THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

One of the great comments on my post about the new Puppy Book reminded me that training “step by step” is not intuitive. Someone may know that there are multiple steps between a dog sitting on cue when asked in the kitchen at dinner time, versus being asked to sit when barking at the visitors at the front door. But what are those steps? And how do you know when to move on to the next one?

I thought it would be helpful to give a few examples. However, I would love it if some of the experienced readers would add an example of their own. My favorite part of writing this blog is the wealth of knowledge of its readers, and I am sure that many of the readers would benefit greatly from hearing a range of examples.

Here’s an example, using the dog sitting on cue when it’s easy for him to comply and when it’s hard (in kitchen, no distractions versus at door, company ringing door bell): Note that this is only one way to get to Step 25: There are many paths to the top of a mountain…

Step 1: Teach the dog to sit (I use the Lure/Reward method to get it started quickly) when holding a treat as a lure, with as few distractions as possible. Use food as lure, do not say “sit” yet.

Step 2: Once dog will sit as you move your hand through its ears and toward its tail, say “sit” before you move your hand.

Step 3: Modify your hand movement so that it is less of a lure and more of a hand signal, sweeping your hand upward toward your face. (This could be in session 1, 2 or 3, depending on how well things are going)

Step 4: 3 times in a row, use your visual signal (hand movement) and reinforce with the treat. The 4th time, immediately after the first 3 (assuming they were successful), say “sit” and don’t move at all. Wait for the dog to respond just to your voice.

Step 5-8: Practice using either the VISUAL or the VERBAL cue one at a time, being careful to only use one or the other.

Step 9-12: Begin to ask your dog to sit when there are MILD distractions. For example, try it outside in the yard when it’s relatively quiet or in the house when someone else is making some noise. Be sure to practice in many different places, not just the kitchen. Begin to give a food reinforcement when asking during mild distractions, and substitute other reinforcements for times when it is easier. For example, you could clap, say GOOD! (I also teach people to condition an association between a praise word and a food treat) and let your dog chase you as a game. Or throw a toy, or rub a belly….

Step 13: Start asking your dog to sit when you are by the front door, or whatever door company comes in through.

Step 14-18: Have all family members ask the dog to sit when they are greeting the dog. Put treats by the entry door so that all family members can easily reinforce the dog for sitting while greeting. Get in the habit of ringing the bell or knocking before you enter your own house, then ask for the sit. Once you’ve given the treat, squat down to greet your dog so that he or she doesn’t have to jump up to get to your face.

Step 19: Have good friends who are dog lovers AND who will listen to you (the hardest part!) start helping you teach your dog ‘door manners.’ Have only one person come at a time. Ask them to ring the bell or knock, and immediately ask your dog to sit (using BOTH the verbal and visual signals) as soon as you open the door. They ask for the sit, but YOU reinforce the dog (because you are the one with the best timing, right?!). If the dog doesn’t sit, close the door and have the person try again. Repeat 3-5 times in a row if you can.

Step 20: (Can be during the same time period as Step 19) When people come over who aren’t part of training, get the best food treat imaginable, and ask your dog to sit (not sit and stay, too hard for now!) before you open the door. Give copious treats for any positive response. If your dog tends to jump up a lot, even after a first greeting, just lure him away from the door with pieces of chicken and put him in a crate, or give him a stuffed toy once he’s made an initial greeting.

Step 21: Once your dog is sitting well when your friends come over and ask for a sit, try it with two or three people coming together (even more exciting and distracting!).  Have each of them ask for a sit, and be ready to give out lots of food as fast as you can!

Step 22: Assuming again, that all is going well (at least 80% compliance), ask for a sit before you open the door when ‘regular’ visitors come over, but this time don’t have a food treat in your hand. Explain through the door that you’ll be right with them (I always say “Just a minute! I’m training my dog to be polite to visitors!”), ask your dog to sit and if you get compliance, praise liberally and run to the kitchen and give your dog a great treat.

Step 23: As above, with anyone, but this time use your praise word and skip any primary reinforcement.

Step 24: Continue alternating primary reinforcements (especially food or toys if dog is toy motivated) with a praise word that you have conditioned.

All this can easily take nine to ten months! (Hey, it’s hard for a dog to control his or her emotions and excitement when people come over. I can relate.)

Step 25: Dog becomes an adolescent. Go back to Step 9, rinse and repeat.

I know that sitting at the front door isn’t a serious behavioral problem for many people, but trust me, for some it really is. I’ve seen so many families whose dogs were out of control at the door, which has resulted in dogs being yelled at, kicked, or stashed in crates for too long. I’ve also met lots of people who have just simply stopped having visitors because they are embarrassed about their dog’s behavior. It can be very stressful to have a dog misbehaving around company (like you didn’t know that.) Of course, there are many alternatives to problems related to greeting visitors (my favorites are training to run into another room when the bell rings, or going to a designated place, see the Manners Minder that Sophia Yin designed.)

Of course, this is just one tiny example… (and I’ve SURE I’ve actually skipped some steps, I reserve the right to modify later!) I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to tackle a description.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: On Sunday, the University of Wisconsin Vet Students interested in small ruminants came out to do pregnancy checks under the supervision of Dr. Harry Momont (standing in back on the left). That’s my girl Rosebud on her butt, getting an ultrasound through her lower belly. We didn’t get a shot of the screen, but the lambs are far enough along that the students could see beating hearts, backbones and other bones of the lambs, all due within 4 to 6 weeks. The ewes didn’t exactly volunteer, but everyone was very gentle and I doubt that any of the sheep were unduly stressed. Jim took the photographs, (thanks hon!), because I had gone up to the house, a tad under the weather and wanting to get out the raspberry/cherry/strawberry pies I’d made for everyone. Ahhh, a little bit of summer in the middle of a snowy day goes a long way!

Here’s one small aspect related to the question of how dogs interpret our cues:

I started listing the cues that Will responds to, asking myself if he saw them as verbs or nouns (good point by one of the readers that humans can use one word for both, as in “snow.”) I didn’t get very far before things got interesting. Remember that game that Ian Dunbar used to do in working seminars? Testing out what cues really mean to your dog?

It came to mind when I started working with Will, and I asked him to Sit when he was already sitting. He immediately lay down. Of course, you can teach through this, but I never have because I haven’t needed to. So right there…. Will and I have not defined sit the same way. I think Will defines it as an action similar to:  “Go down toward the ground,” while I’ve defined it as a posture. Right there we have a big difference in perceptions.

Lie down: When I asked him to Lie Down while already doing so, he flipped his hips and began to lay down on his side. Again, it looks like he defines it as an action (”go down farther toward the ground!”), while I tend to think of it as a posture.

Here’s another one to think about: What does “Stay” mean to your dog? My speculation is that dogs are extremely sensitive to ‘place,’ and that stay does not mean “don’t move your body,” it means “remain in the exact point in space.” I’ve come to define it that way too. If I tell my dog to Sit and Stay and he lays down, I’m perfectly happy because his behavior suggests that he has accepted that he’s not going anywhere and is choosing to get comfortable. Of course, if I competed in obedience that would be a problem, but I don’t so it doesn’t bother me. (Although I have to admit that I wish dogs weren’t asked to do long Sit/Stays.. it’s just not a comfortable or natural position for many dogs.)

Right now Will and I are working on using one hand signal for “High Five” and another for “Touch” (with your nose). He is struggling, because he anticipates so much… the second I move my hand he throws out a paw for a High Five, even if it’s his “Touch” signal. I can’t use separate hands because I’ve taught him to High Five with both fore legs, depending on which hand I hold up. Like so many highly visual dogs, he is so reactive to movement that sometimes it makes things harder rather than easier. I’m putting both High Five and Touch on verbal cues and we’ll see if that makes it easier for him. (I’m also going to tape my visual signals and see if something I am doing is making it harder. Moving my hand to the right 1/4 of an inch each time without knowing it? Could be…..)

Meanwhile, back on the farm: another 6 inches of snow or so. Nothing note worthy compared to some of the country, but pretty enough and thick enough to wear out me, Will and the sheep when we did some herding up the hill. Boy that warm bath is going to feel good!

Here’s Dorothy, impatiently waiting for me to put the &*^%$* camera away and get out her hay.

And because I am starved for color, here’s a Little Blue Heron from my trip to Florida in January. (This is one chilly bird, by the way, it was cold and rainy and the bird has one foot up to warm it and his/her feathers fluffed to capture air for more warmth. Seemed appropriate for this snowy day in Wisconsin!)

One of the segments on the BBC show The Secret Life of Dogs that generated several interesting comments was the segment that showed “Betsy,” (not her real name, you gotta love that some dogs now have ‘nom de plumes’) retrieving an object after being shown just a photograph of it. Wow. That truly is amazing. It got me to thinking about the trouble I had a year or so ago when I tried to teach Willie to discriminate between toys based on a name. For over a year he’d been told to “Go get your toy,” and he’d pick out whatever toy he liked best that was nearby.

When I tried to teach him to touch or pick up a toy based on a different word (”ball” or “rope”), he became hopelessly confused. He became so stressed over the entire operation that I dropped it and went on to teach him other things. My best guess is that he had categorized all signals as requests for action, not as labels of an object. That’s a pretty big frame shift to make. And yet, here is Betsy, able to pick out 250 different objects by name and by just looking at a 2-dimensional photograph (which dogs, by the way, were not supposed to be able to do). And of course, there’s Rico, the other famous BC, who could not only pick out hundreds of objects, he could get the larger of two versions, AND could ‘fast map,’ or be asked to retrieve something he’d never heard of or seen before, and deduce that it was the only unfamiliar object in a group of familiar toys. Wow. These are some smart dogs.

Will now has learned labels of living things: he knows “Jim” and “Trisha” and “Sushi.” I can say “Go to the Barn” or “Go up the hill” and he runs the right way, but I suspect he doesn’t think of the “barn” or “hill” as a label of the object itself, but rather of an action and direction. The BBC segment got me rethinking about what Willie understands as an action and what he understands as a label. He knows “get your toy”… and I suspect understands that “toy” relates to the objects he plays with, but does he see it as a label or as an action? Is it more about playing with anything in front of him, or the objects themselves?

I’m inspired now to start testing this out with Will. I’m going to write down every word and movement I make that I think might be a cue to him, and what I think it means to him. This, needless to say, is going to take some time, so stay tuned for what I come up with. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. How much of what your dog understands relates to an action, and how much is it a label of an object? Is there any difference between learning to label a living thing versus an non-living object? Willie definitely knows “sheep” and “Sushi,” and I wonder if it matters that the ‘object’ of a label is living or not? He knew all the names of my other dogs, in that he’d turn and look at them if I said “Where’s Lassie?” He gets excited when I say “Dinner,” but does it mean the actual food itself, or the action of eating them? See how interesting this can get?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: We are all continuing to heal. Willie played for hours with his new friend, Max, an adolescent Border Collie who lives not far away. Watching them run and run and run huge circles around the Orchard Pasture cheered me up immensely. The best part of it was the way they played, because Willie didn’t always play as well with others. Willie would start running with another dog, then get in front and air snap toward their face to stop their forward movement. Then he’d stand still with a satisfied look on his face. Look what I accomplished! Boy, am I a good herding dog! Eventually the other dog would just stop running, because what was the point? However, recently the lovely Dobberman Mishka seemed to have taught Willie to stop playing by herding. Mishka put up with his “herding” two times, and then growl-charged at Willie. Totally appropriate, very controlled; I remember saying “Good girl!” I was so impressed. Willie backed off with that confused, silly look that male dogs get around females who discipline them, and never tried it again. They began racing instead and now it’s Willie’s favorite game.

It helps that Max is fast. Really fast, and so is Willie, but neither can really beat the other, so they run and run and run in the snow, stop and get their breath and then run some more. And you’d think that would have tired Willie out enough to sleep through the evening? Of course not, he kept dropping toys in our lap all evening long. I think it just warmed him up. Here’s some photos of Max and Willie playing. Not the best photographs, but I love how it shows the world we live in right now. Black and white (dogs). Black and white (everything else!)

One of our alert readers sent a link to a study done by Kathryn Lord of U. Massachusetts on the “meaning” of barks in a variety of species. The link is to a newspaper article written about the study, complete with comments (mostly irate) about the findings of the work. But the study (which I of course don’t think is a waste of money, contrary to some of the negative comments) brings up some very interesting questions that researchers in animal behavior have been thinking about for decades. The over riding question is this: what, exactly, is the message of vocal communication? Take any species, and ask yourself: is the bark, the growl or the song of a particular animal an expression of the animal’s internal state (expressing fear, or affiliation, or emotions that could lead to aggression) or (and?) are some vocalizations more like the abstract aspects of human language, in that each call refers to something in the environment, external to the sender. Scientists call this “referential communication,” meaning that the call is not just an expression of fear or excitement, but a more abstract phenomenon that refers to an event or object external to the self (as in: “There’s a lion under our tree” or “I just found a specific kind of food.”)

What’s fun for us is that this debate now includes the bark of the domestic dog (and high time I would say!). It is shocking (truly) how little the bark of the domestic dog has been studied–there are, after all, over a thousand individual studies on the call note of the Red-winged Black bird.  But thanks to researchers like Sophia Yin and Kathryn Lord, among others, barking has become a vocalization worth study. Yeah for them!

To summarize with painful simplicity, Sophia Yin and Yin and McCowan did some very interesting work (see (J. of Comparative Psychology, 2002, Vol X, p 189-193 and Animal Behaviour, 2004, Vol 68, p 343-355 respectively) confirming our anecdotal observations that different contexts elicit different kinds of barks from dogs. Harsh, low pitched barks were given most often in “disturbance” situations (stranger at the door) and higher pitched, more tonal barks were given if the dogs were playing or were isolated away from their owners. Yin suggests that these differences are interesting and important, countering the arguments of some others whose published work suggests that dogs are so altered from the wild type that barks have no value for ethological study.  Yeah for Yin for making an excellent argument (as I told my Dissertation committe once, if it’s good enough for Darwin, who was fascinated by domestic dogs, surely it’s good enough for us!)

Lord et al, in her recent paper that got so much press (just Google her name and “dog barks,” argues that barking in domestic dogs is best described as a “mobbing call,” a vocalization seen in a large range of species, given in circumstances in which an individual is often ambivalent (wants to approach but afraid to) and has the same acoustic features of other mobbing calls. She and her co-authors argue that barks are purely expressions of emotional states, and have no “referential function.” That does NOT mean that a great deal of communication can’t be relayed, and that the receivers can’t learn a great deal about the environment by listening to the bark of a social partner, but it does mean that a bark is not saying “Large man approaching from the North” or “Timmy is stuck in the well” but something closer to “Ah Uh, What do I do now?” We can learn that the sound of their bark means there is an intruder, but the dog isn’t necessarily trying to communicate that.. or are they?

This is VERY complicated and wonderful topic. I could write for hours, but I’d better not, so I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to comment on what you think about this issue.  To prime your thoughts, I’ll add that I’ve never had the impression that barks were anywhere near as nuanced a communication as visual signals in dogs, AND that there is a growing body of research that has found referential communication in a variety of species, including Prairie Dogs and, ironically, a small, beautiful primate called a Vervet, who I am probably watching right now as you read this . . .

Meanwhile, not “back at the farm” but in Africa: As most of you know, I’m in Africa (having written and pre-posted this before I left). This is a photo I took on a previous trip of the famous Vervet Monkeys, known to all students of animal behavior because researchers Seyfarth and Cheney spent over 20 years studying their vocalizations, and showing that they truly do use “referential communication.” They have different alarm signals (and responses) for flying predators (who they run DOWN the tree and hide from), terrestrial predators (who they run UP the tree to escape) and snakes (who they run into the grasses and mob). It’s great research, using lots of playbacks that show that although the young can physically produce all the calls, they give them to the wrong triggers at first (at any flying bird for example) and the adults generally  ignore them until they learn to distinguish an eagle from a vulture. Cool stuff, and seeing the monkeys live, right next to our dinner table (as we might be right now!) is a thrill for me beyond description. Besides, how many male mammals have testicles that are robin’s egg blue? Well, Vervets do… but sorry, this photo is of a Vervet female and her new born infant. They are in a tree that was just a few feet from our table, beside a Masai Warrior who usually stays in the dining area to shoo them off our tables if need be!

Earlier I wrote that you “can’t reinforce fear” and used a dog who is afraid of thunder as an example.  For so long we have been told that we’ll just make our dogs worse if we try to comfort them when they run to us in fear when the skies rumble and the rain falls. In this context, it really is doubtful that comforting your dog is going to make him worse. As I said previously, fear is designed to be aversive, and dogs who are terrified of thunder aren’t going to get worse because you stroked their belly.

Indeed, there is research that some interpret to mean that our petting has little effect at all: As I mentioned in a 2008 Bark column (and an alert reader posted), Dreschel & Granger (Applied Animal Beh Science, 2005) found that cortisol levels, a measure of stress, did not decrease when owners pet their dogs during storms. (The most important factor in decreasing cortisol was the presence of other dogs.) However, note that a study by Odendaa & Meintjes (2003, Veterinary Journal) found that cortisol in dogs doesn’t decrease when we are petting them at other times, (although it does in us when we pet them!). However, it is important to remember that cortisol is not the be-all and end-all of indicators of emotion. The authors found that other indicators of internal affect, such as feel-good hormones like oxytocin and prolactin, increased when the dogs were petted, which suggests that stroking did indeed have a positive effect. And hey, if a dog’s behavior changes such that he is no longer pacing and panting while I rub his belly, I’m going to rub his belly!

Here’s an example of fearful behavior from last night at the farm. It’s not about thunder, but it is still instructive: late last night my farmer neighbor was in the field across the street from me in a tractor the size of Connecticut. As soon as Willie heard something and looked out the window, he absolutely lost it. He ran frantically in circles, barking hysterically with his ears pinned, his eyes twice their normal size and a look of sheer terror on his face. When I first heard him bark I honestly thought something terrible had happened, he sounded so horrifically upset. As soon as I saw what it was I said “Will! It’s okay!” and went to him. I used my voice in a soothing way (soft, quiet, looooooooooong notes), sat beside him and asked him to stay still. I rubbed the area between his eyes and the side of his head with long strokes. His barking decreased, although one BOOOOF would still burst out of his mouth every 5-10 seconds at first. In about a minute he stopped barking altogether and stayed still without me helping him. Eventually he put his head down and buried it between my body and my arm. It looked like he was hiding it, and I remember feeling all gooey when I saw that and said “Awww, honey, it’s okay!” but I suspect he was looking as much for the soothing feeling of being cradled as simply hiding his head.

This example brings up an issue that I didn’t address in my first post about reinforcing fear. I should have, but thanks to several thoughtful commentators, I will here. (You can read their comments on the May 4th, 2009 post). They raised the point that surely it IS possible to increase the frequency of a problematic behavior in some contexts, even if fear is one of the motivators. I agree completely that the issue is a bit more complicated that I might have suggested in my first post–ironically I had started to go into it in more depth and then ended up deleting several paragraphs because the post was getting too long and the topic was getting to complicated. But I shouldn’t have, because the topic really does deserve more nuance than I suggested.

The bottom line is you could indeed cause problems by inadvertently reinforcing behavior in certain contexts. There are two things that are important to remember here: one is that fear is an emotion, and “reinforcement” refers to something that increases a behavior. You can’t, technically, reinforce an emotion, but you can increase the frequency of a particular behavior. In the case of thunder phobic dogs I don’t think there is ever a problem, because you are trying to decrease the emotion, which would indirectly decrease the problem behavior. Besides, if you sit beside your dog and stroke him while it thunders, and he stops pacing in circles but sits beside you, then if you are reinforcing anything it is him sitting beside you and not pacing.

Secondly, motivation is key here.  If a dog is barking at visitor from fear, then having the visitor toss treats or toys does NOT reinforce the barking! It decreases it, because the emotion of fear subsides and it is the emotion of fear that drives the behavior. Once the dog associates visitors with treats, her behavior changes to body wags and happy dances. (Visitor = chicken! I love chicken! I love visitors!) This is standard Classical Conditioning, and I can tell you from 22 years of experience that it works incredibly well with lots and lots of dogs. However, if the dog is barking at people not because she is afraid, but because of another reason, it IS possible that you could increase the frequency of the behavior. That’s why it is so important to be able to read dogs and do a good evaluation of a problem behavior. I met a dog once who loved to get right into your face, all body waggy and grinny and relaxed, and then explode in a bark lunge about four inches from your face. I truly believed she just adored it when you startled (I rose at least a foot from my chair), and that is behavior that was clearly being reinforced!

I also think that how you respond to a dog’s fear is critical. First of all, we know that emotions can be contagious, so it is important to not be fearful yourself. Jennifer, in the comments, mentioned the importance of role modeling cool and collected sometimes, and I couldn’t agree more. If I had run to Willie and tried to pet him with an anxious voice and upset affect, it well might have made him more fearful.

Oh, my, I could go on and on, but life continues and I need to get to other things…. But here’s a link to the study on Storm Defender Capes that has just been published (thanks to an alert reader, Chris, for the link!). It looks as though capes in general do indeed have a positive effect, and that there might be something to the Storm Defender cape itself. I haven’t seen the whole study yet, but check it out, even the abstract is interesting. It in Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, it’s been cool and gorgeous and busy. This time of year in the country is never-endingly full of chores. (Did I mention the 150 exams to grade?) The lambs (who, with one exception, are doing beautifully) are thriving but need worming, the grass is growing and so are the thistles which have to be killed one by one, the ram needs to be split out before he breeds Snickers and Truffles, the gardens are full of weeds, the LP tank is leaking, the water tank up the hill needs to be scrubbed out…. and I need to sit in the swing at least a few minutes every day. Can you see it calling to me?

Here’s Sushi this morning. You gotta love the flexibility of cats. I love that Sushi maintained her x-rated yoga pose even while she moved on to licking her legs.

I promised I’d write more about treating thunder phobia in dogs, beyond the earlier posting that it won’t make things worse if you try to comfort them. It’s such a serious problem for some dogs (and their humans), and everyone who has a dog who suffers from it deserves some help (or just support!).

All I can do here is to summarize some of the treatments I have known to work.. a thorough discussion of treatments requires a booklet unto itself . I encourage you to send in comments to let others know what has worked for you, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is no one treatment that works for all dogs.

Counter Classical Conditioning: This is the first treatment I recommend, and it is especially effective in mild or moderate cases. I’m doing it now to prevent thunder phobia in Will, who is one of the most sound sensitive dogs I know, but so far has not reacted with any anxiety to thunder. In this paradigm (described in a a general sense in The Cautious Canine), you pair something the dog adores (food or play best) with a damped down version of what scares him. Your goal is to condition your dog to associate thunder with something he loves, so that his emotional response to the loud noise is “Oh boy!” rather than “Oh No!” To get this to work:

~ You need to start at whatever stimulus first elicits any sign of fear in the dog. Dogs backward chain storms so well that you can use them as meteorologists… beginning to pace and whine when the wind comes up, and in extreme cases, when the barometer drops long before the storm rolls in.

~ The thunder or other stimulus has to be mild enough to prevent eliciting extreme fear (you can also use CDs or tapes of thunder, but need to have speakers distributed around the room, overhead being best).

~ The “treat” (food or play) has to be highly desirable so that the emotional response it elicits is more powerful than any fear elicited by the thunder.

~ The thunder/noise has to come first… so that it becomes a predictor of something good.

~ You need to proceed in a step-by-step manner, gradually linking louder and louder thunder with the food or play.

In other words, you hear thunder in the far distance, you say “Oh boy! Thunder Treats!” and give your dog a piece of chicken, or throw the ball if they are more motivated by play. Your goal is for your dog to emotionally respond to thunder as a predictor of something good, just like a clicker in clicker training.

Yeah, I know. Believe me, I’ve been through it myself with several dogs. You see the problem here…. how, exactly, does one make arrangements for thunder storms to begin in May with tiny, little quiet thunderettes and then gradually work their way up into glass-rattling boomers once your dog is ready for it? Well, you can’t (if you can, please write soon), but you can give your dog the ‘treat’ (I used food for Pip and play for Luke & Willie) whenever the thunder is relatively quiet, and then just stop once it becomes loud. I’d run outside with Luke and play ball when the barometer dropped and the wind came up, continue playing until the thunder started far away, and then come inside when the thunder began to get so loud that it would overwhelm Luke’s love of ball play. Then we’d go inside, I’d let him hunker beside me, rub his belly, sing and laugh. He got through it in two seasons (I’d call his case a moderate one, not at all severe, while Pip was severe for a few years but came through it fine after two summers of thunder = chicken.).

Pheromone Therapy: I’ve had several clients who had good success with Dog Appeasing Pheromone, or DAP, which is an artificial replicate of the pheromone produced between the mammary glands of a lactating bitch. It is species-specific and has no detectable odor and has the huge advantage of requiring you to buy it and plug it in. Period. Perhaps the easiest behavioral treatment known to science. It has some good research behind it and I’ve recommended it to clients for several anxiety-related problems in dogs and cats (Feliway is the brand name of one of the feline versions) and I’d estimate that it appeared to be helpful in at least half of them.

Acupuncture/Acupressure: I’ve never used this specifically for thunder phobia, but as I’ve said earlier, have used it for a variety of problems with good success.

Wraps: I’d be curious about reader comments on their success with wraps (originally developed by Linda Tellington of Tellington Touch). The theory is that in a general sense, swaddling provides a sense of comfort and safety. More specifically, the speculation is that the continuous neuronal stimulation of the wrap on the dog’s body at minimum distracts him from his fear (a process often called “overshadowing,” in which one stimulus modality dominates an animal’s nervous system) or at best, creates the production of endorphins that de-activate the amygdala and create a sense of calm.

I tried a wrap on Pip and she certainly appeared to be “calm,” but then, that was because she pretty much stopped moving altogether. I wasn’t sure if she was relaxed or in what’s called “tonic immobility,” (or frozen with fear) but after about 10 minutes she lay down and went to sleep, so I relaxed myself and tried it the next time a storm came up. (Use it first before a storm.) It seemed to work miracles at first… she slept right through the next two storms. But wouldn’t you know, the next storm was a barn burner, and it never worked after that. Have you ever tried wraps? (I should add that Pippy looked adorable in an old pink T-shirt! It made me smile anyway!) There are many commercial products available now, but I’ve never seen any research that they would be more effective than wrapping a la Tellington Touch or using an snugly-fitting T-shirt.

A Safe Place: I wrote in For the Love of a Dog about a dog whose job was to protect acres of vegetables from deer, and who became so afraid of thunder he’d run through the electric fence and risk his life on the county highway. I designed, and the owners built, a ’safe house’ for him, and his dedicated human, Barb, spent many a wild night hunkering in his straw covered cave giving him chicken in storms. It worked incredibly well, but it took one amazing woman about two months of dashing 200 yards across the lettuce and beans to get to the safe house before the thunder started!

Safe houses can be created inside houses too… I’ve had several clients who did the counter conditioning in a roomy closet or sound-insulated dog house, and ended up with a dog who was still a bit nervous about thunder, but simply went to her safe house and curled up and slept through the storm.

Sound Therapy: I’ve talked before about the interesting work of Leeds and Wagner in developing music specifically designed to calm dogs. Their work is based on solid biological principles, and I’ve seen many cases in which anxious dogs appeared to be calmed by playing their music. You can read more about it, and get a CD of the music by checking out their book, Through a Dog’s Ear.

Eliminating Static Electricity: Nicolas Dodman suggested a few years ago that part of a dog’s fear of thunder storms could be due to static electricity. One of the blog readers commented that she, in desperation, wiped her dog’s coat with an anti-static dryer sheet, and that it seemed to help. Interesting… I know that Tufts was doing a study of Storm Defender (a wrap that is designed to dispel static electricity), but I haven’t seen the results yet. Any one seen any studies on this yet?

The list goes on.... there are so many things that people have tried. Claudeen McAulifee has a good booklet on treatments from homeopathy to flower essences to melatonin, etc. It’s called the Big Bang! and it’s the only booklet I know of exclusively on the topic of noise phobias. She doesn’t talk about counter conditioning, but goes through many different kinds of non-intrusive treatments (including the use of pink light…… interesting!).

And last, but not at all least, Medication: Serious cases of thunder phobia can be life threatening. I’ve had clients whose dogs ran away, and weren’t found for days, and clients whose dogs jumped out of second story windows, mutilating their bodies in the process. I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that someone talk to their veterinarian about using medication as a supplement to counter conditioning or other methods if their dog has a serious case of noise phobia. In the most serious cases the veterinarians I’ve worked with have prescribed both a tricyclic antidepressant (like clomicalm) and a fast-acting tranquilizer (like diazepam). In many serious cases, I’ve found over the years that a combination of meds, counter conditioning and a ’safe house’ led to a successful resolution, but I would now add in music from a Dog’s Ear without a doubt.

That said, again, every dog is different, and not all dogs can be cured. As John Paul Scott said to me once, (of Scott and Fuller, and yes, I’m dropping names, I was thrilled to meet him!) not long before he died “Of course dogs are afraid of thunder, to them it sounds like GOD IS GROWLING.”

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Spring is glorious, gorgeous, wonderful and exquisite. it’s amazing how few days like today one needs to make an entire 5 months of winter worth it! There is also so much to do (besides grading 300 pages of essay exams and supevising the grading of another 900) it is overwhelming, but I”m going to focus on the good part!

Here are Tulip’s tulips from the window in the living room, showing the view she had as she overlooked the farm:

I fear you will all get tired of yet another photo of Mr. Will’s bright, expectant face, but it does remind me of spring! (This was taken a week ago, and wow is it different now. The leaves are coming out, the size of a squirrel’s ear, and right on schedule, or a little late, the warblers have arrived this morning. As colorful as any tulip (but too hard to get good photos of for me!). I’ll post more photos of spring at the farm as soon as I can get outside again….

It thundered last week during a rain storm, and it reminded me how much trouble a storm can be in the life of a dog (and for those of us who love them.) Since thunder season is approaching, this seems like a good time to talk about one of the oft-repeated, and ever-so-inaccurate pieces of advice handed out to dog owners: “You mustn’t pet your dog if he runs to you because he is afraid of thunder.”

That’s just wrong. Totally and completely and utterly wrong, but it has gathered gravitas, as things often do, because it has been repeated over and over again.

There are several reasons why that advice is wrong, here’s one of them: Fear is designed to be aversive, that’s why it is an effective way of affecting behavior and keeping animals out of trouble when they encounter something that might hurt them. Fear is aversive enough that no amount of petting or sweet talk is going to make your dog more likely to shiver and shake when she hears thunder rolling as the clouds billow and the rains begin.

Here’s the example for you of how hard it is to “reinforce” fear. What if someone tried break into your home in the middle of the night? Let’s say they did, and after the intruder left, a friend or loved one sat down with you on the couch, brought you tea and gave you a hug. Would the tea and sympathy make you more likely to be afraid if it happened again the next night? Of course not.

Can you imagine someone saying: “Well, I understand that you are frightened, but I’m going to ignore you because any sympathy that I would give you might make you more likely to be frightened if it ever happens again.” I don’t know about you, but that would be my EX friend.

One could criticize this example as one of misplaced anthropomorphism, but the fact is that this process works much the same in dogs as it does in people. The fact is, it is almost impossible to “reinforce fear.” Fear is highly aversive, and if anything, it works in reverse. I suppose, if you did it often enough, you could create an association between thunder and petting that would make your dog afraid of petting, but it is extremely unlikely to go the other way around.

It is true that you can make your dog more afraid than he already is, by doing something yourself that scares him, by forcing him into situations that scare him already or by being afraid yourself. Emotions are contagious, so if you want your dog to be afraid of thunder, then be afraid yourself! But you’re not going to make him more afraid of storms if you stroke his head and tell him it’s going to be okay.

The bad news is that petting won’t help (him or her) much either, so I’ll write next time about how to help a dog who is thunder phobic, but you might also find some ideas in The Cautious Canine, a booklet I wrote about helping dogs conquer their fears in humane and effective ways. I also wrote about why it’s okay to pet your dog when he’s scared in Bark Magazine in October of 2008, and more recently Pia Silvani wrote a GREAT article about it in this month’s APDT Chronicle.

Speaking of emotions, here’s a photo of a boxer with a lot of expression on his face. What emotion would you ascribe to it?

First off, thanks to everyone at All About Dogs and all the participants of the seminar in Woodbridge, VA. Every audience has a personality all its own (anyone every done temperament tests on audiences?), and this group was a delight from beginning to end. About 150 people and I spent the weekend in an inquiry about emotions, ethology, people and dogs. And as usual, I learned a lot. Several people reported that they too had played the music from Through A Dog’s Ear, (designed by a musicologist and a veterinary neurologist to soothe and calm dogs) and that they had seen impressive results. One person said her dogs now lay down and go to sleep as soon as she turns on the music. (Don’t expect miracles though… no sound is powerful enough to sedate an exercise-starved puppy who just got out of his crate!)

I remember learning in graduate school about a French researcher (my apologies, I don’t remember the name) who played classical music to pregnant women as they lay down to nap. Unlike puppies, humans can hear well in utero in the last month (at least) of development, and the unborn babies could hear the music being played perfectly well. We heard a tape recording of what the music sounded like in utero… (yep, they put a microphone inside some incredibly agreeable woman!). It sounded like the sounds you hear when you are underwater, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. But you could definitely discern the melody.

It turned out that, after birth, the babies who who heard the music while their mother slept during the last phase of pregnancy would go to sleep almost immediately when the music was played again. That finding supports the claims of the authors of A Dog’s Ear, (and of my own research in the 80’s) that sound can influence the behavior of the receiver, and can act to soothe and relax the individuals who hear it.

Over all, it was a great weekend, thanks to the hosts and a wonderful group of people in the audience. (And oh, those demo dogs! Can I PLEASE take them all home with me?) Here’s a fun shot of all the great folks at All About Dogs:

On an altogether completely different note, here’s something else I am happy about. I bought a new, quite expensive ram who was delivered last week, and was a bit concerned because he didn’t seem to be that interested in the ewes. He was also much shorter and smaller than I expected; the breed does tend to be very short in the leg (think Corgi), but I still was surprised at how very short he seemed, based on his hunky photo sent by the breeder. So I was a bit worried: In the past my new rams have been crazed as soon as they were introduced into the flock, but this guy seemed a bit, uh, lackadaisical. I switched his name from Fabio (see his glam shot below) to Ferdinand, after the bull who just wanted to pick flowers. The breeder, a wonderfully responsible woman at Crane Creek, suggested I try what’s called “breeding paint,” which you smear on the ram’s brisket and then gets transferred to the butt of the ewe if she’s been bred. So Monday morning Jim and I mixed up a bright red powder with olive oil (no kidding, someone asked if we added garlic), and smeared it all over the chest and brisket of the ram.

Because I had liked the way the ram had been acting around one of the ewes when we caught him, I went back to check just a few minutes after we smeared on the paint. Sure enough, Brittany had a bright red butt! And this morning I discovered red everywhere… the ram has been a busy boy, and has bred 4 ewes in 24 hours. The only problem is that the barn pen looks like a scene from a slasher movie. I expect people to knock breathlessly on the door to tell me that something is terrible wrong with my flock.

Based on all the above, the perfect name for the ram has now come to me: ROBERT REDFORD, Redford for short. Very very hunky and handsome, a class act all around, but shorter than you expected.

Here’s his hunky glam shot and a shot from “the morning after”: (he’s the one on the far left)

I’m off in an hour to Virginia to do the For the Love of a Dog seminar on Saturday (about emotions in people and dogs) and a half day version of Both Ends of the Leash (focusing on how OUR behavior influences that of our dogs). Both seminars are fulfilling to do, I love doing them both. Spending a day on emotions—the basis of our bond with dogs if you think about it—is always wonderful for me. Every time I give the seminar I learn something new, and every time I end the day overwhelmed at the miracle of our relationship with a entirely different species. Think about it: two very different species with individuals who will risk their life for a member of the other species. That’s amazing, truly amazing.

On Sunday we’ll become field ethologists observing the always interesting behavior of people and dogs, focusing on communication. What signal does your dog respond to when you say “sit?” It well might not be the word… do you move your head? move your arms? Does your dog even notice the word, if he’s busy watching your body? And when you do talk, how do you use your voice? Can you use it like a singer, and make your voice model what you want your dog to do or feel? We practice in the seminar (okay, it gets a little noisy when everyone practices at once!) and leave even more conscious of how our voice and our movements are always ‘talking’ to our dogs, whether we know it or not!

I’ve gotta run, but here’s the words that end Saturday’s seminar, after a discussion of why we love dogs so much. It’s a testament to my soul mate dog, Luke, taken from the end of the book, For the Love of a Dog.

There’s a stone I had made for Luke at the top of the hill road, where the pasture opens wide and the setting sun highlights the words carved into its face. “That’ll do, Luke, that’ll do.” The words are said to working dogs all over the world when the chores are done and the flock is settled: “That’ll do dog, come home now, your work is done.” Luke’s work is done too. He took my heart and ran with it, and he’s running still, fast and strong, a piece of my heart bound up with his, forever.

Here’s me and Lassie up the hill, in a beautiful photo taken by Amanda Jones.

If you’re a professional dog trainer, you’ve repeated “never repeat a command” countless times. Surely it’s one of life’s greatest ironies. I’ve said it myself many a time, and I’ve written about how hard it is to follow that advice. How easily the second “Sit” comes after the first one, yes? I’ve gotten pretty good at saying things just once, although that doesn’t mean I’m perfect. If I had five bucks for every time I’ve repeated “Lie Down” to my working Border collies I’d be a rich woman. But still, I’m better than most… and am the first to explain why it’s so important not to repeat a command. (If you want your dog to respond to a signal, then repeating it simply teaches him to not respond to the first time you say it and wait for the second.)

So answer me this: the man I call the “Tiger Woods of Herding,” Allisdair McRae, and the only woman who’s ever won the International Sheep Dog Trails, Julie Simpson-Hill, both repeat their commands, and do it on purpose. You can’t fault their success: between them they’ve won just about everything there is to win on the herding circuit. Their dogs are willing, brilliant and precise workers, who are as responsive as anyone’s in the world. And yet, if a dog doesn’t Lie Down when asked, their response is to say it again, but this time louder, as a correction (Do remember that we are talking about working dogs who can be 500 yards away from you, moving at a dead run, dancing on the line between herding and predation. This is NOT a time you can simply ignore behavior that is incorrect, honest.). This method does not lead to dogs who don’t lie down the first time that they are asked, it leads to dogs who are responsive and precise.

If this just resulted in winning trials, but with dogs who were cowed and fearful it’d be one thing, but that’s not the case. Allisdair and Julie can get into the head of a dog as well as anyone I know, and as far as I’ve seen, are relentlessly kind and thoughtful about working each and every dog.

Food for thought.