What the “normal” dogs do

While on my walk with Mia last night on the lovely first evening of spring, I started mentally composing a post quite similar to this one. Shoot. Turns out I’ve already written it.

But the question remains, what are we supposed to do when we pass another dog on a narrow path? I mean, if the other person blithely lets her dog wander to the end of its leash, I’m going to let Mia do whatever she wants to, which is usually to sniff between its legs.

Circumstances have changed slightly. It’s lighter, drier and warmer out, so we’re seeing more dogs (and we’re actually able to see the dog, and read the human’s facial expression).

I can’t read people as well as I read dogs, but the last three we passed, I sensed that the walkers didn’t want our dogs to meet. In two of the three cases, I suspect they were afraid of what their dog might do.

Scenario 1: Passing on the sidewalk
Mia and I see a woman and a golden on the sidewalk, on the same side of the street as us. Joy, joy, I think. Since Leo’s not with us, I don’t have to cross to the other side of the street. The woman veers out into the street to give us space. Her dog strains against its leash, Mia strains against her leash. Mia’s hackles go up. The woman murmurs something to her dog as I say, “You’re fine. Good girl.” (To Mia, not the other woman.)

Scenario 2: Passing on a footbridge
There’s a whole other anecdote connected to this scenario, involving a little kid running up ahead of his parents and falling down in front of me (and Mia), shrieking as if he’d been shot (c’mon, kid. You didn’t fall that far, and I wouldn’t even be crying if I’d taken that fall), and me thinking it’s just as irresponsible to let your child run out of your sight on a woodsy trail as it is to flout the leash law. But I digress. Before the kid fell, while he’s still running ahead of me and Mia (with his parents behind us), we see a couple of older ladies approaching with a small dog, perhaps a miniature pinscher. The ladies give me a look, a little like, “Can’t you control your kid,” and I just keep walking over the footbridge. The ladies sort of pause at the other end of it, but not far enough away to keep Mia from sticking her face in the min-pin’s crotch for a good whiff. I felt like the lady wasn’t too thrilled about having my terrifying beast that close to her dog, but maybe that’s just remnants of my reactive dog shame talking. I mean, if she didn’t want our dogs to meet she could have a) picked hers up, or b) given us more space.

Scenario 3: Passing on the trail
A couple emerges from the woods as Mia and I are walking on the trail. They clearly want to keep their dog from meeting Mia. I think the man asked the dog to sit, but then, like, maybe he changed his mind and kept walking (or maybe the woman knew the dog wouldn’t sit and she overrode his strategy). In any case, their dog might have growled, but stayed on its side of the trail. Mia pulled on her leash a little, but kept on walking with me, and her hackles didn’t go up. “You’re fine. Good girl,” I told her.

I guess a perfect dog wouldn’t pull on the leash and try to sniff another dog? But Mia doesn’t pull me off my feet, or bark, lunge, growl or snarl, so as far as I’m concerned, she’s behaving appropriately… at least as appropriately as the other dogs.

I suppose I could have been more courteous to the ladies in Scenario 2, but as I said, I think the people in Scenarios 1 and 3 were concerned about their own dogs’ behavior, not Mia’s.

Tell me, owners of “normal” dogs, are Mia and I doing this right? I’m happy to take your constructive criticism.

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New doggie friends

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It’s not so easy to take a selfie with a dog you just met

I am so impressed with the Humane Society of Skagit Valley. Lots of dog lovers like the idea of walking shelter dogs, but never do it because “it’s too depressing.” Well, yes, it is sad to think of all the dogs who don’t have families. It’s sadder to think of them never getting any fresh air or time out of the kennel.

At HSSV, “no dog ever runs out of time.” They’re actively looking for families for all the dogs there. In the two times I’ve volunteered so far, every dog I’ve met has been incredibly sweet. Really good dogs. Adoptable dogs.

If they’re a little rambunctious, it’s just because they need more exercise, and that’s motivation enough to keep me coming back.

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WOOF! Management Is the Secret to Success

Welcome to the second WOOF Support Blog Hop.

This month’s theme is Success, Frustration, and Everything In Between.

Reactive dog trainers talk about “setting your dog up for success.” To me, that means careful management.

Generally, I do not consider Leo a fearful dog, but he is extremely leash-reactive. After what we went through with Isis, I don’t have it in me to devote the kind of time needed to teach Leo to be bomb-proof on a leash. Instead, I manage him. I don’t walk him around our neighborhood when we’re likely to encounter a bunch of other dogs or people.

While I am decidedly not a runner, Rob jogs on a treadmill sometimes, and I knew he liked the idea of jogging with our dogs. The day we met Mia, in fact, he tested her out to see if she would run beside him. She did, and yet, he never goes running with the dogs.

Recently, during the darkest, wettest part of winter, I started walking the dogs around a well-lit commuter parking lot that used to be a drive-in movie theater. (Rob remembers when it was, but that was way before my time.) Buses arrive on the hour to return college students to their cars, but otherwise there is minimal bicycle or dog traffic, and the gravel is so uneven, I’ve yet to see a skateboarder there.

I clocked it with my car and found that the perimeter is 1/3 of a mile. I suggested to Rob that he try jogging there with Leo. He took me up on it, and a new exercise routine was born!

Mia and I went with them a few days ago to get some pictures before Mia and I went on our own walk. (I told you, I don’t run.) Leo was very distraught to see me and Mia go off in the other direction. He squawked and squawked and even backed out of his harness. Mia and I had to get out of his eyeline before he could focus on jogging with Rob.

Mia and I got back while they were on their sixth lap. I handed her off and Rob jogged with both of them for a stretch.

As far as I’m concerned, any activity that gets their tongues hanging out is a success. If we can do it without a bark or a lunge, it’s cause for celebration!

Do you have a reactive or fearful dog? Please join us and share your story. The Blog Hop is open through Sunday, March 16, hosted by Oz the Terrier, Roxy The Traveling Dog and Wag ‘n Woof Pets.

Oz the Terrier

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How to train a dog to do anything (and prevent bites)

I read Ian Dunbar’s Before and After Getting Your Puppy before and after we got Leo. Unfortunately, I had not yet heard about puppy socialization when we got Isis, whose story I tell in Bark and Lunge.

That’s why, after reading an advance copy of my book, Ian Dunbar said: Prospective puppy/dog owners can save themselves a lot of heartbreak by reading Bark and Lunge, which tells the story of what can go wrong when a puppy is not properly socialized and when unsuspecting owners are bullied into using aversive training techniques. Please read this book so you don’t make the same mistakes with your puppy.

Ian recently came to town for a six-hour seminar at Tails-A-Wagging, where he taught us how to train a dog to do anything in four steps:

  1. Cue
  2. Lure
  3. Response
  4. Reward

1, 3, 4 are the science. The art is in the lure. The simplest example is:

  1. Say, “Sit.”
  2. Show the dog a treat in your hand and then lift it above his nose.
  3. Most dogs, as they look up, will sit down. Some dogs won’t quite get it, and therein lies the art.
  4. When the dog sits, you say, “Good sit!” and give him the treat.

Training Defined

Ian says he’s astounded when people tell him their dogs don’t like treats. They don’t like to fetch. They don’t like tug.

“Training is not just teaching a dog what to do, it’s teaching him to like it.”

Let’s say the dog doesn’t consider treats to be very exciting rewards, but he really likes for you to chase him. Use the treat as a secondary reinforcer, like a clicker, before you reward him with what he really wants — to be chased. The treat becomes mega-secondary reinforcer. (At least, that’s how I understand it. Ian will be discussing this further at his workshop on Biting and Fighting Tuesday in Olympia.)

#1 Training Error

The biggest mistake reward-based and positive-reinforcement trainers make is to not phase out food soon enough. Or ever, in our case. We still can’t get Leo to sit unless we have a treat in our hands.

After a dog is four or four-and-a-half months old, the lure becomes a bribe.

A lure takes a willing dog and tells him what we want him to do. A bribe coerces an unwilling dog to act against its will.

Preventing Dog Bites

You know what the biggest bite trigger is? Grabbing a dog’s collar.

Here’s how you turn it around: Once you’ve already taught sit and come, call the dog to you. Have him sit. Grab his collar. Give him a treat. Let him go back to doing whatever he was doing before you so rudely interrupted. Most likely, playing.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

You have turned the biggest bite trigger into a tertiary reinforcement. (Play is the primary reinforcer. The treat is secondary.)

Girl Problems

Apparently there are a lot of female dog trainers who have trouble walking their own reactive dogs. I saw this happen with Isis because my own anxiety about what she would do fueled her anxiety. Men don’t have this problem, because, in Ian’s words, “Men don’t give a shit.”

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Modeling with my muses

I apologize that the backdrop is the same as my photo from last week’s shed shaming post. Leo and Mia were acting as my stand-ins for a little photo shoot we did over the weekend.

The end goal was a new photo of me, which you can see on the About Me page, but a happy byproduct were some pics of me with my bestest buddies.

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Christmas in February

It snowed ALL day yesterday. By the end of the day, we got about six inches, which will probably all be rained away by the time I get home tonight. We shot this video pretty early in the day, when there were only a couple of inches on the ground. We tried to make the most of it.

Music: Save My Mind for Later by Wildlight via freemusicarchive.org (Accompanied by Mia’s woofs!)

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Shed shaming

dogs in chairs

I have a phobia about inviting people in my home. Not because these two critters aren’t hospitable, it’s just that there’s no place for a person to sit without getting covered in dog hair.

You know those signs, T-shirts, and dish towels that say “No outfit is complete without dog hair”? That pretty much describes my wardrobe. I’ve accepted this. I’m okay with it.

Reusable grocery bags are a problem, though, because there’s no hair-free place to keep them in my car. I used to have a plastic tote where I kept the bags, along with my outdoor gear for work, but that was when I only had one enormous dog. I removed the tote to make room for Mia.

A grocery checker sneered at me once and said she could refuse to use my bags because they’re a health hazard. Lady, you think I don’t know my hairy reusable bags are disgusting? Lately I’ve just been paying the extra five cents for paper bags. I’ve tried washing the reusable bags, but the dog hair is stuck in there pretty good. I’d throw them away, but that seems wasteful. Guess I should get a different style of bag.

I used to vacuum my car before having it serviced, but somewhere along the line, I decided to own it. This is the Pacific Northwest! Our cars are dirty! Our dogs are big!

I had to make a repeat visit to the dealer this week because my dashboard lights went screwy after I had two bulbs replaced. (Boy, was that a waste of money. In hindsight, I would rather have burned out defrost and A/C lights than pay $120 in labor to have the guy futz back there, bump my other bulbs and make then go out intermittently. My car may be filthy, the interior chewed up by dogs, but apparently I’ll throw money away on superficial things under the naive impression I’m taking good care of my vehicle.) Usually, I don’t even see the mechanic who works on my car. When I pick up my car, it’s cheerfully waiting for me in the parking lot.

This time, the mechanic called me back to the inner sanctum to show me that my dashboard lights up just fine. And if it goes out, just give it a smack. Then he sent me out the front door while he drove my car around.

When he climbed out of my car, he quite conspicuously brushed off his pant legs. Because what could be more repugnant than having dog hair transfer from the seat of my car to his mechanic’s uniform?

Have you ever felt so completely shed shamed?

The Good Dog Park v. The Bad Dog Park

Photo Feb 16, 1 38 02 PM
Queen and King of the hill at the “bad” dog park

There are lots of reasons not to take your dog to a dog park, and most of these have two legs and spend their time texting when they should be watching their dogs. But sometimes, especially when it’s cold and rainy and your dog barks and lunges when he’s on a leash, you really just want to take him somewhere to run off all that energy. We do walk him, but he’s kind of a meanderer on a leash. We have a fenced backyard, and we play games with our dogs meant to stimulate their little brains, but Leo tires himself out best when he can run with other dogs at the park.

In my community, there are two dog parks where I have at various times been a “regular.” When Isis was first old enough to socialize, she did not have a reliable recall, and was prone to do things like run away from me during obedience class tests. I started taking her to the one dog park in town that is fully fenced. I loved watching her race around with the other dogs, once she stopped being afraid of them.

What I learned later is that this is the “bad” dog park, where owners (like me) who have no control over their dogs go. The crowd there is a little rough and tumble.

I thought I’d found the answer to all of Isis’s excess energy needs when I discovered the “good” dog park. While it’s not fenced, the play area is down a trail and bounded by a hill, and Isis never once attempted to escape. She did however, start to show fear aggression toward smaller dogs, and we had to stop going there.

Leo is extremely well socialized with other dogs, so for the past few months, we’ve been taking him and Mia to the “good” dog park quite a bit. Mia didn’t do much playing with other dogs. She liked to run around with her ball in her mouth. Not sharing it, not wanting any humans to throw it for her. But she seemed to enjoy lying on the ground watching the action. Most of the time, Leo romped with the other dogs, and if there was no one fun to play with, we threw him a ball.

Occasionally there would be a clueless owner who let her five-year-old child run onto the field wielding a Chuck-It, her face at the exact height of an excitable Lab mix. You’ve all heard stories about dog park fiascos; I can’t top those. Really, this dog park is as close to ideal as I think a dog park can get.

Except.

For some reason, joggers and cyclists seem to think it’s a good idea to jog or cycle on the gravel trail that runs alongside the off-leash area. Granted there aren’t loose dogs there 24 hours a day, but I want to hang a notice next to the sign for the off-leash dog area that says, JOGGERS AND CYCLISTS WITHOUT DOGS, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? and THIS IS NOT A GOOD PATH TO TEACH YOUR CHILD TO RIDE A BIKE.

It’s not a very scenic trail. It literally smells of sewage because it runs past a wastewater treatment plant. There was a time the trail led to the bay, but at the moment, it’s blocked off because of construction and you can’t get there from there.

Despite Leo’s penchant for barking and lunging at bicycles and joggers, sometimes he completely ignored these distractions at the off-leash park. Other times he ran after a cyclist, but not to any disastrous end. However, the last time we went to this park, he ran up to a jogger and clearly frightened her. I get why she was scared, even though he didn’t bark or jump on her, but my attitude also was kind of, “Hey, lady, I don’t bring my dogs to your track! Why are you jogging through my off-leash play area?”

Bottom line: It’s our fault for not having strong enough voice control that we can call Leo away from a jogger or a bicycle, so he lost his “good” park privileges.

Today, we returned to the “bad” park, enclosed by chain link to keep the joggers out. Calling it the “bad” park isn’t fair to all the lovely people and their dogs who were there, but it was a boisterous crowd. Mia was scared. She chomped on her ball and stuck pretty close to our sides. A dog barked in her face to incite her into play, and her hackles went up. Leo did a lot of running around, which was the whole point, after all.

As responsible dog owners, we kept a sharp eye on our dogs, as well as the other dogs. I was prepared to leave at the first sign of inappropriate behavior, but we didn’t see any. At one point, Leo joined a group chasing after a dog who had tucked its tail under. I called him away and headed for the exit gate. Happily, he obeyed and we were on our way.

Is this like taking my badly behaved child from a playground in suburbia to a park in the inner city? How are the dog parks in your community? What are the signs that you look for that tell you it’s time to leave?

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WOOF! Working Out Our Fears

isis buddha (13)
Isis, fearsome and fearful

Where were all the Fearful Dog support groups when I was struggling with Isis? Did they not exist, or did I not understand until way too late that fear was the root of her problem? Social media was still young then, way back in 2008.

I’m part of two great Facebook communities where every day, people post questions and success stories about their fearful or reactive dogs. Truly, I am not alone.

UPDATE: During the WOOF Blog Hop, I was introduced to another Facebook group for Reactive Dogs.

I wrote a book about my experience with Isis, and am in the process of getting it published. This is probably against protocol, but I want to share some of the concerns editors had about the marketability of my book:

1) Readers will not be able to connect with the character of Isis the aggressive dog.

2) My book is not different enough from all the other dog books.

3) It is not a “feel-good” book: “Rather, I felt a lot of sadness and regret.”

I flat-out disagree with points 1 and 2, but point 3 gave me pause. It’s true! I feel sadness and regret, too! But is that any reason not to tell my story? Doesn’t the dog always die at the end? I gave the manuscript another read, searching for places where I might alleviate sadness and regret in my readers. I revised my proposal so that the chapter summaries don’t end on such a down note, and I wrote a little epilogue, describing life now with Mia.

A sad ending does not make it a sad book. We treasured every minute we spent with Isis, and she brought us joy beyond measure. If you asked her, Isis would tell you that her life was filled with an abundance of love and happiness. Writing (and reading) the book does make me “feel good.”

My true goal in writing this book, however, is to help others learn from our mistakes. To give hope to dog owners experiencing the same guilt and frustration that I felt while trying to train my “problem” dog. Bark and Lunge will raise awareness about the importance of socialization, the benefits of positive reinforcement, and the hazards of aversive training methods.

In the coming months, I will be giving away free copies of the book to readers willing to post an honest review to Amazon (and/or GoodReads or Barnes and Noble). Stay tuned!

Today is the inaugural WOOF Blog Hop. WOOF = Working Out Our Fears. Not just our dogs’ fears but our own fears of inadequacy and hopelessness that our dog will never get better. Fear that other people will think our dogs are mean.

Oz the Terrier

Do you have a reactive or fearful dog? Please join us and share your story. The Blog Hop is open through Sunday, February 16, hosted by Oz the Terrier, Roxy The Traveling Dog and Wag ‘n Woof Pets.

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