THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

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.

“Puppy nerd” asked a great question in his or her comment: Given how visual dogs are, should one start an exercise with visual signals to help the dog get it right, and then switch to acoustic ones, or avoid visual signals altogether if you want your dog to pay attention to your voice?  Well, this could keep us all busy for the next few months. I know this is a loaded issue, with people strongly advocating one or the other (mostly the latter in my experience.)

There’s no ‘right’ answer, at least not in my opinion.  But then, I’m not a big advocate for there being one way to train. There are many roads, as they say, to the top of the mountain. I think what’s most important is to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of starting with visual signals.  The first obvious advantage is that dogs learn them readily, and thus you can create ‘wins’ fast and start reinforcing dogs right away. That’s good for dogs, and it’s good for novice owners too, because people get reinforced when their dog does it right, and are more likely to keep training when it works relatively fast.

I also think it’s a good thing to help dogs understand what we want right off the bat; I don’t think it’s always “positive” to not give a dog any clues at all about what he’s supposed to do next.  The other reason I like visual signals early in training is that I love using them in daily life. I love being able to “call” my dog to come, lie down and stay while I’m on the phone, or motion one dog to do one thing and another to do something else.

The disadvantage of starting with visual signals is that if you want your dog to lie down to a verbal command, without relying on a verbal prompt,  you need to carefully and thoughtfully eliminate the motion during training.  This can be tricky, because non-professional dog trainers tend to be relatively unaware of the movement of their body, and end up often using a movement as a prompt. They think their dog is lying down to “lie down,” but he’s really watching to see if their head dips forward. Their dog never really learns the verbal signal, and is always waiting for the owner to give the salient signal. The salient signal to the owner is the phrase “lie down,” but the salient one to the dog is the  head nod. That leads to obvious confusion and frustration on both sides.

For whatever good it is, here’s what I do.  I’d be curious how others handle it; I look forward to your comments.

To train sit, for example. I use the tried and true ‘lure/reward’ method advocated by Ian Dunbar, but I combine it with a lot of operant principles.  I’ll lure the dog into a sit with a treat in my hand, but not give the verbal cue at all. Over the next few sessions I”ll modify the movement of my hand into less of a ‘lure over the  head toward the tail’ to a upward sweep of the hand.  Once I can predict the dog will respond to the motion with a sit 80% or so of the time (you know we all really make those numbers up, don’t you? I’m just estimating.) I’ll add in the verbal cue, being careful to say it BEFORE I move my hand.

After a few sessions of lots of saying “Sit” right before I make the visual signal, I’ll say “Sit” and not move. Now the dog is being asked to sit just to a sound, not a movement. I’ll wait 2 seconds or so. If the dogs sits within that time frame I’ll jackpot big time, with lots and lots of treats, and then try again.  If the dog doesn’t sit and just stares at me like I”m an idiot, I’ll turn away, wait a few more seconds and then try again. If I get no response just to the word for 3 tries, I’ll add back the visual and end on a ‘win.’

So, what do you do?

I got back recently from doing a seminar in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the Ann  Arbor Dog Training Club.  What a wonderful audience; we had a fantastic time together. At least, I did, so thanks to Tammy and everyone at the club  for having me. One of my favorite parts of this seminar (Both Ends of the Leash) is its focus on signals, or cues. The question we looked at in depth was: what sound or movement is actually the one that is salient to your dog?  You may say “Sit,” and think your dog is responding to it, but so often it’s the tightening of the leash or the nod of the head to which your dog is responding. (okay, “to which” is grammatically correct, but good grief it sounds awkward!)

We had a great example of that in Ann Arbor. A lovely Golden (perhaps the most perfect example of “Life is good if you’re a Golden” I’ve seen in a while…. I mean, this dog was HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!) was being asked to sit and stay. The dog was young, and was just in the beginning stages of understanding stay.  We were working on practicing body blocks as a response to a break.  Two women, great observers, noticed that the dog broke, every time, when the otherwise almost motionless owner let the leash unravel just the tiniest little bit.  After saying stay, she backed up one foot and didn’t move, keeping eye contact with the dog. But without knowing it, she let the coils of the leash in her  hands unravel an inch or two, and every time she did the dog broke.

That was an especially interesting observation, because I had just suggested to the owner that the only change I would make in her training was let her body loosen and move a bit while the dog was on stay, because otherwise the stillness would become the cue to stay, and any motion would cause the dog to break.  Sure enough….

What a perfect example of a wonderful dog and a super trainer (she was great, and I apologize profusely for not remembering her name!) communicating on slightly different planes.  It’s just amazing how tiny a movement can be and still get an effect out of a dog sometimes.. sometimes I wonder how we ever manage to communicate correctly at all!

Speaking of, last week I got myself spoiled silly with an entire morning spent with Ken Ramirez at the Shedd Aquarium. He indulgently let me work with Nya a beluga whale (I’ll tell you next time how I screwed up) and let us watch behind-the-scene training of a sea lion and a sea otter.  The morning brought up lots of questions in my mind about the similarities and differences between training captive marine mammals and animals who live in our homes. I’ll talk about that next time…

Meanwhile, here’s the  Golden of our Office Manager, Denise Swedlund, channeling HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY for all of us.

Well, no more storms, thank heavens, but I did read more of Through a Dog’s Ear. In it the authors talk about the effects of sound on the health of humans, as well as that of dogs. I’m as sound sensitive as a stereotypical sheltie, so I pricked up my metaphorical ears. Here I am, some one who can’t stand noisy restaurants (take me to a noisy one and watch me start to tongue flick), is exhausted at loud parties and craves a quiet country morning with nothing but bird song in the air. (Excuse the digression, but I am reminded of a dear city friend, who was visiting me and friends at our places in the country years ago. We all sat on a hill, overlooking a tangerine sky at sunset when somene commented how peaceful it was. Royce, as urban as they come, said “Peaceful? It’s a racket out here. I can’t hear myself think for all the crickets and the damn birds singing.?”

Well, surely one person’s noise is another’s music. But still, the book gets you thinking about how much peripheral sound there is in our lives, and in the lives of our dogs. I was lying on the living room couch reading the book, at about 6 in the morning, the dogs chewing on their frozen, stuffed Kongs. As I read I realized that I had turned on the television out of habit, and the news was nattering in the background. I tend to mute the sound during commercials, but what was I doing reading with the TV on in the first place? I didn’t used to do that, and as I read I realized that more and more I’ve gotten in the habit of leaving the TV on whether I was watching or not. When he’s there, my guy notices the sound, and is better than I am about turning it off–he’s as sound sensitive as I am (very handing when looking for restaurants together when traveling!).

For the last two days I’ve been more thoughtful about the acoustic environment in which I and my dogs live. After all, if constant sound can tire and stress out a person, why not a sound sensitive dog? (like, uh, my Border collies? Right now I’m at the office, and all I can hear is the air conditioning blowing through the ducts and a little traffic trundling down the highway through my little mid-western town. Tonight I’ll go home and listen to the gold finches chick chick chick-o-ree as they fly over the garden and the nighthawks peenting over head. Well, of course, then there’s going to be all that panting while the dogs play…

Here’s a photo of six month old Brodie, who I am babysitting for a dear friend. She is a certified Animal Assisted Therapist, and Brodie is applying for the job as the animal part of the team. I suspect he will start collecting his salary soon. Willie certainly hopes so, they are best friends and play together perfectly. How sweet the sound.

5 AM. I wake up to Lassie’s nails clicking on the floor (wasn’t I going to trim them last night?) as a boom of thunder shakes the farmhouse. Damn.  Why is it that Lassie’s slight discomfort of storms has become more serious as her hearing degrades?  Surely it should go the other way around.

We pad downstairs and lay down together on the carpet, she spooning against me as I stroked her head. (And no, it won’t make her more afraid of storms…. check out my column coming out in Bark magazine soon.)  “Eaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-sy” I crooned, using my voice to help her calm herself.  Why didn’t I bring the CD home from “Through a Dog’s Ear,” a new and fantastic book about the effect of sound on dogs? The CD has music
designed by the authors to calm dogs, and both it and the book are invaluable resources for anyone who is interested in dog behavior.

The authors know what they are talking about.  Susan Wagner is a veterinary neurologist and Joshua Leeds is an expert in psychoacoustics. They got together to investigate the effect of sound on dogs, and to create music that could act to calm nervous canines.  Their work is ‘music’ to my ears (sorry), given that my dissertation research was on the effects of different types of sounds on the behavior of domestic animals.  In brief, I found that short, rapidly repeated notes increased activity, while two different types of notes were used all around the world to slow or stop animals. Long, extended one-noted signals (like “Whooooooooaaaa” and “Staaaaaaay”) were used to slow or calm animals, while one, sharp highly-modulated note (think up and down in a brief period of time) were used to stop fast moving animals (‘DOWN!” or “WHOA!).

The research in Through a Dog’s Ear’s follows those same general principles, but adds more, including “harmonic complexity” as well as carefully designed tempos and note intervals.  The authors did research (I can’t wait to see it) that suggested that their calming CD really did settle dogs down.  I talked about this at a seminar I gave in Madison, WI and one participant said her shelter had been using for a while, and it was extremely successful. (So  much so that the dogs who wanted to play chose to go outside, presumably to avoid the effects of the music.) We all listened to the CD, and I swear I had to stop because we all would’ve have gone to sleep. (The authors address that too… they found that dogs settled after just a few minutes, and they could pick up the beat after that to keep the people awake without disturbing the dogs!). I’d love to hear if you have tried it yourself.

I was so impressed with the book that we offer it on our website now (patriciamcconnell.com), but you can get it in lots of places. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but this morning’s storm put finishing it at the top of my reading list.  I’m putting it and the CD in my “take home from the office” bag right now, so that I’ll have it at the farm tonight and tomorrow if the storms come back.

At worst, maybe the  CD will help ME go back to sleep while I cuddle with Lassie through the next set of storms. Here’s my Lassie girl, all fourteen and a half sweet-as-cream years of her.