THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Here’s a video of Self Handicapping that I took 3 years ago, when Will was a young pup and Lassie was the stronger of the two. It’s a lovely illustration of appropriate dog play, showing how the stronger dog self handicaps to avoid overwhelming the weaker player.  Lassie, even now, is capable of pulling with a great deal of strength, but in this video she clearly damps down both the power of her pull and intensity used when she shakes her head. She moves more slowly and with less power than she would when playing with me.

There’s another piece to this video that I  just love: when Lassie decides she is done playing she gives Willie a very clear signal that play time is over. (Not long after she looks at me when I say “Jim! Turn the TV down” in the background!). She gives a second (more obvious) signal when Willie doesn’t seem to get the message… did you see the first one?

I showed this at the seminar on Dog Play (Dog Play DVD)  to illustrate appropriate and inappropriate play and followed it with a second video thatmakes me all gooey whenever I watch it. It was taken 2 years later, and shows the now grown up, and very strong Willie self handicapping while playing tug with Lassie, who at 14 is now the weaker one. I can’t tell you why, but it makes everyone who sees the comparison feel all oxytocin-y and big of heart.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Or, rather, back at the office right before I drive away to pick up Willie from his FIVE AND A HALF HOUR root canal. I have been flipping out over here… five + hours under anesthesia? Oh lordy, be still my heart. (I know, I know, I am such a wuss. It’s pathetic. Talk about oxytocin! Is there such a thing as oxytocin poisoning?)

Much warmer now, might even be up to 20 degrees. Wow, feels like an entirely different place. The lambs are doing beautifully. On Sunday Jim and I opened up the panel dividing the two ewes with lambs and let them all in together. We wanted to wait to be sure that the lambs were well bonded to their moms (and vice versa) and that they were stable and healthy enough to tolerate being shoved around a bit by the ewe that wasn’t their mom. Given how vigorous Snickers was (I am being so kind here, using the word vigorous instead of several others I can think of) when she was trying to reject her own little ewe lamb, I didn’t want to subject the single lamb to that kind of abuse. However, we don’t call him White Dude for nothing. He looks like he’s in training for a starring role in professional wrestling, so we figured he would be able to handle some ‘nudges’ from Snickers.

(You should know that lots of sheep people will be laughing right now… getting shoved away by sheep that aren’t your mom is just part and parcel of being a lamb.  Granted, I was being a bit, uh, cautious, partly because of the cold, party because Snickers seems out-of-the-box aggressive to other lambs, and partly because, okay, I’m a wuss.) After a few minutes of confused lambs and indignant ewes, everyone seemed to get it all sorted out. Whew. Now the lambs are able to play together and have more space to run around. Ideally, they’d be frolicking on emerald green pastures up the hill, but the grass is  under about a foot of ice and snow.

Here’s the lambs from this weekend:

You can see how big White Dude is in this photo of him and the little ewe lamb:

Meanwhile, Willie and Lassie are warming my heart. They started playing in the living room Saturday night, and I was completely transfixed while watching them. First Willie threw himself in front of Lassie, with his head held high, his ears up at the base, with the rest of the pinna (ear flap) flattened against his head. His legs were erect and stiff, and he stood still as if frozen for a moment, then threw himself down in a play bow in front of Lassie. She responded with her “play bark,” (only heard while she’s playing, one WOOF, repeated about every 3 or 4 seconds) and picked up their favorite tug toy.  They proceded to play tug for several minutes, while I was transported away from huddling in the cold on the couch, blue snow, frozen ice buckets and bitter winds.  I imagined that they were individuals of a wild species that one rarely sees… imagine how enchanted you’d be if you’d never seen a dog and all of sudden there were 2 of them, playing this amazing game right in front of you. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that they were in my life, and that by simply doing what dogs do, I could be elevated and warmed with amazement and appreciation. Those of us lucky enough to have dogs are lucky indeed.

Two more posts about play from presentations at APDT: this one about play between people and dogs, and a post coming on Friday regarding Karen London’s presentation on using play to treat aggression-related behavior problems.

I spoke in the afternoon about play between people and dogs. It’s a rich topic, with many nuances and complexities, and I only I had 45 minutes to address it, so I focused primarily on two issues: the importance of clear signals and the importance of pausing to allow emotional arousal to keep from overwhelmed our dogs.

CLEAR SIGNALS: Play bows in dogs are truly unique; there is no other species that I could find that had quite as clear a signal that means “Hey! I want to play, and everything I do next is meant playfully!” (Also see my post on Oct 21st.) In relation to that, I discussed the research of Rooney, Bradshaw and Robinson (2001) who video taped people trying to get their dogs to play (without using toys.) They found that people tried a variety of actions to get their dogs to play, some were effective and some weren’t. (And there was no correlation between how frequently someone tried a behavior and how effective it was! I just love that.. it is so human.)

People, ineffectually, tried whispering, patting the ground, kissing the dog and barking at the dog (to name a few). The effective signals were play bows, lunge toward and away (also called “start/stop” in other literature), running toward and away and adding vocalizations to other actions. I video taped a raft of cooperative people replicating the above, and here’s what came up:

1. People are REALLY bad at playing bows, unless they are willing and able to get down on all fours! (We’re just not designed to do it, you really need 4 legs after all.)

2. Running, as Rooney et al found, is a powerful way to elicit play (and has it’s dangers too… see Play Together, Stay Together by Karen London and me.)

3. “Start/Stop” is the easiest way to get many dogs in a playful frame of mind, but again, can elicit mouthiness or nipping in dogs if you’re not careful.

Keep in mind that the research kept toys out of the picture… as many of your comments have noted: there’s nothing like picking up a toy in front of a toy-loving dog to say RECESS! LET’S PLAY!

The other primary point of my talk was that dogs tend to play hard and fast and then pause, so that play sessions look like strings of play PAUSE play play PAUSE play PAUSE. This is especially true when they are play fighting (and less true, I suspect, when they are chasing and running). Given how many aspects of play, especially play fighting, are the same actions you see in serious fights, it makes sense that something needs to be built into the system to keep them cool. My suggestion is that we need to explain this to our clients in beginning family dog training classes… I think every beginning class should include a “How to Play with Your Dog” section in it. People are going to do it whether we bring it up or not, and besides emphasizing the value of object play, we can give them guidelines and boundaries about other types of play. We all know that play can go bad in a hurry (“I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.”) and it’s important for us to help owners avoid that.

Overall, I argued that play is a wonderful, wonderful way to enhance our healthy relationships with dogs (and is probably one of the reasons dogs and people get along so well.. play really isn’t that common among adult mammals) BUT, we need to be sure dogs understand when we are and when we are not playing, and play in such a way as to avoid over arousal. Karen London and I talk at length about the value of play, and how to do safely and constructively in Play Together, Stay Together (linked above)… I’d love to get your feedback on the booklet if you have it, on whether you include “How to Play” in your family dog training curriculum and/or more on how YOU play with your dog.

Here’s me playing silly with the same statue from the last post….

Pia Silvani’s, Director of Behavior and Training at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in New Jersey, gave a talk at APDT that focused on play between adult dogs, and it was a fantastic presentation. The best part of the talk was her videos of dogs playing–both appropriately and inappropriately. My absolute favorite was a video of two Tervurens meeting, greeting and eventually playing together beautifully. It was a like watching two strangers meet each other, and end up dancing as if they were on Dancing with the Stars. Several things stood out in the video that are, I think, important aspects of healthy dog play.

First of all, the dogs were able to meet each other one on one, without other dogs around. So often it seems that dogs get introduced into a ‘pack’ and are overwhelmed by 3 or 5 or 7 other dogs all trying to get access to them at the same time.

Secondly, the dogs weren’t forced into anything; they were able to approach and withdraw often, which is another way that dogs can avoid too much pressure during a greeting. This reminds me of the Ph.D. research of Dr. Anneke Lisberg from the University of Wisconsin, who did some of the first real research ever done on scent marking in domestic dogs (familiarity breeds contempt in science too!). She found that dogs entering a dog park were most likely to be the ones urinating after a greeting ritual with the resident dogs, and that the “newbee” often ended a close encounter by trotting a few feet away and urinating. Dr. Lisberg speculates that the entering dogs can avoid tension during greetings by walking away from close contact w/ other dogs and urinating a few feet away. It would be as if the dogs were providing information about themselves in their urine, on the ground, to avoid all those noses stuck up under their tails. Interesting, isn’t it? This makes me think about indoor day care facilities, where dogs are inhibited from urinating… I wonder if that causes problems? It does seem, on reflection, that all dogs should be able to meet and greet outside where they can use urine to communicate.

Thirdly, the Terv’s in Pia’s talk began to play with lots of play bows and ’stop/starts,’ done with a good distance between them. Gradually, as their play continued, they began to play closer and closer to each other, and finally began to make contact only after several minutes of mutual play. It really was one of the loveliest examples I’ve seen of two dogs reading one another and politely beginning a relationship.

Contrast that with the video she showed of a poor (Boston?) little dog being tossed into the mosh pit of a busy day care. The dog was literally swamped by 5 or 6 (I’m guessing here) other dogs who overwhelmed it, ran after it, surrounded it and basically terrified the poor thing, giving it no chance to get a breath much less manage to be appropriately greeted. Thank heavens, there are many, many day care facilities who are very careful when they introduce new dogs, starting with a one-on-one session with a known “good greeter” and then gradually introducing them to the entire group… would that they all did this, yes?

I’d be curious about your experiences with your dog, both while greeting and playing with unfamiliar dogs. My Willie, aka “I-came-with-so-many-issues-Trisha-called-me-the-Spawn-of-Satan once,” plays beautifully with other dogs IF I manage the introduction so that he doesn’t get overwhelmed. First impressions matter with dogs too, don’t they?!

Here’s Pia mugging with a statue in Louisvile:

Speaking of great play between dogs, I recently visited some dear friends who I met through our mutual love of Great Pyrenees. Here are 2 photos of Czar, Tundra and Osa the Newfie playing as beautifully as dogs can play. What a joy it was to watch them!

And here’s yet another view of fall at the farm. Sorry, I just can’t stop myself.