The Dog Blog

There is one thing I tell my clients on a regular basis and this is to have a training plan.  Don’t just blindly find yourself in situations where you’re supposed to be training your dog, without first thinking through the possibilities for distraction, reaction, reward, and an all important emergency get out clause, if things get too much for either you or the dog. 

The challenge had been set, to get my teenage puppy Guinness to stop cocking his leg on everything and anything his testosterone filled body declared worth peeing on.  You may all be pleased to hear that on day one, this exercise resulted in a major failure on my part.  I would love to tell you all that as a trainer, I do everything one hundred percent correctly, one hundred per cent of the time.  But of course I don’t.  Last week was a great example of what can go wrong.

While innocently surfing TV channels one Saturday afternoon in the early '90s, I came across an alarming undercover expose' on the plight of racing greyhounds. The dramatic footage showed emaciated dogs inside a dark trailer, standing up in crates stacked two-high with their heads held low, yearning eyes glowing from the light of the camera. Most of the dogs inside the pitch black trailer were still alive. Subsequent scenes featured audio of gunshots followed by dead hounds being tossed unceremoniously into a dumpster. Call it destiny, fate or divine intervention but that was it for me, time to get involved and Go Greyhound.

At the time, I had never met a retired racing greyhound up-close and in-person and didn't know the first thing about them or their intricacies. Now, nineteen years and five hounds later, here's a little bit of what I've learned about this remarkable semi-exotic creature.

I am a huge advocate of neutering.  It’s very difficult to find a dog person who comes from a rescue background as I do, who isn’t vehemently pro-neutering.  Indeed, I generally advise clients that with a few exceptions, neutering will result in a dog who is easier to live with and healthier in the long term.  So why did I make the choice to leave my current male dog intact for a year, when all my other dogs would have taken their trip to the vet for ‘the chop’ by now?

As a trainer who’s been around for quite a while, it’s easy to give the same old answers to the same old problems.  This is especially true if those problems are likely to be solved by castration (humping, scent marking, some aggression issues, recall challenges around other dogs).  Now what if the client in question is just as against castration as I am an advocate of it?

I’ve been doing various sorts of dog play groups for over ten years. But conducting play groups in the shelter environment is a much more challenging prospect. Having worked through some of those challenges, I’ve decided to share my solutions in an upcoming seminar, Beyond Socialization – Using Shelter Play Groups for Training Assessment. Not only will I be talking about challenges and solutions, but also the potential pitfalls of shelter play groups and how play can be used to better serve the dog and the adopting public.

Here’s an overview of some of the challenges I’ll be discussing:

For those that have seen the first installment I posted on You Tube here is the second and third from July & August of 2011. If have not seen the first video of Brandi and Nancy check it out and then see how things developed in this new set of videos.

http://youtu.be/pcQ8sauoMV0

In the July session it was apparent that Brandi and Nancy had made great progress. Both of them were calm, poised and very efficient. All the qualities that usually make up well executed dog training for leash reactivity.

We did not change the environment from the first video we shot in June.
The July set up was virtually the same with the exceptions we started at a much longer distance and had the benefit of the previous session video and notes.

This January we celebrate the 30th birthday of off-leash puppy classes. Happy Birthday SIRIUS® Puppy Training! It’s hard to believe that I taught the world’s very first off-leash, puppy socialization and training classes thirty years ago at Live Oak Park in Berkeley (where SIRIUS classes are still held to this day). Basically, I started SIRIUS simply because I wanted a local puppy school for my Alaskan Malamute puppy, Omaha. After ten years researching dog developmental behavior at UC Berkeley, I was well aware of the critically important and permanent effects of early socialization and of science-based training techniques and I certainly didn’t want Omaha’s schooling to be put on hold until he was an adult. Little did I know that SIRIUS puppy classes would change the way that pet dogs are trained worldwide.

The problems facing the modern dog are the same problems facing the planet, wildlife, government and economics. They all have one common denominator. Interestingly, this common problem is also the common solution. It all comes down to human behavior.

Dogs are not in a position to make decisions on where they live, how they live or even if they live. Their fate and welfare are in the hands of humans. This can be a very fortunate place to be if the individual dog finds its way to caring people. Surely there are many other species who could only hope for the level of concern that is given to our beloved canines.

Just because we can….doesn’t mean we should

I want to eat.  Actually, I need to eat in order to survive.  However, eating has become a battleground between my need for sustenance and my desire to avoid pain.  At each mouthful, I could taste food, or an electric shock could hit the side of my face like a hot, burning, lightning bolt, causing me to gasp and pull back.  But, often it doesn’t, in which case, I can take the next bite.   But do I want to take the next bite?  Need and pain fight each other.  The end result is that I eat very carefully, one bite of soft food gently following another.   I don’t snack and, while I can’t say I don’t enjoy my food (it still tastes good!) it comes at a price that is difficult to pay.   This, by the way, is what happens when you have Trigeminal Neuralgia, a fairly rare condition that was once called “the suicide disease.”

Seymour is a dog living in foster care in NYC. I have worked with him three times since this blog and the corresponding video have been released.

http://youtu.be/8cgLdBBs_mY

Seymour is roughly 7 – 8 months old and a mix of we are not sure what. He has had a rough past; which I will not get into for the sake of time. Suffice it to say he has suffered some traumas in his young life from children abusing him.

He is now is a good environment and lives with two adults. They are dedicated and are working closely with me on his training and his behavior modification.

Seymour learns fast and is very keen with sits, stays and waits, following lures, speedy orientations to prompts and he has a great mouth, meaning no known bites and no known aggressions towards humans. He may grab a shirtsleeve or a hanging purse however!