It was simple, in a way. Both dogs were insecure in their current environment, and were setting each other off. It’s all fine to say that we humans need our dogs to look to us for direction and security, but no one talks ‘dog’ more clearly than another dog, and Willie and Hope were both increasing each other’s insecurities. The irony was painful, because their relationship was improving in many ways. They played “tooth fencing/wrestle play” beautifully in the house, and Willie was just, finally, beginning to stop being such a victim when Hope bullied him in the house. Hope still would growl, lunge and bite at Willie’s shoulders as they moved to the door, for example, and Willie often responded by tongue flicking and dropping  his head, but in other contexts Willie would discipline Hope for some perceived rudeness with an inhibited muzzle bite.

As I would with a client’s dog, I sat down and considered the options:

I. Do nothing and hope that the dogs would come out of it.  In Hope’s case, it is true that some dogs seem to come out of what I call Juvenile Onset Shyness by themselves, but lots of dogs don’t, and in my experience, it is crucial with most dogs to actively help them through this stage with environmental management and behavior modification. As a four year old, Willie’s background level of being an inherently anxious dog meant he would most likely regress to his previous behaviors of serious aggression to unfamiliar dogs, and further degrade into being at least fearful, if not problematic, around unfamiliar people.

Probability of success: Small to Zero.

II. Actively treat both dogs with environmental management and behavior modification. That would include:

1) Full health checks, although a medical cause of this behavior was highly unlikely, it is still always good to check.

2) Physical support from Chinese Medicine, Vet Acupuncture, possible inclusion of pheromones (DAP for example) and scents (lavender for example) and homeopathic medicines (Willie is already on Shen  Calmer, possibly add that to Hope’s diet as well?). Also included is diet, specifically the amount of grain and the protein source. In addition, Hope could not drink the well water from the farm without developing crystals in his urine, so he drank distilled water that we had to purchase. No chance of any improvement there.

3. Stimulus Management: Take dogs off the farm separately, so they don’t set each off and I could work with each of them by one on one. This is no problem when leaving the farm, but doesn’t solve their behavior at home.

4. Behavior modification: Use Operant and Classical Conditioning to condition the dogs to have a different emotional (classical) and behavioral (operant) reaction to the stimuli that are setting them off.  For Willie I would continue going back to what worked in the past around unfamiliar dogs: Start by saying “Watch” which he knows means to look at me, whenever another dog appeared. When he turned to face me, he got to play a rousing game of tug. That reinforced him for looking away from the other dog in many ways–he got to play a favorite game and the tug game allowed him to release pent up tension. The goal was to get him to “AutoWatch,” or look at me automatically when he saw another dog, and then he’d get a game of tug. That not only taught him a behavior incompatible with barking and lunging, it classically conditioned him to feel good when another dog approached. For unfamiliar men, I’d have them toss toys or balls for him (can’t train other dogs to do that or I’d use it with other dogs!), conditioning him to love it when men approach.

For Hope, who spooked mostly at strange shapes (but that included a woman carrying a small bag while walking a small dog), I have been teaching “What’s That?” The meaning of that cue is to look at something, turn and get a treat or a toy. (Treats seemed to work better with Hope than play, so I began using them more often–every dog is different.). This works well if you can anticipate what stimulus sets off the dog, but is harder if you don’t know what the dog is responding to.

5. Lots more training… of course, always more training! Willie was taught to bow on cue, and it’s a great way to help  him relax when he is nervous. (He does it himself often now, I suspect he uses it as way of relieving stress himself.) All dogs profit, as do their owners, by having lots of behaviors that they can perform that relax them, that are incompatible with the ‘problem’ behavior. Play bows are one of my favorites, because they not only relax the dog they often act to relax other dogs (people too.) The list of behaviors that are helpful to put on cue goes on, but you get the idea.

Probability of success? 70/30? 60/40? 50/50? Given the seriousness of Willie’s insecurities, it’s hard to say. Probably couldn’t make a good judgment about prognosis until about 4 to 6 months into treatment and Hope is older.

III. Re-home one of the dogs. Given that the insecurities of both dogs appear to be feeding off of each other, the last reasonable option is to re-home one of the dogs. I’ve re-homed 2 dogs in the past 25 years, always because I felt it was in the best interest of the dog. Every time it was brutally hard on me for a while, and every time the dog was better off for it. Here’s my criteria for doing so that I shared with clients for over 22 years: the new home has to be better than the home the dog is in now. Period. Pure and simple. (Of course, if one dog is putting others, either people or dogs, at risk, the criteria must be considered differently.) In each case, you have to carefully consider which dog would be better off in a new home; in some cases the answer is simple, in multi-dog households it can be more difficult. In the case of Willie and Hope, which dog to re-home would be  simple.  Willie is over 4 years old, I have moved heaven and earth to keep him alive and happy, I am bound to him as if he were a part of me, and my first commitment is to him. Hope is not even 6 months old, is a much sounder dog than Willie will ever be, and would be a much easier dog to place than Willie for a gazillion reasons.

Probability of success? 95 to 100 % if it was the perfect home, but where would one find that? How could you know what’s “perfect?” My heart goes out to those of you who commented that you have a dog you think is in the wrong place, but can’t imagine where the dog would go. It’s not always easy, I know. Because I have had Hope long enough now to know him well, in his case it would have to be a home in which he 1) lived in a settled group of dogs in which he could play with the young ones, learn boundaries from the elders and feel secure in a home with trustworthy people and dogs, 2) live in the house with people who are kind, clear, patient, humane and who would give him the kind of health care that, frankly, few dogs get and 3) once he is ready, work sheep on a daily basis with people who know what they are doing, who use humane versions of training and take learning how to do it well seriously.

I’ve been working on Option 2 diligently, wrapping my life around it, and then, like a karmic piece of toast, the perfect home for Hope popped into our lives. A  home with a settled pack of 6 dogs–a puppy his age to play with, elder males and females to provide boundaries and security. A kind, loving home, in which the dogs sleep on the couch, get home cooked food and cutting edge health care. A farm in the country with sheep and people who devote their lives to working dogs, going to clinics, herding dog trials, taking private herding lessons from the best in the country. The dogs get far more work on sheep than one of my dogs ever would, at least until I can afford to retire, which isn’t going to be for awhile.

That’s where Hope is now. He’s been there awhile, long enough to know he’s thriving there. Willie not only went back to his old self in 24 hours, he has never been happier. Recently we were out walking on leash at a public park, he saw another dog, did a loose body wag, turned and looked at me, mouth open and relaxed, and turned back to the other dog as if he’d love to say hi. He is back to loving everyone, unfamiliar men included. Never once did he look for Hope, or act in any visible way that he wondered where he was or wanted him back. (But of course, who knows what he was thinking? Did he wonder where Hope went? If he did, he certainly showed no signs of it.) He has been happy and playful and relaxed at home and everywhere else. He is no longer licking his paws, alarm barking at the slightest noise or tongue flicking.

By all accounts, Hope is happier than he’s ever been. He plays with a five-month old female pup much of the day, has been corrected for rudeness a few times by his elders and is now on his best behavior. He is behaving beautifully around all people and all dogs, has never yet had a house training “accident” in the house (he did relatively often at our house and I suspect now it was as much about anxiety  as anything else). He has “spooked” at one thing, one time, and nothing else. He fit in the day he moved in, and it sounds like he has never been happier. His new humans adore him, are eternally grateful for all of his training and socializing, and say he acts like he’s been there all of his life.

And so, the dogs are doing great. I don’t need to tell you who this has been hard on. I won’t belabor it, but what’s called “Separation Distress” in animals is the same thing we call grieving, and it’s recorded in a primitive part of your brain as if it were a serious, painful injury. (That’s why we talk about “healing” from the death of a loved one.) Willie and Hope have shown no signs of it; they appear to be happier than before. It’s the humans who are suffering. The first three days after Hope left were brutal, even though I knew it was better for both him and Willie. I gave up trying to do any work at all one day, just let myself give in to the sadness and the feeling of loss. It’s better now, but I look forward to the day when it still doesn’t feel quite so raw. One of my few regrets is knowing that, to a lesser extent, this news will be a bit hard on some of you who have followed Hope’s story with me throughout the summer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make this change as easy for the humans as it has been for the dogs, but I can’t.

I knew it would be hard personally, and I knew it would be made even harder because of the public nature of this decision, and because some people will criticize me for it.  But here was my choice: send Hope to a better home with the highest of all probabilities that it would be better for him and Willie both, or keep Hope because I loved him too much to let him go, or because I didn’t want to lose professional credibility with the people who believe that if I was good enough I would have ‘fixed it,’ or that it is never acceptable to re-home a dog, no matter what the circumstances. I can be a real coward sometimes, but I couldn’t live with myself if I passed up the best solution for two wonderful dogs because I was afraid of what people would say. This is a good place, however, to thank all of you who have been supportive during this process; there have been a lot of you, and I am forever  grateful to you. Truly. Thank you.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of talking and soul searching before this decision was made. I talked to numerous other behaviorists and shelter/rescue experts–the list of people I consulted would drive a seminar host mad with envy. The consensus was clear: it ranged from “Of course that is the right thing to do” to “Why didn’t you do it sooner?” Most of our discussions ended up asking what we could do to help people understand that sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a dog is to get him out of one situation and help to find a place in which he will thrive.

A word of caution: Please don’t try to generalize this situation too much to  any other. It concerns me that someone might read about the solution I have chosen and decide then that they should do the same. Every situation is different. If the perfect home hadn’t arisen for Hope, I never would have made that choice. What I will say to those of you who are struggling with this, based on 22 + years of working with clients, is that IF you have a situation in your home that is truly untenable, don’t assume that there isn’t either 1) help from someone to improve the problem or 2) another good home out there somewhere for one of your dogs. I have had clients work with trainers and behaviorists and end up resolving problems that they initially thought were unsolvable. I have had other clients who choose to re-home dogs with a variety of serious behavioral problems, and in many cases, the problems either went away, or the new owners managed the issues without any disruption to their lives.

Bottom line? There will always be Hope… sometimes it just lives in unexpected places.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: The sheep still need feeding, the water tanks filled. Willie has just brought the flock out of the main pasture, through the woods, for their afternoon snack. The ewes get a little bit of alfalfa hay, and the lambs luxuriate with their noses deep in a mixture of corn, oats and a protein balance pellet. The lambs stopped growing for awhile when it was so hot, but they are doing well now.

Here’s a photo showing how big some of them are now. Hard to tell a few of the biggest from their mommas.

Here’s Snickers and one of her lambs, looking through a window in the barn. Is dinner ready yet?

It is very quiet here, but Willie is very, very happy, and that is a good thing.

I recently spent three evenings with Jim’s son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Taylor, and so the issue of kids and dogs is near and dear to me right now. I also, in that serendipitous way of the world, just received a question about how to find help for a Boxer who growled at a grand child from the post Who Should Treat Behavioral Problems.

Young children and dogs can be the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. There’s just no way around it, to some dogs, kids can be unpredictable, rude, and/or frightening. And surely, to some kids, dogs can be unpredictable, rude and/or frightening. Given that, here’s some generic advice, sprinkled with specifics from Will’s encounters with Taylor.

1) Never live in the land of “I-think-it-will-be-okay.” If you are not 110% positive that an interaction between a child and a dog will be safe, don’t allow it to happen. Any time I hear “I think it will be okay,” red flags start to wave. What does “I think it’ll be okay” mean? That maybe, probably, it’ll be okay, but you’re not sure? I’ve had 21 years of hearing people say that they “thought” it would be okay, and then they were sitting in my office, crying about whether to euthanize or re-home their dog. Granted, two decades of hearing about bites, law suits and potential euthanasias makes a person especially cautious, but that’s still what I’d advise any parent or dog owner to be: extra cautious. When dogs bite, it happens like lightening, so don’t think (there’s that word again) that you can prevent something because you’re ‘right there.’ You can’t. If you’ve ever believed me on anything, believe me on this.

2) Always protect both the child and the dog. It is neither fair nor safe to sit back and let a child harass a dog (or vice versa) because the dog is “so good with kids.” Well, he may be now, but after a number of years of pulled tails and poked eyes, he may decide he’s had enough. (That was a VERY common presentation in my office: “He’s always been so good with kids, he’d let them do anything to him, and then, out of the blue, he bit the neighbor boy.”) If you don’t protect your dog from a child who has not yet learned to interact politely with a dog, you are forcing your dog to protect him or herself. Some dogs can’t take it the first time, but others put up with it until they are older and sick of it. Even if your dog never threatens a child, it’s not fair to the dog AND it is teaching the child to interact in ways that may get him bitten by another dog. Speaking of teaching. . .

3) Both children and dogs need to be taught, gently and kindly, how to interact. If your dog is too exuberant, you might yelp as if you were a litter mate when the play got too rough. I’ve used a sound like ARPPP! (think seal here), that bursts out of my mouth when a dog has been a bit too rough with something weaker. It usually gets a startle response from the dog, and sometimes (not always) the dog seems to get the idea that she must self-handicap better and inhibit herself. Children always need to learn how to interact kindly with real dogs, given that they tend to treat them like stuffed animals until they learn better and acquire more emotional control. Any trainer or behaviorist can tell you legions of stories about kids who ran up to dogs, grabbed their heads and kissed the dog on the nose, while the parents watch with big smiles on their face. Until the dog bit, then the smiles go away.

4) Management is a good solution in many cases. Lots of dogs either can’t tolerate the energy and arousal of young children, especially if they are not used to them. Some dogs can learn to be comfortable around children with positive experiences, and some dogs can’t.  Some dogs can be around kids in certain contexts, and not others (see about Willie and granddaughter below).  There is nothing wrong with keeping kids and dogs apart, as long as both are in comfortable places. Willie loves his crate, and spent a lot of time in it Sunday when the whole family was visiting. Not for a minute did I feel guilty–he could rest and not be expected to deal with arousal levels over his head, and I could relax and enjoy  my company rather than being vigilant every single second.

5) Use conditioning to ease the relationship. I’ll use Operant conditioning next time Taylor comes out, asking Willie “Where’s Taylor?” He loves this game, loves “Where’s Jim” and “Where’s Trisha?” and it’s a great way to relax him around a child. Of course, I’ll be standing right next to Taylor, and will have her throw him a toy when he gets close (but not too close.) I’ll use Classical conditioning too, having Taylor toss or feed him treats (he’s has already taken several from her hand, mommy instructing her to hold her hand out flat on top of mommy’s hand) or toss his toys. I can teach Willie to lie down every time Taylor starts to run, to play bow when he sees her… etc etc etc. The point here is that it is our job to teach our dogs how to interact, what we want from them, and to do all we can to influence their emotional state when around children.

Will doing all this make every dog trustable around kids? Not a chance. Every dog is different, and some dogs will never be comfortable around kids, period. For those dogs, either management or a new home might be the best alternative. I’d be curious how you have handled this issue, and what your experiences have been. It’s such a huge part of our culture: kids and dogs, and how they interact. (By the way, Colleen Pelar has a book coming out in fall on how people in the profession can help parents raise kids and dogs. I reviewed it and it is great! I’ll keep you posted.) (8/23: When I first posted this I attributed the book to Robin Bennet, who has collaborated with Colleen in the past. Robin, gently and graciously corrected my foolish  mistake.)

Meanwhile, back at the farm: here’s Lassie and Taylor (and her dad Shane) playing around the wading pool (of course, this wading pool is normally for the dogs!). Note Lassie’s open mouth and relaxed posture, a good sign that she is comfortable at the moment. However, even though Lassie has been absolutely bomb-proof with children for all of her life, we still monitored all her interactions with Taylor, who didn’t know (how could she?) that it’s not a good idea to take a dog’s muzzle in your hands and squeeze. Why Taylor wanted to do this no one knows, but her parents are fantastic about teaching her to be polite around dogs, and they watched her (as did I) literally every second she interacted with Lassie. This level of hands-on interaction was only allowed because I have 14 years of experience with Lassie as adoring young children, and because Taylor’s parents were as vigilant as I. Even though Lassie has been amazing around kids, she IS 15 1/2 years old, and it is not fair to expect her to put up with things she would have in the past, so we still watched all interactions carefully. Even at only two years of age, Taylor is learning how to interact with unfamiliar dogs… would that all parents be so wonderful as Taylor’s!

Here’s Taylor and mom Rachel at the zoo, doing what all kids do: hugging. And she’s hugging the perfect animal, a statue that can’t take offense or turn around and bite her!

Teaching children not to hug dogs is a true challenge, it is clearly part of our species’ natural repertoire (I talk about this at length in The Other End of the Leash), and something that is hard for children to inhibit. To us, hugs are a sign of affection, but to most dogs they are, at best, something to put up with. To nervous, reactive or status-seeking dogs, hugs are rude, offensive and threatening. The few times that Taylor started to hug Lassie we gently re-directed her to another behavior. However, I never would have allowed Taylor and Willie to be in a situation in which a hug might even have started… I simply don’t trust him around children this young yet. Willie is reactive, easily made nervous, unfamiliar with young children, and nippy when objects (not live ones) start moving around fast. It has taken him years to keep himself from nipping a mop or broom and I have to remind him still not to nip the tires of the wheelbarrow when it is moving. Granted, that’s not the same as living things, but again, being conservative is smart. Being anything else around kids and dogs is not. When Taylor was running around in the house, Willie spent lots of time in his crate (and got lots of treats brought to him for being so quiet and patient about it). Later, we went on a walk with all of us in which Taylor and Willie could get used to each other without directly interacting, and spent some time in the yard with the whole gang outside. Note that there are no photos of Willie and Taylor; taking pictures would have distracted me from being as vigilant I necessary. Maybe next time?

On a walk in a prarie, which was the third time that Willie had seen Taylor, I noticed that Willie ran up, with a completely relaxed body, to Taylor and her mom and licked faces. I praised and called him away immediately…. to insure that things ended on a good note. Overall, everything went beautifully, but possibly because I was hyper conservative, never allowed any interactions I wasn’t 110% comfortable with, and Taylor’s parents were amazingly observant and cautious. Things might have been fine without that level of vigilance, I am the first to admit I was being hyper conservative. . . but there was no cost to being so, and a big cost to everyone if things had not gone well.

And, if you’ll indulge me, just a note about Jim’s grand daughter? . . .  Can I say it now, or is it just too tacky and grand-parenty?  Oh well, I’ll say it anyway, awash in oxytocin as I am: IS TAYLOR CUTE OR WHAT?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what do you do?