THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Two more interesting books: A favorite of mine, In the Kingdom of Gorillas has been revised and updated since it first came out a few  years ago. It was written, truth in lending here, by two good friends of mine. I pretty much kiss the hems of their pants, because they are the people who did as much as anyone (actually more in my opinion) to save Mountain Gorillas from extinction. Amy spent years living with gorilla families, and with her husband and co-author Bill Weber, spent years convincing the governments of several countries that a well-managed gorilla tourist program would be economically more valuable than cutting down the remaining forest and growing crops. They are brave, intrepid people who are a big part of the reason that I and my friends got to spend a rapturous 45 minutes sitting amongst an extended family of gorillas in Rwanda a few years ago. In the Kingdom of Gorillas is a fascinating account of their attempts to learn about gorillas, their life with gorillas, and their relationships with other researchers and agencies. (And yes, they knew Diane Fossey well. Some of their stories about her are in this book. Others, well, are better left unpublished.) If you want to read about Amy and Bill’s close encounters with these amazing animals, and marvel at the hard work and stamina it took to save the species, pick up the book.

The second book was sitting on a table by my desk until I got comments from my last blog about wishing dogs could communicate with us more than they do. Many people wrote in (when asked what they would like to know about canine cognition) saying they’d like to know more about how their dog could communicate with them more specifically and more effectively. Sometimes I yearn for the same thing, but one comment also reflected my worries about that ability: do we really want to hear what they have to say?  Would our dogs relentlessly sign CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN I WANT MORE CHICKEN if we taught them how?

But here’s the book: Dogs Can Sign, Too by Sean Senechal. Here’s what it says on the back: “Imagine being able to ask your poodle, “Who’s at the door?” and having her respond “It’s Katy.” Or asking your golden retriever, “Do you want a treat?” and him responding, “No, water.” Myself, I’ve never met a GR who would pass up a treat for water, but hey, maybe it’d been in the desert and was seriously dehyrdrated… Anyone read the book yet? Taught your dog to sign? If so, let us know. I’ll pick it up soon and let you know what I think. Or, I’ll have Willie write it up.

Here’s the sunrise early this morning, a still, foggy breathless patch of time and space:

When clients, eyes shining, would tell me how smart their dog was, I’d often respond: “I’m so sorry.” Of course, I said it with a big smile and we all laughed about it, but the truth is, smart isn’t always what we want. Most of us want dogs who are “smart” in that they learn what we want them to learn at lightening speed, but we don’t want them to use their cognitive powers against us. Some dogs do just that; I swear I can see smoke coming out of their ears as they try to figure out how to train us to do their bidding. I remember one dog, a brilliant Standard Poodle, who appeared to spend much of her day trying to figure out how to “beat the system.” Others, the more biddable ones who came hard wired to want to work as a team (far more rare than the former!), not only rapidly learn learn the cues we teach them, they are delighted to perform them just to be part of the social group.

Clearly, “smart” means different things to different people, and in dogs as in people, there are different kinds of intelligence. This was emphasized in a new study by Bradley Philip Smith and his colleague Carla Litchfield in Animal Behavior (Vol. 80, No. 1, 155-162) comparing the problem-solving ability of domestic dogs to that of dingoes.  Dingoes derived from domestic dogs, but have been independent for so long they are believed to represent a wild-type canid more than a companion animal.

The study asked dingoes and dogs to solve a simple problem known as the “detour task.” In this case, a bowl of food was visible behind a transparent barrier. In order to get the food, the animals had to move right or left, detouring around the barrier to get the food. The dingoes figured it out in an average of about 20 seconds, while the dogs, bless them, were more likely to paw, whine, bark and look at their humans to “fix it.” I find this especially interesting, because I have had to teach all my working dogs the cue “Go around.” On a farm you often find you and your dog on opposite sides of a fence, and when they are young they seem to need help understanding that sometimes to go forward you have to go sideways first (to get through the gate). They learn it rapidly, although some learn it A LOT faster than others. Wolves, by the way, are adept at figuring this out for themselves, performing more like dingoes than dogs.  Even if they have been raised by people, they don’t look to us to help them solve problems like dogs do.

However, dogs are better at problem-solving that includes a social relationship. You’ve no doubt heard about the studies in which dogs are better than wolves or chimps at following an arm pointing toward something, usually hidden food. (I should note that Pam Reid, at the BFF conference, stated she has the same skepticism I do about the reports that young puppies automatically follow a point. In our experience, young dogs just sniff your hand if you extend your arm and point toward something. However, they seem predisposed to learn to follow a point, which is important and significant.) It makes such sense that domestic dogs would be better at social communication with humans than wild-type canids, while dingoes and wolves are better at problem solving on their own. As has been argued (including on this blog on 2/2/2009) dogs are excellent tool users… it’s just that we are the tools being used!

A question for you: I’m starting to work on my talk, an Introduction to the APDT Canine Cognition Symposium in Atlanta, and of course am doing a lot of thinking about well, thinking. Here’s my question:  If you could ask scientists to do research on canine cognition and your dog’s mind, what would you ask them to try to figure out? What do you wonder about? Do you wonder if your dog’s memory is like yours? If she understands death? If he can count? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Chaos reigns. We’re having several of the old Birdseye Maple floors refinished, and so the house is torn asunder for several days. It makes everyday routines into adventures–you’ve all been there I’m sure. But the weather broke though for a few days, and it actually felt cool (ooooh, cool!) yesterday. Sheep, dogs and humans are all extremely grateful.

And speaking of grateful, I am grateful for your kind responses to my last blogs. I will indeed continue to interweave information about training and behavior with with my own experiences with my dogs. I’ll admit that sometimes it is a struggle–we are hard wired to pay more attention to the negative than the positive and it takes a goodly number of thoughtful and kind replies to counteract the that say:  “I’m going to stop reading your blog because you just pass dogs around as if they were old shoes.”

Here’s my old shoe now, the wonderful Mr. Will, taken a minute ago, dozing by my feet as I write.

I’m between washing off the sweat and dirt from worming our lambs and finishing my talk on Play in Toronto (got some great new video!), but I couldn’t get on the plane without adding a few more words about Hope, Willie and the comments that have come in. I know that many readers don’t read the comments, so I thought I’d address some of the questions that came up after my last post about Hope and Willie.

If you haven’t read yesterdays post, I wrote to alert readers that it is not yet clear to me that Hope is the right dog for Redstart Farm. He’s only 5 months old, and I won’t decide what is best for me, him or Willie until he gets older, but I wanted to let readers know that there are some red flags rising, so that you wouldn’t be blindsided if I decide he’s not a good fit. I didn’t write the post for me, I wrote it because I’m aware that many readers become attached to my dogs–I will be forever grateful for the hundreds of sweet comments written when Lassie died. I’ve posted lots of pictures of Hope and Willie playing well, but I realized that I wasn’t presenting the whole story, and that wasn’t fair in a way to not alert you to the possibility of problems down the road. There is one thing I wrote yesterday that needs amending. I wrote: “And so, here I am, in the process of deciding whether Hope is the right dog for Willie.” What I should have written is: “.. whether Hope is the right dog for me, for Willie, for Redstart Farm, and if we are the right home for him.”

Ironically, one reader commented that it seemed I was uncomfortable with uncertainty, so perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten a puppy.  I’ve always said, in numerous writings and speeches, that you can never tell how well one dog will do in an environment until they’ve been there for awhile. That’s doubly true with puppies, and so when I got a puppy I was, and am, perfectly comfortable knowing that I can’t know if it’s a good match until it some time passes. That’s especially true of working herding dogs–you simply can’t know if their style will match yours until they are 10 to 12 months of age. I’m fine with that, although of course I’d much rather not be seeing some potential red flags. It’s traditional to “audition” working dogs, to see if you and they are a good match. It’s not only commonly done, it’s considered responsible. You bring in a dog with potential, work together once they are old enough, and if you are responsible and wise, only keep the ones that match your own style and temperament and find the others a better match.

If Hope’s style of herding doesn’t match mine, that’s what I’ll do, for his sake and mine. If Hope and Willie end up being two males in one household who are always vigilant and anxious, I’ll find Hope a great home and be proud of all the time and energy I’ve put into giving him the best start possible. I’m perfectly okay with that, but I know that some readers are not.

There are two ways I could go here: Stop writing about my own dogs, and limit my posts to information about behavior and training. I’m fine with that, there’s so much of interest to talk about, and I love this international inquiry we all are in together. I’ve written about my own dogs as part of the blog for a few reasons, the most relevant being that I’ve always believed it is helpful to others to see how people who are considered experts handle real life. And real life is not black and white, it’s not always a happy movie, and it’s full of complexity and uncertainty. I’ve been reading an interesting book, titled Wrong, about the problems inherent in both research and pop “experts.” One of the author’s points is that the public wants experts to speak in absolutes, whether they are accurate or not, while scientists are often ignored, because the issues they are discussing are complex and can’t be understood in a 15 second sound bite. Although there indeed some black and whites to dog behavior, there are a lot of colors in between, and I will always be drawn to the golds and midnight blues of real life, and want to write about them.

But for now, since I have been writing about my dogs, know that I’m going to make a decision about Hope based on my responsibility to ensure that the dogs in my care live healthy, happy lives. If worst comes to worst (and I’m NOT saying it will, it’s much too soon to say), forcing dogs to stay together, even if they are anxious and uncomfortable when trapped in the same house, is not responsible, loving or kind. I have seen client after client who had 2 dogs who clearly were miserable living together, but the client could not bear to do what the dogs needed, which was live apart. If our herding styles don’t mesh, then I’ll find him a place where he can work sheep and be a loving and beloved member of the family. It’s a lovely egocentrism to believe that each one of us is the perfect home for every dog, and that if we just try hard enough we can fix anything, but every behaviorist in the country will tell you that’s not true. My decision will not only be made on whether Willie and Hope play well together (I might have emphasized that aspect of it too much in my previous post), it will be made on what is best for me, Jim, Willie and Hope. I’m comfortable that as time goes on I will know what I need to know to make that decision.

Eeeps, gonna miss my plane if I don’t wrap this up! One last point: I love that many of you have suggested an older female as a buffer. Great minds…. if I had $100 for every time I’ve said “If only Tulip were still alive,” I’d retire!

Here’s a photo to make us smile, smiling is a good thing, isn’t it?

This is a tough one to write. As regular readers know, I primarily got Hope as a playmate for Willie, my turned-around crazy dog who took three years of intense work to deal with his pathological fear-based aggression to other dogs, his episodes of all-out rage, his extreme sound sensitivity, his dysfunctional gut, etc etc etc. And inside all that was one of the sweetest dogs I’d ever met, and that is the dog you’d meet if you came to the farm today–a sweet, people-loving healthy dog who loves his dog buddies and goes all happy-faced and loose bodied when he sees an unfamiliar dog approaching him. I’d never take him to a dog park, and he becomes a nervous wreck if a large dog he’s never met comes into the house, but with a little easy management he is a wonderful dog, and I love him now like life itself.

My dear Lassie-girl, the one who died in January, was Willie’s best friend, and they played together up to a few days before she died. Soon after she did, I started looking for another dog, primarily a play mate for Willie. I surfed on rescue sites for months, any breed would do, never quite finding what looked like the right dog, and then heard about a litter of BC’s from a great breeding with a super track record. That’s where Hope came from, and he indeed is a super dog. He is the smartest Border Collie I’ve ever had, and I don’t need to explain to any of you what that means. He is so fun to train it’s addictive. I could happily quit all my jobs, including this blog, and spend the next few years training Hope. He’d be doing rocket science by the time he turned five. I’ve rarely had this much fun training a dog, and especially now that we’re over the worst of the early puppy stages (including having to pee every eight minutes), he is a joy.

He’s also competitive, and that has become the basis of his relationship with Willie. As Hope matures, Willie has stopped greeting him when we come downstairs in the morning. They have stopped playing tug games, I suspect because they were never games to Hope. He’d work his way up the toy until he was an inch from Willie’s mouth and do all he could to get the toy and run away with it. Unlike other dogs, he seemed serious about it from the first time he played. Not so some other dogs: I have a video of Lassie playing tug with Willie when he was a puppy, and she continually gave it back to him if she pulled it out of his mouth. But at nine weeks of age Hope  wanted the toy, period. Willie and Hope don’t play much wrestle play anymore either. They do on occasion, but it’s much less frequent and doesn’t last very long. Some of this could be related to Hope’s age, he is getting older after all, but he’s only 5 months old, not exactly in his dotage.

Hope is not the only problem. Willie, who wasn’t able to play with dogs outside of the house until he was almost one and a half, turns out to be no fun to play with outside if you are a young puppy. As the strongest eyed BC I’ve ever had, Willie loves to herd other dogs, running around to the front of their forward motion and stopping them by diving in and either nipping or just plowing into them. I hadn’t seen too that much of this until I got the pup, because usually  Willie has played with older dogs who are as fast as he is. Wilie plays “let’s race!” and the dogs run shoulder to shoulder, sometimes I swear slowing down and then speeding up on purpose to keep the game going. However, he has tried herding other dogs before. Once he tried herding one of his BFF’s, Mishka the Dobbie bitch, who, with the power and confidence of a canine Serena Williams, told him in no uncertain terms never to do that again. He got all flat-eared and grinny-faced after she disciplined him and he got the message. He’s never done it to one of his other friends, a year-old BC, who is as fast as he is and who loves to play “Let’s be race horses!” along with Willie. But Hope is just a puppy, and can’t possibly keep up with Willie, so sometimes they play well outside, Hope running after Willie or Willie running circles around Hope, and sometimes, more and more often it seems, I have to call off Willie because it starts to look more like harassment than play.

Willie also seems to have a V on his forehead for Victim. When Hope was younger, Willie never corrected him for the usual things that rude, young puppies get disciplined for by older dogs. Instead, Willie would  hang his head and look oppressed, or look as though nothing had happened while I was thinking “Willie! Stand up for yourself!”

And so, here I am, in the process of deciding whether Hope is the right dog for Willie. He is a great dog, but I am not looking for “a dog.” I’m looking for a friend for Willie, and although you can treat and manage a multitude of behavioral problems, you can’t force a friendship if it’s not there inherently. {Added later today: I don’t need them to be best friends, but Hope’s competitiveness and adult male behavior as a young pup might be a red flag that could be some serious problems between him and Willie down the road.}  My loyalties have to first be to Willie, and I have to do what I think is best for him. Nothing would make me happier if I decide that Hope is the right match. Hope is smart and fun and probably will be brilliant on sheep and damn it, has gotten drop-dead gorgeous as he’s grown up. He is not perfect: he is a resource guarder (he is already 50% better, yes I think there’s a genetic basis but I totally disagree with some who say it can’t be treated), he’s a tad pushy (barks for attention, jumps up and slams against you) but no pup is perfect and all of his ‘issues’ are things I not only know how to treat or manage, I enjoy doing it. The problem is that this isn’t a training issue; I wish it was because then I could better deal with it. The fact is, no one can make two dogs into friends if they don’t want to be, any more than you can force two people to love living together. {Again, they don’t need to be best friends, but I’ve seen dogs living in constant states of vigilance and anxiety and that’s not a life that is good for anyone.}

Cross your paws for us. I haven’t decided what is best yet, but thought I should let you know where things stand. This issue does bring up an interesting question related to all of us: that of friendship between dogs. I’d love to hear from you about the dogs in your life who have either become best friends, or not… and why. I think the issue of relationships between dogs is often not addressed at the right level: we talk about resource guarding or appropriate play, but what about true friendship? Camille Ward’s research on play found that as dogs mature they seek out the same play partners more and more, and she suggested we need to think more about whether our dogs need BFFs of their own species. Your thoughts?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Sad news from last night. We lost another lamb to a new worm in the area that is resistant to worming medicine. It was our best lamb, a ram lamb I kept as a potential breeder. He looked fine two days ago, and then I found him dead last night. I talked to my vet and he said that 3 other farms in the area have been losing lambs right and left; one farm lost 20 lambs before they could blink. I’ll be trying a new medicine tomorrow after the sheep are kept off food for 12 hours (we’ve learned that worming meds work best on an empty stomach), so tomorrow before I fly out Jim and I will be cowboying sheep in the barn at dark-thirty in the morning. (And thanks friend Kathy for helping with the dead lamb. Never a fun way to spend an evening.)

Happier  news: here’s Hope playing with a new friend, a four month old BC mix pup who came over and played non-stop for almost an hour and a half. Hope played beautifully with him… he always does with other dogs it seems. The younger pup was always on top by the way, and look at that tail!

A quick post today, trying to catch up before I leave for Toronto on Friday.  Sunday at the BFF conference was great, I’ll write a post soon about Pam Reid’s talks on cognition, her talk about stress, and Emily Levine’s talk on compulsive disorders in dogs.  All of them were great, very valuable. I thought this conference had the highest level of talks I’ve seen, and many others seemed to agree.

Although it’s hard to pack up and go before you have your paws on the ground, I’m very much looking forward to meeting folks in Toronto, and to traveling to Seattle to speak in mid-September. It is hard to turn around this fast when you’ve been traveling, leaving the farm and the dogs, sheep and Sushi, I won’t pretend it’s not, but I do meet such interesting people and always learn so much.

I get all the benefits later in September when I give the same talk I gave at BFF on “The Power of Pets” in Madison WI on September 23rd, a fund raiser for the Dane County Humane Society. I get to meet lots of great people in my own backyard (no airports!) and talk about a topic I love: the biology and psychology of why we love our dogs soooooo much. Please come up and say hi if you are a blog reader (and thanks for all of you who did in Pennsylvania, I LOVED meeting you and seeing real faces behind the people out there in cyberspace.) You can get tickets from DCHS for just the evening talk or, you can also come to the reception beforehand. The numbers are limited so we’ll all have enough time to talk. If you come to the  reception, PLEASE bring a photo of your pet, nothing would make me happier than to coo over your dog or cat!

Here’s a photo from BFF of all the speakers and the organizers, Dana and Carolyn. I am using the one in which we are all cracking up, because that’s pretty much what we looked like when we went to dinner together every night. I suppose this is where I should thank Suzanne Hetts and Nancy Williams for introducing me to a Peachtini. Always glad to add one more fruit serving to my nutrition for the day. (Not to mention adding about 3 pounds. My only complaint about the conference is that if you add Pia Silvani, Suzanne Hetts, Nancy Williams and Pam Reid up together, you would still barely manage a Size 2. I said I was representing the cows of Wisconsin.)

From left to right, back row: Dana Crevling, conference organizer queen who lost her soulmate dog the same day that Pia lost hers. Together they decided to do something to honor them. Next is Carolyn Barney who was a invaluable help in the  organization, Nancy Williams, Pia Silvani, Trish King, yours truly, and Vinnie Castalano. In the front is Suzanne Hetts, Pam Reid and Emily Levine. Not pictured are the legions of wonderful people from St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in NJ, who did tons of work. It looks like we raised lots of money for St. Hubert’s and that felt great to all of us.

I’m at the Best Friends Forever Conference in Pennsylvania, taking a quick break from the talks. I have to say that this is one of the best seminars I’ve attended: the quality of the talks is outstanding. Suzanne Hetts gave one today that was fantastic: absolutely the best organized and most informative talk on what dominance is and isn’t that I’ve heard. I couldn’t begin to summarize it all, but here is some especially useful information from it, based on common mythologies that people have about dominance.

Common Underlying Assumptions about Dominance, from Suzanne Hetts:

I. Most (all?) interactions between dogs are competitive (going out the door first, who gets the toy, etc.). Is this true? No, it’s not. The fact is, many interactions between dogs are not competitive. A great example is the tug game. Some people argue that you have to ‘win’ or the dog won’t respect you, yet many dogs love to play tug for the sake of playing tug and will give you back the toy if you drop it. Suzanne showed a video of one of her dog repeatedly giving the toy back to her husband, Dan, clearly in hopes that he would continue the game. That’s exactly how Hope plays with me BUT not how he plays with Willie. I don’t think Hope is “playing” tug with Willie, I think he simply wants the toy for himself. He grabs it closer and closer to Willie’s mouth, and if he gets it he takes it away. However, Willie and Lassie played tug for long periods of time, both holding only the very end of the toy, giving it back to one another if necessary.  Conclusion: some interactions may be competitive, but lots and lots of them aren’t.

II. Dominance is about Control and “Obedience.” The confusion between ‘dominance’ and ‘obedience’ is pervasive, but they are NOT the same thing. “Dominance” is about who wins a competitive interaction over something that both individuals want, not about responding to a cue or “command.” Calling your dog to come has absolutely nothing to do with ’social dominance,’ whether the dog comes or not! Confusing those concepts has caused a lot of problems in the dog training world, not to mention to lots of dogs.

III. All dogs are social climbers and are always ready to challenge others (humans or dogs) for social rank. Not true again. First, many people argue reasonably that we know little about “dominance” between 2 species. As used in science, it is between animals of the same species. Second, Suzanne argued, that if anything, most domestic dogs are predisposed to take a subordinate role to humans. We could talk about this aspect for hours (and pages), but she made several excellent points in relation to it. If this hangs you up, ask anyone if they would take a real bone away from a wolf. And as importantly, it is simply not true that all animals of a social group “want” to be high ranking. There are many costs to being in a high social rank, and many benefits to being a subordinate.

IV. Some dogs are just “dominant.” Whoa, careful here again. Dominance is a descriptor of a relationship, not a personality or an individual. If you have 2 individuals and a piece of food between them that they both want, one individual would be described as “dominant” if he or she gets the food 20 out of 20 trials. That’s all the concept meant as it was and IS used in science. What’s often not considered by the general public and advocates of “getting dominance” over your dog, is that it is context dependent. Indiv A might get the bone every time, but Indiv B might get the sleeping place. Motivation and context is everything, and behavior in one context does NOT necessarily predict behavior in another.

I could go on, but better get back to the conference. Most importantly, Suzanne did an excellent job of advocating for people in the dog world to be able to talk about the concept knowledgeably, to avoid polarized conversations that only divide and confuse, to use terms with precision and knowledge, and to avoid repeating assumptions. She advocating for people on both ends of the extremes on this issue to take a deep breath (my words) and educate themselves about what science tells us about social relationships. Here here.

Before I go, here’s a photo I took the day before I left, of Hope’s new friend, Lily, a young Dogo Argentino (sp?), who tends to lie down every time she meets puppies and young children. Clearly she is trying to exert her dominance here!  Lily and Hope couldn’t play, because she had just had minor surgery, but I suspect rollicksome play is in their future.

This is a great question, one that none of us really know the answer to. Of course, it actually includes several questions: Do dogs learn to associate a smile with good things? Or a frown? And/or are dogs inherently able to “read” our faces because their expressions are so like our own? Or, do none of our expressions have any effect on our dogs? Do they take cues about our internal states and future behavior from other clues, our voices, our posture?

A friend and colleague sent me information from the just concluded Canine Science Forum in Vienna (thank you Julie!!!) about a study done on that very topic. Anais Racca, from the University of Lincoln in the UK, showed 21 dogs 6 images, two each of a person and a dog looking “negative” (we’d call the human’s face angry), “neutral” and “positive” (classic smiling-faced human, open-mouthed, slap-happy dog). They measured what’s called a “Laterality Index,” or how often the viewing dog’s eyes went left, right or stayed on center. In human research, there’s a suggestion that more negative emotions are processed in the right hemisphere (or left eye) and vice versa.

Their primary question was whether the dog’s would respond similarly to the expressions of the people as they did to the dogs. A summary of their conclusions was that the dogs were more sensitive to the facial expressions of their own species (not surprising) BUT did show different responses to “positive” versus “non-positive” (negative and neutral) expressions in both humans and other dogs. Interestingly, they noted that prototypical “neutral” faces in humans are still evaluated in a negative way (cold, threatening)–thus we tend to lump “neutral” in a similar category as “negative,” and so did the dogs.

Of course, this is a small study, and there are all kinds of issues that it brings up, but it is interesting as far as it goes. Based on my experience, it appears to me that many dogs are adept at reading human facial expressions. Just like people (who we know from Paul Ekman’s research vary greatly in their ability to ‘read’ faces), some dogs are a lot better than others.  It would be great to see a study that continued the one above, and that also tried to tease out learned versus inherently correct interpretations of the facial expressions of another species–us.

I’d love to hear what you think… have you had dogs who seemed much more attuned to your facial expressions (or other indicators of mood or future behavior)? If you say yes, tell us how you think you can separate your facial expression from body posutre, voice, etc etc. Just to get you started, I’ll mention that I call Willie “Trisha’s mood ring,” but I suspect much of his response is based on extremely subtle changes in my voice. As soon as I’m done here, though, I’m going to go smile at him!

On another note, I had a great time spending a morning at the Int’l Society of Human Ethologists. Wish I could’ve spent more time there. I especially enjoyed a talk about how people perceive facial structure… (turns out that wider faces, measured at the top of the cheekbones, are considered less trustworthy than more narrow faces. Love this kind of stuff!). I had to leave before a study about the benefits of bringing dogs to the workplace, darn, but will try to contact the author of the study directly sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s hatefully hot here, I feel so sorry for my sheep. No air conditioning for them. It’s making exercising the dogs rough, I’m not good in hot, humid weather, and neither is Willie (he had a heat stroke one summer when I was out of town, and like many dogs, he’s never been the same–though he was always especially heat intolerant. But then, so am I. Me and Willie: peas in a pod.

Here’s Hope and Will playing chase a few minutes ago. Look at Hope digging in to try to keep up. Wow can that little dog haul . . .

Needless to say, I didn’t let them play long. Here’s where they ended up after just a few minutes:

I promised the people who keep an aging hippie social worker like me in business that I’d mention that the summer 1/2 price DVD sale is on. Okay, I did that. Good Trisha.

Sweet day today. Jim’s and my 10th anniversary. Making, as I write, a cherry/blueberry/strawberry/rhubarb pie for Jim. I will eat some myself to keep him company and prove that I love him. Greater love hath no woman.

I had planned to write a post yesterday about the correlation (if any) between testosterone and aggression, but got overwhelmed with speech preparations. I’ve got 6 separate talks to give in the next 2 weeks. Oh my. Giving a Keynote address to the Int’l Society of Human Ethologists on Monday, then off on Thursday the Best Friends Forever in Pennsylvania (giving 3 talks there, soooo looking forward to seeing my friends and colleagues and learning lots and lots from other speakers) home on the next Monday then off to Toronto after that to talk about Dog-Dog Aggression & the Biology of Play. So bear with me, I might be tad less productive than usual, but I’ll do my best to keep up. So many things I’d like to discuss with you all . . .

Time to take out the pie and go up the hill and feed the rams before we get the straw out of our hair and go to town to celebrate, but here’s Mr. Hope, all 5 months of him, eyeing the sheep. Notice how his tail is starting to go down (from up over his back). That’s a good sign, means he’s starting to think about herding rather than chasing. He won’t get a chance to do either until he’s much older, but it’s fun to watch the progression.

Here’s my pie for Jim, and here’s what I always sing when I make one, straight out of the movie Waitress, one of my all time favorite movies:

Baby don’t you cry

Gonna make a pie

Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle . . .

Lucky for you, you are not able to hear me sing it.

I wish the world could have seen Ken’s seminar on Sunday in Worcester MA, it was fantastic. For those of you who don’t know his name, he is the Training Director and Senior Trainer at the Shedd Acquarim, has trained exotic animals for over 30 years, and could train just about anyone to do anything. I left inspired and crazed to train something, anything, and had to stop myself from trying to teach the flight attendant to scratch her head on cue.

When I got home, close to midnight, I sat down with Hope and taught him to flip his hips sideways while lying down to “Settle” before I even walked upstairs. Took five minutes. Scary easy, and extra fun because of being inspired by Ken.

However, in order to get home Sunday night, I had to miss the last hour of Ken’s videos. I heard they were great… anyone care to tell us what I missed?

Here’s what I didn’t miss: some excellent points about what are often called “Secondary Reinforcers.” [Note to training geeks: there are some details about terminology that Ken went into that I found fascinating, but it would take a couple of posts to explain them, and you're better off going to see Ken in person if you are interested in terminology.] But here is a summary of points that I think are  relevant to all of us:

First, many of you know that “Primary Reinforcers” are things that are inherently reinforcing (that automatically cause an animal to increase the frequency of a behavior). Strictly speaking, they are things that an animal needs to survive: food, water, etc. When you give your dog a treat for sitting on cue, you are using a primary reinforcer.

Secondary reinforcers are things that are learned by an animal to be associated with Primary Reinforcers, and thus eventually elicit a similar response through classical conditioning. For example, if you repeat “Good Dog” and follow up it with a treat enough times, eventually your dog will work to hear you say it. But here’s what I learned from Ken:

It is critical to continue to link a secondary with a primary  part of the time, no matter how long you’ve been using it. In his experience with his animals (who have to perform perfectly in shows and when being treated medically), even if the animal inherently enjoys the secondary reinforcement, it has to be maintained with a primary if you want a totally reliable behavior. That’s true even if the animal loves the secondary reinforcement. For example, at the Shedd, Beluga Whales love having their tongues rubbed, it clearly feels good to them and they seek it out. However, Ken considers it still a secondary reinforcement, and is very careful not to over use it.

He advises that you condition ALL secondary behaviors as if they were a behavior. In other words, rub tongue, give treat. Rub dog’s belly, give treat. Even if your dog likes it inherently, initially reinforce it with food if your dog likes food. That makes it much more powerful in the long run.

Once your dog is clearly thrilled with what you are doing, then begin to use it as reinforcement by asking for a simple behavior, then use your 2ndary R, and follow with the primary R. After that, for a long time, use the 2ndary by itself only twice in a session, and never in a row. Gradually increase the use of the 2ndary, but be very careful not to overuse it. (By the way, he is NOT talking about a click for those of you who are clicker trainers. He considers that a marker, not a reinforcer.) Clearly there is a lot to talk about here, but this is enough for now to get us all thinking about the issue.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm, I had a chance to think especially  hard about all this the day after the seminar. I loaded up the dogs, the plastic bags, the treats, the water, the camera and the leashes and drove over to a wonderful place to walk the dogs. Hope has been there off leash 5 times before, but I am very careful because in the beginning it is close to a road. In the past he’s gotten lots and lots of food treats for coming when called, and for checking in with me on his own.

When we arrived I looked for my bait bag and discovered I’d left it on the counter in the house. Whoops, no food. No primary reinforcer for a young pup who was going to be off leash for 45 minutes. I pondered keeping him on leash the entire time (I always start with him on leash) and thus him getting less exercise, but decided to forge ahead because 1) the path has a natural boundary of high grasses 2) Hope tends to follow Will, who always stays on the path 3) Hope has had 5 lessons there and had done very well and 4) I DID have a primary reinforcer: water. It was hot, and I knew the dogs would be thirsty after not very long. So I decided to risk it, but here’s what I did:

1. Unlike our other trips, during which I called him back to me often for training purposes, I decided to call him back only when absolutely necessary. I knew he wouldn’t always be thirsty, and wanted to have the water retain its power. I ended up calling him to come five times in 45 minutes. Every time he came he got water, but I didn’t let him drink his fill. The last time he drank one quick lap and moved away, so I immediately leashed him up. We were close to the end anyway, and at a place I have always put him back on leash, because it gets close to the road.

2. I used Willie to move Hope around in space, calling Willie (by name “Willie Willie!). This helped a lot and meant I only had to call Hope 5 times total. I also used clapping to get the dogs to come. Clapping is not trained as a recall, but is used to motivate the dogs to speed up, sometimes when they are playing with each other, sometimes when running to me. I could use it without polluting my “Hope, That’ll Do!” cue.

3. I managed to keep my hands to myself and never pet Hope when he came back, because he behaves as though he hates it when he is active. He only likes petting when he is sleepy and tired. Petting would have been punishment. Most relevant to Ken’s talk, I didn’t fool myself that “Good Dog” or any other 2ndary R was going to be effective, at least not for long. And I didn’t want to take away its power, so I said “Good Dog” only twice before he started to drink, and kept my mouth shut the rest of the time. Please send chocolate, this is not easy for me.

4. I was ready at any second to bail and put him on leash if I saw the slightest sign that he was going to get himself into trouble. Most of the walk was a long, long away from the road, and there were plenty of scents and sounds to keep him occupied. If he had put his head up and started air sniffing, or completely ignored any signals from me, I would have leashed him up in a microsecond.

Here he is, coming when called, Goooooooooooood Boy!

And here I am Saturday night in Masssachusetts, after a lovely dinner with our host Dana Crevling from Dogs of Course!, another trainer Carolyn whose last name I have rudely forgotten, Ken Ramirez and Karen Pryor (how great that she was there too for the entire weekend!). We ate at a restaurant with a giant crab balloon on its roof. Seriously. And I only had one Corona for dinner,  honest.

Have you seen the latest issue of The APDT Chronicle? It has a fantastic article by Suzanne Hetts and Daniel Estep (both CAAB & Ph.D) titled Safety and Ethics in Working with Dog-to-Dog Aggression. Anyone who treats dog-dog aggression, or who has a dog who might have that problem would do well to read it. (And to stay tuned, Chronicle will have more articles on dog-dog aggression in several issues to follow–Pia Silvani and I are writing one together for an upcoming issue.)

One of the important points they make is that dog-dog aggression is often not taken as seriously as aggression toward humans, and yet, it can have horrific effects on both species. No one knows better than they: their Dalmation and Irish Setter were brutally attacked by a loose dog last year, and were only saved thanks to the efforts of 4 people–Dan, Suzanne and 2 brave and altruistic passers-by. Suzanne’s hand was broken and was in a cast for 5 weeks. Dan, Suzanne and the dogs were seriously traumatized . . . how could they not have been?

And yet, we all know of people who are willing to work with dog-dog aggression cases, but not cases in which humans are the targets (at least not directly.) However, aggression toward any species can result in serious injury, even death, and needs to be taken seriously before someone takes on the task of trying to help with it. The article in The Chronicle does a great job of listing what is needed to be able to ethically and responsibly work with dog-dog aggression cases. If you can’t get a hold of a copy of the magazine (July/August 2010), they summarize it on their website, Animal Behavior Associates.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I’m in the usual flurry of trip prep, leaving tomorrow at dark thirty to do a seminar for Dogs of Course outside of Boston. I speak on The Biology of Emotions on  Saturday, and Ken Ramirez talks on Sunday on Solving Training Problems, Non-Food Reinforcers among other things. I’m staying on to hear Ken’s talk; I always learn a lot when I listen to him speak. The seminar is booked solid and I don’t think they can take any more registrations (waiting list?), but come up and say hi if you are a blog reader. It always warms my cockles, wherever the heck my cockles are, to meet a blog reader in person.

Speaking of cockles, or words vaguely related (sorry, can you tell I’m getting a little slap happy?), here’s a visitor to the farm. There are lots of turkeys in the area, they’ve flourished here once they were re-introduced, but they usually don’t come knocking on the front door. This one was all by himself beside the garage as I drove up. As I struggled to quietly get out my camera and get the window down. he strolled across the driveway and meandered up the hill behind the house, but in the pictures he is just a few feet from the garage. The pictures aren’t great quality, but I can’t resist giving him (her?) some press.