THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

We’ve been talking about secondary reinforcers and markers, and the good question has come up about the difference between them. On the one hand, we know that a click or a “yes” can be used to communicate to a dog that a specific behavior is what is about to be reinforced. Clicking or saying “yes” at exactly the right moment is incredibly powerful in that it is a precise way of communicating to an animal exactly what it was doing that will elicit the reinforcement (clicks are more precise than words, by the way).

However, you could also call a click or “yes” a 2ndary reinforcer, since to be effective it is paired with a primary reinforcer like food, and the animal learns to associate the click/marker with the treat, right? So which is it? Ah, you gotta love the English language: sometimes it helps us understand things, sometimes it makes things more confusing.

Let me answer that question from a different perspective. Ethology, the study of animal behavior in its natural environment, spends a lot of time studying communication. One of the traditional ways at looking at communication is to distinguish between the Message and the Meaning. The Message can be thought of as what the sender is trying to convey, whether intentionally or not. The Meaning, on the other hand, is the information the receiver gets from the signal. As every human who has ever been in a relationship knows, those aren’t always the same thing. So in this case, the Message  of a click or other marker is clear: “THAT, what you JUST did, is what will get you a treat!” [I first inadvertently wrote "meaning," thanks to an alert reader for noticing the mistake! Jeez]

At the other side of the signal, we  don’t know what the receiver makes of it–do they have any idea that we are intentionally ‘marking’ a behavior?  Are they consciously aware that the click/yes leads to a treat if they do that exact, specific thing again? (They don’t have to be to perform brilliantly, as a matter of fact we’ve all seen animals perform perfectly and then have it all fall apart, often when they start thinking about what they are doing!) Are they simultaneously or uniquely becoming classically conditioned to the sound of a marker (I think they are being CC’d, no matter what else is going on)… It seems reasonable that our dogs, if we could talk to them, would define the Message of a marker as both a marker AND as a 2ndary reinforcer. Perhaps what is most important from our perspective is how we define it, because that is what drives how we use it.Does this make sense? I have to admit sometimes I worry less about labels and more about actual behavior, but still, it’s a fun intellectual inquiry.

Question for you: I’m curious: How many of you use markers, of any kind, at all? Did you consciously decide to use a marker and follow it up with praise (sometimes, as a 2ndary)…? If you use a marker in the strict sense of the word, what do you use? Click from a clicker? A word?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Over 6 inches in the last 24 hours. No kidding. Another 1 to 3 today. Eeeeeps. Last night there were many small tornadoes reported in the area, one not far at all from the farm. I take these babies very seriously, the infamous Barneveld tornado (9 people killed, the town 90% destroyed) freight-trained just one valley away from my farm, less than a 1/2 mile away, and I will never forget the impact of the first view I had of a close neighbor’s farm, metal roofing blown over a 1/2 mile into tree trunks, 5 buildings destroyed, the ground littered with siding and bricks and fertilizer and corn and thousands of things in tiny pieces too small to identify.

I was in town with friends during the worst of it, and we were all happy to return home to find the structures still standing, the dogs, cats, sheep, etc. fine. Sorry, no pictures yet, it was raining, again, so hard this morning when I left that I didn’t want to take the camera outside.

But here’s Hopey-boy (don’t you love knicknames?), a  helpless victim of Sherman the Sheep, who somehow developed a wound in his neck and is attempting to blame it all on an innocent little puppy. Tall two-leg female is not upset, however. Sherman has been played with, tugged upon, bitten, and thrown around every day for a long time, and has shown an impressive amount of stamina. Besides, we just got in Polly the Pig (seriously) to sell on the website, and Tall Two-Leg is forced to take her home for the dogs to try out. Poor dogs.

Good news and bad news:

Best and wonderful news for me is that my sister, Dr. Wendy Barker, is coming to do a reading for her new book, Nothing Between Us, this Thursday night at UW. (Come one come all!) Her book has not a darn thing to do with dogs, but it’s pure and simply brilliant and I can’t wait for her reading. (For those of you who are interested in a novel in “prose/poetry” form about a multi-racial affair and life in the 60’s in Berkeley, California, the talk is in Helen C. White, Room 66191, 7 pm, Thursday the 29th). Full disclosure: Yup, she is my sister and so my objectivity might be a tad, uh, challenged? But I’m not the only one raving about this book… everyone I know who has read it loves it…

Sad news is about the farm. It might sound strange, but I have to have my silo taken down this Friday, and I’m grieving the loss.  It’s stands as a wonderful bridge to the past, and as a structure that adds complexity and depth to the farm. I’ve let ivy grow up it and in summer it’s quite the picture. However, it has to go. The huge storm we had a few weeks ago undermined it’s foundation, and either it comes down in a controlled way, or it comes down sometime in the future on its own. It could land on the barn, on the sheep or on Willie. None of those things are likely, but then, how much of life actually turns out to be? In addition, there is now about 2-3 feet of air, instead of ground, on one side, the side that all of us walk by several times a day. If an animal fell in, they’d slide down to the bottom of the empty silo, about 15-12 feet, and it would end up one of those feature stories on the local news, in which 3 fire departments spend all day rescuing a trapped dog/cat/raccoon while the owner stands in the background wringing her hands. We have the hole covered with plywood and straw bales right now (in back of the silo, out of sight in this photo) . . . but still. Stuff happens.  Here how it looked this morning after taking the sheep up the hill . . .

Here’s a good addition to the farm: The fence in the foreground in the photo below is a new portable, electric fence. It will allow us to make much better use of the pasture, by doing controlled grazing and forcing the sheep to eat in the areas that they tend to avoid. Right now they are in an area that they usually avoid because although it has great grass, it’s in a dip between the woods and a slight hill to the right. That makes them less able to spot danger from a distance, and even on little farms they are predisposed to spend their time where it is safest. Also, they like to graze uphill (less work on their necks) and because of that they always end up overgrazing the top of the hill and wasting good grass in other areas. With 9 adults and 19 lambs, I need all the pasture I can get this year.

Of course, electric fences like this have their disadvantages: If they turn off an animal can get a head stuck and, worst case, die, they are labor intensive and they don’t work as well if it’s super dry and hard to get the stakes and the ground rod into the ground. My biggest worry isn’t any of the above though: it’s that Willie gets hit by the fence when he’s close to me, and associates it with me, or with working sheep. At some point he’s just going to have to learn, but I have to think about how to set it up so that it happens without him making the wrong association. Meanwhile, all is peaceful now!

I’m working on a column for Bark magazine, in which I’m going to talk about one way to decrease the number of dogs needing adoption from shelters and rescues. Right now the two primary efforts to decrease the number of dogs killed in shelters are 1) encourage spay/neuter & discourage breeding and 2) encourage adoptions of dogs from shelters and rescue groups. I say Here! Here! in general to both of those, and it is heartening how successful both of those efforts have been.

However, there is one important aspect of this issue that is missing, and that is encouraging responsible breeding. Ah, some would say, responsible breeding?! Isn’t that an oxymoron? Breeding is a dirty word in some circles. After all, aren’t there too many dogs out there already? How could anyone justify breeding a litter when so many dogs in shelters and rescues need homes? But if you look at the data, the picture becomes a tad less black and white. Based on the extensive research of Gary Patronek & Andrew Rowan, there are about 7.3 million dogs acquired by households in the U.S. each year and about 6.2 million puppies produced every year by breeders, amateurs and puppy mills. Hmmmm…. Interesting math here, yes? So where do those 1.8 to 2.1 million dogs killed in shelters every year come from?  They estimate that about 4 + million dogs enter shelters every year, 400,000 from amateur breeders who don’t find a home for the litter, 2,2 million strays (.6 million are reclaimed) and 1.8 million owner surrenders.

There is no controversy about the fact that most dogs end up in shelters because of behavioral problems. And that is why, I would argue, we need a third leg of prevention efforts to keep dogs from dying in shelters, which is based on keeping dogs out of shelters in the first place. And that’s where responsible breeders come in. I don’t think we have a good communal idea of what responsible breeding means, and I think we need one as a country.

Many members of the general public have no idea what a responsible breeder would look like. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had who said things like: “Oh, I can’t tell you about the behavior of the father, because we couldn’t get anywhere near him.” (Oh my, this is a dog who was bred?) I’ve had clients who competed in Conformation who wanted me to help get them a title on a dog who was insecure, shy, or behaviorally unstable ever since youth. They wanted the title so that they could breed the dog.

If I was queen, we would have a universal understanding of what a responsible breeder is, and reinforce them for their good work. As someone who bred BCs years ago (Lassie had 2 litters), I can tell you that doing it right is very, very hard work. If you carefully select a mating based on genetics, physical and behavioral health, care for the dam and the litter as they should be cared for, provide an enriched environment for the maturing pups, sell only to the best of homes and act as a resource (and possible home) for the rest of the dog’s life… well, that’s a huge commitment. And yet, when doing all that years ago, I’ve had people treat me as if I was a social pariah.  Breeders, even the really good ones, tend to be castigated in this country, and yet, shouldn’t we be reinforcing responsible ones?  A truly responsible breeder maintains responsibility for every pup he or she raises, which means that the number of dogs going into rescues or shelters would drop so significantly that they would have to redefine their job. (And wouldn’t that be great!)

I’d love to hear what you think about all this. It’s true that I’m not completely objective, having bred litters from 4 females in the past, and am considering getting another BC from a breeder sometime in the future. (Criteria = “bomb proof” thank you very much. One Willie is enough!) But it saddens me that truly responsible breeders are so often castigated (while the irresponsible ones don’t care), and that so many dogs enter shelters and rescues because no one was there to help the owners solve what are often minor behavioral problems, or direct them to the right dog in the first place.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Babies everywhere, there’s just no getting around it. My bottle babies from Truffles are getting more milk from her (yeah!), but not enough for triplets, so Jim and I visited Ann Topham of Fantome Farm fame (her goat milk is internationally known, and for good reason) and picked up 5 gallons of goat milk. It took 2 refrigerators to hold it, but it should last the babies a good long time. When I was at Ann’s earlier, I stumbled on her own birthing drama.  Here’s a doe who was 2 days late and was clearly in labor. When they start looking at their own bellies, you know something is up!

Ann called our mutual vet, the good Dr. Jeff Kunart, who came out and helped the doe deliver two HUGE twins while I was there. Here you can see the two front hooves just starting out. The nose was right behind, and once the shoulders were through, the kid flowed out like water.

Here he is, just seconds after being born.

I’ll start with the bottom line. I don’t use the word “dominance” when talking to people about training their dogs. There’s just no profit in it. Even given that dominance is about “priority access” and “social freedom,” but not about how to get it, I still see nothing but the potential for confusion and misuse. Given that in general parlance dominance means “total control,” and that it is so often it is equated with force (completely inappropriately), I avoid the term as if it were toxic.  Which is exactly what I think it can be in this context.

Look at all the absurd uses of the concept sent in by readers. “Expressions of dominance” include: A dog sitting with its back to you, forging in front on walks, jumping up on people, pulling washing off of a clothes line (one of my personal favorites), acting scared when someone approaches, a “refusal to be potty trained,” (did the dog hire a lawyer?), using signs of fear or appeasement to manipulate their owners (no kidding), and another personal favorite–dogs who are good retrievers as youngsters should be avoided because they are acting as alphas by provisioning the pack (bringing back a chicken in this case) and are thus predisposed to be dominant. Oh my. Oh my my my.

Thank you all so much for adding fuel to my fire that we need to drop the concept of dominance in relation to dog training. However, if we put aside the issue of training, and take an intellectual look at the issue of social relationships in depth, the waters can get a bit muddy. Independent of issues related to training, the questions still remain: How DO dogs perceive us? Is there any possible relevance to social hierarchy in our relationship with dogs? One reader responded to an earlier post that if dominance is about priority access to resources, we need to acknowledge that most of us inherently have that. We control the doorway, the food, the toys, when dogs potty, etc etc.

There are good arguments on either side of this question. On the one hand, social hierarchies are always between individuals of the same species, so how could they relate to relationships between people and dogs? On the other hand, why do dogs use the same social signals to people that they do to other dogs if they don’t see us as part of their social units? Why do some dogs grovel with appeasement displays, and others go stiff and hard-eyed when we go to pick up their bone? How do we describe those dogs? Because I think the issue is so complicated and so easily misunderstood, I tend to use terms that avoid the D word.  I might describe a dog as being “on offense” if it goes stiff and presents what is called an “offensive pucker.” I’ll talk about a dog with an appeasement display that includes flattened ears and a retracted commissure or “submissive grin” as it is often called. (I realize, as I am writing this, that I am still more likely to describe a dog’s posture as ’submissive,’ perhaps because I find it so descriptive and because I don’t see people abusing that term like they do “dominant.”)

Personally, I do suspect that there are some aspects of social hierarchy that relate to our relationship with our dogs. However, I also think it is exceptionally complicated and easily misunderstood. I think we have a lot to learn about how dogs perceive us, and how they categorize us in relation to other dogs. We clearly are not dogs to them, but then… we clearly are members of their ‘pack.’ I have no definitive answers to this question, but I love pondering the question. It’s a little like thinking about how many stars there are in the sky….

Soon I am going to write about another aspect of our relationship with dogs that I think is important, and that’s the concept of “leadership.” I know that some of you will disagree, but I truly believe that because dogs are so completely dependent upon us, they are happier and more secure if their humans exemplify the best of what we think of as being a good leader. You know: the person everyone wants to stand beside, and automatically wants to be chair of the committee even though he or she never volunteers for it. I talk about being a “benevolent leader” in some of my writings, although I deeply regret that even the term “leader” has been co-opted by some to be equated with “dominance.” I don’t think it is, any more than good parents or good teachers are ‘dominant.”  Stay tuned for more …. but I gotta go now and get more milk for the bottle lambs.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, and speaking of bottle lambs, it is still all about the lambs at the farm. Explodo ewe is still holding out, and Truffles bag is still full and hard and giving almost no milk. Her triplets are bottle junkies now, and feeding them 5 times a day is getting a bit tiresome. I’m leaving now to go get more milk and set up a self feeder, which will help tremendously. I was hoping my Chinese medicine vet could come out, because western medicine has not been successful in clearing up Truffles’ udder, but my vet is booked solid for the next 10 days. Still have my paws crossed though, optimistic that I am. Truffles triplets are flourishing, at least the 2 Bl & Wh ones are. The little white ewe lamb is a fussy eater, and isn’t getting as much milk as the others, but she’s hanging in there. I tried to get a picture for you, but I can’t get them far enough away from me to get much beyond this:

Apologies, I seem stuck on pictures of lambs and spring flowers: Here’s another spring ephemeral, called Pasque Flowers, from Walking Iron County Park outside of Mazomanie. A gorgeous set of prairies and native wild flowers….

Next week I’ll start writing about social hierarchies, the “D’ word and dog training. Eeee Hah!  But for now, it’s Friday, I get a weekend without 4 hours a day of grading papers or doing grant reviews for the first time in a month. Ooooooooooh, there’ll be lots of gardening and cleaning of house and playing with critters and eating and exercising and cleaning up the house and watching of golf (yep, no kidding).

Some sad news: Something happened a few nights ago that scared Willie so much that he won’t sleep in the bedroom anymore. He goes upstairs with me, and as soon as we both enter the room he begins to tongue flick and flatten his ears. He then slinks out of the room as if it contained monsters. He sleeps in the adjoining bathroom, and slips back into the bedroom sometime during the night. It seems to have something to do with me, but only me in that room in that context. Before we go upstairs we usually spend at least an hour lying together on the living room floor while I watch television. We cuddle and I rub his belly and he licks my face, and we have a mammalian love cuddle fest and then we go upstairs and he acts like I’m a werewolf. Here’s my guess: either something fell off of the bed (which I tend to pile with books and magazine, or I had a nightmare and made some kind of racket. He is so easily frightened that I can imagine either one being the cause. Poor Will, he is such a bundle of anxiety sometimes. And poor me, because it feels lousy, like I’ve become an abusive dog owner. I know intellectually that it has nothing to do with anything I’ve consciously done, but still . . . He seemed a little better last night, so hopefully this will resolve itself soon. I’m going to try some counter classical conditioning to see if I can speed things along.

Back in the barn, four more ewes are still due, and I admit to getting a tad impatient. However, I’m not the one carrying around 2 or 3 lambs the size of adult dogs inside my belly, so I have little to complain about. This weekend I’ll put the 9 lambs we have already out on grass for the first time. Can’t wait, the lambs of my new ram seem to be especially playful and spring loaded. I’ll try to get pictures. . .

Meanwhile, last night we had a hard, hard freeze. You can see the frost on the daffodils here. They should be fine, they are super hardy, but I am a bit concerned about some of the buds on the trees. Our atypically warm weather pushed a lot of plants too hard and too fast, and the buds of things like lilacs and apple trees aren’t as hardy as the buds. All paws crossed. . .

Here’s a dog-sized view of Barbie’s belly–taken two weeks ago. Now we call her the EXPLODO EWE… stay tuned.

If you’ve been following the bouncing ball, we’ve been talking about how the concept of “dominance” and social status may or may not relate to dog behavior. Now I’d like to summarize a bit and discuss how we might handle conflict between dogs within the household. After all, whether you buy into it or not in relation to dogs, the proper use of the term “dominance” is as a form of conflict resolution. First, some comments of my own in relation to your excellent additions to this inquiry:

WHO CARES? A few of you mentioned that you don’t care about labels, and so why waste time worrying about what to call a behavior? Why not just reinforce what you like and train out what you don’t? I can see the logic here, but as a few others mentioned in the comments, I just can’t leave it at that. I am fascinated by all aspects of behavior, including the inner life of a dog. How do dogs see the world? How is that different, or the same, from how we see it? Can understanding “dogness” help us relate to them better? It’s true that BF Skinner and others made tremendous strides in our understanding of learning by only focusing on observable behavior. And it is also true that we can get into trouble by reading too much into the actions of non-verbal animals. Believe me, as an ethologist, I’m all about accurate, objective observations. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a rich internal life inside every sentient being, and I can’t help wanting to know as much about it as I can. And so do most dog owners, so the more we understand about behavior, the better we can help them understand how to relate to and train their dogs. I think there’s value in understanding all that we can about animals, for both their sake and our own.

IS THE ‘D’ WORD RELEVANT OR USEFUL when evaluating interactions between dogs? Well, here’s my answer at the moment: I almost never use the term “dominance” any more when talking about relationships between dogs. The term is so loaded and so mis-understood that it rarely feels useful in any way. However, and this is a big however, I still think that the evidence suggests that the concept of “social status” is relevant to domestic dogs. As in our own species, social status is interwoven with issues related to personality, context, reactivity, resource distribution, etc, etc, and is only one of many factors that influence and explain behavior. But as members of complicated and complex societies in which all the bells and whistles of social hierarchies are evident (visual displays, some dogs with unquestioned priority access to some resources, living in an environment with “clumped, high quality resources” etc.), it seems reasonable to argue that status is relevant, in varying degrees, to domestic dogs. That in no way takes away from the importance of different levels of desire, confidence or a lack of it, an individual’s charisma, an obsessive need to control the world in order to decrease anxiety, etc.

I suspect that part of the confusion about status (and the D word) is that people want it to mean too much. It’s simply a way of describing how others in a group view one individual, and how that one individual would like to be viewed in relation to others. This makes it a much more general term than “priority access to a resource.” One could get priority access because of one’s status in the group, but they are not the same thing. Make sense? Surely social status could only be relevant in complicated societies, in which individual animals have complex perceptions of the role of others in the group. Dogs and wolves appear to fit within that category, and in my mind their advanced sociality is one of the reasons that dogs and people have developed such profound social bonds. I also think this shared social structure is part of why the “dominance” model of training is so seductive. Not only is it sometimes successful (for a variety of reasons, as pointed out in the comments), but it plays to our inherent understanding of the power of social status within our own species’ interactions.

[Note: A quick comment about the problem of a word, like "dominance," having a different definition in science than in general use. Ah, yes, it is so frustrating, but it is not unique to this issue. "Positive" and "Negative" punishment" are great examples also related to dog training. "Positive" means "good," right? "Negative" means bad, right?  Argghh, no wonder people struggle to learn the true definitions in operant conditioning paradigms! Perhaps the most problematic example is the word "theory," as in the Theory of Evolution, meaning in science a "model of reality" or an underlying fundamental process explaining a variety of phenomenon. In general parlance, "theory" means hypothesis, which is something completely different. But I digress...]

WITHOUT THE ‘D’ WORD, WHAT DO WE CALL DOGS who greet all other dogs tail up, head up, body elevated? Who stare hard and stiff-bodied at another dog over a bone on the ground? Confident? Rude? On Offense? Several of you have asked great questions about how to describe different types of dogs, and I think therein lies one of the problems. The word “dominant” provides a short, handy way of describing a particular way of behaving around others, and we are all hard-wired to try to find terms that allow our brains to sort the world into categories. But again, that word is so loaded and defined differently by the general public) that I think it is best avoided. That’s why I am more comfortable talking about “high status” dogs or “status-seeking” dogs if it seems relevant to the conversation.

For example, Luke was a high status dog who never had to work for his social position. He was benevolent, loved other dogs, calm and confident. He had what one commentator called “charisma,” which is a great way to achieve social status around others in both species. (And why the training techniques of those that have charisma often don’t work with those who don’t?)  His nephew Willie is a status-seeking, anxiety-ridden dog who attacked my seemingly super “submissive” adult dog Pippy Tay when he was 9 weeks old over a piece of food on the ground. (And, argh, there’s that word problem again, this time ’submissive”… sometimes it is SO useful to describe a dog with this kind of term…you all know exactly how Pip behaved around other dogs now, right?)  When Will went after Pip his commissure was forward in an offensive pucker, and there wasn’t one sign of fear in his rude, little body. If anything, he looked angry. My evaluation of him now is that, at his worst around other dogs, he is status-seeking, easily frightened and easily frustrated, sound sensitive, reactive, and controlling. Thank heavens, he is also incredibly biddable, smart and truly seems to adore many other dogs once he gets over the evil twin that sits on his shoulder. I get the strongest sense from him that he desperately wants to do the “right” thing, that he understands that there are “right” and “wrong” things (in some simplistic doggy way) and that he finds great relief in learning that he can get what he wants by being patient and polite. I am the first to admit that I might be reading things into him, but all my gut says that he desperately wants to be thought of as way cool by other dogs, but that he doesn’t have the confidence or serenity of his uncle.

BUT FOR NOW, WHAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE in terms of the way we manage multi-dog households? There’s no ultimate truth here, but I’ll give you my perspective. Remembering that there are many ways to get what one wants, here’s what being high in the social hierarchy gets a dog in my house. Nothing. Or, not much anyway. I’m not saying that I could somehow manage the environment such that two status-seeking females of equal power and intensity could get along, but I can create a world in which dogs learn that they get what they want by being patient and polite, not by throwing their metaphorical weight around.

For example, when Luke used to push in between me and another dog when I went to pet it, I’d quietly ask Luke to “get back and wait” while I continued to pet the other dog. Luke learned that he’d get a food treat as well as attention IF waited his turn, but being pushy resulted in a being backed up in space and told to sit and stay. When I had 4 or 5 dogs in the house, all the dogs learned to sit and wait while another dog was eating out of a plate on the floor (see a video of this in the Feeling Outnumbered DVD, including Tulip’s hysterically funny inability to keep from licking the air after being told to back away from the plate.)

I describe teaching dogs to be patient and polite in detail in the booklet,  Feeling Outnumbered, which Karen London and I wrote after working with so many clients whose dogs weren’t getting along. I used it on a daily basis with Will. Right after he went after Pip over food I’d dropped on the floor I said “What did you do?” and backed him up into a sit. I told him to sit and stay (he knew sit and was just learning a “puppy stay”) and fed Pip some more food. As I did, I praised Will (I’d conditioned him to like the sound of praise already), gave him his own treat for staying in place and then released him. We repeated that 2 or 3 times and I spent the next 6 months teaching Will that if he sat and waited his turn while I fed/petted/played with another dog, something wonderful would happen. He’s been wonderful with my other dogs since then, (though he did always take Lassie’s Kong away if he’d finished his first) but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when a new dog comes to the farm. I suspect I’ll be right back to reminding him of the benefits of being patient and polite. Thus, I take a very functional approach, using both operant and classical conditioning to shape the behavior I want. (And I can understand why some would then say… then why worry about labeling it? Why even bring up issues like status, etc? My answer goes back to how I started this: because to me, it’s not enough to be able to manage and control their behavior, darn it, I want to understand it!)

Can this solve all the conflict between dogs in a household? No, not at all. Personality is just too, too important.  Some dogs just hate other dogs. Some dogs have serious issues with emotional control and impulsivity (a topic for another blog soon!) Some turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control everything but doesn’t have the chops to do a good job at anything. But teaching dogs to be patient and polite seems to be the best solution to dealing with what can at least be described as “competition” for resources.

Soon I’ll talk about this in relation to dogs and people, but I thought we should work our way up to it in a logical manner, first looking at the issue in terms of one species before we throw another one into the mix!

Meanwhile, back on the farm: We had one of those barn-busting thunderstorms last night, complete with hail and rain so hard and plentiful it looked like water coming out of a faucet as wide as the sky.

Amazingly the flowers seemed to make it through. Here are some Bloodroot flowers, a native ’spring ephemeral,’  just before opening early this morning.

And best news of all: Willie is back to playing with his frisbee outside, and worked sheep last night when I let the ewes without lambs out onto the front lawn. No sign of any lameness still, but I am still holding my breath!

Last week I wrote about that ever-so-controversial word, “dominance,” and how it might or might not relate to dog behavior and dog training. To refresh: In animal behavior, dominance refers only to “priority access to a limited resource,” has little to do with controlling the actions of another in any other context, is highly dependent on context and the distribution of resources and is maintained by species-specific displays that act to avoid conflict rather than create it.

In decades past, it was assumed that classic dominance hierarchies existed in domestic dogs. After all, drop a pork chop between two hungry dogs and in short order, one of them is going to get it more often than not. Dogs greet one other in classic “dominance/submission” displays of ears up/tail up versus ears flat/tail tucked. “Submissive” dogs greet others with the same appeasement behavior of puppies, ears flat, body low, tail tucked, foreleg cocked, licking another’s muzzle with a submissive grin, even urinating in some cases.

In addition, dogs are not only derived from wolves, they are so close genetically they are now considered sub-species of Canis lupus. And wolves used to be the story book species of dominance/submission social relationships. We were told that only the alpha male and female mate, that extremely strict social hierarchies existed between each member of the pack, and woe unto an omega wolf who tried to usurp power from a dominant member of the same sex.

Ah, but that was then, and this is now. First off, as we learn more, it is clear that social relationships in wolves are a tad more complicated than previously believed. We’ve learned from following packs in Yellowstone National Park that, in some packs, several females have litters. Nor does the hierarchy seem to be as strict in wild packs as it does in captive ones. And several authors have questioned the concept of dominance in domestic dogs: To name just a few: the Coppingers in the book Dogs said they saw little sign of it in the free-ranging dogs that they observed around the world; Bradshaw et. al. wrote in the J. of Veterinary Behavior (2009, Vol 4, 135-144) that learning and ’subjective resource value’ are better explanations for agonistic behavior than ‘dominance.’

And so, is the concept of a social hierarchy and dominance even relevant in domestic dogs? I think yes, but then, I think no. Here’s the beginning of this potentially profoundly unsatisfying answer:

DISPLAYS: There’s no getting around it. Dogs are the poster children of visual displays that have historically been used to describe signals of social hierarchy. What are we to make of two dogs greeting, one with her tail flagged forward, the other with tail tucked? We can call lip-licking and flattened ears appeasement displays, but what do we call the opposite? Dogs who are flagging their tails, and giving hard direct stares over a favorite toy should be described how? Well…. there are other terms. We could describe them as “on offense” or “threatening” or “confident.”  We can label the opposite postures as “insecure” or
“appeasing” or “on defense.” I should mention here, however, that I’ve seen a gazillion dogs with extreme versions of what are usually called ’submissive displays’ who appear to be full of confidence around other dogs. File this away for a moment, and continue pondering:

PRIORITY ACCESS TO RESOURCES: There also seem to be a plethora of examples of multi-dog households in which one dog is “more equal than others.” (Remember the famous quote from the book Animal Farm?: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”) The resource may vary, from access to their human, to access to the great outdoors to access to the pig’s ear, but there are a gazillion examples of groups of dogs in which one dog appears to priority access to what it wants.  But, of course, (of course!) there are complications:

What of the issue about “wanting something equally?” Several of you have asked in your comments about how one can determine if two individuals desire a resource equally. Could all “wins” simply be an example of an individual who wants something more than any other? It IS a complication, and is yet another reason why the concept of “dominance” can be a tricky one. However, I don’t think it’s always impossible to make this judgment. Luke would let any dog take food out of his bowl, because he just didn’t care much about his dinner. Figuring that out was trivial, because sometimes I had to encourage him to eat. But he never, ever let another dog pick up a tennis ball that was between the two of them. His intensity around tennis balls was best illustrated when he was an adolescent and first became interested in fetching. I threw the ball and little Misty, a tiny, fox-faced BC of mine, got to the ball first. As she ran toward me with it in her mouth, Luke rushed up behind her, grabbed her tail in his mouth and flicked his head to the side. Misty, being attached to her own tail, flew threw the air and landed so hard the ball popped out and dribbled through the grass. Luke snatched it up and proudly brought it over to me (at least, until I, coming out of my shock, said WHAT ARE YOU DOING? and body blocked him backward about 10 feet. FYI, that is all I did, and he never did it again.)

Possession is the law: The concept of “priority access” is often confounded by a lack of understanding of what it means. It is often said that “possession is the law” in wolf society, and I have found it often true in dogs. If a dog who normally behaves submissively/appeasingly (etc etc) has a hold of a bone, a dog who would be called “dominant” by many does NOT have priority access. Often, he who has the bone gets the bone. “Dominance” was originally used to described two individuals who do not have possession of a resource. Given that scenario, when two individuals do NOT have possession of something yet, who gets it? That’s partly why Luke was being such a jerk in the example above. As an adolescent, he hadn’t read that memo, and was breaking all the laws of canine custom, as well as just p….’g me off.

Resources Vary: In biology, the word “resource” can refer to a wide range of things. Common zebra males compete for females, as the limited factor in passing on their genes. Grevy’s zebra males compete for good waterholes, an indirect way of competing for females who are attracted to the resources necessary to provide for their young. Cavity nesting birds compete for territories with old, dead trees that can provide good nest sites. Etc. Etc. Dogs can compete for a favorite toy, or access to outside or sitting next to their favorite human.

Resource Distribution Varies: Did you notice from my descriptions above that social hierarchies seem to be less strict in wild than captive wolves? And that observers watching free-ranging dogs see less evidence of “dominance” displays than others have reported in other contexts? Ah, I wish more people had taken Ecology, because here’s what all ecologists know: social systems, in the same species, vary tremendously, dependent upon the distribution of resources. “High quality, clumped resources” tend to create stricter social hierarchies, while “Low quality, evenly disbursed resources” tend to create looser social organizations.  Hmmm.  Which would describe house dogs?

PERSONALITY MATTERS: Besides an interest in status, the personality (that’s temperament + life experience) of each dog surely makes a huge difference in their behavior around other dogs. There are dogs out there who are what I call “alpha wanna-bees” — status seeking, controlling BUT insecure and nervous. They turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control all the resources but doesn’t have the chops to do much of anything with confidence. Other dogs, my Luke was one, are what some people call “natural alpha’s.” Luke was an intact male, he met hundreds if not thousands of other dogs, some of whom were dog-dog aggressive. He never got into a fight, not even a skirmish.  Not once. Luke was accepted by all dogs who met him as being . . .  dare I say it? A leader? He greeted other dogs with his tail flagged and his entire body elevated, but he also broadcast a benevolent, Gandhi-esque-like aura that appeared to calm all who met him. Granted, there were a few client’s dogs that I did not let him meet, so I’m not saying that Luke was magical in any way. Dogs who were still seriously dog-dog aggressive did not get a chance to interact with Luke, but Luke was the vehicle for curing hundreds of aggressive dogs, in part because he seemed to make everyone, dogs and people alike, feel better standing next to him.

In reality, there is no such thing as a “dominant personality”. Dominance is a relationship between individuals, not a description of a temperament. However I DO think (and I know some will disagree) that one component of personality in dogs is whether or not they are “status seeking.” I use “social status” to describe the general phenomenon that some animals are more equal than others. This is as true in our society as it might be in dogs. The actress gets the best table at the restaurant because she is famous and fame in our culture gives one social status. In my opinion, some people care deeply about social status, while others don’t seem to care at all. Status simply means ones position relative to that of others, and surely it is an obvious feature of human interactions.

But some dogs just don’t seem to care about social status either, do they? And here is perhaps one of the reasons why this issue can become so confused and confusing. I suspect that dogs vary tremendously in how important social status is to them. This makes sense: dogs are neotonized wolves, meaning that there’s been selection for a regulator gene that basically keeps them in eternal adolescence. This interference with development also creates ideal conditions for tremendous variability–not just in size or coat color, but also in behavior. Perhaps you’ve known some dogs who just couldn’t care less about who’s who in the social register, and others who are obsessed with being king or queen of the mountain? And then there are others, the equivalent of a gold digger who is always looking for power–and who may or may not get it, depending on a myriad of other factors.

SOCIAL STATUS IS JUST ONE WAY to get what you want. Here’s another problem I have with the way the concept of “dominance” is used. Somehow, if an individual is “dominant” it is presumed to be able to get everything it wants every time it wants it. But that’s just not the way complicated societies work. You might get a better table at the restaurant because you are more famous that I am, but what if I slip the Maitre D a hundred bucks? What if he’d seen your movie and hated it? My super submissive/appeasing BC Pippy Tay got a chew bone out of Queen Tulip’s mouth one night by lip-licking and tail thumping so relentlessly that Tulip finally got up and walked away. Pip was brilliant, and yet, I assure you: Tulip would’ve gotten a pork chop lying between them every time, but I’d bet the farm that Pip wanted it more than Tulip did.  Pip never, ever would’ve ‘won’ a piece of  yummy food off the floor if Tulip was around, unless she’d had 15 minutes to work her magic as she groveled her way toward Tulip, grinning, licking and tail thumping like a fool. And no pork chop was going to last in Tulip’s mouth for 15 minutes. Take my word for it. “Priority access” may mean that a higher status dog has gets the goody more often than not, but it is NOT the only way to get what you want in a social group.

Just to confuse things (or to clarify?): There’s one other phrase used by a wolf ethologist (Zimen) that I really like: Dominance simply means whoever has the most social freedom. Is that the same as priority access to a preferred resource? Hmmmm. More food for thought.

THUS, MY ANSWER IS YES AND NO: Here’s what I meant by “YES, the concept of “dominance” is relevant to dogs, and NO I don’t think it is relevant”. I think the concept is relevant IF AND ONLY IF it is understood that it is merely a way of describing one aspect of the relationship between social individuals. And I think NO, because once you use the word “dominance” all other aspects of personality, context, and the complexity of social interaction seem to fly out the window. I could write on and on, but this is becoming something of a book, and I need to get something else done today and you are probably getting sick of reading . . . I’ll take this topic up again soon, because it deserves it, and so do you, dear reader. In it I’ll address some of your very thoughtful (and considerate!) comments.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Busy weekend. One new set of twins, but still nothing from Dorothy, now 9 days late. Best guess is that she didn’t get bred the first round, and will deliver lambs from the next cycle, 8 days from now. The lambs, all 9 of them now, are doing wonderfully, fat-bellied and playful. Even better, Will got to run free for the first time on Saturday. I even let him work sheep for about 6 seconds! What a joy for us both. So far, so good. Cross your paws.

Yesterday we visited a friend with a litter of 4 week old Border Collies. Puppy rapture on all counts:

Heavenly rain on Friday, sunny and cool Saturday and Sunday; grass and flowers lifting upward toward the blue sky. Good golly I love spring.

I’ll continue on in the next weeks talking about the D word (next week intra-specifically (between dogs) and the week after inter-specifically (between dogs and people), but I thought an intermission celebrating spring and Easter would be nice. Besides, you all deserve reinforcement for such considerate and thoughtful comments (which have been fascinating by the way, thank you so much.)

Three ewes have lambed so far, and I have 5 to go. Lady Godiva & Spot had twins and Rosebud, what a woman, had triplets. All are doing well. Spot’s lambs had bellies so full of milk just an hour after their birth that they felt like they had bricks in their tummies. Nothing better than quiet lambs with warm mouths and full bellies (or worse than bawling lambs with cold mouths and empty ones.)

I only have 5 more ewes to lamb out. I have such a tiny flock that serious lamb producers laugh when I tell them my winter herd equals a total of nine. When I was in New Zealand the sheep folks I talked to looked stunned when I said I had 8 or 10 ewes. They count them in lots of a hundred, or a thousand, and could barely imagine having a flock so small. “Ah,” they’d say after learning that not only did I have a micro flock, I gave them names. “So you have them as pets,” they’d say, with a friendly but somewhat incredulous smile on their face. Well, I guess I sort of do. But not . . . An interesting question… how close a social relationship does one have to have to call an animal a pet?

Speaking of, I am becoming worried about Dorothy. my oldest ewe. As a matter of fact, I’m waiting for the vet to call. Dorothy is a week overdue. A couple of days is meaningless, 4-5 becoming a bit of a concern. A full week? Hmmm. Here is she resting, about an hour ago. I would have been more worried, but she seems fine, hungry and as active as everyone else. But darn I wish her lambs would come soon. I expect she does too… check out her belly:

It’s crazy busy for everyone in the country right now. It’s almost 80 degrees (30 degrees over normal), things are growing and moving and changing and it feels like everything needs to be done right away. You don’t have much control over when you do things on a farm: the weather and season plans out your agenda for you. I got the pasture fertilized yesterday (check), some of the mulch out of the gardens (check), some of the fencing repaired (check) but couldn’t spray the thistles because it was too windy. The daffodils all opened up at the same time, literally in one day, and would burn out in another day or so if it stayed so warm and sunny. Luckily, it’s clouding up and supposed to rain. Good good good. Don’t want summer in spring and it’s terribly dry now, and we really need the rain.

And here’s some lamb rapture shots of Andrea Stephenson (new marketing director and web queen extraordinaire) and me today at lunch time:

Ah, here I go into the fray. Picture my loins girded. In some ways I’d love to avoid this topic altogether, because as most of you know, conversations about “the D word” can sometimes turn into arguments that make the American health care debate seem like a day at the spa. (I was going to say “like a tea party,” but then . . . )  But I think the issue is important, and deserves consideration. So EEEEE HAH! here we go.

This post will only be a beginning, because the topic of “dominance” and social relationships is actually a big one, and I’d like to facilitate a thoughtful, meaningful discussion about it in dogs. As you all know, some people think that just about all of our problems with dogs relate to “dominance” and advise owners to “be the alpha dog.” At the other end of the spectrum, some argue that “dominance” and even the concept of “social status” are completely irrelevant to a dog’s behavior, and that the terms should be struck from our vocabulary. I don’t agree with either extremes of the spectrum (but I’m a lot closer to one than the other!), so hang onto your hats, here we go . . .

First of all, it would be good to start with a definition. The simple definition of ‘dominance,’ as the term is used by the general public is something like: “control or command over others.” However, (and this is a huge “however”) that is NOT the definition as the term is used by people who study animal behavior, the ones who first coined the term to describe a certain kind of social relationship in non-human animals. In ethological terms, “dominance” refers to “priority access to a preferred, limited resource“. In other words, if there’s only one really great table open at a restaurant, who is going to get it? You, or the famous actress standing beside you?

Relating this to dogs, if someone dropped a pork chop between two dogs, who would get it? If you repeated this numerous times and the same dog got it every time, that dog was described in the literature as “dominant” over the other IF both dogs wanted the food equally.  The “dominant” dog could get priority access to the food in a variety of ways; s/he could simply look toward the other dog with a hard stare, could try to be the fastest one every time, or could fight for it. The problem is that fights are dangerous if you are a predator who can rip open elk hide with your mouths. (For a reminder of the power of the canine jaw, try making a gash in a leather purse with your teeth. If you are successful, please send video….heck, send one if you’re not successful!)

The potential of injury in social predators, is the reason that many argue why social hierarchies developed in animals like wolves. (Yes, I know dogs aren’t wolves. Bear with me here.) If every time one had to fight for what one wanted, the genes that predisposed an individual to fight would be eliminated out of the gene pool. That’s the explanation for the existence of social hierarchies: they allow individuals to get ‘priority access’ without having to fight for a resource every time it was available. Note that serious fights do happen in some species: In many ungulates (hoofed animals like elk for example), the males fight every breeding season for priority access to females. They are continually challenged by other males, and spend so much energy guarding their females that even if they aren’t killed or injured in a fight, (it happens, but not commonly), they sometimes die over the winter, having been unable to spend enough time feeding in fall to put on body fat to get them through the winter. However, before they are mature,  young male ungulates often spend years in “bachelor herds,” in which they may play at fighting, but no one individual has priority access to anything else during that period. Their food is widely dispersed and the only ‘resource’ they need to compete over is females during a breeding season. As this Elk examples shows,  a ‘resource’ can be many things, from a pork chop, to the best sleeping place, to a female in heat. But, remember, the “D” word is about “priority access to a resource,” not about anything else.

Here’s what “dominance” ISN’T: It has nothing to do with decision-making about the actions of a group or one other individual. There is no relationship in the literature between who decides when to move on, where to go or what to do. Period. (Bookmark this point!)

It has nothing to do with “who’s in front.” (In prey animals, the ‘dominant’ member of the group is often found in the middle of the herd if the group is in an area that might be dangerous.)

It is not fixed and immutable: Who “has dominance” can vary in time (as one individual ages for example), in space (one individual can have it in one area and not another) and in context (perhaps one individual with dominance doesn’t like pork chops.) In some species it appears to be linear (as in chickens, for example, in which if A is over B, and B is over C, then A is always over C). In most social mammals, it is non-linear and much, much more fluid and complicated.

It is highly influenced by resource distribution: “Clumped, high quality resources” tend to exaggerate social hierarchies, which probably explains why captive wolves appear to be absolutely obsessed with hierarchy, while wild wolves appear to be more relaxed about issues related to social status. (Keep this in mind for later when we talk about studies on feral dogs versus owned dogs.)

It is usually maintained by visual or chemical displays that are innate and are species-specific. It can be achieved by an initial fight in which one individual wins and the other backs off, or, more commonly, by nothing more than the types of display specific to that species. (Think high tail, erect ears and forward posture of a captive wolf). If the individuals continue to fight over a resource, then there is not an established hierarchy.

It is not a relationship desired equally by all individuals in a group. In complex social societies, not everyone is equally motivated to be first in line for the goodies. In our species, for example, some people would love the status associated with being famous, while others would consider a guarantee of a great table at a restaurant to be a poor trade for losing their privacy and would avoid it at all costs. In some species, high status is associated with increased responsibility, which can be dangerous and burdensome.

That’s a good starting place for our discussion. In my next post, I’m going to write about how all this might relate to domestic dogs. But I will say here that the misuse of the term “dominance” in dog training is so pervasive that it causes ethologists like me to want to poke pencils in our eyes. The examples are endless: “Your dog won’t come when you call unless he accepts you as alpha!” (Uh, not relevant, see above.) “Teach your dog a “Dominance Down” and he’ll respect you in the morning!” (Uh, not relevant, see above….). I suspect that much of this comes from the two different definitions of dominance used by the biologists versus the general public. I also think, although I admit to just guessing, that our species loves the idea of control, and anything that suggests we can get it easily is seductive. Whatever the reason, the mis-use of the concept of “dominance” is pervasive.

I’d love to hear your examples of the misuse of the term. I suspect there are some egregious ones that will allow all of us to have a good laugh… and then move on to talk about whether the “D” word is ever (ever!) relevant to dog behavior. Do be considerate please, and don’t assume that everyone believes that way you do. Remember, thoughtful and considerate . . .

Meanwhile, back on the farm: UW is on spring break and besides running the business (and writing blogs!) my life is full of two other things: grading term papers (right now it’s the ones on: “Biological Issues Related to the Use of Non-Human Primates in Biomedical Research” — both ’sides’ must be covered objectively; next it’s Cloning Pets) and of pacing the barn floor. I have 4 ewes who are overdue, one by 5 days. A day or two is, of course, meaningless, lambs paying no more attention than babies to when they are supposed to arrive. But 5 days? Jeeeez, Dorothy, have your lambs already!

Here’s the first of the lambs: A twin boy and girl from Lady Godiva. The all-black ram lamb is lying behind Lady G and the ewe lamb with the white body and black eye spot. I’m calling her the Lassie Lamb.

Here’s the first flowers of the season, crocus. Color! Whaaa Hooo! Daffodils are JUST starting today…

And lest you think it’s all lambs and flowers out in the country, here’s a photo of just a few of the hundreds of Asian beetles that invade my house for 2 weeks every spring and fall. They were brought over to control aphids, and the person who made the decision to import them wouldn’t last a day in southern Wisconsin. They are a scourge, somewhat akin to locusts. What you are seeing was taken about 10 minutes after 30 minutes of vacuuming, which followed another long session of vacuuming earlier in the day. They look like our native “Lady Beetles,” but they have no natural predators, bite when they’re hungry, smell horrific, land in your drinks, fly into your food and generally make life miserable. You can spray for them, but the active ingredient makes me sick and and is not safe for cats. Now you know why I went out for dinner tonight.

xx

I’m just back from participating in grant reviews for NIH (Nat’l Institute of Health), and what a process it was. 36 people, from all over the country and a vast range of fields, were charged with reviewing a large number of grant proposals for scientific merit. The proposals were administered through the Nat’l Institute of Child Health and Development and related to Human/Animal Interactions. I can’t tell you anymore about the grants themselves, or they’ll shoot out my kneecaps. Well, probably not, but the absolute hardest part of the process is that we all pledged to keep virtually any information about the proposals themselves completely confidential.  That means never, ever talking about them to anyone, ever, outside of our two days of meetings in Washington, D.C. As the Scientific Review Officer said: “The statute of limitations is forever.” She said it would be the hardest part of the process, and it is. I’d say more, but then I’d start going down a slippery slope.

What I can tell you is this: First, the initial phase of the process is something like sitting on a beach in the warm sand, and then looking up to see a wave about 30 feet high looming toward you. Once you agree to be a reviewer, the amount of information that one is sent is, well, overwhelming. The process is clearly much less time consuming once you’ve done it before , and considerably less confusing, but as a newbie, wading through the reams of information sent through the mail, email and internet is daunting. It took me I don’t know how long just to figure out what COI (conflict of interest) and SRO (Sr. Review Officer) meant. Well, I do know how long it took, but I’d rather not say.

In brief, 3 people are charged with carefully reviewing about 6 grant proposals each. Once that is done (8 million hours later-although the process is actually clear and straight forward once you’ve got in figured out, some of the grants are over 200 pages long), the entire panel of 36 people meets for 2 days to discuss and eventually rate every proposal that the reviewers agree has merit. We met from 9 am to 6:30 pm on the first day (1/2 hr for lunch, in the room) and started at 8 am the 2nd day. We finished around 1:30 pm, which was a boon to those of us who wanted to fly home that day. I managed to book an earlier flight, and got home at 9:30 instead of midnight. What’s most important to know, if you are a tax payer, is that the process was done with meticulous attention to giving every proposal a fair and equitable hearing, that the room full of reviewers (from child psychiatrists to CAABs like me) had enough IQ to lift the building off of its foundation and that everyone worked hard and appeared to care deeply about the process.

Before I left I must have said “I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN” at least 25 times and after I came back I said “Wow, that was amazing.”

But the primary reason I bring it up here is because the review process reminded me of a ’simple’ but not easy aspect of dog training: starting from the beginning. Let me explain: The SRO (see, now you know the lingo too!) asked us to let her know if they could do anything to make the process simpler and easier for first time reviewers. I will write her next week, because there is. What I most needed was someone to give me chronological instructions. “First, do A. You do A this way. Then, do B. The way you do B is this….”. It seems so simple, but it’s actually very difficult to pull off instructions that are that clear IF you are involved in a complicated process and IF it’s hard to remember what it is like to start from the beginning.

I think learning to train a dog has the exact same challenge. So many trainers are so good at what they do that they can’t remember what it was like when they first started. There are great dog trainers who are brilliant at training dogs, and there are great teachers who are great at training people to train dogs. Sometimes that gets combined, but they are two different skills, don’t you think?  Great dog training teachers are able to both empathize with dogs (as best one can with another species) and also with the beginners that they are working with. I am still touched and saddened by how many people have come to my office in the last 22 years and said “I left dog training class/another behaviorist/the vet’s office in tears…”. I think it happens less than it used to, but it still happens too much. One feels so vulnerable when starting something out, and unless information is provided in a way that begins at the beginning, it is hard to learn much.

But it’s tough to start at the beginning when you were there many, many  years ago, isn’t it? It’s challenging, but it’s actually one of my favorite parts of my work–working with people who don’t even know where to start. In part, it requires a clear understanding of where the beginning really is, which is not always an easy place to spot when you’ve traveled far away from it yourself. So here’s the question of the day: What is the beginning? What are the very first things that people need to know about training and behavior when they first get a dog?

Here’s one of mine, just to prime the pump: Dogs can learn to respond to dozens or hundreds of words, but first, they are watching you. Learn to pay attention to how  your body moves when ‘talking’ to your dog, and you will automatically beocme a much better trainer.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Before the farm, here’s a shot taken close to my hotel in Washington, DC. Trees in bloom, OH MY!

And here are some of the girls (and Redford in the middle) at the feeder, with careful attention paid to their nether regions. Butt checks like this happen three times a day now. I have 3 ewes who were/are due to lamb between yesterday and tomorrow, and I am obsessively looking for signs of imminent action. The one who looks closest here is Spot, 2nd from the right, with her slightly enlarged bag and swollen vulva. And of course, there’s piggy Brittany standing in the feeder getting everyone covered in hay, as usual…

But nothing yet. Jim, Will and I are about to go on a long walk (it’s sunny and gorgeous) and I’ll check again when we get back.  Will is still on leash, but I let him run free to the barn and back yesterday (he is crazed with joy to be outside off leash or off heel, I got tears in my eyes watching him flip and spin joyously). I’m still taking it slow, we’ll keep him on leash for the long walk, but I’m becoming a bit optimistic that he might be able to go back to working sheep or playing with other dogs in a week or so.