happy 3rd Birthday, Cerberus!

A real update will have to wait for a time when I have some more energy, but I had to drop in and wish my puppers a happy third birthday! I went into work today and we had a bunch of new goodies from the Preppy Puppy Bakery, and I saw the Happy Birthday cakes and suddenly remembered that Cerberus turned 3 this week. How could I forget such a momentous occasion? ! Worst dog mommy ever. So I made it up to him by picking up one of the cakes and a massive elk antler. I think he forgives me.

Sep 24 2012
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On the Importance of Doing Nothing

I feel like I just looked up from my work and suddenly it’s fall. The mornings are cold, the leaves are changing… and I feel a sense of impending doom about the fact that it is almost October. Damn it, world, stop turning and let me catch my breath!

Last week’s depression, anxiety and frustration culminated in an epic meltdown followed by a sudden snap of “I am over it”-ness. Yesterday I decided that I just can’t care anymore about what so many other people think. I have to filter out the noise and focus on the voices I respect the most. I have to stop feeling guilty about my hobbies because they a) don’t take up that much of my time and, more importantly, b) keep the depression at bay. I was full of determination and revived spirit, ready to go out and tackle my workload and feel good about myself.

Of course, today is a new day and I have no idea what I was thinking last night, because today I am full of misery and woe and spent at least an hour reading about leaky pipelines, the two-body problem my husband and I will face, and leaving academia to find happiness. I came home wanting a stiff drink, which doesn’t make sense because I don’t drink, so I had a glass of water and some “Rescue Remedy” I just bought for Cerberus and now I’m going to write about our awesome Sunday and hopefully not cry (more).

Going out to Karen’s every Sunday (well, most Sundays – things come up) is my version of going to church. The drive out there is time for quiet thought and appreciation of the beautiful rural scenery. The roads to her farm are sheltered by trees that line each side of the road and brush the tips of their branches together far above my car as I cruise through. When the trees part, yellow fields stretch endlessly in every direction under the wide blue sky. It’s scenery made for wide-angle lenses and I pay my dues by pulling the road and using mine. The views make my heart soar.

Once we arrive, it’s time for physical labor. We move the wheeled cart up and down the barn aisle, we lift the enormous roll of carpet from its storage place and roll it along the concrete. We heave thirty-pound bags of sand and gravel from one place to the other, thousands of pounds in total. We get covered in dust and slobber and dog hair and we talk. We talk and laugh and cheer each other on. Then it’s time to pack up all the weight pull gear again – thousands of pounds of sandbags off the cart and back into their storage stall, carpet re-rolled and heaved back up onto the wall again, cart set back in its place and dogs stripped of their harnesses.

After weight pull, Karen and I usually work on Rally or some other “thinking” activity with our dogs. It’s been Rally lately, as Karen’s training her little Mollie for trial and I am… I don’t know. Training Cerb for trial, I guess, though the idea is so nerve-wracking that I have no definite plans yet. This week we mixed it up a bit, though.

Cerb’s been doing well with his mat work in Karen’s class, so this Sunday we decided to have him do some mat work in a new place. While Mike was pulling Chopper, I spread Cerb’s mat in a quiet spot in the barn (walled off from where Chopper was pulling) and we worked on being calm and relaxed. It was difficult. Cerb could hear Mike cheering Chopper on as he pulled and could see (and otherwise sense, I’m sure) people moving around on the other side of the aisle door. He could occasionally see Karen moving around in the barn aisle, which was extremely exciting for him, so we played the Look At That game. Once Chopper was finished and back in his crate, we opened the door and played more Look At That, moving closer and closer to the other trainers (Karen, Mike, and our new friend Linda) until Cerb could sit right by all those exciting people and still keep his focus on me. Then he was released to go and greet everyone, which was a rowdy little adventure.

He pulled well, but he was frustrated. Weight pull is such a mental sport and Cerb was responding to all the attention and “newness” of doing his Control Unleashed games in this new place. Every touch from me or from Karen sent him into a leaping, wiggling explosion. Karen held his harness and tried to do some T-Touch with him, but he was so responsive to the excitement of being touched that he was throwing himself around trying to engage her in physical play. We pulled a few more times and then gave him a break while we put all the equipment away again.

After pull practice, Mike and Linda left and Karen told me to bring Cerb into her indoor arena. She wanted to do some “reorienting” work – letting Cerb run around off-leash in there and rewarding him for checking back in with me. Once we went in and released Cerb, though, she realized he didn’t need that work. He’s already great at reorienting and checking in with me. Thus began one of the most interesting conversations and sessions I’ve ever had. Karen and I walked around the arena, completely ignoring Cerberus (well, observing him and discussing him, but not interacting with him at all). Karen shared her thoughts with me: Cerberus has no idea how to not take direction. He is a fabulous working dog and loves to be told what to do, but he has no idea what to do with himself when he’s not being asked to do something. He has no idea how to relax or how to handle his boredom. I could see it as he loped around the arena, checking out the equipment Karen had set out for her horses. He would trot away, getting as far as the opposite side of the arena, and then stand and look at me as if to say “… Well? Aren’t you going to call me back?” After a few moments of this, he would come racing (seriously – absolutely hurtling along) back to me and look up at me with great expectation. Then he’d wander off again and repeat. He sniffed. He peed on things. He tried out the horse teeter-totter and thoroughly surprised himself when it teetered under him. He jumped over the Cavalettis. He jumped on Karen in frustration, trying to get her attention by leaping at least 4′ into the air. He barked, whined, sighed. He even scared himself with the sound of his own gas (bulldogs, it happens) and went racing off around the arena again.

“I want to know how long it will take him to get bored and lie down,” Karen mused. So we waited. We talked about other dogs we know, we talked about training, we talked about finding meaning and purpose in life, and we waited.

And waited.

And Cerberus came back to us, sighed, and settled down with his head on his paws.

“What time is it?” Karen asked. It was 5pm. “It took him one hour.”

ONE HOUR. It took my dog an entire hour to finally realize nothing was happening, there was no cue or direction coming, and that he should just relax. Mind: blown.

“Now ask him to heel.” I called Cerberus to my side and we moved forward. Karen called out a heeling pattern: “Forward. Halt. Forward. Right. Fast. Normal. Left. About-turn. Halt.”

He was flawless. Well, in my eyes, anyway. He stuck close to my side, head turned up and eyes on me. He tucked his back end into the left turn, he extended himself through the right turn, his halts produced square, straight sits. It was stunning.

“THAT’S the dog you want,” Karen proclaimed. “THAT’S the dog we’re working towards.”

I drove home exhausted and dirty, with dust and sand under my nails and cuts all over my fingers from Cerb’s snaggle-teeth. We came home, I gave Cerb his dinner, and he wandered into his crate and passed out with the door hanging open. He didn’t move for the next five hours, and even then it was only to take himself upstairs and get into our bed, his normal night routine. My dog was completely, utterly exhausted by the important work of Doing Nothing, the hardest thing he’s ever been asked to do.

I feel like there’s probably a life lesson there for all of us.

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Sep 21 2012
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Running on Fumes

Before I get stuck into this entry, I just wanted to do a quick signal-boost for Team Unruly, a blog I share with my group of versatile and awesome dog training friends. We’re all positive trainers with dogs of all shapes and sizes, and we’re all interested in pretty much everything to do with dog ownership, training, and competition. We publish a new post every few days and topics range from adoption to training philosophy, product reviews to dog book read-a-longs. It’s a lot of fun and I’d love it if you would check it out!

Wow, this week was… really long. I have meant to update this blog at least three times but have been so exhausted every evening it just doesn’t happen.

I’m going to try not to be too negative, because I don’t want this blog to become, well, That Blog. The mopey blog. Things aren’t that bad. I’m just burning the candle at both ends right now with school, work, work, Cerb, blogging, and the remnants of my social life. I scheduled a bunch of data collection interviews this week and they’re very mentally and emotionally exhausting. I have to make sure I’m doing the things I need to do, like getting all the paperwork filled out correctly and trying to make sure the data I’m collecting are valid, but I also need to do the emotional work of talking women through their often horrific experiences and managing their frustration at the lengthy interview process. Doing one interview a day isn’t too bad, but some days this week I had two or three, and that’s exhausting.

I’ve just been low this week. It’s hard to see beyond this degree program and look into the future. I feel burned-out, run down, frustrated and hopeless lately. There are a million things I need to be doing right now and I just… can’t. Do you ever feel like you’re so overwhelmed, you can’t tackle even the smallest task? I need to study for my next comprehensive exam, write a paper, prep a class, redo a rejected manuscript and submit it to a new journal, keep up with interviewing and the work for which I’m actually paid, and keep up with my home life. Oh, and remember to actually have some fun in there somewhere. It is just really difficult and I feel very isolated.

Okay. Enough of that. That’s not what you came here to read.

Cerb had a good week! I managed to scrounge up a bit of time to work on his mat work and relaxation protocol at home. On Thursday afternoon I had a bit of free time before training classes and wanted to take Cerb out to burn off a bit of energy (cheating at CU class: a tired dog is hopefully a more relaxed dog?). I stopped at PetCo to grab some more treats for class and happened to look behind the outdoor mall and see a big, green, grassy area. I’ve driven by it a million times, of course, but I had never really considered taking Cerb there. There’s a big hill in the middle of it and I always see people sledding there when there’s enough snow. Would it make a good Cerb-place?

Finding Cerb-places is hard. He can’t go to dog parks because he tries to rearrange dog faces, and unfortunately most of the other dogs-allowed places around here have turned into unofficial off-leash dog parks, even when there are leash law signs posted, which drives me insaaaaane but is a topic for another day (or never, because people get testy when I rant about how much I hate people who ignore leash laws). So there’s a great park at the end of our street and I would love to take Cerb there, but everyone else lets their dogs off-leash there and that means it’s a no-go. I’ve never seen any other dogs in this space behind the mall, though, so I checked the posted signage – “All Dogs Must Be Leashed.” Nobody else around. Looked good! I ran home, grabbed Cerb, some toys and his long line, and brought him back.

He had a great time. We played frisbee for a little while and then climbed up the big hill to check the view from the top. Cerb loped around, mauled his toys, sniffed things and had a wonderful time. It was so nice to be able to take him somewhere he could run around (on his long line) without having to worry about other dogs. We did some heeling work using his frisbee as a reward, then headed back home to relax before class.

* Leash removed in Photoshop.

Class on Thursday night went really well– Okay, back up, I have to go in time-order or I’ll forget something, and puppy class comes before Control Unleashed class.

Puppy class this week was awesome. AWESOME. We had one student drop out and the energy in the class totally changed. The shy little Sheltie and the outgoing Mini-Aussie got on absolutely faaaaamously and made huge progress in the week between class and during the session. I love the class. It’s not an obedience class, it’s a socialization class – yes, we do sit/down/come/stay, the regular rigamarole, but we also expose the puppies to being handled (paws, teeth, ears, collar-taking) and overcoming any fears of new objects. On Thursday, we all put on funny hats and walked around with umbrellas, canes and crutches to get the pups used to all those crazy items. We did restrained recalls across the room and through an agility tunnel, which was Oh! So! Scary! for the little Sheltie puppy at first, but by the end of class she was zooming through the tunnel voluntarily. The pups are just coming along so nicely and I’m so glad they’re having this experience. I really wish Cerb’s puppy classes had been like this – now that I see him as an adult, I realize that it is way more important for him to know how to recover from being startled by a new object than it was for a 12-week old puppy to sit on verbal cue.

Theeeen it was time for CU class. Cerb did very well this week. It is hard for me to say that because, as his anxious owner, I have a bad tendency to recall all the terribly embarassing moments, like when Karen asked me to demonstrate Cerb’s left finish for one of the other students and Cerb got all keyed up about ERMAHGERD WE’RE WORKING NOW!, lost his mellow, and then exploded about the scary noises on the other side of the classroom door. Sigh. But he really did do well. He had a hard time relaxing at the beginning of class, so Karen sent us to the Dark and Quiet Hallway of Naughtiness to just sit and chill. Then we came back out into the classroom and did Cerb’s Relaxation Protocol on his mat, which went… fairly well (he lost focus a bit at the end because he could see Karen in another part of the room, and Auntie Karen is his favoritest). He did some fantastic box work, though I attribute that largely to his experience reorienting and returning to heel position – but still, he was relaxed enough to pay attention to me and follow me around, so that’s good! I was pleased. Karen and I chatted after class and agreed that the biggest difficulty for Cerb, the Number 1 thing he needs to fix, is that he has no idea how to relax. He’s a working dog, and while that is great when it’s work time, it means he’s anxious when he’s not being cued and directed. At home, the environment is so boring he just wanders off and sleeps, but when we’re in public he’s so tense that he just offers behavior after behavior to try and get my approval. When that doesn’t work, he searches for something else to “do”, and that often means freaking out over triggers. I need him to learn how to breathe, think, and be calm in stressful situations and how to just relax when he’s not being asked to do anything. That’s our big task. We’re working on it.

Here’s your Friday Photo Dump.

Sep 15 2012
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‘Tis the Season: Back to School

Well, by now most of the schools in the country are back in session, and my various learning institutions are no exception. The university is back in full swing and you can’t turn around without bumping into a dazed undergrad (they’re so cute and confused!). I’m not taking any classes this semester, but my plate is full anyway. I’ve got some papers to write, an exam to study for, a class to prep for next semester when the tables finally turn and I find myself standing in front of all those undergrads — I’m trying not to panic. I’ll get it all done. In fact, I’m eschewing a tailgating opportunity this afternoon to stay home and catch up on reading. Hopefully I’ll make some time to do something fun with Cerb, too.

I’m not the only one in this household who went back to school lately. Cerberus is taking his first class in a loooong time. I think I mentioned this before, but Karen (my trainer and good friend) is teaching some classes at a local business and I offered to be her assistant/apprentice. She took me up on my offer, but only one of her two offered classes had enough students to run. She proposed turning the later class into a Control Unleashed series and I was 100% in favor of that idea. If you’re unfamiliar, Control Unleashed is a book by trainer Leslie McDevitt and it is magical. MAGICAL. You can use the program for all sorts of problem-solving, but it’s most commonly used for reactive dogs – dogs who get stressed in new surroundings and respond by either shutting down and being unable to work or, in Cerb’s case, exploding and (also) being unable to work. I think I talked about this a little bit in my last entry when I mentioned we were doing mat work. The mat work is a huge part of the CU curriculum, because the mat becomes an easy-to-move “safe place” where the dog can retreat and relax. If you have a dog who seriously needs to learn to just chill and collect his thoughts, I strongly, strongly recommend checking out the Control Unleashed book and trying some of the exercises. I have seen this method work miracles.

Of course, when Karen offered to teach a Control Unleashed class, I was all over it. What an excellent opportunity for Karen to see Cerb out of his element and to support and guide me through helping him. Karen often sees Cerb when he’s pretty happy, because he loves going out to her farm, but he’s very different in a class setting around other dogs. She offered a position in the class to me in exchange for my help with her earlier session, a puppy socialization class.

Wednesday night, the night before classes started, I was totally anxious. I bought, cut up and froze four different kinds of stinky, smelly, soft, delicious raw treats to take to class in case Cerb needed some extra motivation. I cleaned and folded his mat. I packed my clicker. I paced. I had Deep and Meaningful conversations with Cerb about how We Don’t Eat Other Dogs and Mummy Just Needs You To Do This For Her, Please Please Please. Then Thursday arrived and it was too late for any more begging.

Puppy class was a riot. First of all, can we talk about how difficult it is to accomplish anything when there’s three herding-breed puppies galloping around? Add to that mix the owners of all of these puppies, who are very much the Concerned Playground Parents trying to keep one eye on the puppies and one eye on Karen, who was explaining what the class is about and her philosophy and approach to puppy socialization and training. Then you’ve got the common beginner mistakes, the things we all do but might forget about as we spend more time training: repeating verbal cues until they become meaningless (Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit!), trying to juggle a leash, a clicker and a bag of treats (time to invest in a treat pouch!), using treats that are totally boring or that crumble everywhere when you try to use small pieces… You know exactly what I’m talking about, because we have all been there.

At first, I felt really awkward because I felt like I was in the way. Karen had everything under control, people were trying to wrangle their puppies, and I felt like I was being a distraction because I sat down on the floor and puppies piled in my lap. As class went on, though, I felt more comfortable helping out. There were two very boisterous Aussie puppies and a much more delicate and timid Sheltie puppy who was getting bowled over every time the stampeding Aussies galloped by. She was obviously distressed by this and having a hard time focusing on her owner, so we blocked off half the room with some ring gating and made a safe area for her so she could watch the other puppies but not get pushed around so much. Once we had her in that safe area, she picked up “sit” and “down” like a pro. She’s obviously very smart and willing to please, but just has a much softer temperament than the other two pups. I was able to work one-on-one with the Sheltie puppy and her owner while Karen coached the owners of the other two puppies, so that made me feel really good — I feel like I actually had a job to do and wasn’t just getting underfoot. Yay, I helped!

And then it was time. Time. I collected Cerb from the car (it was late in the evening and quite cool outside — on warmer days, I’ll crate him inside the building) and we came back into the room, where Karen had set up three gated areas (one for each dog in the class) and covered the gates with cloth so that the dogs couldn’t see each other. There’s two other dogs in the class with us, a gorgeous blue brindle pit bull and a lovely batty-eared pit mix. Both are much more shy than my dog, who tends to externalize his insecurities and try to intimidate/scar off his triggers. Karen walked us through what the class is about and introduced us to T-Touch, a calming massage technique we will use at the beginning of every class. Of course, Cerb was having none of that. He was Very! Excited! to be in this new space with Auntie! Karen! and! treats! and every time I tried to pet him, he would jerk away, give me an open-mouthed grin, and try to engage me in I-am-about-t0-go-over-threshold play. Sorry, buddy. We have to work! I eventually convinced him to relax on his mat, but he was still really alert and tilting his head at the different noises coming from elsewhere in the building. Someone was standing outside the door (with a frosted glass window) to our classroom and that was cause for EXPLOSION from Cerb, so I had to take him into the empty hallway at the back of the classroom and get him to calm down again.

I will admit, because I think it’s important to be honest, that I have a really hard time “taking myself out of it”, as Karen says. I love my dog and want to help him, but I am also an anxious person who is very concerned about what other people are thinking. I know what people think when they see my dog, so I know what they must think when he has a meltdown. He’s intimidating when he’s asleep, for goodness’ sake — think about what he looks like when he’s having a meltdown over another dog or some other scary thing. It gets to me, it really does, so as I hauled him back into the dark, empty hallway and tried to get him to calm down, I was on the verge of tears. I heard Karen’s voice from the other room: “Just let him calm down. Give him a chance to relax. And remember to breathe. Take yourself out of it.” After a few minutes, I felt calm enough — and felt my dog was calm enough — to come back into the room. The rest of class was great. We did some more mat work and Cerb demonstrated for the rest of the class how he would return to his mat even when I lured him away from it by dropping treats by my feet.

I was still feeling negative about his behavior at the end of class, but as we cleaned up the classroom Karen told me she was pleased with how things went and that Cerb had done a good job. She has so much faith in us as a team, it is hard to be down on myself and on Cerb when she’s cheering us on. I think this is why it’s so important to find a trainer you can work with when you’re trying to solve these difficult issues – you can buy the Control Unleashed book and DVD and work through things yourself, but if you don’t have someone cheering you on, it is really easy to feel very negative about your dog’s behavior and your ability to change it, and when you feel negative, you want to give up. A good trainer can keep you feeling upbeat and accomplished.

We’ll be okay. We have a lot of work to do, but I can already see Cerb improving in just one class. I’m excited to see how much more we can grow over the next few weeks.

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Sep 12 2012
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General

Ethical and Effective Training: My Position

Yesterday evening I left work (I have a part-time job at a pet supply store) wondering how we have so few serious dog bite injuries. I was regaled all day yesterday with horrific stories from pet owners about their “problem” dogs and the awful training techniques the owners were using to try and fix common problems like pulling on the leash and shyness around people. I marveled that dogs put up with so much crap from humans and don’t often resort to biting. It really is a testament to the temperament and bite inhibition of most family dogs. Humans are lucky.

Why do people think it’s acceptable to hit, kick, slap, scream at or physically intimidate their dogs? I want to say I don’t understand it, but a quiet voice inside of me says I do. It’s about power and control. It’s a little dark piece inside all of us – larger in some than in others, but always there in some way. I think it’s part of being human, and unless we actually dedicate ourselves to using our brains and trying to understand and outthink our animal inner selves, we succumb.

I try not to be preachy about my training methods because I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have options and you are being judged for just trying to cope. I was there for a long time with Cerb. His behavior seemed impossible to understand or control. I wanted to scream at him that I was just trying to help him, that I wanted so badly for him to be a Good Dog, and why couldn’t he just understand that if he could do this simple thing for me — sit on command, stop hauling me down the sidewalk, refrain from trying to eat other dogs — then everything would be better and we could be Happy, capital H. Of course, he didn’t understand. He looked at me in bewilderment when I screamed and then resumed whatever he had been doing before.

Why did I think that teaching a dog would be any different than teaching any other animal, including humans? Why did I think that dogs just worked differently and that using force would somehow make Cerberus understand what I wanted? I look back now and I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I was illogical. Drawing analogies helps me explain this to others: Think of your dog as your student, a young child who needs to learn something “unnatural” (because, really, a lot of the things we want our dogs to do are unnatural for them) — how to read and write, how to do long division, how to kick a ball into a goal. At first, the child won’t understand. He will make mistakes. He’ll occasionally get it right but mostly get it wrong. How will you teach him? Will you scream at him when he makes mistakes, loom over him to frighten him into getting it right, or smack his backside when he’s not sure what to do? That doesn’t seem like an effective teaching method. Instead, you would — I hope — investigate which part of the task he doesn’t understand and where he is struggling. You might break the task down into smaller steps (first work on kicking the ball in a straight line, then add the extra difficulty of getting it into the goal). You might practice again and again until he gets it right, drilling long division problems until he has a breakthrough in understanding. You might change your approach — if a child isn’t learning to read well by sounding out words, maybe you’ll switch to a different technique. You might ask for professional help or turn to recent studies on childhood learning to see if there’s something different you could try.

There’s science behind education and there’s science behind dog training. They’re not very different.

Why don’t we offer our dogs the same options? I’m really not sure. I think there is a tendency to just give up on dogs in a way that we can’t do with children. We make excuses for dogs — “He’s stupid”, “Oh, he only listens to me at home” — or we employ different tools like prong collars and shock collars so we can just get by.

This is a problem. Let’s go back to the analogy of a child who is trying to learn a new task. There are lots of things children (and dogs) are asked to learn, so we repeat our teaching process again and again. If we use force and intimidate our student whenever he makes a mistake, we teach him that mistakes are unacceptable – mistakes bring pain and fear! Some students are resilient and draw power from within themselves to survive the pain and fear. Perhaps they harden themselves towards the teacher and become more and more difficult to effectively punish, forcing the teacher to become more scary and more forceful with every lesson. Eventually, the teacher will probably hit some sort of ceiling where the punishment can not possibly be increased. At that point, the teacher’s power is lost and the student is “free”, although it seems pretty damn unlikely he’ll ever want to perform the task ever again. In the worst situations, the student may get sick of being intimidated and threatened and decided to strike back at the teacher.

Other students aren’t as resilient. In response to threats and force, they shut down. When mistakes mean punishment and the student hasn’t yet perfected a task (meaning mistakes are inevitable), the fear of committing a mistake can become so powerful that the student is paralyzed. He offers nothing and makes no progress because it’s better to remain in limbo than take a risk that could result in punishment. This happens to people and it happens to dogs, and it’s really hard to bring a “student” back from a place where he is paralyzed by fear. The student may stop making mistakes, but he can’t move forward in perfecting the desirable behavior because he refuses to engage.

These are the outcomes from force-based education/training. Sometimes people get lucky and force works for them — I am not the kind of person to say that teaching through force never works, because I know there are trainers (especially in protection sports) who succeed through these methods — but it is a risky, risky game to play and playing it well is beyond the reach of most pet dog owners.

Let’s change up our scenario now and consider educating/training through positive reinforcement rather than “positive punishment” (the term used when a negative stimulus — like pain or fear — is inflicted in order to discourage a behavior). Our student is trying to learn long division. Every time he gets it right, we reward him in some way. Maybe he gets a gold star and after X gold stars, he gets to pick a toy from a bin. Maybe he gets a piece of candy for every right answer. When he makes mistakes, we reteach the correct behavior (e.g., he accidentally transposed two numbers so we point this out and have him repeat the problem) or we just ignore the wrong answers (no candy for incorrect problems). If we have chosen our reward carefully and it is very motivating for this individual student, he will attempt to perfect his technique so that he gets as many correct answers as possible — and, in return, as many pieces of candy or opportunities to get a toy! In the future, even when we’re not actively trying to teach our student how to do long division, he will associate this task with positive experiences and may be more willing to try to puzzle through a more demanding activity (like more complicated mathematics), because his early experience was so rewarding. By teaching him this way, we are also empowering him — we are saying “Mistakes are no big deal, what matters is that you keep trying for the correct answer.” There is no risk of pushing the student into a shut-down situation where he becomes too afraid to try novel approaches. This sounds much better to me than the force-training outcomes!

Positive training translates into an eagerness and happiness to work.

Beyond the simple question of “Does force-based training work?” is “Is force-based training ethical?” When presented with multiple training options, I believe we, as dog owners, have an ethical obligation to choose the method that achieves our goals while inflicting the least amount of harm. When you can teach a “sit” by (a) yanking forcefully on the dog’s neck until he sits or (b) luring the dog with a treat and then giving the treat once he sits, I truly believe (b) is the ethical choice. It achieves the same goal — a “sit” — while minimizing pain/fear and the risk of harm.

So while I try not to get preachy and judgmental, I admit that I struggle with people who defend force-based training because I do truly find it unethical to use this approach when positive training both achieves the results and minimizes risk. Sometimes the people I encounter truly don’t know there are alternatives to force-based training, and I love talking with these dog owners about my history with force training and how things have changed for me since discovering positive training. Other times, people have tried positive training and feel it hasn’t worked for them, so I try to figure out where the system broke down – wrong reward for their individual dog? Rate of reinforcement not high enough in the beginning? Attempting to teach a new behavior in an environment that’s too distracting? Other times I can tell that the discussion is not worth having, as the owner seems convinced that positive reinforcement training is for sissies, that positive trainers are “cookie dispensers”, and that dogs who make mistakes “deserve” to be punished — and hard. At that point, I find I have to walk away or risk losing my cool, because I don’t know how to combat someone who defends a practice I find highly unethical.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

Cerb and I had fun last night playing with his new mat, a Molly Mutt “dog bed duvet.” I freaking love duvets. I don’t know why we don’t cover EVERY BLANKET with a duvet. They just make it so much easier to keep comforters looking nice and clean. I was excited to see these dog bed duvets because Cerb frequently gets his beds really gross. He’s a dog, it happens. Sticking the whole bed in the washing machine usually results in a lumpy, misshapen bed, though, so a duvet seems like the perfect solution.

Of course, that’s not how I plan to use this thing. I’m using it as a mat. Cerb and I are taking a Control Unleashed (CU) class on Thursday nights and a huge part of the Control Unleashed curriculum is “mat work.” We teach the dogs that their mats are safe places, places where treats rain from the sky and nothing bad can happen to them. Why? Because mats are portable. CU is an awesome approach to helping reactive dogs relax in new places. The mat becomes a place of retreat where an anxious dog can find comfort. Through clicking and rewarding when the dog relaxes on the mat, we form a connection between being on the mat and feelings of relaxation and pleasure – then, when you’re in a stressful place and you roll out the mat, your dog can sit on it and return to those calm feelings. It’s extremely effective and deceptively simply, really, and I think it will be a valuable tool for managing Cerb at trials and competitions. He is so willing to work and so easily excited that it can be really difficult to make him relax and keep his head on straight, and when he’s not relaxed, he can’t brain. When he can’t brain, he reacts without thinking and he can’t make decisions that will earn him rewards. It’s not a good situation for him (or for me).

So last night I whipped out the new mat and we started some foundation work, because I’m anxious about starting the new class and it makes me feel better to prepare ahead of time. I unfurled the mat and threw some treats on it to get Cerb’s interest, then sat down with my clicker and waited. Whenever he touched the mat, I clicked and threw a handful of treats in front of him. He caught on to that pretty quickly and was soon bounding over to his mat whenever we moved away from it. Then I increased the difficulty – I didn’t want him to just touch the mat, I wanted him to lie down on it. At first, he didn’t realize I’d changed my requirements, so he would touch the mat and then look at me expectantly. I ignored him, because that wasn’t what I wanted. Frustrated, he touched the mat again. Nothing. He sat down next to me. Nothing. He flopped down on his side. Nothing. With an exasperated grunt, he offered me a “roll over” — and rolled onto the mat. CLICK! Treats rained from the sky. He caught on immediately and, from that point, would go to his mat and lie down. I moved the mat to a few different locations in our house to make sure he was aware that the mat was important, not just its location (the behavior I wanted was “lie down on the mat”, not “lie down next to the bookshelf, ignoring the funny-colored mat that happens to be there”) — dogs are often poor generalizers and I wanted to be sure he was associating good things with the mat, not with the room where we were training. After a few false starts (fewer every time!), I’m pretty confident he thinks the mat is a Very Awesome Game. I think he’ll enjoy taking the CU class and puzzling out what I want from him.

If only I had a mat.

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Sep 09 2012
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General

Bad Bulldogs Get the Tire

This weekend was exhausting. I have to write a separate post about how I spent my Saturday (hint: PUPPIES), because that’s this whole other topic that requires a bit of background information, so this post will be about today, Sunday.

Scenery on the way to Karen’s. I love it out there.

Sundays are training days. For the last two years, my Sundays have been set aside for weight pull training at Karen’s farm. There used to be a group of us who would go out there every Sunday and train, but the number has fluctuated over time and now it’s often just Karen and me. That suits me just fine. I love it when my dog buddies Mike and Betsie can come out, of course, but I also like just hanging out with Karen and talking shop (if shop is dog show drama, training philosophies and techniques, and anything else to do with dog training and ownership). I work Cerb and she works her latest project, a little toy mix named Mollie. Lately we’ve incorporated Rally training, as Karen’s trialing with Mollie and I am… doing something. I haven’t figured it out yet.

See, I have Issues. I worry way too much and get super uptight about, well, everything, and taking Cerb to trials is definitely something that makes me really anxious. Months ago, maybe more than a year now, I was at a show with my dog show friend Lindsay and they had a Rally trial going on, and I watched and kinda thought “Huh, we could do that.” I took Cerb out for a spin around the Rally 1 course and he totally rocked it, but I — in my white-knuckled panicked terror — blew right by a Side Step sign and we didn’t qualify (though the judge did really like us and said she was sorry she couldn’t give us the Q). That was the last time we trialed. That’s really stupid, because it was actually a really positive experience and I left the ring with a smile on my face, but… I don’t know, I can’t even explain myself.

So I’m really nervous about trialing, but I really want to trial and I enjoy training Rally stuff with Cerb. Karen likes to challenge us, too, so she gives us really difficult courses. The result is that, despite not having a Novice Rally/Rally 1 (AKC and UKC) title on my dog, he is currently “schooling” at Level 3, which is the hardest Rally tier in the UKC. He’s just cool like that. The routine on Sundays is now: show up, set up the weight pull cart, pull until Cerb’s brain is functioning again (he can’t brain when he has the wigglies), put the weight pull stuff away, set up a Rally course, run it, then pack up and go home. Whew!

Except today. I do not know what got into my dog today, but it took all my willpower not to chop him up and turn him into stew. From the moment we pulled into the farm’s long driveway, he was a live wire. He tried to bust out of his crate when Karen’s little dog Mollie ran up to greet me and it took him a good ten minutes to get over himself and settle down. We set up the weight pull stuff (we have to roll out a long carpet, pull the cart into place and add sandbags for extra weight) and Mollie pulled for a little while, and then it was Cerb’s turn. Forty-four thirty-pound sandbags put on the cart (which weighs 400lbs by itself, I think), and then I stuffed Cerb into his harness and brought him into the barn.

SPAZZ. ATTACK. He was just… insane. Spinning around, jumping on Karen, falling over himself to offer me heels and downs and sits. Don’t get me wrong, I love having a dog who offers behavior. This is one of the huge benefits of positive training — you end up with a dog who volunteers desirable behaviors in hopes he might get a reward. This was just way over the top, though, and Karen and I exchanged exasperated glances over his head as I hooked him to the cart. I had him pull it a few times and it should’ve been cake. It’s way lighter than what he’s pulled in the past, but this is the thing: weight pull is mostly mental. Dogs are way stronger than most people think, but being a good weight puller is about more than muscle and conditioning. The dog has to focus and use his body effectively, and Cerb wasn’t able to do that in his hyped-up state.

Karen suggested we take him for a walk in the woods on her property to “take the edge off” a bit and I thought that sounded great, so we hooked Cerb up to an old tire and set off. We did a one-mile circuit through the woods, which meant Cerb had to drag the tire uphill and downhill, across roots and rocks and piles of leaves. He stopped a few times but we just kept walking forward, encouraging him to keep up, and he had a pretty good attitude about it. I was definitely surprised he didn’t just up and quit on me. I was really proud of him when we got back to the farm. He flopped down in the grass next to his much-beloved bucket of well water (seriously, he loves the water at Karen’s — we use it as a reward for good behavior because he just thinks drinking from a bucket is the greatest ever) and actually seemed exhausted. We went off to set up the Rally course.

Ten minutes later: BARK BARK BARK BARK JUMP JUMP BARK SPAZZ.

I really have no idea what his deal was, but he was just crazy. While Karen and I were setting out the Rally course, he pulled on his leash (tied to a nearby post) and yapped incessantly. I went over to sit with him in hopes he’d be quiet, but no — he threw himself on the ground, rolled over, barked at Karen, jumped on Karen, and generally made a giant ass of himself. I ran him through the Rally course once before throwing up my hands in complete frustration. He got a brief time-out in his crate while Karen worked with Mollie, and then Karen decided to give him a run through herself. I don’t like to train my dog when I’m frustrated because I feel like I’m more likely to be negative towards him when he doesn’t really deserve it.

Cerb, just after getting back to the farm — the tire is still attached — relaxing with his dear friend, Water Bucket.

Karen took him out and he did… pretty well. A lot of forging forward and bouncing around, but he was trying. The best part was when Karen was approaching the fence bordering her horse pasture. As she and Cerb walked towards it, one of her horses perked up and came racing up — seriously, cantering — to see what was happening. Cerb looked and gave Karen a “What the hell is that?” look, but then returned to heeling like the horse was no big deal. Nice! In the past he has kinda tried to eat Karen’s livestock, so I’ll take this as a victory.

On that good note, we called it a day. A gorgeous but frustrating day. Karen gifted me a lovely old tire so we can have Cerb drag it around our city neighborhood (oh god, the cops are going to stop me and think I’m some kind of dog fighter, aren’t they), so hopefully that will help make our training sessions a bit more productive. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a Rally title by the end of the year.

… Maybe.

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