Dear New Dog Owner...

Dear New Dog Owner...

(If time travel existed, this is the letter I'd send to myself when I first became a new dog owner.)

Congratulations! Right now you are fascinated, anxious, and excited that there is a living, breathing dog in your condo. There's a whole world of fun ahead of you and tons of emotional growth you'll experience over time. You have no idea how good it'll be and how your life will change.

I have to warn you though - there are many things about dogs that aren't common sense and you really should know now on day one.

1. Dog socializing is not forcing your dog to meet every dog on the sidewalk, every dog at the park, or any dog tied up outside the supermarket. You wouldn't allow a 10 year old child to "go play" with all the kids standing around the corner store, so why would you do that to your dog? Socializing your dog is about making him feel comfortable just being in the company of other dogs, which may or may not mean a meet and greet. In fact, two dogs meeting on leash on a narrow sidewalk is a very tense situation - kind of like when the mafia and the yakuza meet in a warehouse for a drug deal. There's a good chance somebody will get nervous and accidentally pull the trigger, setting off a big kerfuffle.

2. The books about dog behavior stocked at your local bookstore are generally garbage - save your money. Start by reading Patricia McConnell's "The Other End of the Leash". If you pick up a book that talks about Wolf packs or Dominance, put it down.

3. Ditto with the programs on TV. I admit, I do watch Dog Whisperer and End of my Leash, but mainly because I think the dogs are cute. The training is abusive - you won't be able to tell at this point, but the dogs being "trained" there are under intense psychological stress and trauma. If you are lucky enough to get Animal Planet, do watch Victoria Stillwell's "It's Me or the Dog" though.

4. Don't be in such a rush to let your new dog off leash. Off leash is a privilege for both YOU and your dog - one that must be earned with work.

5. You'd think a dog park is exactly where your dog would want to play. You'd be surprised though, I think he'd rather be playing with YOU somewhere quiet. But you need to learn how to play with your dog and be interesting to him. Start with Tug of War and Fetch.

6. This may be a lot to ask early on, but kibble is terrible for him. For now, can you just add some table scraps on top of his food bowl each night? Just no onions or grapes.

7. Get pet insurance. You will spend more each year than the premium.

8. Work with a private dog trainer that uses positive reinforcement NOW - don't wait. An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure.

Sincerely,



Me in the Future



PS. You know when he's doing that - he's rolling around in poop or rotten food.

Counter Conditioning - TIMING IS EVERYTHING!

In the last two months we've been working on changing Duke's underlying attitude towards dogs. Much of the work we started off earlier was about teaching incompatible behaviors (i.e. Duke sees dog, he looks at us) but now we're tackling things a bit more head on.

For example, at the dog park - when we unleash Duke and dogs come to greet him, we click and treat as the dog approaches and Duke stays calm. (he takes the treat). When a dog approaches and sniffs Duke appropriately, we click and treat. When Duke approaches a dog and sniffs nicely, we click and treat. The result after just a couple of weeks has been phenomenal. While in the past, Duke used to let out a warning howl and snap to send incoming dogs away, now he tolerates their arrival and allows them to sniff him (and he will often sniff them back).

At the dog park, we usually do this work off-leash. I've gotten good at throwing a treat such that Duke sees it coming and can eat it in mid-air (or anticipate where it'll fall and pick it off the ground right away).

We've been doing the same, on-leash, with certain dogs on the street and sidewalk. Click and treat just for the mere presence of another dog (we're not asking for him to sit or look at us). Click and treat as the dog approaches. Click and treat after Duke passes the other dog. Click and treat if we can get them to meet on leash (major jackpot here).

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Safety - we've gone back to using the Gentle Leader so that we can close up Duke's mouth if ever he decided to bite another dog. Also a side effect of the Gentle Leader is it adds a certain level of suppression to Duke, which makes it a bit easier. (Suppression, as I see it, is the underlying fear of something unpleasant - in this case, pulling up to close the Gentle Leader is not exactly a fun thing)

2. Level of intensity and Flooding - if Duke won't take the food (I have waved milk bones right in front of his nose and he's turned away from them) it means the stimulus is too great. If this happens, you either have to lower the intensity (distance is best, or sometimes the particular dog is too "hot" for him) or increase the intensity of the reward.

3. TIMING IS EVERYTHING. The moment you click and treat is really critical. It has to be done the split second your dog's brain picks up the stimulus as its fed from his eyes. Its that split second where his brain is processing what the stimulus means where you have the opportunity to input meaning by a well timed click and treat. If you haven't had a professional dog trainer or behaviorist tell you that your training is bang-on, don't attempt this sort of program without getting expert help. If you're in the Toronto area, I can help you, or I can recommend someone who can.

I recently watched this video by Dr. Sophia Yin that really illustrates the power of classical counter conditioning. This video really shows that TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

Seminar on On-Leash Aggression - May 10 or 29

For those of you in the Greater Toronto Area - our behaviorist, Joan Weston, is having a two hour seminar on On-leash aggression via our school, Who's Walking Who - see below:

DESCRIPTION:

Does your dog lunge out at some dogs while on leash? Do you feel that you
don't have full control or your dog looses focus quickly? Is your dog
aggressive or just afraid? This seminar is will help sort out the reason
behind the reaction, and help to establish a plan of action to manage your
dogs actions. Joan Weston specializes in aggression and the rehabilitation
of dogs with issues. She is the staff Behaviorist for Who's Walking Who and
is a leading authority on this topic. She is the author of the popular "On
The Couch" column for Dogs Dogs Dogs newspaper and has studied ethology, the
science of behavior, with Dr. Raymond Coppinger. Her complete bio is on our
website, on our Behavioral Consultation page. For registration, if you have
more than one person to attend, please register each person individually.
Thanks.

SEMINAR LENGTH: 2 hours

SEMINAR FEE: $35.00

The two seminar dates are:
May 10, 2009 Sunday at 1:00 - 3:00 pm 889 Westney Road, Ajax 2 min south of
Hwy 401

May 29, 2009 Friday at 6:30 - 8:30 pm 97 Main Street (at Swanwick) Community
Centre 55 in Beaches

You can register here
http://www.whoswalkingwho.net/SeminarsEvents.aspx

If you register please put Helping Homeless Pets in the box that says "How
did you hear of our classes?"

Never too early to start...

Xsara's mom has a new 12 week old puppy - and it is astonishing what she's been able to learn at such a young age! It is never too early to start!

play date with photon

duke had a reunion with his classmate photon at the beaches off-leash dog park and had a howler-ific time. duke and photon hadn't seen each other since their 'step ahead' class almost 1.5 years ago.

photon impressed us with her leg weaving and duke blew out everybody's eardrums.

we also ran into a classmate from duke's current obedience class!

thanks peter for putting up with duke's overly enthusiastic howling and meeting us in the freezing cold!

i'm sure duke had a really great time playing fetch with photon!

Lessons from Practical Living, Class Four

(Woops, I missed a post about Class Three)

Today, Duke was a champ! No incidents of howling in class and he was focused the whole time. A few factors playing into his outstanding performance:

1) He's had bouts of diarrhea in the last few weeks due to a diet switch and eating a lot of melting food from the streets. He's feeling better. Illness or injury plays a huge part in reactivity.

2) We fast him on school nights so he's more motivated to do work. Basically he gets a very small breakfast and that's it all day. This just increases his motivation and drive for food reward.

3) We also put cheddar cheese into the treat bag (thereby increasing the value of the rewards)

We were able to walk by many dogs in class, and have many dogs walk by us, and Duke either held it together or we were able to put him in a backaway.

In today's class we learned:

1) Down stay while reading the newspaper
2) Down stay while getting up to go to the door and come back
3) Down stay while other dogs are recalled (Last year, Duke couldn't do this in Step Ahead - he'd recall to the arms of other dog owners calling COME - this year he nailed it!)
4) Go to your Bed
5) Emergency stay mid-recall (see video)



Well done Dukey!

Lessons from Practical Living, Class Two

Tonight was not so good a class for Duke's on leash aggression.

We got there about 20 minutes early and because the class is so full (12 dogs?) the lobby area was rammed and we were too nervous to go in. As we paced outside in the cold for 15 minutes, Duke was very sensitive and howled at pretty much every dog that was going in or coming out or going by. By the time we got into class, Duke's brain was tired out so he was only able to give us about 20 minutes of good work.

The big lesson we learned here is it is probably better to arrive just before class is about to get started. The lobby will be empty, and we won't waste Duke's energy outside the building or trying to get into the building without incident. Dogs only can focus for so long before they get tired and lose interest so its best to quit ahead. In fact, with 10 minutes left in the class, when a freezed dried liver delicacy put in front of his nose did nothing for him.

Some pluses - For every one time Duke howled at one of the dogs in class there were dozens of times he chose not to, and we were able to leave the facility and have Duke walk by two dogs at close proximity without any fuss.

We'll get it right next week!


Agenda from this week's class:

- Loose leash walking review
- Sit with your dog in down position, while other dogs circle your dog
- "Leave it" with food on the counter
- Back up - have your dog walk backwards
- "May I pet your dog?" - stranger pets your dog without him jumping up or acting silly
- "Hello how do you do?" - stranger approaches you but does not want to touch the dog
- Meet a dog on leash and recall from dog