THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

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

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

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

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

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

Baby don’t you cry

Gonna make a pie

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

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

Lots of dogs go through a “what’s in it for me?” stage (and this stage lasts longer in some dogs than others, right?). Mr. Hope is dancing around it right now, especially when I ask him to come into the house. Several of you asked about ways to handle it; not surprising, since most dogs aren’t like the Lassie on television and don’t automatically do what we want just because we love them.

Here are some of the things I’m doing right now to get Hope to come back into the house from the yard. Of course, “But I don’t wannnaaaaaa” is going to occur in different contexts, but many of the principles here apply to all situations, they just need modifying to fit the problem.

COMING IN MEANS GOING OUT Hope loves loves loves to be outside. He’d happily stay outside all day long if he could. So, sometimes, his reinforcement for coming inside is . . . wait for it . . . going outside. It’s the perfect example of the Premack Principle:  using a high probability behavior to reinforce a low probability one. I can count on him always going outside (high probability) because he loves it there, so I can use that to reinforce him for coming inside (right now it’s a low probability that he’d do it on his own). That means that sometimes when he comes in when asked, I say Good Boy! and dash outside again for a few more minutes.

JEALOUSY IS YOUR FRIEND This only works if there is some other living thing in your house that loves food or toys. But if you do, it’s powerful stuff. When Hope started pausing 20 feet away when I called him to come into the house, I began calling Willie and giving him a treat when he came. Will always comes when called, and I can give him a treat for coming and entering the house whenever I need to. As soon as Hope saw Willie getting a treat,  he instantly came running, only to discover that treats are only available on a limited basis. “Oh, too bad” I say, with sincere sympathy. “You missed the treats this time!” Right now he isn’t getting a treat for coming to the door ‘late,’ but if he then enters the house I’ll give him a treat once he’s inside.

UP THE ANTE I always have a mix of food treats available, from pieces of kibble to real meat. Right now he gets a jack pot of real meat if he comes, first time, when I call him to the door to the house.

MIX IT UP I’m very conscious with Hope of the importance of varying not just the reinforcement schedule, but what Hope gets as a reinforcement. You want to mix it up with any dog, but for some reason it feels more important with Hope than with others I’ve had. He’s pretty independent (okay, for a BC), and I want to condition him early on that if he does what I ask he’ll feel good (versus the more narrow “he’ll get food”). Although I use high value food most of the time for coming into the house, I also use play, effusive praise in which I get down on the ground and laugh like a loon while letting him leap all over me and lick me like a popsicle and again, getting to go back outside.

IF HE WON’T MOVE, YOU SHOULD If all else fails, don’t stand where you are and continue to call (and pollute your cue!) The few times that Hope simply plants his feet and won’t move toward me, or turns and goes farther outside to dig or look for sheep poop to eat (a favorite), I stop saying anything, ensure that I have a great food treat in hand, and go to him. Moving quietly, never scolding, I’ll show him what I’m holding and lure him toward me and back to the house. I’ll shape this, giving him a treat for just a few steps if he was overwhelmed with a distraction (New stinky sheep poop! Fox poop even better! Do you get the pattern here? … there is a reason the word for dog in Navajo translates: “eater of horse poop.”). If the distraction was only so-so, I’ll expect him to come further before I give him the treat.

Are we done yet? Oh my no, he’s just beginning adolescence after all. I expect we’ll work on these things for at least a year. However, he is already much improved; I haven’t had to walk to him more than once or twice in the last 4 days.  Now he comes voluntarily when we move from outside to inside about 75% of the time, even when I don’t call him to come, we just run into the house together. That’s an increase from — I’m guessing here — about 20% of the time, so that’s great progress.

What about you? Tell us your stories of your free spirit, and what you’ve done to work through it. I can’t wait to read what you send, and will be sure to have Hope read them too.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: We had 2 days of hateful weather on our short vacation, but thankfully the weather cleared and we were able to enjoy Perrot State Park in western Wisconsin for a few days. Jim got to take off his hateful Iron Man brace for part of the day and I even hiked up a steep bluff for a little bit, although it was a far cry from what we intended. But we got time off and a sweet visit with my niece and her new husband. Ummmm, so good to visit with such wonderful people. And we’re related! Go figure.

We returned home to a dying lamb, spent Friday night trying to save it, but to no avail. Turns out, even though we have wormed the sheep on a careful schedule and have alternated wormers, that worms all over the world are developing resistance to worming medicines, and that’s what is happening here.  The little white ewe lamb, the one I bottle raised, took a dive when we were away and was too far gone to save by the time we got back. The next day we started a new worming protocol, aware that no matter what we do it might not be enough. Seems so strange to lose an animal to worms — that just doesn’t happen in dogs (yet) but I understand it’s becoming a problem in horses as well. Gotta give those parasites credit, but I hate losing a lamb to something that it seems like I should be able to prevent. There are 2 lambs I have my eye on, one looks especially thin, but all the others are thriving, and clearly are inherently resistant to worms. I’ll pay special attention to which ewes have resistant lambs when I breed next year.

On a lighter note, here’s the small prairie at the foot of the bluffs at Perrot State Park (on the Mississippi flyway). It’s a beautiful park and a lovely little restored prairie. Hard to imagine that there were 10,000’s of thousands of acres of this across the midwest.

And here’s a happy scene to any farmer: a winter’s worth of hay being delivered to the barn. Thank you Gary, Gus, Gordy and Brad for doing all the work while Jim and I felt guilty (but cooler) in the house!

A dear person sent me a book titled American Lambs, by T Yamamoto. It’s subtitled “Poems and Stories about Working Border Collies, Sheep, Family and Life on the Land.” The author explains that it is a mix of real life and fiction, but is all based on a real island off the North West coast in which sheep were allowed to graze the pastures and beaches until the rural land slowly, inexorably, evolved into a landscape of urban dwellers who, in the author’s words “didn’t realize that they were changing the exact things they loved about the land.”

But don’t think this is a sad book. It is a rich and moving celebration of our connection to animals and the land. I loved it, absolutely loved it, and I don’t think you need to have sheep or herding dogs to love it too. I read it in one night, and was sorry to turn the last page.

I also just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain. It’s a best seller, gotten rave reviews, but I was, uh, well, not equally impressed. Have any of you read it? It’s a novel primarily about a man and a dog, told through the voice of Enzo, a lab-terrier mix. I’ll be the first to agree that the story is gripping–a race car driver’s struggles to maintain custody of his child–but the use of the dog as the speaker comes across to me as just weird. I can see that it’s a handy literary device to describe the action from an “outsider’s” perspective, but there’s just nothing “dog-like” about what the dog says or thinks. Enzo’s dream is that he’ll come back as a person when he dies if he is a good dog now. Perhaps I’m taking this too seriously, but presenting dogs as little more than a stepping stone on the path to being human just doesn’t work for me. Can you spell  egocentric?

In the book, the dog Enzo seems to have no problem understanding the most complex of human interactions and intentions, and yet does nothing dog-like himself. You’ll  have to  look hard to find a reference, for example, to the sense of smell, which surely is the foundation of a dog’s perception of the world. Enzo is an interesting and endearing character, I just can’t find the dog in him.

I am clearly in the minority. Publisher’s Weekly and Entertainment Weekly loved it (every author’s dream), and its site on Amazon is full of raves. Is it just me? Am I getting churlish in my dotage? Did you read it, and if so, what did you think?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: How could it be mid summer already? Where did June go? Time seems to speed up as we age (my mom said just wait: in your eighties it goes by so fast you get dizzy), but this is ridiculous. I think between my knee and Jim’s arm and a puppy who has to pee every 10 minutes (better now), we lost time-related consciousness for a month. But it’s glorious here now. The endless rains have paused, and it is Ireland-green and lush and now cool and sunny. Sweet.

We are surrounded now by food, growing and ripening all on its own. As a woman who grew up in the  Arizona desert, this still seems miraculous to me.  Luscious food that just appears by itself and waits for you to pick and eat it? Is it a trick? Is there a witch behind the berry bushes?

The existence of free, wild food is amazing enough, but now? Wait, isn’t it still May? I can’t believe that the black raspberries are already ready, and that the wild plums behind the house are ripening. Dozens of stems of wild mint has been picked and dried, and I’ve managed to get 6 quarts of strawberries and 6 bags of rhubarb into the freezer. It all seems too early and I want to tell the summer to slow down please.

This afternoon I take Hope in for his last vaccination. Cross your paws for me. I’m not willing to skip his last shot, parvovirus is a constant threat around here and it is fatal far too often. I’ve done what I can: Hope is on chinese meds and lots of cooked greens (and has been a very sweet boy lately, more on that later in the week.) Wish us luck, I am hoping to skip the 24 hours of frantic, growley dog that Hope turned into after his last vaccination.

Here’s some berries I photographed this morning, waiting for me and the birds to gobble them up. Tonight I’ll pick another quart or two. It’s so kind of them to ripen in stages!

Thanks for your comments with examples of what looks like imitation in dogs and cats. I was especially intrigued by the cat stories, having had a cat myself who did a perfect imitation of a herding Border Collie after watching me work Luke every day. Luke and I would drive the sheep up the hill to the pasture, and Ayla, my tiny, gray cat, would follow behind. She often sit on a log and watch as I worked Luke on gathering and driving. The sheep, although never abused, did not enjoy this exercise as much and Luke and I, and were always ready to bolt to the barn if given half the chance. When that happened, Luke would have to streak around them at lightening speed and stop them.

When we were done working I’d say “That’ll Do” to Luke and let the sheep run back down the hill. Once they discovered no one was going to stop them, they’d usually break into a full run and dash down the hill like deer. After a month or so of this, as Luke and I followed the flock back down to the barn, Ayla darted out of the adjoining woods in front of the careening sheep, lept up and smacked the lead sheep on the nose with her paw. The entire flock came to a screeching halt. Ayla sat down in front of them and looked directly at me. The thought bubble over her head, as I imagined it, said “I can do this too you know.”

For years afterward I had visions of taking Ayla to herding dog trials, and, Babe-like, amusing and amazing the spectators while AYLA THE HERDING FELINE marched the sheep around the course. Of course, that didn’t  happen, Ayla appeared to be content with her one demonstration of prowess, and I never took the time to try to turn her ability into a circus act. But this example fits with so many of yours of dogs and cats observing the behavior of another for some time, and then replicating it. The challenge, of course, is turning our anecdotes into an experiment that rules out other explanations.

There are two pieces of research that come to mind that did just that, the work of Milosi and others with the imitating Tervueren, and the research of Friederike Range in Vienna. Here’s a summary of each:

Miklosi (& Topal and Bryne) worked with a 4 year old Terv, Philip, who had been trained from an early age as an assistance dog for a disabled owner. Philip could open doors, pick up items on cue, switch off lights, etc. His trainers began to teach him a few cues that corresponded with the desired activity. For example, his cue for Turn Around was an owner turning around him or herself. The experimenters built on that, and taught Philip to replicate 9 actions that replicated the behavior of the human. First the dog was asked to sit and attend to the person to “Philip, listen.” Then the trainer performed an action, like putting an object into a box. The “imitate” cue was “Do it.” After 10 weekly training sessions, Philip correctly imitated the action of the person 72% of the time, a significantly  higher percentage than a result expected by chance alone. Skeptics will note, however, that this is not necessarily imitation, if the cue was the same as the expected action. The question is, did Philip begin to understand the concept of imitation, versus responding to a cue that happened to be the same as the desired outcome? That’s why Philip was then asked to replicate untrained actions, which he did correctly 63 out of 94 trials.

A second test, two years later, asked Philip to pick up a bottle from one of 6 boxes and place it in another, based upon the actions of his owner (which creates 30 possible sequences). Philip performed the exact same sequence as the one he observed 28 of 60 times, which is again significantly higher than expected by chance. (Remember there were 30 possible combinations.) In addition, many of his mistakes were still very close to the correct response. There’s lots more in the paper, “Reproducing human actions and action sequences: “Do as I do!” in a dog,” published in Animal Cognition Vol 9, 2006.

In the other study, Friederike Range trained a Border Collie to get food by pressing down on a wooden bar by using its paw (versus the easier and more natural way of doing it, by grabbing it with its mouth). Three groups of dogs were allowed to watch the dog pull down the bar in this way: One group watched the BC use its paw with nothing in his mouth, the second group watched the BC use its paw with ball in his mouth, and a third group was given access to the bar without watching the BC demonstrate. 83% of the dogs in the first group used their paws to pull down the treat, but in the other 2 groups only 21 % and 15% used their paws. The authors suggest that the first group of dogs consciously imitated the demonstrator with the assumption that the BC was using the most efficient way to get the food. The second and third groups used the most natural method, the second group presumably concluding that the BC would have used his mouth if he could have, but used his paw because his mouth had a ball in it. The test dogs had no such constraint, so they went ahead and used their mouths.  If this is true, it is not only evidence of imitation, but inferential and selective imitation. The full study is published in Current Biology, Vol 17, Issue 10, May 2007. Needless to say, it looks like our observations of dogs imitating the actions of others may have serious merit. I suspect that it is MUCH more common for dogs to imitate other dogs than to imitate people (I’ve never had luck with modeling a behavior, like lying down, with dogs, though some commented that they have). It just makes more sense for dogs to relate more to the actions of their own species, yes?

Thanks as well for the comment about Ken Ramirez’s work on imitation. He’ll be speaking the day after I do in Massachusetts, I can’t wait to hear him talk. He’s one of the best, and I learn something new and wonderful every time I see him.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Tornadoes a few miles away, torrential rains every night. Dramatic enough, but try leaving your partner’s Prius out one night in a downpour with all the windows all the way open. Makes for an impressive bolt out of bed at 2:30 in the morning, not to mention an hour of toweling, 2 hours of blow drying with a hair dryer and 4 hours of huge fans streaming air through its open doors. Whoops. Dodged a bullet I think.. car seems totally dry now. Whew.

I’m about to take off for the fund raiser in Milwaukee… truly looking forward to it. I was taking some more photos of play for the talk, and here’s my favorite of Will and the Scorpion. Dog bliss!

I didn’t know what it was at first. A large cat? A fox? The grey-brownish animal was trotting just outside the fence, looking inward toward the lambs, as Will and I stood looking at the flock in the high pasture one morning last week. As it came closer, I realized it was a coyote, a frequent visitor to the outskirts of the farm, but a rare sight in broad daylight, so close to my sheep.

Granted the lambs were no longer newborns, and granted some of the older ewes were capable of smashing a small canid into the dirt like bugs, but still, a coyote/lamb omelete is not something a shepherd wants to see. My guard dog long gone, I reflexively barked myself. (Will hadn’t noticed the coyote at that point, he was so focused on the sheep.) BARK BARK BARK, I said, trying to sound low and growly and oh-so-intimidating. The coyote stopped and looked at me for a moment, and continued its purposeful trotting along the fence. I changed tactics. WOOF WOOF WOOF I bellowed, and before the second note had left my mouth the predator pivoted and ran for the hills, its beautiful tail streaming high above the grasses.

It was the coyotes themselves who taught me to say WOOF.  Last year after Tulip had died a pack of them was rallying just yards from the barn and the damp, delicate lambs within it. We heard them yip-howling, sounding like happy banshees risen from the graveyard, and we dashed down the stairs and ran out onto the front lawn. In the past we would have run out with Tulip, who would  have been barking loud and low long before we got to the bottom of the stairs. Out she’d go on her tie out, where she’d roar out into the blackness, her voice echoing back from the hills beyond, and the coyotes would immediately go silent. One of us would stand there with her until long after, listening to the night, sleepy but thankful for her deep barks and her huge white presence.

But with Tulip buried practically under our feet, on the very spot she would stand and broadcast her presence, we were on our own. BARK BARK BARK we yelled, and the coyote chorus continued. For reasons I can’t explain, I jazz riffed my way from BARK BARK BARK to WOOF WOOF WOOF, and the cacophony immediately stopped. Nothing. Silence. I tried it again a few nights later, and again, BARK had no effect, while WOOF was a game stopper.

I told a friend who has two Great Pyrenees my story a few weeks later, bellowing out my BARK and my WOOF  at her home in the country as best I could to illustrate. My friend and her two dogs listened to my story . . . until I got to WOOF WOOF WOOF, and you guessed it, her 2 dogs immediately began to bark. Not only that, but each dog ran to a different area on the property where they typically bark at intruding animals (especially coyotes). One went left, one went right, and they each raised their beautiful white muzzles to the sky and barked like a stereo symphony. Their barks were loud and serious… they had to be loud for us to hear them, because my friend and I were laughing so hard, big-eyed and amazed, that we would have drowned out anything less than a full operatic performance.

Barking is such a huge topic, and surprisingly little studied for such an important behavior of the animals we live with most closely. We know that wolves bark, but rarely, and most often when they are adolescents. The message appears to be directed to two parties: one to the intruder (I see you!) and another to the pack itself (911: I need some assistance here!). Domestic dogs are veritable Chatty Cathy’s compared to wolves, which makes sense if you think of dogs as wolves who never grew up (called paedomorphic or neotonous). Surely we have also selected for barking; in many places in the world the primary purpose of  dogs is to be an early warning system for predators.

Barking itself is controversial (isn’t everything?). Some argue that barks lack any communicative value at all (these could not be people who own dogs, could they?), while others argue that barks vary by context and can be accurately used at minimum to assess the internal emotions of a dog, and at most to gain information about the environment (ie, what kind of predator is approaching?). For a great review of this literature, see Sophia Yin’s article in the Journal of Comparative Psychology (2002, Vol. 116, No. 2), “A New Perspective on Barking in Dogs.” Fedderson-Peterson, a researcher in Germany, agrees with Yin that barks can convey a tremendous amount of information. All (most?) agree that low, noisy barks  correlate with offensive & defensive threats (following the “universal principles of vocalizations” described by Morton many decades ago, with  lower pitched sounds correlating with an animal on offensive or about to be aggressive), while high-pitched, more harmonic barks correlate with fear or play or mild frustration.

So how does that fit with WOOF versus BARK? When I repeat the words and listen to myself, WOOF sounds a lot lower. It’s easier for me to say ‘woof’ in a low, deep voice than it is to say ‘bark.’ Could that be the reason it had more impact on the coyotes? Certainly, the words we use to symbolize canine vocalizations vary greatly, depending on the language. According to Wikipedia, people in Albania say “ham ham” while people in Iceland say “voff voff” to label a dog’s ‘bark.’ I find it interesting that for English, the article listed “woof,” “ruff” and “arf” for large dogs, and “yip,” and “yap” for small ones. Say those to yourself, and if you’re like me, you’ll say ‘woof a lot lower than you’ll say ‘yip.’ Larger animals inherently make lower sounds, which is believed to be one of the reasons that a deep, low bark is perceived as more threatening…. “I am BIG and I’m coming to get you…”

And here’s the beauty of the internet: This blog has about 16,000 readers now, from all over the world. So let’s hear it: what word do people use for “bark” in your native language?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Hope, at 12 weeks now, is doing beautifully on so many things. We’ve made huge strides on coming on when called (best reinforcement is running away from him, much better even than pieces of dried beef!), crate training, house training, sit and down on cue, puppy pauses, sitting down instead of chasing the cat (this one will take awhile!), and walking on leash. He is just as willing and biddable as his parents and the 7 older siblings I was able to hear all about (2 different litters, 3 yrs and 1 year of age). Of course, none of this is close to “done”.. he is only 12 weeks after all!

Hope and Will have more good moments than bad. They wrestle play and “tooth fence” in the house, and Will has lost his look of abject misery that he greeted with me every morning for a few days. Here they are now–look carefully and you’ll see the tiny, curved shark-like teeth in Hope’s open mouth. Last week he lept up and bit me on my . . . well, let’s just say I was facing forward, he jumped up above my waist, and it was quite a surprise. Good thing he’s learning bite inhibition from me and Willie both.

A short post today, but I hope a helpful one. It’s inspired by the “mud luscious and puddle wonderful” nature of spring, and the need to wipe off Will’s paws as we enter the house when it’s wet outside. As I was drying Willie’s paws a few days ago, I thought about how much easier it is now that I say “Ready?” right before I pick up each leg. Since I started communicating my intention (“now I am going to pick up this paw”), he is beginning, on occasion, to pick up a paw himself, but more often he will shift his weight so that it is less awkward for him. (Yep, I could train him to pick up each paw on cue… also a potential solution, but keep reading for some potential benefits of a more generalized cue.)

Keep in mind that this is the dog who, as an adolescent, growled at me  when I picked up a paw to dry off the mud. That was 3 years ago, and I remember saying something like “Oh, don’t be silly” and continuing what I was doing. He growled one or two more times, but we worked through it and I haven’t heard him growl at anything in years. However, he doesn’t enjoy his paws being cleaned, as most dogs don’t, and the process got me thinking about how little control a dog has over having his/her body moved around, even gently, without any say in the matter. That’s especially difficult if there is any pain involved in putting more weight than usual on one limb. I’ve always been aware of Will’s bad shoulder, and have always been extra careful about picking up the other paw, but a few months ago I started saying “Ready?” right before I picked up a paw, giving him a chance to shift his weight himself.

It’s made a difference to both of us. I lean down and put my hand close to a paw and say “Ready?” and he either shifts his weight or picks it up. Paw cleaning is not only faster, it feels like Will and I are moving down the same path, instead of trying to go in opposite directions. This is a cue that has so many applications; Will’s structural troubles require acupuncture and chiropracty, and he’s not the kind of hail-fellow-well-met who takes being handled lightly. I would bet the farm (and, hey, I have one) that handling Will with force and punishment would have created a severe aggression problem within a few months. In both cases, we give Will lots of options, using patience and communication during the treatments. He adores both practitioners, but he literally hides behind me when the greetings are over and it’s time for treatments. But we work through it, sort of like a dance; sometimes asking, sometimes quietly insisting, but always with an awareness that Will desperately needs to have some say in what is happening to him.

I know many others use cues like “Ready” for a variety of reasons. I’ve heard similar cues most often in obedience, meaning “Okay, time to start working together”. But I’ll bet there are many examples from your own experience of using a cue to communicate your intentions to a dog. I’d love to hear them. I think we’d all learn something from hearing about all the ways that concept can be used. (By the way, signals like “Ready” are called “meta-communication,” meaning “communication about communication.” A play bow is an example in dogs, meaning “Everything that happens next is in play, don’t take these bites and growls seriously!”

Meanwhile, back on the farm: The new fence is working beautifully (more on Will and the fence soon), the bottle lambs have learned to use the self feeder, though they still mug me relentlessly for more, and Snickers has stopped looking for her 3rd lamb, the one I had to take to a friend because 1/2 of Snicker’s bag dried up. The tulips and blossoming trees are in full bloom. Here are Tulip’s tulips, the flowers I planted over my Great Pyrenees grave, her body deep in the soil, nestled onto a bed of of hundreds of tulips, warm and safe in the small hill in front of the house, where she’d stand strong and tall, and bark out her great, white presence to the world.

Thank you so much for all your insightful comments about overpopulated shelters and whether responsible breeders could help reduce the number of dogs who enter shelters in the first place. Here are a few, admittedly somewhat random, thoughts about the issue.

One: Boy would I like to see more collaborative efforts between good breeders, shelters and rescue groups. I know that already occurs in some areas, and Here Here! to that, but I wish somehow we could more often use the energy and commitment of these groups to 1) publicize a universally understood definition of “responsible breeder” so that the public understands what that really means 2) create more, affordable support systems to help people when they need help with training and behavioral problems. (FYI, I too have heard a common reason given for a surrender is “owner moving,” a far more socially acceptable reason for giving up a dog than “I don’t want him anymore because he has become a pain in the ass…..”. We should remember though, if I recall it correctly, that one of Patronek’s studies found that most people gave up a dog only after many months of struggle, that they did not make the decision lightly and that most of them were distressed about having to give up the dog. I know that’s not true in all cases, and that some people think of dogs as furniture, but there are still many who would much rather not take a dog to the shelter.)

Two: Influence breed clubs to add behavioral stability to a criteria in shows. It is indeed true, as some of the comments have mentioned, that many clubs in Europe require animals to be carefully screened by vets, and are given behavioral and soundness tests before they can be registered. I visited a Warmblood stud farm in the Netherlands once, and was told that the club had decided only 12 studs could be registered that year, and the farm’s drop-dead gorgeous and bomb-proof stallion had been rated “number 13.” No foals for him, at least not that year. Wow. That would never fly over here in the land of the free, but at least we could start advocating that breed clubs add more to a championship than conforming to a structural standard and having a perfect gait. I know many competitors argue that just being in a dog show is proof enough of a dog’s disposition (me own mum used to make this argument to me), but you know . . . it’s not.

Three: Legislation? I don’t know. I am torn about this myself. On the one hand I agree with the argument that the ‘commercial’ facilities will be the least affected by this. Right now in Wisconsin we finally got a “Puppy Mill bill” passed, but the language says that breeders must adhere to standards that “are to be determined.” Last I heard the make up of the committee deciding on the standards had no behaviorist, no trainers, and lots of you guessed it, large scale breeders. (I’ll find out more about this in the weeks to come….it’s on my “To Do” list when I catch my breath from UW.) On the other hand, perhaps licensing will really will have the effect of 1) improving large scale breeders and 2) educating the public about what they should, at a minimum, expect.

Four: Helping breeders and rescue groups to be realistic: There were several comments from people who felt that some breeders or groups set their standards for a new home unrealistically high.  I have heard this complaint from quite a few people, including a dear friend and veterinarian with a long history of taking in special needs dogs and going to the mat for them. She finally gave up after waiting for 6 months to adopt an older, needy dog from the same group who had adopted her her first dog. She went so far beyond the call of duty with this dog that she deserved to be sainted, and yet the rescue club couldn’t decide if she was worthy of another one. How do we help breeders and groups be more realistic about good homes? Oh dear, I don’t know, but I do think we need to collectively work on it.

I might have a better idea of how to solve these problems if I wasn’t so damned hung over. Last night I had a total of one and a half glasses of red wine and I was a happy girl. Not so happy this morning though. It took me a few hours to figure out why I felt so crummy, and when I did, I actually ran into Andrea’s office and said “Oh good grief! Maybe I feel so crappy ‘cuz I’m hung over! Do you think?”).  I guess it is clear that this is not a common occurrence in my life.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Willie is much better about the bedroom, but we’re not done yet. I did figure out that it’s all about the bedside table. If I even turn toward it to take a sip of water he’ll get up and slip out of the room. I am guessing it’s about the drawer, the one I open to get my reading glasses. It has a low, growly sound when it is being opened. But he’s better: a few nights ago he never left the room at all, (and then regressed the next night), and he now comes back in soon after I turn out the light (also on the bedside table.) One step at a time. I have to confess I have done no counter-conditioning, no DAP (which, fyi, I have found to be useful in some cases). This is out of pure laziness and nothing else. By the time I walk up the stairs at night I consider washing my face and brushing my teeth a significant effort.

It’s been gorgeous, just plain and simply gorgeous. The warmth we are experiencing is 2-3 weeks early, and a big worry to those of us who worry about the plants and the environment. It is also just a tad unsettling to see things happening when we don’t expect them, but the tulips and many of the trees are now in bloom. Here’s Willie lying in front of Tulip’s grave site, where she used to stand and broadcast her presence to the coyotes across the road.

And here’s a fuzzy photo of the bottle lambs. Granted the only thing in focus is my chubby little hand, but I included it because what you see is pretty much what I usually see: a black and white milk shake of lambs jockeying for position.

One last comment, for now, about our relationships with our dogs.  I had mentioned in the last post that I believe that dogs do better if they see us as what I call “benevolent leaders,” in the sense of good parents or good teachers. Here’s my thinking:

Dogs are dependent upon us, granted some more than others, but most of our dogs have no control over when and what they eat, where they spend their time and who they spend it with. They can’t open the door to go outside, they can’t leave their social group to go find another one that they like better, and they can’t provision themselves with their preferred food. They have to know, at some level, that we hold most of the cards. We are able to open doors, we are the ones who can open the cabinets and get out the dog food and we decide who makes up the “pack.”

Because of that, at least in part, dogs know that we have more “social freedom” than they do, and much of their life is dependent on how we use it. Let me be anthropomorphic for a moment . . .not always a good thing, true, but sometimes useful. If you were dependent upon someone else, how would you like them to behave? Think of a great boss, or a great teacher or ideal parent. Wouldn’t they be a person who 1) was clear and consistent, 2) established clear and reasonable boundaries  and 3) saw you for who you really are, and acted in ways to bring out the best of you and inhibit your dark side?

I think that insecure dogs especially are in need of people who teach them to be patient and polite, who help them learn to inhibit impulsive behavior, and to establish boundaries in a fair and clear way so that everyone knows what to expect. We know that part of what makes a social animal nervous and insecure is a lack of ability to predict what is going to happen to them. And more than that, I think insecure dogs need a sense that their human is someone that they can count on, to take charge and get them out of trouble when necessary, and to create clear and fair boundaries that help them learn emotional control.

I have seen so many dogs in my office whose owners adored them, but who were afraid to deny them anything. No boundaries, no rules beyond “please don’t pee in the house.” I had one client whose dog began to growl at her because she didn’t get up out of her chair and go across the room to pick up a toy for the dog. This particular dog had taught his human, literally, to fetch for him, and if she didn’t pick up on his cues fast enough to pick up his toy and hand it to him, he began to growl and threaten her. And yet, I got no sense that this was a happy dog. You might think that he was in heaven, living in some kind of canine fantasy with a person who waited on him hand and foot.  But he was nervous and insecure, and after we started using positive reinforcement to teach him other ways to behave, and decided on some reasonable boundaries, he not only stopped bullying  his owner, he seemed like a much happier dog.

And so, although I have concerns about what the word means to some people, I still use the term “benevolent leader,” in the belief that most dogs are relieved to be able to count on their human to, as one dictionary defines “to lead,” to “guide something along the way.” That’s not a bad thing to do for the animals who are so dependent upon us. We just need to do it with love, patience, benevolence and most of all–a good sense of humor.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s exquisite spring weather, 60’s and sunny and all emerald green grass and liquid bird song. Here are 2 of the 3 bottle lambs that Truffles doesn’t make enough milk for. They are just starting to frolic after getting their bellies full of goat milk.

And here are the 3 ewes who lambed most recently. The rest of the flock has dashed up the hill for 2 acres of clover and grasses, while these 3 stay closer to the barn. That’s Truffles, the ewe with the problem udder, on the left. Her 3 lambs are the ones on the left too, although the one with the most black is in the foreground. Dorothy is in the middle with her twin lambs, while Snickers is on the right with her all white triplets. Snickers and Dorothy are especially cautious about leaving the safety of the barn. Dorothy is so cautious that I have to feed her separately because she is hesitant to leave the barn to feed with the others. Her lambs are tiny, tiny tiny tiny, but their little bellies are full when I check on them. I gave Dorothy extra grain last night because I’m a tad worried that she isn’t getting enough food.

As I write this they are all at the top of the hill on an Irish green pasture. I can almost hear them tearing the tips of the grass off as I write . . .

I’ll be working on a post about social status and dog training this week, keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, something happened on Saturday that related to our discussion about fears . . .

I mentioned last week that Willie has become fearful of being in the bedroom with me at night. He is better, although he still leaves the room when I get into bed, but he is not slinking out anymore as if he saw monsters sitting on my shoulder. (And yes, by the way, it appears that whatever scared him is associated with me–all of his tongue flicking and slinking was directed toward me, but only once I get into bed. The issue seems to be specific to Trisha + Bed = Scary. (Oh lordy, one could construct a lot of jokes out of that. Sigh.) Speaking of unexplained fears, here’s an explained one that might shed a little light on the ones we can’t figure out.

On Saturday a dear friend came to visit from northern Wisconsin, and after driving 4 hours let her Akbash, her Golden Retriever and a Lab she is babysitting out of the car to relive themselves. Unbeknownst to us, my cat Sushi was sitting on the porch, and the Akbash and GR took one look at her and began lure coursing with her as the rabbit. Luckily she was only about 30 yards from a tree, and she got up it when the dogs were only a few feet away. She must have climbed 25 feet up, but got herself down within a few minutes once it was safe. (We didn’t see her come down, we were busy rounding up loose dogs at that point.) We found her soon after, shaken up and with what looked like a minor eye injury, but otherwise still intact. However, she clearly had been terrified, and for the next 48 hours she panicked every time she saw Willie. Now, Willie had been in the house, and had no part in chasing her. But he’s a dog, and apparently that was enough to set her off.

Fears are like that: When we, or any mammal, is truly frightened, the change in neurochemistry in our brains creates a state of hyper awareness. It is as if the brain is saying “I need to pay attention to everything, because I don’t know yet what it was that related to the danger, so I’ll take it all in and sort it out later.” In the famous story told in all animal behavior classes, an entomologist who was struck by a car in a pedestrian cross walk can still tell you the species identification of all the insects plastered onto the grill of the vehicle that hit him. Apparently he’s never felt the same way about moths again. The downside of this hyper awareness is that we can develop conditioned fears to things that had nothing to do with the actual trauma or injury. In Sushi’s case, it made some sense: Willie wasn’t anywhere near her when she was being chased, but he is a dog after all. But the association can be illogical and meaningless, and still have tremendous power. We can get nervous when we hear the song that was playing on the radio when we had a car accident, or our dogs can associate us with something that happened in our presence that had nothing to do with what scared them. But we were there, and sometimes that’s enough.

As readers have wisely commented, it could be related to smells (I think that is often over looked in dogs, because we as a species are so oblivious to scents), or sounds that we can’t hear ourselves. I think it often has to do with pain; I’ve seen many clients whose dogs had an abrupt injury and associated their owners or another dog with it. I also wonder about barometric pressure, stray voltage (I had a case of “Separation Anxiety” that turned out to relate to a huge power surge by a nearby power generating plant right next door) and who knows what else. Temple Grandin talks about a horse afraid of anyone with a black hat on, because the man who beat her wore a black hat. I’ve had clients whose dogs were afraid of anyone who smelled like pepperoni (abusive pizza delivery man), anyone with bushy, blond hair (who knows why!), and Hereford cows (not Holsteins) because the dog was looking at Herefords when he got hit by an electric fence. Sometimes we can figure out the association, sometimes we can’t, but it does help a bit to remember that the association is often illogical.

Meanwhile, back in the barn: Lambs lambs lambs. On Saturday morning, Truffles had triplets. She’s a 4 year old ewe who has always had 2 great lambs every year, but this time she had triplets, 3 little lambs, with 2 of them marked like Border Collies. Her cousin Snickers looked like she would lamb too, having an udder that blew up like a balloon on Saturday morning, and she became less and less interested in food as the day went on. Sunday morning it was clear she’d been digging, a sign of early labor, and she even left a rare chance at fresh grass to run back into the barn as if her babies were imminent. But, then . . . nothing. Hour after hour, nothing. Sunday morning it was also clear that Truffles wasn’t producing any milk. Her lambs were hunched and cold, and her bag was hard as a rock. Thus, much of Sunday was phone calls to the vet, visits to pick up goat milk, teaching the lambs to nurse out of a bottle, picking up medicine at the vet clinic, herding the flock with older lambs onto the front lawn for their first fresh grass in weeks, herding them back into the barn and taking the lambless sheep onto the front lawn (pasture isn’t grown up enough, needs to be rested), massaging Truffles’ bag with warm towels, feeding the lambs every few hours . . . (Don’t take any of this as a complaint. Except the worrying part, I love lambing season and was so grateful that I was home and not needing to work most of the weekend!)

Late Sunday afternoon, just when I was getting truly worried about Snickers and her blank-eyed, listless look and lack of any signs of labor, Jim, bless him, drove to the vet clinic to get oral calcium that might help her along.  I went into the barn to do another round of cleaning and feeding, and there were 3 little lambs with fat, full bellies, all standing beside Snickers. She had had them all in just minutes, cleaned them up and got all 3 fed in about a half an hour. This morning Dorothy (finally!) had twins, 2 lovely little boys (but wouldn’t you know that’s who I wanted to keep a ewe lamb from, she is my best ewe hands down….), one white and one grey & white. That’s 17 lambs out of 7 ewes. Holy moley. And there is one more to go, Explodo Ewe Barbie. Still no milk from Truffles though. She doesn’t have mastitis, and I actually wish she did. Then I could give her antibiotics and milk her out and use warm compresses and probably pull, her udder and her lambs through. But this hard bag is worse–the bag is full of fluid and the ducts are blocked, and the milk can’t get through. It might resolve in another few days and it might not. If it does, she still might not be able to provide enough milk, even for twins much less triplets. Looks like I’ll be constructing a self feeder soon.

Here are some of the older lambs, with the front runner impersonating a Border Collie.

Here are the 9 older lambs (there are 8 others in the barn), checking out Willie. Notice that Lady Godiva, whose lambs are the two in the front on your left, has come over to lure her babies away from the wolf lying in the dirt. She came a little closer, nickered, and her black lamb followed her away. The black and white ewe lamb ignored her completely, and continued to check out Willie, who bless him, stayed quiet and calm throughout.

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: