And More Progress, On Another Front. Wow.

Okay, I don't have time to write up a proper update, but here's something....

This week Laev gave me quite a few proper sits during bitework, first in setting up for the blind search (which is classically hard for her) and then in heeling about and AWAY FROM the helper. In other words, exactly what we've been struggling with.

The possible solution? I went to "get her dressed" for her turn, but the previous dog took longer to finish than I anticipated and we had time to kill. So we did lots of sit-at-heel for clicks by the car, rewarding with food, with the constant lower stimulation of bitework on the field. She never failed to do it, but it was obviously harder for her in the beginning. By the time we got onto the field, however, something must have settled in her brain, because she heeled mostly nicely to set up for the blind search and then sat when cued. I clicked and handed her a last piece of food I'd kept back (surprising her, I think!) and then sent her around the blind.

After that, I split heeling away and turning to sit (as for the courage test) into finer bits, doing quarter turns and such, building up to the full 180 degrees. She isn't quite there yet, but it was loads better.

As someone else noted, "working on it on the edge of the excitement area, but not in it, and then repeating right away on the field, was the key."

Baby steps!

Woo-Hoo! Happy Dance!

I just have a moment to quickly update, but this needs reported....

So, Laev can lie on the mat, chin down, comfortably resting, while I fire the cap gun right beside her. Even repeated shots. Even repeated shots, live and dry firing.

Aw yeah. :)

Lots more work to do, obviously, but we've made the first step!

I see progress -- I swear, I saw it!

So, as mentioned previously, I finally deduced that Laev has developed an anxious response to gunfire, though she displayed not trouble at all with it in her early life. Knowing where it came from doesn't help, but I told myself that what was learned can be unlearned and started a new path. My goal was to teach Laev to relax herself and slowly introduce gunfire.

This was easier said than done, of course. My first attempt to install a conditioned relaxer, by pairing a verbal cue with a naturally relaxed (sleepy) state, just didn't take. Laev sleepy is not Laev relaxed, it is Laev sleepy. When Laev is aroused, she's not going to go sleepy. Ain't gonna happen.

So I tried matwork, a la Control Unleashed, Laev had done matwork before, of course, but it was always infused with the thrill of training. She could be still on the mat, but not relaxed, and not always even still (as described in a previous post). I persisted, swapping to a different clicker. (It was suggested to me that I use a verbal marker instead of the exciting clicker, but I knew I needed the split-second timing a clicker afforded to capture Laev's minute muscle extensions. The Clicker+ was familiar enough to recognize but different enough that it didn't spark the same kind of excitement in my dog. Your mileage may vary.) Gradually, I got Laev to relax onto a mat.

Feeling pleased with myself, I introduced the gun. I'd bought a cap gun, keeping noise and gunpowder scent while reducing the intensity of both. Within a few days, I was able to fire the gun while Laev lay on her mat and then present her with her supper, without Laev bolting into the hinterlands with displacement activity. I was so happy.

The next day, I sent Laev to her mat and dry-fired the gun (no cap, no bang, just a hammer click). Laev couldn't handle it, began wandering restlessly about. Displacement activity. Stink. We'd had success, but we got it too fast and it didn't have enough foundation.

Back to relaxation on the mat... I learned that she could hold the mat for two or three dry-fires each followed by individual clicks and treats, but even if successful and reinforced she was then over threshold and couldn't stay through the next. It's very frustrating, because her stress signs are SO VERY SUBTLE and I have a very hard time identifying her threshold. Back to work.

And a change of venue. One thing I'd noticed is that Laev had definitely associated gunfire with geographic location. She could hold a lovely 10 minute long down on one side of the field, where we never practiced those, but got twitchy after 30 seconds in our usual trial down location. So tonight I took the mat to club training and threw it down in the front yard, where we've done little work and no gunfire. Laev was initially interested in the local wildlife but after a couple of moments settled nicely, resting her chin on the mat and waiting for her click. (The chin rest starts as "faking it," not real relaxation, but like method acting, she does start to relax after a moment of practice.)

When Laev was nicely stable, I took the cap gun from my pocket, held it to one side, and dry-fired. Laev kept her head on the mat. Click/treat. Repeat.

I worked for a while, trying to ride the threshold. If Laev moved at all when I dramatically presented the gun to one side, I simply replaced it behind my back. No dry-fire, but no treat. But it worked wonderfully. I called a friend over, whose dog was also having gunfire issues. "Look! I just want someone to watch this and verify that it really happened!" I brought out the gun and dry-fired once, twice, thrice, at five second intervals. Laev kept her chin on the mat and her muscles loose. "Look! It really did happen!"

/happy dance/

I wanted to carry some of this relaxed success to the field, loaded with all sorts of emotions. But I didn't want to let myself get greedy, so I deliberately put the gun back in the car before we trekked out to the field. Went to the trial honor down location and dropped the--

WHOA! Laev lit up and a jillion volts of electricity spattered everywhere. There was something in the tall grass beside the field, and she was standing on her hind legs against the leash, too jazzed even to vocalize in her intensity. I haven't seen that much from her in a while; this was something much more important than a rabbit. Coyotes? I held on, somehow dropped the mat, and gradually manipulated her backward with the leash, asking her to down (I knew she was incapable of looking for the mat). She did, but she was too buzzed to bother with treats. I started pegging her with treats as I clicked, knowing that if it actively bounced off her body, she'd turn and eat it. After a moment this worked, and she started giving me quick glances between turning back to the field. From there, it was a long road to shape relaxation, but that was my goal.

Good thing I'd left the gun behind; my goal here was just to get a semblance of matwork!

We were doing pretty well, actually, and we probably just went too long. Laev suddenly flipped a switch from mostly stable to leaping off the mat and lunging toward the field again. Again I blocked with the leash, brought her back, and started working slowly toward self-control. It took quite a while, but I'm pleased to report that Laev finished the session with her chin between her front paws and her hips rocked to one side, which is pretty darn impressive for her non-sleepy mode and near miraculous for her predatory mode.

I put Laev away and returned to where club members had gathered to start bitework. "Was Laev getting dirty?" one asked me with a grin. "Is that why she had a mat?"

I only smiled. "That's her security blanket."

And it is, in a way. When she can handle actual shots again on the mat, we'll fade it, but for now, I am very happy with what we accomplished tonight.

Scales & Tails

I was extremely proud of Laev on Saturday. We attended an event called Scales & Tails at our state museum, where Laev worked nicely among LOTS of dogs, cats, ferrets, raptors, lizards, snakes, and the public. I was very, very happy with her self-control around the kittens in training (who helped by staying nice and calm), even when they were inches from her nose (never loose!).

She did a couple of demos on training, nothing fancy. We showed how to teach nose targeting and then how to use that to get loose leash walking and easy handling for vet exams and nail trims. The kittens showed beginning cat training (just nose targeting; they'd come from a shelter only two days before and weren't far along) and Shakespeare happily volunteered behavior for audience members who got to try shaping for the first time.

When we first entered the building, Laev got a bit overwhelmed by the crush of excited dogs and people. I glanced down as we were en route to our area and saw her quiet, but hackled. (Remember hackles can be simple arousal as well as fear-aggression!) We paused, I spoke briefly to her, she glanced up and gave me a wag, and the hackles went down. Off to our spot, and she was fine all day after that. I didn't give her a chance to get riled about the kittens (she had not seen them before) which were crated next to her; I took her from her crate, immediately clicked her for looking into the kitten crate and noting them but BEFORE she could get excited, and quickly got her looking at the kittens as a visual target. She offered a down and glanced happily but calmly at the kittens. Yay!

Overall, good behavior at the museum.

That night, however, Laev depressed me during our training session. She had MUCH better things to do than recall from distractions. Finally got her working, but ugh. Still in remedial school on some things!

When CU goes wrong, or, my nutty dog :-)

I put Shakespeare in a crate with a chew (which, offended, he did not deign to eat) and Inky in another with a chew (which she ate) and kept Laev out for a training session. I had two exercises in mind.

1) open her mouth, with a big "say Ahh" movement
2) relax on a mat in preparation for gunshot desensitization

I'd started the open mouth idea a full year ago, but I'd not worked very hard on it and hadn't kept it up. No reason to. Now, however, I suddenly need to fill more time at our demos this weekend, and Laev needs a cute trick. So back to the open mouth game. I'd done one session on it last night, just enough to remind her that jaw movement works for clicks. (It's very hard getting jaw movement with no vocalization!)

It would be very wrong to say that Laev doesn't do much with her mouth; Laev is quite oral. But she doesn't lick or kiss or pant like most other dogs on the planet. Seriously, I generally see her pant only during summer bitework or after mile 10 on the AD. It's not even a common stress signal for her. So it was bizarre when I sat down to start our open-mouth session and she was panting.

Not really panting, after a moment. Just sitting there with her mouth open. Did she actually remember the open mouth? I didn't think so; she was just "stuck" that way. This was not as good as it sounded -- I couldn't click her opening her mouth!

So I abandoned that project and went to the other side of the couch, where I set out a mat. Laev parked promptly, but I wanted to shape her into relaxing. I clicked for chin down, etc., but she was faking. She wasn't relaxed, she was working the click system.

It took a long while before I could click a hip flop. As I clicked, she immediately popped back into a sphinx down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. She tried the other direction. Cool! Mom will click either hip flop! Watch me work both of them!

Finally I got her stable for a few seconds. She looked at me, lying on one hip, and gave me a big open mouth. And another. Way better than before.

I don't want to click the wrong behavior in the wrong place. Back to the couch and clicking for open mouth.

Laev started getting the open mouth, offering it more regularly. (Never as good as on the mat!) She had some superstitious body movement too, but I can live with that; it's just a silly trick. I decide that we're not going to have time to finish the full open mouth and hold before Saturday, so I'll go with an open/close/open/close movement and call it something to do with "goldfish." :-)

Back to the mat, on the other side of the room. Laev starts working the hip flops, never actually relaxing, just trolling for clicks. I stop clicking hip flops and click only what can be accomplished with muscle extensions -- legs extending, head lowering, ears relaxing, etc. In theory, this should relax the dog.

I just had a FABULOUS session yesterday with a dog in this. This fear-aggressive boy used to aggress at dogs across the street; relaxed on his mat, he was able to lie quietly and calmly while Shakespeare did happy treat dances back and forth about 15' away. I was thrilled with his progress, and in theory I know the concept of shaping relaxation on the mat.

But not with Laev. Determined to make me click, she started throwing everything she could think of at me -- crossing and uncrossing her front paws, flopping from one hip to another, raising and lowering her chin, and opening her mouth repeatedly. ALL AT ONCE. She looked like some sort of demented Rube Goldberg device. I couldn't help laughing, but we were not getting relaxation on the mat.

Finally got an instant of stillness, clicked and threw the treat off the mat, and let her reset. Clicked and treated for stillness. Not relaxed, but at least less like a steam engine about to explode.

Back to the couch and the open mouth, where I started adding a cue. We don't have the behavior anywhere near stimulus control yet, but I think it'll be good enough to fake for Saturday's demos.

Back to the mat. I settled for clicking for a hip flop and chin rest, though she was faking. She wasn't really lying still, not in her brain. She was ready to launch if I asked!

So... yeah. She's not nervous on the mat, but she's not relaxed. We have a way to go. :)

Bad Dog!

I wanted to do some training, so I pulled a bag full of chopped treats from the freezer. The treats were of course frozen together, so I left them on the counter to thaw a bit.... This was my preferred training treat bag, with a waistband and a French hinge and a little pocket for my clicker storage.

My mother pulled into my driveway, and I went out to see what she wanted. I was standing on the porch talking when I heard what sounded like a click. And then another. And then another click. Yes, those were definitely clicks.

I turned and peeked through the window! "Get off of there, you mutt!" I laughed. Laev had jumped onto the counter and (probably) whacked the treat bag, activating the clicker. Marked, she had then happily reinforced herself from the bag. She was now merrily clicking and eating (though I don't know how much of the clicking was still intentional by the time I noticed).

Laev, reproofed but happy to see me, moved away from the treat bag and peered through the window, wagging. "No, all the way off," I pressed, and she dropped back to the floor. I should have been more outraged, but the idea of her clicking herself for getting on the counter was kind of funny in a bad-dog way.

We Survived.

Well, I made the right choice. Laev bombed her track on Saturday, which was I think part loaded-for-failure (as I said, we weren't going in good shape) and far more lack of preparation. She's tracked another person only three times in her life, and she triple-checked the start of the track, which is very unusual for her, so I knew she was uncertain. Once she got off the track, she kept casting as requested, and I could see a slight hesitation as she crossed the track -- but she was looking for my scent in a field where I'd never been.

I wasn't upset; why worry that my dog didn't do something I hadn't trained her to do? We track over other people and crosstracks all the time, and Laev has learned to look for my scent among others. I need to enlist other tracklayers, and Laev will get it quickly. I'm not worried.

More importantly, I've had time to think about re-training. Laev is talking to me again ;-) in that she played with me on the training field (no gunfire) and, while not nearly where she was, is performing her obedience with more enthusiasm. I also set her up for two long downs, traditionally her worst exercise (because *I* hate training duration), and she never offered to budge, even when a loose dog headed for her and made her tighten anxiously. (The dog was called off before reaching her.) I think part of that success was a change in location on the field; there was no history of gunfire in that long down geography. But it's something I can use.

Those on the Ground Have No Fear of Falling.

So... yeah.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that Laev had a gunfire problem. A real gunfire problem, not just the minor twitch I thought we had. It's tough with Laev; she doesn't show stress very obviously, and it's not until extremes that she starts to look as bad as she is. Where other dogs will be whining, panting, showing the whites of the eyes, or raising a paw, Laev flattens her ears and pulls back the corner of her mouth only. It's easy to miss. Then something goes wrong, and I wonder, "Where did that come from?"

There's also a consistent delay, because Laev really does have a nice work ethic, and she will try to continue for a while before things collapse. This is why Laev twitched at the gunfire in December but didn't break the heel until about 20 seconds later. This, I have gradually realized, is a regular pattern. Okay, I'm slow.

So I felt really stupid when I finally realized that her two major stressors in a trial were the reporting in (her first experience involved a dogfight) and the gunfire. Those can come in quick succession in a trial. She never used to have a gunfire issue, which is probably why I wasn't paying close attention, but we have a neighbor at home who likes target practice and I think he's done some sessions while Laev was trapped in her kennel, unable to escape the hours of ceaseless, intermittent shots, and she's now sensitized.

No problem, I thought naively. I borrowed a starter pistol and enlisted an assistant. I'd just have him fire a number of shots as we heeled and I'd reinforce heeling with me, and then we'd be fine!

I tried to split, I really did. But Laev does not react to recorded gunfire, only the real thing -- and it looks like distance is not necessarily a factor once she is sensitized. All I did was poison my cue, confirming for her that heeling with me predicted gunfire; she very quickly became so reactive that she'd jump just at the sound of a box clicker.

I left town for four days, which gave her time to flush the stress chemical cocktail from her system (takes about three days to purge so that the dog is starting with a clean slate). When I came back, I was able to heel her at club training with two gunshots, and she didn't have a panic reaction. She did, however, show me subtle signs of stress. "I didn't see anything, she looked fine," said most of the club, but I knew that if I'd pushed, I would have lost her again.

So today I went out for one final practice, after working a while without gunfire. Our trial judge, already in town, came to watch and offered his opinion: I was not firm enough with the dog. She broke not because she was afraid of the gunfire -- "look, her tail is wagging, she's fine" -- but because I had not taught her to "down or die."

I broke down, to my complete horror, and there is NOTHING more shameful than crying in front of a training director and a German judge. It's like crying in boot camp. Seriously, I should turn in my gear now. (The only thing worse is crying with sinus issues, which I had, making it all even more sniffly and gruesome.) I explained that though I wasn't going to sound rational now, I had rationally thought about this, and a week before the dog was shaking and crying during gunfire, so I knew it was a gunfire stress issue, I suspected where it had come from (the judge agreed with me there) and that I knew my dog well enough to know that she was stressed, though she didn't look typical. (Really, a wagging tail can certainly be a stress indicator as much as a happiness indicator! Look how many people get bitten and protest, "but his tail was wagging"!) He conceded that perhaps I did know my dog to know that she was upset, but that the issue was not the reactivity, but her lack of respect for me as a handler. It's good to love my dog, he said, but I had to force control.

My club friend had more immediate advice. "Don't take it so personally! It's a frickin' dog." He grinned.

"It's my frickin' dog!" I answered, but I took his point -- I shouldn't take it personally that Laev is sensitive. I blame myself for utterly destroying her training and I do get upset that she can't just trust me for five minutes, but I shouldn't think of it that way; I should think of it as a chance to improve her. Right after I get done destroying her training.

I know these people are experienced and are offering advice that has worked for them and others, but Laev and I don't work like that. He said that if Laev breaks the down to come to me during gunfire, I should require her to heel to punish her for the error. Heeling should be something she doesn't like to do. But I think heeling should be something Laev wants to do! and it should be a reward, not a punishment. And it used to be something she liked, before I destroyed years of training in just a few sessions by linking heeling and her trigger. /facepalm/

"There is no other way," he told me. And he believes it. So do my club friends, who all mean the best.

I believe there is another way. I have been told so many times, by so many people, that I will never get X without force. I've heard that it is impossible to train something the way I say I did. Yes, it may take me longer sometimes, because I don't really know what I'm doing 'til I've done it, but not having a map doesn't mean it's impossible to get there.

I hate being in disagreement with people who are trying to help me. I'm not trying to be unreasonable, and I'm not trying to be rude; I'm trying to do something I want to do. I know it's different than what they want, and sometimes I think that others think I'm judging them because I'm doing something different. But the truth is, I'm trying something here. I've never said I'm an expert -- heck, I just said I don't have the map! But that doesn't mean I can't try, right?

More, I have an ideal. I refuse to be the lesser of two evils -- if I have to force my dog to work with me, then it's no longer a game I'm interested in. Laev used to prance along with me to the field, even volunteering heeling en route -- today she was reluctant to work with me at all. That's not right; I miss being her first choice. If Laev heels or downs because it's that "or die," then I've lost sight of the reason I got a dog in the first place. We're a team; we'll get through this together.

Somehow. Honest. I'm pretty sure. I'd like to think so.

Anyway, I've changed her entry. We're going to just do a track only tomorrow morning. And it probably won't go well -- stressed dog, mega-stressed handler, thunderstorms all night and through the morning, and I don't know if the tornado watch will still be in effect during tracking -- but who cares? Those on the ground are not afraid of falling, and we can't get much lower. I'm going to support my club trial and support my trialing friends, and then I'm going to step back and do some serious evaluation.

I just wish I didn't feel like I had let down my friends, my dog, my training colleagues, and everyone who had wished us luck for this weekend. I'm supposed to know better, I'm supposed to get results. I hate having expectations.

UDC Report: A New Tracking Title

Now don't get excited; it wasn't that great a performance.

It's the penultimate day of UDC Nationals. The day started well, though, in that we weren't having the thunderstorms originally predicted. We left the hotel parking lot at technical sunrise and drove an hour to a horse farm, where we laid tracks on hayfields. The grass was much longer than I'd been using, and it was thoroughly wet. My pants, shoes, and socks were all squishy soaked by the time I set my flag. (You can blame the USPS for my lack of moisture-appropriate gear.)

The judge didn't let my track age as long as was legal, which is normally appreciated by competitors. I'd been working Laev on older tracks, however, and I worried that the fresh vegetation scent would be too strong to require much focus from her. As it turns out, that wasn't our problem.

No, Laev walked out into that field and lit up. "THERE ARE PREY ANIMALS HERE," she thought. She spent the first few minutes hackled with arousal and quivering, tail up, as I waited for the final aging of the track and the discussions between judge, translator, and assistants. I stroked Laev, trying to calm her and get her more into a tracking frame of mind, and while I got her hackles down and her tail less rigid, I did not succeed in getting her really calm. She hit the initial scentpad like gravel down a chute.

The track was fresh and easy; she could trail along it easily while thinking of other things. She went back and forth across the footsteps regularly. She did manage to corner correctly. The judge said in his critique that I had helped her on the corners with the line, but that's not so; because of my lack of depth perception, I know darned well that I can't correctly identify a corner from more than 30' away, and I won't risk correcting a dog who's probably more correct than my correction. Still, I'm not arguing; I probably was tugging on the line as I tried to keep her at subsonic speed. I was tempted to run along behind her!

Laev left the track by just over a body length on the second leg to pounce on something in the grass. Apparently she was unsuccessful, because after a moment of browsing, she returned to the track without prompting and continued on -- missing the first article entirely due to her detour. She cornered and settled in on the third leg, as if suddenly recalling that we were here to track! She was much more stable then and downed promptly, if crookedly, on the second article. I had to dig it out of the deep grass; she had absolutely been scenting it properly, as it was pretty deep.

Baaaarely a pass, with 70 points. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd failed; we are capable of much, much better than that. We started back after our critique and promptly flushed a bunny, exciting Laev again. Was another rabbit what had distracted her earlier?

"Judge refused to accept bunny as article," I reported via the power of mobile technology, "but we passed by the skin of our teeth."

"By a hare?" came the text reply.

Yeah, my friends are like that. ;-)

Back to the trial field for BHs. Laev served as the neutral dog for the traffic testing. I watched the WH (watchdog test) for the first time, and I wished I'd registered for it; I think Laev could have done it and had fun. Maybe I'll ask my club to train for it.

So Laev now has a T1 tacked onto her name, though it was a near thing. We'll try to do better next time!

A View of Councillor Speedy's letter on Breed-Specific Legislation

Councilman Mike Speedy has sent an open letter in response to protests of his breed-specific “at-risk dogs” proposal. I thank him for this, because it is perhaps the clearest indication yet offered of his motivations and thoughts in this process. Here are my observations on his excerpted letter; the letter in its entirety can be read below.

Dear Colleagues and Community Leaders,

Note that this letter does not address veterinarians, behavior professionals, nor even the animal shelter executives who wrote to oppose his proposal (whose quoted letter was still attached to Speedy's response). Councilman Speedy is apparently not only disinterested in expert opinion, but disinterested in even conversing with those who work daily in this field.

That’s a rather harsh statement from me; I don’t usually dismiss people so quickly. But we’ll look at Councilman Speedy’s "public discussion" in a moment, which will explain my assumption.

We are now living in a city where one of its citizens could be severely mauled or killed at any moment by a dog, someone’s pet. This due to continued abusive conditions & overpopulation surrounding one small group of breeds.

At any moment, eh? Shall we look at the statistics?

The old line about “lies, damned lies, and statistics” has even more relevance in an arena with such obvious emotional connections; it seems everyone has an opinion on dog bite numbers. The Center for Disease Control tracked dog bites and breeds for a time but abandoned the process, concluding that the numbers accumulated were not an accurate indicator of risk (due to both incomplete data and inaccurate breed reporting).

It is both significant and disgusting that while the CDC itself warns their incomplete statistics are not to be used in policy decisions, many still do cite these statistics in their efforts to limit certain breeds or types of dog. Yet the CDC itself recommends a non-breed-specific approach to controlling bite risk in communities. Funny how Speedy and his sources missed that in their research, though it’s on the very same page as the statistics they would like to quote.

But, to the numbers. The CDC reports an average of 16 dog-bite fatalities a year. This includes what may be called human-induced attacks, such as the abandonment of an infant in a dog yard or where the owner was convicted of murder using the dog as a weapon. It seems to me that sixteen deaths a year, in a country of well over 300 million people and over 70 million dogs, is the kind of “at any moment” risk I can comfortably live with.

In fact, a quick browse of the CDC site shows that an average of 15 children a year die on playground equipment. Yes, the risk of playground-related death is approximately that of dog-related death; where are the proposals to limit playgrounds and publicly vilify homeowners with swings (the most dangerous piece of home equipment, statistically speaking) in their yard? And over 15,000 older adults die each year from falling; what about them? That seems much nearer a risk of “at any moment” than a dog attack.

But wait, Speedy or another may protest. There are more to dog bites than just fatalities; in all, about 386,000 bites a year require emergency treatment.

Yes, in fact, 20% of reported dog bites require medical attention. But again, let’s keep things in perspective – about 45% of reported playground injuries are considered “severe” (fractures, internal injuries, concussions, dislocations, and amputations).

I’m not belittling the problem. About 31,000 people a year do require plastic surgery after a dog bite. I was one of them, after receiving a bite to the face and throat. While that's hardly a risk of "at any moment," I do consider dog bites a serious issue, and as a canine behavior professional I do work to minimize that risk to others. But as a behavior professional, I know that bite risk is not a breed issue.

It seems to many there is an institutional rationalization of inhumane treatment toward pit bulls from the animal welfare community. Pit bull advocates have been giving their all for the last 10 years to pit bull specific spay/neuter, adoption, outreach and training programs with little progress. It is time that we admit as a community they need our legislative help. They are unable to achieve the needed results solely by voluntary programs. And as I have come to learn, pit bull type dogs warrant and deserve laws that provide them with extra protection.

Aw, how sweet – this is for the dogs! We want to protect the dogs!

But wait a minute. How would this law possibly protect a pit bull? Under this law, these dogs would be publicly labeled a risk, possibly limiting proper training and socialization opportunities. How will requiring a posted warning to passersby that the government considers this dog genetically vicious (without scientific support) possibly protect a dog from abuse? How would mandatory spay/neuter keep a dog from being abused, exactly?

It’s much easier to justify the abuse of a “bad dog.”

Imagine, just for a moment, that Councilman Speedy’s proposal addressed not dogs, but demographics. These particular young people, say, face many challenges –- broken homes, pressures from gangs, temptations of drugs and alcohol –- and many of them fall into crime. Because of these challenging circumstances, it is suggested that they wear badges indicating they are “at-risk youth.” Imagine the outcry! There would be shrieks of Nazism and witchhunt and more, all with good reason –- such an action would further splinter those youth, making it nearly impossible for them to integrate with mainstream society. Discrimination would be easily justified as the government condoned mistrust and segregation. How could holding these subjects apart possibly help them to be treated normally and with respect?

In the same way, I predict more trouble for labeled dogs. I see this as an opportunity for those who already abuse the pit bull to strengthen their position – “See, even the city fears our dogs, so now we’re really tough! Now I can post the government sign as an even more obvious status symbol!” And so the city, under the guise of protecting these under-socialized, untrained, fear-aggressive dogs, in fact furthers their inhumane treatment.

What a splendid way for our children to learn to judge appearance, not character.

Note, too, that there is no provision in this “dog-protecting” proposal for responsible owners with dogs for the right reasons. I snapped this photo of a pit bull service dog at one of my costume conventions, working quietly among 15,000 strangers. Councilman Speedy wants this dog to be advertised a risk to the public, wants this handicapped owner to warn the public away from and to pay for extra insurance coverage for what is legally her medical equipment. This Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a local certified therapy dog who lives with a handicapped individual, would also be posted as a risk to the public. Anyone competing in dog shows with any “pit bull type” breeds is simply out of luck – there are no exceptions for dogs which should not be spayed or neutered for competition or responsible breeding.

(Note: the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, while specifically listed by name in Speedy’s proposal, has NOT ONE documented fatal bite incident recorded in published statistics. Not one. Stellar research, guys, showing just how factually-based this proposal is.)

Here’s what this proposal does NOT include for the dogs’ protection –- prosecution for animal cruelty, prosecution for illegal dog fighting, prosecution for the use of dogs as weapons, prosecution for animal neglect. “The pit bull is the most abused breed in America and in Indianapolis” –- Speedy admits that pit bulls face a horrific chance of abuse due to the breed’s macho image, and yet his response is to attack responsible owners who are already doing the right thing.

Speedy’s showcase event, the tragic attack on Brenda Hill resulting in the loss of her leg, would not likely have been much different if these restrictions had been in effect. The owner of those dogs did not have adequate fencing, did not have medical care for the dogs, did not regard the existing animal laws. The dogs had previously bitten, without change in the way the dogs were handled or trained. Why would we expect him to behave differently for this law?

I agree that it’s tough to get at the root of the problem – drug rings using dogs to guard labs and drug houses, dogfight gambling for profit and money laundering, gang wars – but that’s the real root of the problem. I often ask, if these people are already committing felonies, why do we think they’ll change their behavior for a little dog law? Really?

Also, the tactics used to portray unified opposition have been unbecoming. They have pressured, arm-twisted and where needed, resorted to character attacks.... They do not want a public discussion offering alternative, effective solutions.

Let’s talk about reasonable public discussion, shall we? (For those keeping track, this is where I finally decided that Councilman Speedy was simply not interested in education or discussion, no matter what he claims.)

Councilman Speedy claims that, “Opponents to the At Risk Dog proposal agree ... that a breed specific solution is needed.” This is wholly untrue, ignoring the many voices which claim that any dog can bite, that citizens deserve to be protected from dangerous dogs of any breed, and that the existing dangerous dog laws should be more stringently enforced. In fact, what prompted Councilman Speedy’s open letter was a plea for the council to put aside this breed-specific proposal while animal welfare groups drafted an alternate plan which would address dangerous dogs of any breed and welfare for every breed.

Perhaps Councilman Speedy misunderstood the letter? Let's look:

"The Humane Society of Indianapolis and the entire animal welfare community cited by name on our attached position statement is completely opposed to ANY BSL ordinance and will adamantly work to defeat any such ordinance."

That bold print is original. No, I don't think he could have been mistaken. This letter was still attached to Councilman Mike Speedy's reply-all response -- why would he pretend there is unanimous support for breed-specific legislation? Does he think his constituents are really that stupid?

Next, let’s examine the “public discussion” which Councilman Speedy wants. His only public citation for his pit bull data is dogsbite.org, whose “study” is admittedly merely a survey of media stories -– not data from behaviorists, animal control officers, medical personnel, trainers, veterinarians, or experts of any kind.

Why aren't news stories accepted as reliable data? Because they’re not reliable. Media inaccuracy is one reason the CDC gave up collecting statistics; news reporters are not trained to identify breeds and:

“attacks by one breed are more newsworthy than attacks by other breeds.... [incidents] may be differentially ascribed to breeds with a reputation for aggression” (http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/images/dogbreeds-a.pdf).

The National Canine Research Council has preserved just a few inaccurate reports with photos.

Anyone familiar with the psychology experiment in which witnesses reported a knife stabbing (while the “weapon” was actually a banana) knows how preconceptions can color perceptions. We expect to see a knife instead of a fruit because we’ve heard of stabbings; we expect to see a pit bull instead of a Labrador because that’s the popular image of a vicious dog. (Have you noticed how most media-reported dog bites cite purebreds -– almost never mixed breeds or unidentified types?)

So dogsbite.org uses news stories, a source deemed unreliable by the CDC due to bias, as their sole data source for their report to support more media bias. This would be laughable were it not so serious. With the validity of this false study already in question, now let’s look at the “public discussion” available at dogsbite.org, Councilman Speedy’s preferred source. Here are just a few of the many “Acts that Evoke Being Banned” (italics are mine):

– The DogsBite.org Forum is Not Intended for Pit Bull Advocates. (The forum is for promotion of anti-pit bull material only; discussion not permitted.)
--Denying the genetic heritage of the pit bull breed will not be tolerated. (Disagreeing that pit bulls are inherently and genetically vicious will result in banning. Scientific discussion of genotype versus phenotype is not permitted.)
--Falsely representing yourself as a supporter of DogsBite.org will not be tolerated (Forum members must toe the party line –- dissension will result in banning.)
–New users should participate immediately upon joining. If one has not posted a message with a few days or week upon joining, you will automatically be banned. This activity is called "trolling." We must ban all new members that appear to be trollers to protect our active member discussion. (Aside from the inaccurate language –- “troll” means something else entirely –- this tidies the forum nicely for the promotion of anti-pit bull material only. You must post to be a member, and you may post only the site's views or be banned. Why exactly does merely reading endanger active member discussion? No, I couldn't think of a reason, either.)

"Pressuring and arm-twisting," indeed.

So to review –- Councilman Speedy’s only cited data comes from a pseudo-study consisting of non-expert accounts collected by those with a stated bias –- not admitted under any academic standard. The CDC and other reputable organizations specifically urge that dangerous dog legislation exclude breed-specific language. Why, then, are we wasting time and money in drafting a new law instead of enforcing the laws on the books –- laws which could have prevented several of the high-profile attacks in recent years, had they been enforced?

I am committed to moving forward with the attached proposal. I’m sure it can be improved with the thoughtful insight of reasonable people. I welcome that.

Given that Speedy has endorsed dogsbite.org, which has a certain reputation among animal professionals and whose bias and unreliability have been reviewed above, and given that he very specifically lied regarding unanimous agreement on breed-specific measures, I rather doubt that he is open to insight from reasonable people. He has already chosen suspect data over expert observations and recommendations from the Center for Disease Control, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Humane Society of the United States, and more. I wish I believed he would welcome open discussion; I want to reduce bite risk as much as anyone.

But here’s a serious suggestion -– let’s enforce the laws on the books. We already have leash laws, animal cruelty laws, vicious dog laws. Quite a few of these horrific attacks came from dogs previously cited for dangerous behavior or owners with a history of dangerous dog behavior. Let’s be fair in our approach –- if the city plans to vilify the owner of a show dog or therapy dog or service dog, will they also knock on the door of the gang with the pit bulls chained out front? Why not just deal with the gang directly and leave the good owners alone?

I continue to learn about this crucial, public safety issue and the plight of the Indy pit bull. It is unacceptable in this great city for people to live in fear or at risk of being killed or seriously mauled at any moment by a dog, or to continue to institutionally rationalize inhumane treatment of pit bulls.

I agree entirely, Councilman Speedy. I really do. Dog bite risk should be minimized, and it is utterly unacceptable for animals to be abused. I would very much support the enforcement of existing laws and the empowerment of Animal Control officers and police to crack down on dog fight rings, etc. No dog, not even a pit bull, should have to live on a chain or in a tiny pen, in hunger, without social comfort, in pain from fight wounds, in fear of abuse, without hope. No reasonable person should blame an animal for a human’s cruelty.

Can we really expect that by removing pit bulls, these abusive owners will give up their abusive ways? That they will not flaunt the law and keep their abused pit bulls anyway, or that they won’t simply select another breed and do the same? Shouldn’t we address the real issues?

If you are interested in working with me, please let me know. What we accomplish together for At Risk Dogs could easily augment and empower the Animal Welfare Summit in full stride.

This grammar point is telling. After his suggestion that all pit bull types be automatically labeled “Dangerous Dogs” drew such protest, Councilman Speedy amended his proposal to call them “At Risk Dogs.” This is truer than he meant; pit bulls are the dogs most at risk here. Councilman Speedy admits that pit bulls face unimaginable abuse and his response is to blame the breed and label them. There is no mention anywhere of holding abusive owners responsible for their inhumane actions.

I want to include this except from the book Fatal Dog Attacks, a study of both statistics and the stories behind them. It is the author’s conclusion after researching the data behind fatal pit bull attacks that the breed is no more inherently dangerous than another, but that the human factor is the real issue.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” – Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

If we, as a society, are to be judged by our treatment of Pit Bulls, we will all surely be damned.

...The phrase “the Pit Bull problem” is used here not as an indication that we as a society have a problem with Pit Bulls; it is meant as a reference to the problem Pit Bulls have with our society. And the problem is shocking. For the past 20 years, Pit Bulls have been subjected to cruelty, abuse and mistreatment to a degree and on a scale that no other breed in recent history has ever had to endure.

The stories are brutal and sickeningly common. Dogs are tortured, teased and abused in hopes of making them mean. Dogs are pitted against each other in fights. Those refusing to fight or who lose are horribly killed or left to die in alleyways. Dogs carry huge chains and padlocks around their necks and live in squalor. Inexorably intermingled in these cruel pursuits are drugs, guns, and theft. People from the worse segments of our society seek these animals out to guard drug houses, intimidate other gang members, thwart police action and enhance their vacuous self-esteem. Any real or imagined viciousness on the part of the Pit Bull breeds pales in comparison to the brutality, callous disrespect for life, and inhumanity of many of their owners.

The commonality and level of cruelty of so many of these cases is what should be shocking to us as a society. But we do not become outraged until a Pit Bull kills a child; then our outrage and shock at the “viciousness” of this breed is loud and clear. How much easier it is to dismiss this as a breed problem! Addressing the real issues of crime, poverty, animal abuse, ignorance, greed, and man’s lust for violence is far too daunting a task for most people and so we blame the dogs for our societal ills.

[Stories, examples, statistics cut] ...The treatment, behavior and condition of the Pit Bull in today’s society is a reflection of the cruel innernature and inhumanity of our species; it has almost nothing to do with dogs.

And so, please, Councilman Speedy –- your goals are worthy and your assessment of the abuse of pit bull types is accurate. But the answer is not to blame the dogs; they are but a tool. I urge you to please increase enforcement of existing animal cruelty laws and dangerous dog laws, and to crack down on those crimes which rely upon the use and abuse of pit bulls to flourish. The problem is not in the look of a dog; it’s not that simple.

Denver, Colorado enacted draconian breed-specific legislation after a highly-publicized attack, seizing hundreds of pet pit bulls for destruction and driving many owners outside of city limits with their pets. Oddly enough, however, Denver has three times per capita the bite incidents of nearby Boulder, which has no breed restrictions. The Denver laws affected responsible owners, not the abusers, and the resulting false sense of security belied the fact that the problem remained, even after the punishment of citizens and dogs who had done no wrong.

An often-asked question is what breed or breeds of dogs are most “dangerous”? This inquiry can be prompted by a serious attack by a specific dog, or it may be the result of media-driven portrayals of a specific breed as “dangerous.” Although this is a common concern, singling out 1 or 2 breeds for control can result in a false sense of accomplishment. Doing so ignores the true scope of the problem and will not result in a responsible approach to protecting a community’s citizens. (A community approach to dog bite prevention, American Veterinary Medical Association Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions)

Please, let’s not fall back on the unscientific premise that looks define behavior. Let’s deal with the real causes of the problem, not the symptoms, and let’s enforce the neglected laws already on the books.




Original letter:

Dear Colleagues and Community Leaders,

With all due respect to Mr. Aleshire and select members of the animal welfare community, this is first and foremost a public safety issue and a specific dog issue. I applaud the effort to form the Animal Welfare Summit, but human welfare views need to be included and proactive legislative tools adopted & implemented in concert therewith. We are now living in a city where one of its citizens could be severely mauled or killed at any moment by a dog, someone’s pet. This due to continued abusive conditions & overpopulation surrounding one small group of breeds.

Keep in mind, no other “bad rap” breeds such as the Rottweiler, Doberman or German Shepherd ever endured more than 20+ years of abuse, torture, neglect, dog fighting, and less desire to adopt from the public. It seems to many there is an institutional rationalization of inhumane treatment toward pit bulls from the animal welfare community. Pit bull advocates have been giving their all for the last 10 years to pit bull specific spay/neuter, adoption, outreach and training programs with little progress. It is time that we admit as a community they need our legislative help. They are unable to achieve the needed results solely by voluntary programs. And as I have come to learn, pit bull type dogs warrant and deserve laws that provide them with extra protection.

Also, the tactics used to portray unified opposition have been unbecoming. They have pressured, arm-twisted and where needed, resorted to character attacks. They have degraded, silenced and shoved aside many in the animal welfare community who have differing opinions or have given their professional lives to pit bulls and elected officials who see it as their number one duty to protect people. They do not want a public discussion offering alternative, effective solutions.

I am committed to moving forward with the attached proposal. I’m sure it can be improved with the thoughtful insight of reasonable people. I welcome that. I continue to learn about this crucial, public safety issue and the plight of the Indy pit bull. It is unacceptable in this great city for people to live in fear or at risk of being killed or seriously mauled at any moment by a dog, or to continue to institutionally rationalize inhumane treatment of pit bulls.

If you are interested in working with me, please let me know. What we accomplish together for At Risk Dogs could easily augment and empower the Animal Welfare Summit in full stride.

Thank you for your time in reading this email.

Mike Speedy
Councilman, District 24
City County Council
City of Indianapolis, Marion County
4733 Moss Creek Terrace
Indianapolis, IN 46237
T: 317-786-6689
E: m.speedy@sbcglobal.net
Community Affairs, Public Works & Parks & Recreation

BSL -- Not the Answer

I just want to take the opportunity here to point you to this: http://expositionhat.blogspot.com/2009/04/councillor-speedys-big-bad-wolf.html

I had another long talk about BSL this afternoon; it seems we have to fight its proposal annually in my otherwise-delightful home city. BSL can seem like an easy fix, when only part of the picture is presented. The reality is, it often creates more problems than it solves.

I know that drug rings (laundering money through dog fights) and gang wars (in which aggressive pit bulls are something of a status symbol) are tough issues. I know it's a lot easier to pass a law banning pit bulls and other "dangerous breeds" even from the homes of responsible owners than to try and tackle those tough, expensive issues. But really, criminals who are already committing felonies aren't going to suddenly heed a dog law, and in the meantime, the "dangerous" therapy dogs, service dogs, detection dogs, and companion animals are the victims of the obscenely-outdated premise that one's appearance -- color, height, build -- determine one's behavior.

Just read the linked article, please.

Laev Does Great!! and then, Laev Is A Brat.

I somehow injured my neck and back last week, and I woke up on Saturday feeling fairly lousy. So I skipped early morning club tracking and instead let Laev out into the yard to air. A moment later we heard the frantic screaming that meant she's treed a critter, and indeed she was climbing a fence and shrieking at a tree. My husband confirmed that she had indeed treed a cat, possibly a holdout from the feral colony which used to thrive nearby.

Granted, I took a while to get prepared. I had to put on shoes, go and find some cream cheese (I wanted a worthwhile reinforcer), and then I had to go out and find a replacement whistle since my own was missing. All this took a while. Still, I have seen Laev run a fence opposite a still cat for HOURS, so it wasn't like she was going anywhere soon.

I walked out to the area where Laev was still running and blew my whistle (uber-recall cue) at a distance of about 40'. And Laev immediately spun and ran directly to me, no hesitation.

Now, for a lot of dogs, this would be a good thing. For Laev, this is roughly the equivalent of an ant holding back a collapsing reservoir dam, of the earth rotating backwards, of me passing up dark chocolate. This is amazing. Of course she got a good dose of cream cheese!

After that, it was easy. I sent her back to bark at the cat and then called her again and again. We also did some heeling past the cat, and even a moving down with recall. To top it off, while Laev held her down, the Rottweiler barreled past her, close enough to brush her, toward me and the cream cheese -- but Laev knew her job. I was proud of her. I came in and told my husband, "That's bloggable!"

Then I loaded up and went to protection session, so she could get some work and so I could toss money I owed into the club pot. Because of my injured neck and back, I knew I couldn't hold Laev myself -- I think that's how I completed the initial injury, working Laev when I was already hurting -- so I had someone else hold her on a long line as we walked together onto the field, and then whenever she needed held back during work.

This wasn't as simple as it sounds. My long line helper and I weren't used to the elegant dance required to keep all three of us untangled at all times, and gauging distance was occasionally a challenge. The helper did a sneak attack on us as I set Laev up for a blind search, running up behind me, but because the long line holder was also behind us, Laev had plenty of room to turn and reach him, getting a bite right off the bat. No one's fault, and not a big problem, Laev is very clean and even though he hadn't expected her to reach him, she just took the sleeve. But her calls out of the blind were far from prompt and even non-existent -- bad Laev! I am reasonably certain that it started with confustion and frustration over the long line and fumbling, but it got worse as we went on, so no more of that! We won't do any more calls out of the blind 'til the handler is back to full functionality and can insist on clean behavior.

Laev did cheat twice as I was heeling her down the field to send for the courage test. The first time, she got impatient and bolted from heel position toward the helper, only to be blocked by the long line. Naughty! That kind of thing hasn't happened in a long, long, time, so we'll be revisiting that. The other time was kind of my fault; she was heeling nicely, and I did an about turn -- which I have always done as a send to the helper. (Normally I do a U-turn to the left if we're going to sit.) We caught her on the long line, and I heeled back and this time cued "sit" as we turned, so she sat at heel. Then I sent her. :)

So, we'll definitely need to revisit control work when I'm back to normal; there was just too much she could experiment with while I wasn't holding her and with someone else on the line. It takes too much time to explain, "she bumped the helper in the blind, pull her out!" -- which she did tonight, for the first time in nearly a year. Naughty Doberman! Yes, she was high on adrenaline, which is a good thing, but no, that doesn't mean she can revert. I'll be curious to see if the behavior cleans up on its own when we get back to just the two of us on the field.

Laev just started running her blind search wide, too, in typical Doberman fashion. This disappoints me, as I'd always liked her tight circles. The blind search isn't timed, but style counts! We'll have to see if I can tweak those back into full-point territory.

No, Laev, No!

So it's finally nice spring weather, and I was celebrating by leaving the front door open so the dogs could wander in and out and so I could have some nice spring air. This open door is normally a good thing, a treat we get only briefly in spring and fall.

'Til Laev came trotting inside with a dead chipmunk.

"No, Laev, dead chipmunks are outdoor toys."

Hurt look.

I directed Laev back outside and she proceeded to sulk. I told her to "out" and she spat the chipmunk promptly, and then I gave her permission to enter the house. She picked up the chipmunk. Block entrance, repeat.

Finally I tossed the chipmunk away from the door (too lazy to dispose of it properly yet) and Laev hesitated, torn between wanting to keep her prize and wanting to come inside with me. Finally she split the difference and lay down in the doorway, where she could keep an eye on us both.

Last night we were able to get back on the field for some outdoor Schutzhund again. The dogs love working outdoors; so much room to really run and get crazy! I'm still working on Laev's sit at heel during bitework, but she's doing better at revving herself (and I'm doing better at handling for it). We'll get there.... Lots of work in the obedience phase, still, though.

It figures.

Saturday I took the Dobes to a CDSP obedience day -- two trials. A handful of clients came to see the first trial, as I'd suggested some of them might want to consider CDSP obedience, and stayed to watch our Open runs.

My dogs embarrassed me. Ugly heelwork, unfocused dogs.

At least it was a chance to practice good sportsmanship, right? And to demonstrate that our dogs aren't automatons?

I thought about that trial after everyone left, and I realized I was probably not handling the way I train. I was not thinking wholly about the dog, I was thinking about the judge, the stewards, the spectators.... This is a team event. If I need my dog's whole attention, my dog needs mine. Also, I think I'd succombed to boring ring heeling instead of brisk Schutzhund heeling.

So for the second trial, I concentrated on my dogs. Heelwork was still not what it can be, but it was good enough. And we took first and second place in our class. Hours after my clients went home. /laugh/ Figures.

So Laev has finished her Open title -- again -- for real this time (under the proper number of judges!) and will be going back to Utility work. Shakespeare still hasn't finished Open, as I didn't enter him at the last CDSP trial as he was running multiple classes in the neighboring ring. I'm trying to take it easy on the old guy, but sometimes I wonder if he'd rather exhaust himself working...?

TDI update! - a ray of hope!

UPDATE!

The phone rang a bit ago, and it was TDI! It was a different staffer, and she was not only friendly and polite, she was helpful! I explained to her the situation, and she not only took note of what I said and promised to look into it, but she actually even called me back with an answer!

The short version is, Laev's TDI registration should go out tomorrow. I also have instructions on how to submit an appeal for Shakespeare. I left aside my other concerns, preferring to raise the odds of success by splitting criteria ;-) but I hope that we can get some of the other items addressed as well.

But I wanted to in fairness promptly report this development!

Therapy Dogs International -- strong language follows

I thought I was done with all this TDI-bashing, but I think I'm going to finally come out and say this. Some -- not all, certainly, but some -- of the TDI office staff are liars and con artists.

I really, truly feel I have been taken in by an organized con. They have my money and the high ground of saying they're a charitable institution doing good. I am left to sound whiny and plaintive. It's brilliant.

But after all the previous TDI foolishness, I finally wrote to the president directly (a concerned someone passed me a direct address). I received an email response and a phone call from another staffer.

The staffer sounded appropriately horrified. "Oh, no, we would never ask for money if you weren't already a registered member. You're in our system because your dog was approved."

I pointed out that we had tested in July 2008 and that this was January 2009, and we had never received our approval paperwork, nor any answers to my queries.

"I don't know why you wouldn't have been answered or why you didn't get your paperwork; you're approved. I'll send new paperwork out now."

She also listened to my story of Shakespeare's rejection despite his numerous references and the patent ridiculousness of his being rejected for dog aggression after he had to serve as the neutral dog for TDI's own testing (because the evalutor's "neutral dog" was still barking and lunging against the crate door even in another room). She agreed and suggested I submit an appeal.

She also was very interested in my report of a TDI evaluator passing dogs who were growling at the medical equipment and about which handling warnings were given to the evaluator to avoid a bite during testing. (Really.) The staffer said she didn't know why the test organizer's letter on the subject hadn't received a reply, but she would be sure to call her for more information, now that I'd given her the organizer's phone number.

That was in January. This is now the end of February. I have never received Laev's paperwork indicating that she is or has been registered with TDI. The person who contacted TDI about the dubious evaluator never received a phone call asking for more information. And her attempts to contact TDI have met with no answer -- they will not answer the phone, they will not respond to her emails.

But I said, stuff happens, maybe stuff got lost in the mail, who knows? So I called TDI again. "I am still waiting for my dog's registration paperwork. She tested in July 2008, and in January someone told me it would be sent again, and I still need that."

The staffer told me to renew online. When I tried to explain that this wasn't that type of renewal, she wouldn't let me finish my sentence, just repeating "Renew online!" again and again. I finally interrupted, rather more sternly than my usual self, and said that I did not want to pay another year's fee to get the paperwork I had not received from 7 months ago, that I had been told I could have my original registration. The staffer said she would look up my check -- and then she hung up on me.

When you take money for something -- registration, paperwork, insurance -- and then don't deliver it, that could be stealing or it could be gross incompetence. When you take money, refuse to deliver the product, and hang up on people who call to ask where the product is, that's pretty definitely stealing.

So, makes me wonder about the rest of TDI, too. If a TDI dog should bump or startle an unsteady patient who falls, what are the odds the promised insurance will come through for the handler? I wouldn't bet on it.

Say It Out Loud

I hesitated to post this, lest it sound whiny and self-absorbed. I don't want that! But if this blog is about my thoughts and experiences training, and the following are indeed part of my thoughts on training, then here goes....

Today during training, a club member asked me about some behavior he saw in the dog working at that time. I answered with my observations. He asked about the behavior's origins in puppyhood, and I answered again. Where it seemed I might be commenting on the handler personally, I specified, "This is not to sound judgmental about [the handler], I love her to death, but if that were my puppy, this is how I would do things."

Of course, the dog is not a puppy -- she's several years old -- and the handler didn't have this dog as a puppy anyway. Obviously moot point for that dog, but the question related to his own puppy, so it had some relevance.

But someone else, returning to where we sat, saw us speaking quietly. "Say it out loud!" he ordered, taking me by surprise. "Whatever it is, say it out loud!"

I stammered something, worrying he thought I was talking smack about the handler. I wasn't. And the person who called me out explained that he had just seen too many clubs hurt by gossip, even if it was only perceived gossip. But after all was said and done, it got to me thinking.

Dangerous, that.

The point today was that we didn't want anyone to think we were talking bad about someone else. Would I want someone talking about me? Thing is, I know people talk about me, now. I do overhear conversations behind my back or get private emails. Sometimes it's good -- I'm really pleased when I hear that someone finds the blog inspiring or helpful in their own training. Sometimes it's not so good -- protestations that I think I'm the world's best trainer, or that I have a nice dog, shame about the wacky handler. I've had people say that the sport of Schutzhund itself is cruel and no dog-loving trainer would ever even try it (clearly an ignorant opinion). I had someone write to accuse me of lying on a training discussion list. That hurt, even though the accusation was fairly idiotic.

People talk. That's nothing new. I should probably be grateful that I even merit their time. ;)

Yesterday, someone asked me how I handled being a clicker trainer at a competition venue where people are jerking and scruffing and punishing their dogs. I said that I will talk with some people who seem to want to talk, but I don't go looking for fights. "Shut up and show off," I said. I don't need to vindicate and proselytize, I need to train my dog. When they want what we have, I'll share.

Not that we're always a prime example. Today as I was trying to determine my day's training plan, a friend asked me to complete the sentence, "I wish Laev would...." I finished, "Pass the stinkin' Schutzhund 1!" Obviously, I'm still a little bitter. I'll admit, I cried when she failed. Heck, I sobbed on the way home. That was a tough week for me even before Laev flunked and humiliated me, and yes, I cried. And it further bothered me when someone said that we failed because I was a clicker trainer.

We failed because I had a hole in my training. Incomplete training is incomplete, no matter what kind of training it is. Laev was the only Schutzhund entry that day; I never stood up and said that another dog wasn't ready to even try because they use physical corrections. That would be just ridiculous as well as incredibly rude.

The saying goes that the only thing two trainers can agree on is what the third trainer is doing wrong. :) Steve White, whom I greatly respect, told a story of watching another trainer working a dog. It included techniques which Steve didn't use and found silly. He said he was just starting to feel superior when another trainer commented, "Hm, obviously that's been working for him."

That comment interrupted Steve's judgmental attitude, and I think it's a very valid one. We are lazy creatures; we don't do things that don't pay off in some way. Sometimes methods are more effective short-term than long-term, or sometimes the inverse, but we don't invest time and energy in something with no payback. Training is the same way. I don't like to hear clicker trainers bash traditional coercive training with "it doesn't work" because the truth is that it DOES work for many (not all) dogs. If not, it wouldn't have made it this far.

The fact that I think I have something better doesn't mean that the alternative has no validity.

Still, there's a lot of pressure to perform. This blog seemed like a good idea 'til I found myself posting about mistakes and failures. ;-) And when I'm trying to demonstrate TAGteach and I keep using improper language -- me, the instructor, the so-called expert -- it's frustrating. Someone pointed out an error today and I answered, "Yep, my dog and I aren't perfect!" And I don't think we are. But I do think that sometimes there's a higher standard. But so what? If I let that get to me, whose fault is that?

So say it out loud. If someone thinks I'm doing something right, great! If someone thinks I'm stupid, or a liar, or a person who manipulates this blog to make myself look good (right, sure, that's where my posts about failing the trial or being the worst tracklayer ever come from!) then oh well. It won't be anything new, saying that I'm screwing up my training.

But let's be honest. I don't pretend to have all the answers, and I don't pretend that I have perfect training. I just intend to do the best I know how to do. That's all any of us can do.

In other news -- Laev's obedience during bitework is getting shoddy. She isn't loading properly when we start but wants to wait 'til she sees the helper to get excited and focused. We can't have that. She's also losing precision. Grrr. I'll be making training plans for a while....

Back to back.

Monday, I got a call from my training friend who organizes the therapy dog reading programs for the county-wide public library system. One of their regulars was ill and they needed a substitute dog.

So Monday night, Laev went to her first therapy dog visit. She was a bit too forward when greeting the effusive librarians, but then she remembered to sit nicely. I'd managed to walk out and leave her quiet-toy at home, but she downed on her mat and lay still while shy kids worked up the courage to approach her, pet her, and eventually read to her. Laev spent a great percentage of the time lying on her back, enjoying belly rubs, while kids and parents took turns reading. She was very, very good.

Then I tossed her mat into the car and drove up to join Schutzhund practice, where Laev worked on more obedience for blind searches, calls out of the blind, and avoiding predicting outs.

Yeah, back to back. That's called stimulus control. That's my dog. :)

Worse Tracklayer Evaaaaar.

The warm spell has begun. Temperatures jumped from below zero to about forty degrees on Saturday, and our accumulated snow (over a foot at my house) began to melt. This meant Saturday was our last chance for snow tracking!

I planned my track in advance. I've been working on getting strict focus right from the start of the track, instead of Laev's usual "Ooh, tracking!" launch at high speed. One thing that works well is to approach the track from an angle, so that the track could run in any direction from the flag (not straight out); jumping forward means she loses the track. So we'd do that. We'd also have an article just a few paces in; she's not used to finding articles that quickly, so that might surprise her and prompt her to think instead of rushing the track.

When I arrived at the tracking field, much of it was already tracked. No problem -- we'd use a crosstrack, too, so that Laev had to concentrate on her track.

Well, I just kind of ignored the rest of the conditions. Not entirely, of course -- when, while I was pondering how to cross a running stream of melt, the deceptively safe ground I stood upon turned out to be a melting ice bridge which collapsed and dropped me calf-deep into running snowmelt, I didn't entirely ignore that. (I spent the next 6 hours with cold, sodden socks and boots.) But I hadn't taken the melt into account while I laid track. I put down six articles in all. About 45 minutes later, I brought Laev to the start.

Laev was eager to track and rushed straight from the flag, going right off the track (which actually started to the left). She self-corrected and went down the track to the first article. "Eh?! What's this doing here?" She backed away from the article, looked at me, and said clearly, "I'm not lying down in this slush."

She had a point; my footsteps were filled with water. Snow was floating on the field. Her slick Doberman coat wouldn't be much protection.

But I couldn't let her be reinforced by continuing the track without performing the previous behavior in the chain. So I held her collar, gently insisted on at least a crouch, threw some hot dog down and released her to track. Right into the cross track.

Oh, my. How could I have missed that this crosstrack was baited with hot dogs?! Laev hesitated, sniffed both tracks, and then started eating. Reinforcement for exactly the wrong thing, and who can blame her? Bad tracklayer!

We got through that somehow -- "No, no, track! Your track! Track! Good girl!" -- and went on. Now the snow was no longer floating on the field, but every footstep was full of about 3" of water; it had started seeping in after I made prints. Laev didn't bother eating most of the treats I'd left occasionally. She did NOT like the articles, however. She offered me alternate indications -- "Look, lady, I'll point at it with my nose, or paw at it, but let's NOT do the down, okay?" -- and I had to again take her collar and insist. The track is just too powerful a reinforcer for her; she can't have it unless she performs the previous behavior in the chain. If I had predicted the awful cold, wet conditions, I could have used fewer articles and avoided this conflict.

The serpentine again proved to be the best device for forcing Laev to pay close attention to each footstep. At the final article, she pawed it, backed away, got distracted by something in the distance (pure displacement!), pawed it again when I prompted, backed away, and downed. Big hot dog party! And I kicked myself again, because there was a big pile of dog poop just a foot away from my article, which I had totally missed in laying the track. Bad tracklayer -- and bad dog owner, whoever that may be.

So, we'll have some cleanup work to do.

In other news, I really, really need to work on getting and reinforcing the sit before the blind search. Laev is happy to heel for bitework, but she hates sitting at heel. Boring! Let's just straight to the fun parts! So I need to do more there.

Jan trial report -- this was better :-)

I went with a group to an APDT/CDSP trial weekend and wanted to brag on the results!

Two CIA puppy clients entered the just-approved Puppy class. Montana is an 8 month old Lab and has already beaten experienced adult competitors in her first Dock Diving competition, but this was her first obedience outing. Huxley is a Mastiff, just barely over the 6 month age requirement. Both qualified three runs of four and earned their first titles. Yay! All their qualifying scores were quite respectable, 189 and up. I was proud. :D

My CIA comrade Melissa, with a few reminders to try breathing, took her Lab/Golden mix Link (registered name "Excuuuse Me, Princess!") into Novice and qualified 3 runs of 4 to earn her first title! Yay! (Link works a LOT better when Melissa has oxygen!) But on Sunday, Melissa got wild and decided to enter Rally, too. Their first run, Link did very well, but they had a handler error which cost them an NQ. Melissa was REALLY stressing about her second run; I was stewarding the Open ring and couldn't watch, but Melissa told me it was an impossible course and they'd never make it. It must have been really impossible, because every dog in the A class NQ'd -- except Link, who got a blue ribbon and his first Rally leg. Not SO impossible, after all!

I was in the other ring during both of my Schutzhund friend Connie's runs, which really frustrated me. The first time, I'm sure it frustrated Connie as well -- we helped each other's dogs NQ! Our dogs were beside one another in adjoining rings. I had just walked away from Laev when Connie yelled, "Vor aus!" for Batman, and Laev launched to the far end of the 80' ring and started searching for her target. I called loudly for Laev to come, and that made Batman hesitate instead of finishing his sendout! We don't do much side-by-side work with conflicting concepts in club training. I missed Connie's second run, too, but I heard it was pretty decent; Batman didn't make any major errors, but just had an accumulation of points off that kept him from qualifying. But he did his retrieves, which have been very tough for him, and he recovered well after a scary dog incident, so I give him credit.

My husband Jon needed one more leg to get his one title I told him he had to have for the Rottweiler -- any venue, any title, I said, just something to prove to the insurance people that she was functional in public and trained, as I submit for the Dobermans. He was really stressing about it but wasn't willing to pay the professional handler fee I'd charge him. ;-) APDT allows handicapped dogs to compete and will even do some modifications (lower jump heights, etc.), so we submitted the proper form for Inky's utter lack of rear control. (She's gotten even worse, sometimes knuckling over as she walks and she can't get up from certain positions.) Jon worked really hard on breathing and relaxing during the course -- he tends to freeze up and freak the dog out -- and they walked out not only with their third and final leg, but a blue ribbon! which was a great finish. Jon was thrilled and is now done with trialing. :-)

Another CIA client came for just one run with her Standard Poodle Marley. She got a blue ribbon and High Scoring Dog & Handler in First Trial for Both, a special club award for the day. Yay!

My sister and CIA comrade Alena cleaned up. Seriously. She works a very low-threshold, very high-anxiety dog, who can be quite reactive. They got two new titles and ribbon placements in each of the 8 classes she entered! She had three or four run-offs and won every one of them, I think -- including when she finished her CD-H and moved up to the Novice Championship class, full of more experienced competitors, and took second place! Valenzia became mildly famous as the whining Doberman with gorgeous heeling.

Shakespeare started embarrassingly slow -- he broke stays in two classes on his first day, anticipating! -- but came back to his usual form on Sunday. My goal for him was 190+ double-Qs, which he needs for his championship, and he ended definitively with a double-Q of 210 and 209 in his Level 2 and Level 3 classes. (APDT has 200 points, with an optional 10-point bonus exercise selected by the judge.) Needs more double-Qs, but we're getting there.

Laev got another Rally leg (only after a spectacular fail involving the distraction food bowls -- she demonstrated that she can remove the safety cover quite handily!) in one ring, finished her Open title in the other and moved up to Utility, which I'd only just started prepping for after our club trial when I realized belatedly that she would probably finish Open the first day of this weekend. With perhaps 4-5 days' worth of scent discrimination work, zero directed retrieve work, and only one try at directed jumping previously, we entered Utility A. /laugh/ Laev had all the foundation skills, right? :-) Yeah, but she didn't have a handler fluent in the class! The judge called us in, set us up, and (understandably) didn't remind me that it was the Signals exercise first. "Forward," she said, and I called, "Heel!" I went forward three steps, slapped my hand over my mouth and gasped, "Oh, no! This is signals, isn't it?!"

The judge laughed and we restarted, but I was rattled and Laev looked a little worried during signals, so I just verbally cued the drop. That was an NQ, but it meant the rest of the run could be training, which was fine. And we did MUCH better than I'd expected -- a half-point on her scent retrieve, which I'd just crammed the week before, and compliments from someone watching on her nice marks. I was really happy with it.

No one else saw that run, however. All my friends got to see our second Utility run, which -- well, when I came out, Alena asked, "Is this where we start heckling?" :-) It was the very end of a long weekend, I guess; Laev spaced stuff that I know she knows better. Still, if I try to cram for a class like Utility, I can't really complain when the dog isn't ready!

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend. I was really happy with and for my friends!

Utility Articles

I started teaching scent articles just before Christmas. In the beginning, she was so quick to simply do *something* with a dumbbell that she wasn't pausing to think about what was getting clicked. Previous learning was over-riding everything; she knew she had to grab that object for me!

I started clicking for just nose touches to the correct article, interrupting the retrieve, and Laev grasped the scent discrimination idea within a couple of days -- which was longer than I would have guessed it would take, but still pretty fast for the utility scent exercise.

But that wasn't the end of the job, oh no. I've discovered that Laev gets so wired at the thought of scenting that she barrels into the pile, air-scents the target, and grabs the first object in that direction. She is too excited to focus on the exact origin of the scent and wants to just be lazy and go with the immediate area.

Sound familiar?! That is exactly what we've been fighting in tracking!

So I'm hoping that this will improve her tracking concentration as well. I can't really affect her in tracking much -- physically slowing her makes her hectic, so I'm left with trying to induce slow concentration instead of the self-reinforcing air scenting -- but I can establish consequences in this kind of scent work. Laev seemed to get it more quickly when I snatched up the correct dumbbell after she grabbed the wrong one, preventing her from switching to the right one and requiring a reset before she could have another chance at earning her treat.

We'll see how progress goes. It's telling that she got the concept within a couple of days but now is stymied by her old nemesis of self-reinforcing speed.

I'm Glad I'm a Clicker Trainer

Saturday I went to Schutzhund training with Laev. This was my first time back since the debacle of the trial, and I still didn't have a good plan for what I was going to do about the field. Training departed from the usual agenda (tracking and protection on Saturdays) due to the training director being ill and a couple of us wanting to practice other things, so I found myself working Laev in obedience.

I was feeling pressure. A lot of pressure. (Mostly from myself.) I was coaching another member who is preparing for a CDSP trial this weekend (I'll be there with two dogs, too), and I offered some observations to another member who is working a young adolescent, but I prefaced some of my comments with, "I know my obedience training opinions are worth only a couple of Peruvian rupees this month...." Most of the pressure was internal, everybody was very nice to me about the trial, but there was some quiet talk to one side about training discipline. Lots of pressure.

And Laev was not cooperating. She was generally unfocused, preferring to sniff the floor (her worst floor anywhere, a big barn with lots of cat and mouse smells, dung, and general stuff) and just not "on." I mentioned that she was probably coming into season (she's been due for a while but hasn't come in yet), but that didn't explain her absolutely heinous retrieve. I was almost on the ground begging for a retrieve from her, and I was getting one about 30% of the time (first cue). It was slow when I did get it. Laev could do other stuff we were cramming for the trial -- signals, moving stand, broad jump -- but her retrieves were uuuuuuugly.

I getting really testy about the retrieve. Laev KNOWS the retrieve. She knows it. Really. I brushed it off with the explanation that I'd introduced scent retrieves this week and obviously that had temporarily confused all her retrieves, but I was still honestly surprised it was that bad, even considering reduced criteria. I mean, Laev KNOWS the retrieve.

When she did retrieve, she returned slowly, with a less-solid grip than normal. Dumbbell sat crooked in her mouth sometimes like a stogie. "What, is your mouth broken?" I asked. I mixed up retrieves with lots of other work, but it didn't get better.

Time for bitework, because I needed to get a video clip to accompany a KPCT training article for January. Laev locked and rocked on all her bites, dismissing my tiny little worry that there really was a problem with her mouth. She always has great grips.

Afterward, I wanted to fix those lousy retrieves before the obedience trial this weekend. So I brought her back out and tried them again. Laev would look at the dumbbell and just say, all but aloud, "Nope." I wanted to smack her in the head with the dumbbell. I didn't, but I did get a little sharp with her -- sharp for us, anyway.

"It's just not rewarding enough," someone volunteered from the side.

We are a very joking group and normally that would mean nothing, but this time I didn't take it well. "I'm going to reteach the retrieve from scratch," I announced tersely. "Come on, Laev."

Laev said, Nope. Not doing it. Well, I'll do it, but I won't like it. I don't care if you have hot dogs now, I don't wanna put that thing in my mouth.

Something took my body and walked it to a stack of dumbbells, where I exchanged our 1.5# dumbbell for a little AKC-size dumbbell. Laev resisted, but then started picking that one up. Slowly, but she was doing it. Why would she prefer a strange lightweight dumbbell to her own?

I asked an experienced club member to come and look at her teeth with me. Turns out we didn't really have to look hard; Laev had broken off a tip.

Yep, my dog is nutty enough to do bitework with a broken tooth, but she wasn't willing to take the hit just for a treat. I suspect she broke it yesterday trying to root a critter out from under our big old barn; she probably did it biting at the foundation. I felt like a real jerk for getting frustrated and short with her, but I also felt very glad that I hadn't been using an ear pinch or other coercion to try and fix the problem of her clearly just blowing me off about something she knows really well.

/sigh/

It was two days before I could get Laev to our vet. (If she could do bitework enthusiastically, she wasn't in real distress; I tried a temporary OTC remedy but found it was better just to leave her alone.) This vet works field dogs and I explained that I'd found the broken tooth when her retrieve went sour. He checked her mouth. "Do you have a forced retrieve?"

"No, it's trained, but it's not forced."

That seemed to settle him. "This isn't causing her real pain. She's getting away with being lazy. Tell her to pick it up."

I respect most experts in their own field, but my dog is my own field. Laev would pick up lighter objects more readily than heavy ones. I took her to train after the vet visit and Laev would do signals, gleeful little hops into a moving stand, jumps, heeling, everything -- but when I sent her for a retrieve, she stood over the dumbbell for a moment, and then picked it up and dropped it three times before she finally held it and returned to me. (All one cue.) It just didn't make sense that Laev would happily do everything else but "flip me the paw" over just the retrieve if this were any kind of dominance, laziness, other issue.

So I pretended I knew her mouth was sore and didn't do any bitework or retrieves. And then I started scent discrimination with utility articles on Wednesday, asking only for a nose touch indication, but Laev started adding the pick up on her own after a while. The articles are very light; they probably were easy. We played with that for a while, and then last night I asked for a full-length scent discrimination retrieve. Laev is still working on the scenting part (more on that later) but her retrieve is perfectly intact.

Sometimes it's good to listen to one's gut -- a little sooner than I did, in the instance of last Saturday -- and not jump to coercion when a behavior vanishes. I wish I hadn't gotten as frustrated as I did, but at least I know I wasn't hurting my dog further in demanding she do what I knew she knew.

Trial Report.

Today is not a good day to have a blog.

There are good aspects to having a blog; it forces me to think though things as I write posts, it connects me with other people and their suggestions, it encourages other people in their own training, it lets me report to several friends at once on our progress. But there are bad aspects to having a blog, too, like reporting bad news. It's awful enough to live through it, worse to report it to friends, and worse still to have to tell the people from other states or even other countries who have written or commented to wish success.

But I set myself up for this, so I can't blame anyone but myself.

The day was not a total loss, actually. Tracking went decently; Laev started correctly and, though she got excited and overshot each corner by a body length, she self-corrected and showed a deep nose. Parts of the track the judge even called "excellent." Too bad she failed to stop at the first article. (Where did that come from all of a sudden?) So she finished with a score of 80, which isn't going to knock anyone's socks off but was at least mostly respectable, considering she lost a lump 10 points by missing the article.

Shakespeare struggled considerably more at both corners and wobbled, also missing the first article. (Note to self -- leather articles no good today!) However, he finished the track and squeaked by with a score of 71 to earn his Tracking 1 title. (The judge was even kind enough to specify later over lunch that it was earned and not a gift.) That surprised and pleased me. Not bad for a dog I suspect has a handicap! I collected my skipped articles and left tracking feeling fairly happy.

Laev had showed very nice focus prior to the track and good self-control in starting the track, so I was anticipating a good obedience session. During the 45-minute drive from tracking to the club field, I listened to music. By the time I arrived, I was even singing along a bit, having conquered most of my nerves and compartmentalized the stressful stuff from earlier in the week. (I had an upsetting event this week, which hurt and challenged me personally.) I was feeling pretty confident and mostly competent.

I don't know what the temperature or wind chill really was, but it was COLD. Less wind than predicted, which was good, but colder too, I think. We were cold even with our multi-layered winter gear. Still, less wind and no rain was good for obedience. And I liked the judge, who was easy to show to and didn't give me trial jitters like I get with Laev.

BH dogs went first, and there were two. (Someone else came after all!) Alena and Valenzia did better than anticipated, given that Alena had only 10 days notice of the trial and Valenzia had done almost no outdoor work previously. They did not pass, but I was happy for them with their overall showing.

Us next! We had an honor dog working the other half of Laev's flight, as we were the only Schutzhund entry. Laev and I got to the field first -- I really thought the other dog was right behind us! -- and had to wait for the second dog. I had Laev sit while we waited. Then the second dog came and we checked in, Laev offleash and the honor dog on a long line, as approved by the judge. She asked if I wanted to do the down or heelwork first, and I looked at Laev shivering hard and said that we'd work first, to warm her up. Seemed reasonable.

I took her to the start line and sat in basic position, ready to begin. But the honor dog had to get across the field and start his down, which took a couple of minutes. Laev had been fidgety during the waiting but then had focused well for reporting in, and I thought that I didn't want to burn out her focus while waiting again. So I downed her and stepped to one side, so she didn't have to wait all keyed up.

This would have been fine during normal training. But this wasn't normal training, was it? There were strange people on the field, a different atmosphere in general, and we'd already waited in limbo before reporting in. Laev was slightly off-kilter and not quite certain of what we were doing. When I stepped back into heel position beside her, ready to begin, she didn't look up at me as she ALWAYS does.*

(* Almost always, except in times of stress. The last time she missed my stepping back as a cue to focus was during a seminar where I was in conflict, and Laev just checked out. Hey, I wasn't focused on her, either. But it's a distinct sign of disconnect.)

Now, a SMART handler would have not only noticed that the dog was not in tune, but done something about it. I could have stepped away and stepped back again. I could have said her name and asked for a simple hand target to reset her before taking a new basic position. But nope, I noticed that she wasn't focused and I just said, "Heel," to pop her forward into the sit. Laev, her eyes across the field, didn't respond. So I cued again and got her, but now we were already out of sync.

I knew immediately I didn't have the same dog I'd left in the down. But I wasn't really sure what to do at that point, and normally heeling will bring Laev's brain back. So I started the pattern. She was a bit wide, and I didn't feel we were "dancing" as we should have been. The judge said in her critique that Laev looked happy and focused, and I don't want to argue with the judge, so I'll just say that I knew it wasn't nearly as good as it can be. Laev was definitely a bit stressed and not in sync.

Still, she was starting to settle in just as the gunshots were fired. They even caught me by surprise! as I was thinking about my dog. Laev didn't startle out of position, but I saw a small reaction in her. I think it was just the straw that broke her concentration. Mine, too; I had no idea where I was in counting steps, which ususally isn't a problem for me. I guessed at a location for our turn. Probably Laev sensed my uncertainty and it didn't reassure her, because a moment later she broke and bolted.

I shouted, but the judge waved me quiet. "Let her check for the toy," she advised. "She's just trying the vor aus early. You get three commands to call her back; don't waste them."

I knew Laev wasn't trying the vor aus; I haven't been sending her that far down the field. She was running to relieve stress. Stupid greyhound genes. She disappeared into the woods, where there were barking neighbor dogs and lots of squirrels.

#*&@$! squirrels.

Laev appeared again, moving at Mach 8 across the edge of the woods. I called. I don't know if she even heard me. She cleared a brush pile -- "She must have jumped 13 feet!" gasped the judge -- and kept going. Out of sight.

I started to worry; Laev has never run that far from me, ever. I made my final call, and she didn't reappear. "Go and get her," said the judge.

I walked toward the end of the field, but there was no sign of Laev. I was getting more worried, now. I was also remembering the whistle I had in the car. I had considered tucking it into a pocket today, just in case -- okay, so I'm paranoid -- but Laev had been doing so well at staying right with me, ignoring the woods, etc. of late that I hadn't thought I'd need it.

It felt like eternity, though it was probably only about a minute before I sighted Laev galloping across the next field. She was moving really, really fast. Maybe, if I don't kill her, we can give up Schutzhund for lure coursing.

I called and she swerved to come to me. We heeled back to hear the brief critique. There wasn't much; the judge liked our early heeling (though I didn't) and then Laev was dismissed for being out of control.

That's it. No more chance to do obedience, no chance to do protection. Epic fail.

On some pathetic level, it was almost nice to see my club's disappointment. Several told me that they had expected Laev to do well; one said that after the morning's track he thought, "Obedience, and then it's in the bag." It was nice to see that they had really expected success.

But then, I feel like we failed not only ourselves, but our club, the judge who flew out for us, my friends who wanted us to succeed, and everyone who read the blog and wished us well, publicly or privately.

And, hindsight being 20/20, of course I can see where I could have done better as a handler. I mean, on at least three occasions this week I carefully explained how movement and simple, successful behaviors can manage and dispell stress safely. Laev was already focused on me when we reported in; I should have done some heel movements and targeting to keep her occupied, moving, and successful while the honor dog went to the down. Then I wouldn't have added stress by changing the routine ("why are we waiting again?") and compounded it by freezing her in place with a down, denying any relief through movement.

The bigger part, of course, is that I did not train for limbo. We've never practiced waiting on the field for the judge to get a pen or the other dog to down or someone to find a missing dumbbell or who knows what. Laev is used to coming on the field, focusing, and working. When I needed her to wait yet again, I required something other than that which I'd trained. So we're going to add dead time into our routine.

I was very disappointed. People were largely sympathetic -- heck, we've all failed sometime, right? -- until it came out that I was writing an article for www.ClickerTraining.com. Then a few comments shifted tone, which frustrated me. I mean, if we had passed, would it have been said that we did so only because I was a clicker trainer? Then why should it be said that we failed because of that?

Yes, it's obvious I have a problem. And I'll work on it. Someone asked me what I planned to do, and I answered, "I plan to think about it when I'm sober." Because, really, the initial burst of disappointment and frustration is not the best time to make decisions. (I did think, during that moment that Laev was gone, that if I just walked off the field and disappeared, being nowhere in sight when she returned, I would probably prevent leaving me for a long time. But of course I couldn't do that in the trial....)

We worked dogs after lunch in preparation for tomorrow's helper seminar. Laev garnered compliments on her bitework, but when the helper slipped the sleeve near the edge of the field -- I didn't know he would do that -- she ran with the sleeve. She did return, and she was never out of sight, but it's a disturbing trend. (Of course, she'd had HUGE reinforcement for running earlier in the day. Relief of stress is a very powerful negative reinforcer.) We put a long line on her and I worked on recalls after the sleeve is slipped, and she was returning to me even unprompted by the end of the session and in her second session as well. I don't kid myself that it's fixed, however.

Her obedience was shot to pieces during the helper sessions, too. Because the focus was on training helpers, not training dogs, the guest helper working her was talking frequently to observers instead of focusing wholly on Laev and me. He also just does some things differently than I prefer to do. What this meant, however, is that bad behavior was getting inadvertently rewarded. I told Laev to down while he was talking, for example, and then before she did he turned and agitated. So the next time I told Laev to down, she hesitated, eyes on helper. Then I was chided for not having a good down and strong corrections. I know I can get proper obedience if the helper and I are working together, not separately; I need to be hard-nosed about that tomorrow during the seminar. We agree that the bite is the ultimate reward for the dog; we disagree in that I say it must be earned though behavior performed entirely by the dog without handler help. (I'm not blaming the helpers; their job wasn't to focus on us at that time. I was clearer in telling helpers to wait during the second session and Laev's downs got more stable again.)

"There's no crying in Schutzhund!" someone told me today, but I really wanted to cry. (I need stress relief, too!) After stuff this week and now with failing our attempt at the 1, I feel like a huge loser and something of a poser. I mean, I'm supposed to be a professional trainer, and I can't pass the lowest level of titling? And we lose it in obedience?! It's tough, too, when someone says before the trial, "I'm not worried, you and Laev are both so good!" -- that's a lot of pressure, y'know? And then when we do fail, and we're supposed to be so good... yeah. I don't think I like being a novice and yet not a novice. And one with a label, too.

But mostly, I don't like failing.

It's not right; I shouldn't be so disappointed about Laev when Shakespeare earned a new title today. Yes, I expected Laev to pass and Shakespeare to fail, but this is the same 50% success ratio, right? And now I've got 4-5 months to train and polish, right? (No trials anywhere before that, I checked.)

And then, at home, Laev came to me and poked me with her long nose, wagging her tail and looking faintly worried. I was obviously upset -- not angry, just upset. She licked my face tentatively, which is pretty unusual; she's not a kisser.

And I remembered that I'd written to someone just a couple of days ago, "Your dog doesn't know he's failed a trial unless you tell him." Laev didn't know what today meant to me; Laev didn't know why I was upset hours later. So I knelt and snuggled and wished I were more balanced as a person.

Really, it's a dog sport. That's all. Some people were joking today, "Schutzhund isn't life or death -- it's much more important than that!" but that's not true. I have a friend whose brother is in the ICU fighting for his life; Laev's score doesn't matter to them. Laev's score doesn't affect whether I'll eat or pay the mortgage, or whether my husband loves me, or where I'll spend eternity. Sure, there's a permanent ugly mark in her scorebook, but really, it's one day in a long and happy relationship with my dog.

I still intend to improve our performance. I'm still not happy. But I'm trying to get over myself.

Shakespeare's Nose

I realized I'd forgotten to mention something in my last post....

I was talking with Alena today, and we think that my previous supposition -- that perhaps Shakespeare really had suffered some loss to his sense of smell in his head injury -- might be valid. Alena has always said that Shakespeare got much ruder around food after the accident, pushing his nose closer to something a human was holding or sniffing at counters more often. "Did it knock the manners out of you?" she would demand of him. That would make sense if he used to sniff and identify a tidbit from a distance and now had to get closer. And Shakespeare does get excited about tracking -- he's eager to start -- but he definitely worries and frets on the track, and he "falls off" the track much more easily than Laev. He will check a corner several times before settling on the right direction.

So, I don't know if there's a test to measure scent ability, and it's probably not worth testing, anyway. I don't know where scent-processing sits in the brain, but Alena points out that even if it wasn't at the site of impact, there could have been damage with a ricochet effect, just as in human head injuries.

I could be totally wrong on this, of course. It's just guessing re observation. But it wouldn't be impossible, I guess. If it is true, I'd feel pretty bad; I volunteered Shakespeare to do a track instead of an obedience routine because I thought it would be easier on him than repeated jumping and climbing for retrieves. It's a good thing that the stress he displays while working out the track doesn't seem to affect his willingness to start; he's always happy to go to the scent pad.

(Though Shakespeare is semi-retired -- he does only Rally and CDSP obedience at present -- we needed another dog to make minimum entries in our club trial, due to other teams pulling.)

It's clear that, no matter what else, he does have some sense of smell and enjoys working, even if it harder for him. He likes finding articles and anticipates the treats for that. :)

The weather forecast has definitely improved; no more freezing rain! Instead, they are predicting a mostly cloudy day without precipitation, which is much better. There's supposed to be a lot of wind, though, with a wind chill of about 11 in the morning and working up to lower 20s by afternoon. Brr! That wind across open Indiana plain is going to make the long down pretty brutal.... Severe weather warnings have been issued regarding windstorms on Sunday. At least we aren't competing in that!

Laura's Final Thought
What I know, and what I want to get on record before tomorrow, at least for myself: I know that Laev is capable of doing each and every thing I'm going to ask from her tomorrow. We may or may not get all of it; the wind is certainly going to make some parts harder, and sometimes she -- or I -- can have an off day. But I do know that she knows each exercise and each part of it. We hope to get it all together on the same day while the judge is watching. :)

Dress Rehearsal.

I took the dogs out for one final practice.... Shakespeare's track had an ugly section where he seemed to lost the straight line, and then he did okay. Indicated both articles, even did corners. I'd really helped him on the first corner, laying strategic treats in the footprints, but the second he did largely on his own. That was more impressive because I'd been distracted while laying (by a couple turning their young dog loose in the park!) and hadn't given a lot of help in the track or on the line.

Laev, on the other hand, did an ugly track. I'd laid a TON of food, trying to do a last minute reminder that slow, focused tracks were good! but she tracked right over most of it. Struggled on the first corner after a long leg because she was going fast, then settled down and worked the zig-zags in a semi-decent fashion. The shocker, though, was that she skipped both articles until I stopped her! Laev's article indication has typically been very good. I'm calling that an obligatory dress rehearsal failure, because otherwise I'd be stressing big time.

Then we went to do obedience. Man, I love this dog, even to almost forgiving her article mistakes. She tried so hard for me today. It was cold -- in the twenties, with pretty steady 15 mph wind, according to the weather. I don't know what the wind chill was, but I can tell you, it was cold! I left Laev in a down to practice the honor, and when I returned, one side of her face was decorated with snowflakes, while the other was black and Doberman-like. She was shivering, so we played tug to reward and warm up. Then we practiced our obedience routine.

She was not quite as dazzling in her heelwork as I know she can be, but it looked good enough. The awesome part, though, came during the retrieves. I sent her over the wall and waited -- I always wait nervously, I hate not being able to see my dog -- for her to come back over it. Instead, I saw her appear to the left of the wall, having picked up the dumbbell and returned to one side. Before I could even react, however, she froze, glanced up at the wall, and then BACKED UP and leapt at the wall! I didn't think she'd have the angle or momentum to make it, but she came over it with the dumbbell!

I didn't wait for a sit-front, I just started cheering her good decision and reinforced right away. Turkey hearts, today. Raw turkey hearts. (I'd been stretching for long periods between reinforcements, so I wanted it to be good!)

Note: Raw turkey hearts in a bag in the pocket can make quite a mess if the bag happens to invert inside the pocket during heelwork. Note also: freshly defrosted raw turkey hearts are COLD when the blood and juice runs down the inside of one's coveralls and saturates one's jeans all the way to the ankle.

Anyway, Laev had a good time with the turkey hearts.

We have one final issue. I've been working really hard on dropping her, so that we didn't risk leaving the field during the sendaway in search of critters. The woods at the end of the field is just full of squirrels and rabbits! What I discovered today, though, is that Laev isn't expecting a long sendout, but hesitating in anticipation of the platz. I should be able to work through this easily enough, but not on less than a day's notice :) so I just sent her further down the field to a target. I hope she doesn't stop when she doesn't see the target tomorrow!

Still, I'd rather take the point loss for an early platz than the utter failure of her leaving the field, and she hasn't offered to do that again lately. So here's hoping....

Grr. Angry. Our Tracking Is Mega Fail.

I am not happy.

Today was rainy, but I need the tracking practice, so when a private lesson was canceled, I took the dogs to a school field. It was by then both dark and rainy. The lights from the parking lot lit the field enough that I could see my footprints in the sodden grass, so I used starting flags only and laid two zig-zag tracks to practice corners. That's what both my dogs are having trouble with; Shakespeare worries, and Laev likes to run over them with enthusiastic speed.

Shakespeare went first. He started okay, and then he said the track just vanished. He could NOT find the next leg. I learned, too, that the footprints showed only from a particular angle, and I lost that leg, too. Never did find our second article. I finished with a very frustrated dog, which isn't good.

Laev went next, and she was wired. She dove onto her track and exploded. Within a couple of seconds she had obliterated her first leg by scrabbling over it, trying to drag down it, and I couldn't find the corner myself and I'd laid it. She kept swearing the second leg wasn't there. I was totally stumped.

Fortunately, I'd flagged the articles on her track, so I simply took to the first article and restarted. No real trouble from there, though she was still way too fast and frantic.

So I told my husband via phone that we'd just had the worst tracking session ever and were going to another field for another try. This time, I wasn't going to lose my track in the dark! I flagged every corner and along straigh legs. I flagged articles. I took Shakespeare out and tracked him.

Shakespeare's tracking really worries me. He's never been a fantastic tracker, but he always tries. Now, though, his corners are so very bad that I am seriously wondering if his head injury a few years back might have damaged his sense of smell. (I haven't done any competitive tracking with him since then.) He just seems so confused at corners, even easy ones. He'll check the options 2-3 times, and it's not just methodical, but he really looks worried about it.

But Shakespeare finished his track and I traded dogs. Laev started a bit better this time; I may have discovered a way to slow her frantic start. We'll see if it holds up. She tracked decently 'til the track ran through a mud slog (we'd had about an inch of rain so far, I think) and she REALLY didn't want the track to run through that muck! But it did, and so she did, though not prettily.

She ran over the first article but indicated when I prompted. Then she restarted, cornered, and ran over the second article. I prompted her again, annoyed, and she ignored it. Prompted, ignored. Prompted, Laev dragged past it. I went up to point out the article.

Heck, I couldn't find it, either. There was a flag on either side of the track and one in front, the way I usually mark my endings, but no article. I felt around, but found nothing. I downed her and checked to see if I'd made a mistake, if there were more flags further on, but I found nothing. Laev pulled away, scenting where I"d walked on, but it was just a mess and so I took her back to the car.

I got a flashlight from the emergency kit and went back. Twenty minutes later, I still hadn't found my article.

So I tracked twice, frustrated both dogs, screwed up both dogs, lost two articles, and came home in a foul mood. I can't believe that I've been working so hard on obedience and protection and we're going to fail tracking, losing our chance at a title first thing in the morning.

Grrrrrrrr.

"...Whether the Weather Will Let Us or Not...."

This isn't looking good.

I went out Friday morning to train and it was COLD. Seriously, my fingers had lost feeling inside my gloves before I made it from the car to the field. It was cold. Granted, those are my second-best gloves and not my warmest pair. But I don't have training mobility in my warmest pair, so that's how it is on the field.

Laev did her best and was okay for a while, but it wasn't long before she was shivering while she worked. Long downs in the snow just aren't likely this weekend, I'm afraid.

It isn't helping that Laev can't spend much time acclimating to the cold. I had been feeling bad about training in the cold, asking her to jump 39" and climb a 6' wall with cold muscles and frozen ground. That was before I learned that her recent escape ability is because she's leaping (not from the doghouse, but from the kennel floor) out the top, through the shade cover, and dropping over 8' to the frozen ground. So 39" doesn't sound so bad.

That means, however, that she's presently inside all the time except for short bathroom breaks, and so she isn't building up the cold resistance she'll need for a successful trial. So she's more sensitive to the cold AND she's going more and more stir-crazy with the change in exercise schedule.

Adding insult to injury, we're supposed to get a warm snap this week, according to weather predictions. The temperature will jump above freezing and rain, they tell us.

And then it will freeze again. Meaning we'll be tracking and working on ice.

And the current prediction for this Saturday is "wintry mix," which, for those who don't live in the midwest, means a lovely mixture of snow, rain, and sleet. All coming down together, making surfaces treacherous and bodies cold.

I'm hoping our judge has some understanding about the weather. Schutzhund trials don't get canceled except for lightning or other life-threatening conditions, but it's going to be very difficult for the dogs and handlers both, I suspect.

Schutzhund trial pressures

So, next week Laev is attempting her SchH 1. I am getting a bit worried about it; I felt much more confident a few weeks ago.

Last night's practice went better, though. I discovered that if I leave the country for a week, keep Laev in a crate for several days in a row, and then don't feed her for a day due to resuming normal schedules after pet-sitting schedules, then all that works together to give me awesome energetic focus during obedience. That's good.

However, not even all that kept Laev from making a brief detour during the sendaway to check for critters. Stupid Laev. She came back pretty quickly, but I do.not.want.her.leaving.the.field. Ever.

I know she comes by her insane off-the-charts predatory behavior honestly, that it's very strongly genetic, but that doesn't make it much easier to deal with.

We practiced a full protection routine, for both Laev and myself. (I always forget to disarm the bad guy after Laev apprehends him. Stupid handler. Thank goodness it's not real.) Most of it is decent, but we have rough places; Laev finds it hard to sit quietly at heel while the helper is called out of the blind and then heel with focus to set up for the guard/escape bite. She's wholly capable, has done it, but she's just excited. She also finds it hard to leave the guarding position and heel around for the side transport to the judge. And heeling away from the helper to set up for the courage test is more difficult as we get further and further away -- completely my fault, because I've only done that heeling stretch twice ever in practice.

To be fair to Laev, last night she was wired for sound and loaded for bear, after her week of forced inactivity and people deprivation. But she's going to be wired on trial day, too.

So in the next few days I need to rev Laev enough to sustain that awesome energy and focus through our full obedience routine (the phase in which I feel least confidence right now), yet calm her enough that she focuses properly on her tracking instead of racing along it (as she would prefer), and polish some bobbles in protection work (she does not like heeling away from the helper). No sweat. And of the two scheduled training sessions, one is opposite my facility's open house, which will occupy me all day.

I have stated that if Laev does well, I'll buy her a ham. I hope she remembers that.

Squirrels. Dumb squirrels.

(Warning -- this post may be offensive to lovers of small, furry, and exceptionally stupid rodents.)

I have lots of squirrels. I also have two Dobermans. This leads to hours of entertainment, of the variety the ancient Romans would have cheered in the arenas.

The Rottweiler likes the squirrels, too, but she just isn't in their league. She will watch them out the window and occasionally will amble toward one outside, but there's not a chance of her really endangering a squirrel.

The Dobermans, however, are another story. Our squirrel population is benefiting, one could suppose, from the systematic weeding out of those individuals who don't realize that Dobermans can JUMP.

Arrogance + stupidity = fail, in my yard. Coming to low branches to tease and taunt is not a good idea.

We have lots and lots and lots of trees, most of which are decades old (up to 100 years or so), so the squirrels have ample safety and lots of height if they choose. Most of the year they aren't a problem, but as winter sets in, the squirrels get more focused on collecting their food (a good thing) and hiding it (a good thing) and sometimes on hiding it in inaccessible-to-other-squirrels locations (not a good thing, as sometimes those areas are squirrel-free for a reason) and they forget about the dogs.

Today Shakespeare wanted out the bedroom door. I let him and Laev out, not taking any pains to be quiet about it; anyone in the area could have heard the door bang and my voice and the dogs jump out. But apparently the squirrels weren't listening, because less than a moment later Shakespeare proudly displayed his catch at the door. (I wasn't impressed enough to let him bring it inside.)

I don't know how he got that one; perhaps it was simply too dumb to head up the tree when he came out, perhaps it was distracted and missed his exit. A couple of weeks ago, however, I watched a squirrel get caught, and I have no excuse for the thing.

I'd opened the door to send Laev to her kennel. A squirrel was sitting between the door and her kennel, just a few feet from either, and it didn't run when the door first opened. It did run when Laev started toward the kennel. A darting squirrel shooting from nearly between her feet certainly caught her attention and she chased it to the nearest tree.

I didn't think the squirrel was going to make it; Laev is fast. But it shimmied up the tree trunk an inch or so before Laev, who did a flip as she careened past too fast to turn. Laev jumped at the trunk and shrieked at the squirrel.

"Okay, that was fun, let's go," I said. "Game's over."

Laev looked at me. But there's a squirrel in the tree!

"Come on. The squirrel's not coming down."

But -- squirrel!

Laev turned toward me, hesitated, and -- I am not making this up -- the squirrel fell out of the tree. Almost on her head.

So much for my credibility.

The squirrel hit the ground running, but not fast enough. And it didn't take advantage of any of the three trees immediately next to the tree it fell out of, but instead it ran across flat ground toward another cluster of trees behind the garage.

There is no squirrel alive which can outrun a Laev on the ground. The squirrel never reached the next tree.

But I have a hard time feeling sorry for a critter which didn't take first warning, clumsily fell out of its safe place, and didn't head for the next logical escape route. The way I see it, Laev just improved our squirrel breeding stock.

We've had lots of smart squirrels. At our previous house, the squirrels discovered they could run alongside the fence and drive the dogs insane, just 3" on the safe side of chain link. I'm sure that's what Shakespeare is taking vengeance for now. They also knew how to dine safely at the bird feeder, how to cross the yard without risking the dogs, etc. But this current population, well, I'm not so convinced of their cleverness.

More TDI Ridiculousness

Quick review:

1) Shakespeare was rejected by TDI because "he could be a risk if he encountered another dog on a visit." This rejection occurred despite the fact that Shakespeare regularly works around other dogs and has been the neutral dog for countless CGC and other tests, including TDI testing. So he's good enough to use for TDI testing, but not to make a TDI visit.

2) Laev was apparently also rejected by TDI. That's unconfirmed, but it has been months since I was told the review board had to meet for a special decision, and I've never heard back. Stated reason, in writing: I reported on her enrollment that she was "indifferent" toward other dogs. They wanted me to check "friendly." (Interestingly enough, the letter which told me she'd undergo review also instructed me to simply check "friendly" and return the form, which I did though I found it very odd. Still never heard anything back.)

Now, the latest update:
Though I've yet to receive an answer to my questions, I have received an invoice for the renewal of our TDI team registration. They want another check.

That's right. They cashed my check without accepting either of my dogs, and now they want me to pay for another year of non-acceptance.

I'm fully aware that blogging on this means we'll never be accepted (TDI is aware of my posts), but I'm growing more and more comfortable with that. I'm hearing from other people complaining that TDI personnel are often both disorganized and rude.

Quick rant.... TDI is reluctant to accept a dog focused on her handler and her tasks instead of seeking to greet any other dogs in the area -- isn't a therapy dog supposed to interact with patients instead of other therapy dogs? That should be a benefit, it seems. And a special review board for indifference? Indifference is not risky!

The sad thing is, I've now turned down several requests for visits. My friend Melissa is developing a program for a couple dozen facilities. We encourage them to use only tested dogs, to develop and keep a high-quality program, and yet now that means I bar myself from participation. Who loses here? Not me, not my dogs, not TDI (who cashed my check anyway). The kids lose. Something's wrong with this picture.

The Escape Artist

So last week I went on vacation. It was a great vacation -- 10 people (two full families with assorted attachments and hangers-on) on a cruise in the Caribbean. Very fun and relaxing, and I did definitely need a break.

I called our usual petsitter (whom I highly recommend) and also called in a friend to help supplement with extra visits, as our sitter was very busy over the holidays. The dogs and cats were to be visited twice a day.

I mentioned briefly that my husband had wondered if Laev had escaped her kennel once, a week or so before. He had put her in, he thought, and then left and returned home to find her at the gate to greet him. However, this was an isolated incident -- I even tested by leaving Laev for quite a while, and she stayed in. No other escapes, and she's in the kennel for at least a while almost daily. I wondered if perhaps Jon had been distracted while he kenneled her; he's been known to do such things with a book in his hand. :-) But just in case, I let the petsitter know and left an emergency recall whistle on the counter.

This whistle means one thing -- copious amounts of cream cheese to the dog who gets here promptly. I have it because originally, I used a whistle where Laev was too far to really hear my voice (she looked around for the source of the sound and then noticed me) and then I realized that it could be trained as a cue itself (duh!) and used by more than one person.

But, Laev has been in that kennel for almost three years with a perfect safety record. I figured it was a freak thing -- the door wasn't latched properly or something.

So, Sunday morning we flew out to the Caribbean. Sunday evening, I was spazzing out because of phone calls from my pet watching crew....

It seems Laev didn't wait long before making her move. Thank God I had left Melissa's number on my voice mail, because the person who found her -- after she had escaped both her kennel and our surrounding 5' fence -- was able to call her. Laev's collar tag reads "ALONE = LOST!" and I'm glad the family believed that instead of thinking that she was just a roamer.

So Laev went back in the kennel and promptly got out again. My poor pet-sitters blocked the gap under the front gate through which she left (Laev does not dig new holes, that I've ever seen, but we know that she will take advantage of holes made by others -- and she's lithe enough to use raccoon paths, etc.) and went over her kennel minutely. They reattached the sides to the floor where staples had worked loose, they rewired the sides themselves to reduce flexing between panels. Yet they'd find Laev outside the kennel (but still within our perimeter fence, at least). Once Laev was so happy to be running free that Amy had to use the whistle to get her back to the house. Good thing it was there!

So Laev's lifestyle got a lot more cramped; she stayed in the crate indoors except for brief potty breaks. This wasn't ideal by any means, but it was the safest option remaining. The dog is an eel, when it comes to body movement, and no one wanted to risk losing her again.

So Laev was just a bit... WIRED when we returned Sunday night. Fortunately, we had training scheduled for Monday night! I am very, very grateful to my excellent pet-sitters, who had to deal with such a stressful situation (above and beyond what they signed up for!).

Our best guess at the moment is that Laev is using her dog house as a launch point to go over the 7' kennel walls and then dropping 9' to the ground. (The kennel roof was destroyed in a storm this year.) We've moved the dog house, and we're looking into new kennel/roofing options. Sheesh! At least she's safe for now.

The Herding Pig, or, Babe in Texas

I got this link in the mail. I don't know if Squeaky can enter competitive herding trials ;-) but I suspect she doesn't take direction well. Even so, it's interesting footage....

Laev goes to school again.

I'd been asked to do a training demo for an ESL classroom, as they've been doing a unit on dogs. I waited until the last moment to decide which dog to take, and I made a fairly arbitrary decision -- Shakespeare needs a nail trim, so Laev went with me.

This was under our own name, as Shakespeare is not a therapy dog now and I have never heard back on Laev's status. (At this point, I don't really want them to accept her -- the registration and fee is based on the calendar year, so if months later they do register her as a TDI therapy dog, it would be valid for only another month and then I would have to pay the full amount again. Hardly worth it, and I have my own insurance.)

But that was just fine, as I can't do a training demo under TDI visit rules, anyway; I talk specifically about shaping and reinforcement, and I am NOT going to try to use a tug reinforcer in a crowded classroom of 100 or so kids. Nope. We use food treats, so we could not go as a TDI team anyway.

We were a little late arriving to the school, due to a traffic accident, and had to hurry past lots of kids in the hallway. As we were about to enter the classroom, the teacher mentioned that there was another dog already in the room as well. "Is that okay?"

"Sure," I answered without thinking. Laev works past other dogs all the time. And I took her in.

The other dog turned out to belong to one of the teachers; apparently she comes to class sometimes and possibly serves as a reading dog. She was on the opposite side of the room and very intent on Laev as we entered. Someone said they would take the other dog out.

Something whirred deep inside my brain, but I was in Demo Mode, not in Good Trainer Mode. I should have taken Laev right out the door again and taken her down the hall as the other dog exited, but Demo Mode was telling me, "These kids didn't come for you to tease them with a dog and then leave, and you're already 15 minutes late!" So I moved Laev away from the door into the open space left in the center of the rows of kids on the floor and parked her on her mat.

There wasn't much space in the room; it was filled with kids. There was a 3' wide path from the door and a clearing in the middle of the room. The other dog had to reach the door, and so had to come by us. And she was dragging and leaning hard toward Laev, lots of eyeballs.

I really don't think the other dog meant to be aggressive; she struck me as a very typical rude adolescent, or possibly an adult who never learned correct social manners. But Laev, in a down on her mat with dozens of kids behind her, felt threatened by the lunging staring dog, and she barked defensively.

It was a bark. She never even left the mat, much less was there any contact between the two dogs. But even a single defensive noise can sound scary. The kids erupted with, "Whoa!" and the teacher snatched his dog away and out. I took Laev's collar, had her target my hand, and tried, "Well, that's one of the things we're going to talk about today, how to behave safely around dogs...."

I think we actually recovered decently. I got a student to shake hands with me and show polite human greetings, and then I lunged at her with over-the-top effervescence. We talked about how it made her uncomfortable, and that was why Laev barked at the other dog -- and why when WE greet dogs, we have to be careful to do it safely so we don't scare them.

Several kids were selected to practice greeting Laev, and things went better from there. I was a bit rattled, though -- I am always so sensitive to appearances, especially with yet another breed ban revving up locally, and then I was especially fretful when I talked about using reinforcement instead of punishment. Were any of the teachers wondering, "Yeah, and that obviously produces a dangerous dog?" But I don't think we left a bad impression, I hope, though my part wasn't nearly so smooth as usual.

So we did some shaping demos with Laev and kids both, and we talked about dog training and teaching incompatible behaviors to get rid of unwanted behavior, and Laev flipped over for her "dead bug" trick while I was occupied and it got so many giggles that she never really stopped doing it again.... I think it ended okay, but I just felt sub-standard.

Someone told me that the other dog had dragged toward the visiting service dogs, too. It's sad, because that's probably a very nice dog, really. I hate the dog park culture that says all dogs must be friends and that all friendly dogs may rush one another, and that any dog who doesn't appreciate being rushed isn't friendly or a good dog. If we don't accept glomping from strangers, why do we allow or even encourage it in our dogs?

End of soapbox. There was no harm, no foul, today. I just am hypersensitive to such things, I think.

And at least some kids got to practice dog safety and learn about reinforcement. I hope that was useful to someone.

I need more words!

I am very pleased with how I have taught the turn and down for Laev's Schutzhund sendaway. The behavior is strong, capable of overriding a previous cue, and precise. Most importantly, it has low latency. So I get an instant turn and a nice straight down, which just looks pretty.

I'm getting ready for some "normal" indoor ring obedience after our Schutzhund trial and I am thinking, drat, I should have trained that with a sit as well for our send outs. I wonder now if I've built in the down too strongly, in that context, so that sit will be harder to learn....

Regardless, I'll need something to call it. "Down" means for Laev to hit the deck wherever she is, while "platz" means to turn to face me and then lie down. I will need something equally precise for Laev to turn and sit, because "sit" means to plant her rear without moving from that spot. (Yes, I know the dogs can get it in different situations, but why mess with a good thing when I know she can learn precision with specific cues?)

But German and Danish sound too much like the English "sit," so I don't want to use them. I could use Czech, I suppose -- haven't tried that yet, and Laev's sire was a Czech dog. Or I could use Japanese; she has only two Japanese cues so far, both relating to bitework.

Or it could be something really clever, instead of just another word for "sit." I knew someone who trained her entire AKC Utility routine in Star Trek language; her go out cue was "engage." There ought to be some clever option I just haven't thought of yet.

Suggestions are welcome. :-)

Chocolate Calculator for Dogs

A friend sent this link. While the scrolling breeds on the right are a bit silly -- some of those weights are suspect, and at any rate the "Doberman Pinscher" photo is clearly a Dachshund -- the data is certainly good to have. Everyone knows chocolate is bad for dogs, but sometimes people don't think about what's really in there.

The Chocolate Chart Interactive

Why I'm Frustrated With TDI

I am well aware that this post might sound whiny, but in truth, this isn't just about my dog. This is disillusionment with a service organization which is supposed to be helping people.

I got a letter from TDI Saturday night, informing me that they have rejected Shakespeare as a therapy dog. My collected frustrations with TDI have been building for a while; this was just the trigger to actually post them publicly.

Shakespeare had tested with TDI years before and passed. He passed this last test in July with flying colors as well. However, the organization asked for more information because I had checked a box that yes, my dog has been in a dog fight. So I sent a letter explaining that once I was attacked by a German Shepherd (a recent rescue, found wandering and dragging a chain after a tornado -- bad breeding, no socialization, no training, no chance at being a decent dog, and traumatized), and Shakespeare had come to my defense. Shakespeare showed no aggression toward the Shepherd before the dog came at me and another dog (probably targeting the other dog), and he ignored the Shepherd again afterward. I myself considered the action appropriate for a breed made specifically to guard and protect the handler, and I appreciated the fact that he ignored the offending dog when there was no threat.

I explained in the letter that Shakespeare has never started a fight, that Shakespeare has been the usual neutral dog for countless CGC tests, temperament tests, training sessions for reactive dogs, etc. Shakespeare has logged visits and greetings with literally thousands of schoolchildren. I provided a half-dozen professional references, in case they didn't want to take just my word for it.

But their letter said that they could not accept Shakespeare as a therapy dog. It seems that they did not speak with even one of the references I provided. Despite the fact that Shakespeare served as the neutral dog for TDI evaluations, they stated he could be a risk "if he were to encounter another dog while on a visit."

Even the most cursory glance at his resume should have indicated that Shakespeare "encounters other dogs" regularly. Why was I asked for additional information if it were not to be used in the review process?

When I told a friend that he'd been rejected, my friend just started laughing. It had to be a joke. After all, we've already had a number of visit requests this fall, but we hadn't gotten Shakespeare's paperwork back.

I do applaud their taking the time to review the situation; therapy dogs should be carefully evaluated. But I am frustrated that this decision was made apparently fairly arbitrarily, without consulting anyone who actually knows the dog in question or my handling. I did include references for their use, after all.

But this is just the icing on the cake, so to speak. While we're on the topic of arbitrary and frustrating, I am feeling pretty disillusioned for a number of additional reasons.

• Communication (1) It has been more than three months, and I have still never heard anything regarding Laev. Are they planning to reject her, too? Have they accepted her? When should I expect to hear anything on this topic?


• Communication (2) I have yet to see any email to TDI answered. Yes, I am emailing directly through their website.
  
  The last time I wrote was several weeks ago, after a client found that her evaluator had interpreted two test points differently than we had in practice. I wrote a polite inquiry asking for clarification, so that we could be sure we were giving correct information to those who wanted to volunteer for the organization. No answer of any sort.
  
  Our local TDI organizer also complains of intermittent communication. She was told by the office that TDI is comprised primarily of volunteers and we shouldn't expect better.
  
  Excuse me, there are LOTS of organizations comprised entirely of volunteers! I myself AM a volunteer for some of them. I try to answer email within 24 hours as much as possible, even for work for which I'm not being paid. Failing to respond entirely is just rude to the volunteer handlers.


• Inconsistent Evaluations. I have observed several TDI evaluations. At one, the TDI evaluator passed several dogs which were displaying clear discomfort or even fear-aggression (piloerection, backing away, defensive barking, even a muzzle punch at the wheelchair). Two of the dogs I was reasonably sure were bite risks; one of the handlers even said as much about her dog. (I have no idea why anyone would bring such a dog for therapy evaluation...!) I was amazed that the evaluator passed them all.
  
  I spoke afterward with several other observers, all of whom had separately noted the same issues. Two of them took it upon themselves to write to TDI with their concerns; a risky dog benefits no one and in fact puts all therapy teams at risk. Their letters were very carefully worded, politely suggesting that these passing teams should perhaps be further evaluated and, perhaps, more education provided for the evaluator.
  
  Neither of those letters ever received any acknowledgment or response from TDI. (Again, communication!) Those dubious dogs are currently registered with TDI and handlers have publicly posted their scheduled visits. I consider this amazingly irresponsible; a bite from one of these dogs would affect not only the victim, but many other therapy teams and all those patients, residents, or participants who would subsequently be denied access to therapy visits.
  


• Unreasonable Self-Importance. Some local TDI teams rented a booth (at their cost) at a local festival to spread the word, seeking to attract additional volunteers for TDI and also to promote TDI's services and get therapy teams in more places. These people spent their own money and stood for hours in cold and wet to promote the organization.
  
  The organizer asked TDI for signage; we had used donated signs at a previous event but we were told that official TDI banners needed to be used instead.
  
  The organizer was told that she would be sent a banner, but it was for single use only, she was completely responsible for its condition, and she had to ship it back when the festival was over. She had to fax back a contract stating that she was responsible for the banner before they would ship it. This was obviously a big deal to the TDI office and represented a substantial investment; she was very excited about the great banner which would come, giving a real professional air to the festival booth!
  
  The banner arrived. It was paper. About 11" tall. Just letters on paper, not even a logo. No grommets for hanging; there was no way to display the banner without using tape and thereby risking damage. There was no way to display it outdoors, especially in the damp, without risking damage. And it did not really lend a professional appearance to the booth. The banner looked so sad, in fact, that she was embarrassed to be using it instead of what a local print shop had donated previously. Fortunately, the print shop contact had a good sense of humor about it.
  
  What possible justification, I wonder, is there for the TDI office to be so obnoxiously insistent about this, to the point of requiring a faxed contract? Do they really have to hold volunteers contractually responsible for the condition and shipping of a cheap paper roll?

This is all very frustrating. On one hand, I feel strongly that good therapy teams can do a great deal of real good, and that there needs to be an evaluating body to make sure that there is a quality control standard for those therapy teams. I do talk about the documented health benefits of therapy animals and I do want to participate locally with my own trained dogs.

On the other hand, I am indignant at the shoddy treatment our local volunteers receive, with inconsistent information, intermittent communication, and high-handed treatment. I feel guilty when I hesitate to encourage someone to try therapy work, but sometimes I do hesitate when interested clients ask, because I don't feel I'm referring them to a truly organized body.

I have heard better reports of Delta Society, though I have not worked with them firsthand. Unfortunately, I won't be able to work with them; their rules automatically preclude any dogs with Schutzhund experience. This is quite silly, in my opinion; it's equivalent to saying that because I have trained in martial arts, I cannot be trusted to volunteer safely at a library's literacy program. But those are their rules, so we can't even try.

I am just so frustrated and disillusioned. I thought this would be a good program, and it should be one.

And it's not really about Shakespeare. That's disappointing, sure, but really it's not worth getting angry about. I have been (strongly) advised to cut back on my severe overbooking and I don't really have time for frequent therapy visits, anyway. I do understand the need for high standards for therapy dogs -- of course!! -- and I can see that they should be concerned about a dog who reacted strongly to another dog's aggression.

But I feel punished for honesty; if I'd interpreted the question as, "Has your dog ever started a dog fight?" and checked No, we'd be approved. Heck, Laev and I were rushed by a (completely different) German Shepherd while training for the AD. I fortunately had repellent spray with me and blasted him in the face. He followed us for another quarter mile, keeping a wary distance while I offered constant verbal threats. As I understand the TDI review board's decision, if I hadn't had the spray with me, Laev might also be ineligible for therapy work, having been involved in a fight.

(Frankly, if I had a choice between a Doberman who let his person be endangered and was accepted for therapy work, or a Doberman who defended his person and was rejected, I'd prefer to have the real, correct Doberman who defended his human. A Dobe who doesn't protect his person isn't a Doberman!)

But for the sake of the other volunteers and for those who could benefit from more therapy teams, I wish TDI were more organized and more respectful of those who do want to help. There's no reason that they couldn't be a really excellent resource for animal-assisted therapy work.

I'm behind in posting

I have two weeks worth of news and updates. Some are good, some are less so. :-/ But I also have a weekend of KPA assessments to write up, which should obviously take priority, and then I'll try to move on to Laev's stuff.

In the meantime, though, here's a fun image. Last night during obedience, Laev tugged hard enough to rip our toy into two pieces. It wasn't the sturdiest of our toys, but it wasn't a cheap box store tug, either. (I think she's obviously back to playing wholeheartedly with me after her few months of inhibition due to pain.)

Her obedience last night was alternately distracted and brilliant. Her protection work was extremely sub-par. But, that needs to be another post, so I can get work done...!

Proud of My Dog.

It's not always about stuff going wrong or funny stories. Today's post is just about me being happy that my dog is working well in most things.

Laev's protection work is coming along very well; I am really pleased with it. Her outs off a live helper are fast and clean and ultra-reliable. Her hold and bark is lovely. She's backing very prettily into heel position when I call her out of the blind, though we need more work on staying at heel when I then call the helper out of the blind. Not her fault; we just haven't worked on it.

This past week the lightbulb came on for her that the side transport is REALLY just right-side heeling with the helper. I don't use the cue "heel" with this exercise because some judges will fault the dog looking at me during the transport.

This week I transported the helper to a "judge" during practice and then cued Laev to heel away. She is used to getting a bite on the helper during a side transport, to reward proper position and attention, and she told me quite clearly that I was stupidly forgetting something! We heeled away a few steps and then I sent her to the helper for a bite.

OH, Laev said. Why didn't you say so?

Our next repetition, she heeled away readily with me, practically dancing. She knew what was coming if she stuck with me. She's quick, she is.

Also this week she started putting together the send-away and distant down. I have been backchaining that, teaching first a distant face-me-and-lie-down cue and separately a send to a target, and then only recently combining them. This week for the first time I interrupted her run to the target with the distant face-me-and-down cue (at a shorter distance of only 25' or so) and she did it correctly twice out of two attempts. I'll take that. Now we just need more distance.

Her retrieves are almost exactly where I want them. I want a bit more speed on the flat retrieve, but her jumps are looking good. The retrieve over the wall is stressful for me! because I can't see her working, but she's doing it well.

She's still on the long line, though. I don't trust her entirely free. She's left me twice on that field to search for raccoons and squirrels, and she's not getting a chance to play at that again, not for a long, long time.

I do need to start chaining the full obedience routine together. She's got all the pieces; we just need it all at once!

Her tracking is improving, but I need to do a lot more of it. I don't like tracking; I can't practice bits of it in my kitchen. ;-) I need to get out to more fields, but I just don't do it often enough.

The only bad news is that my club's trial date was moved back. Now we're trialing mid-December. While that gives us more time to polish tracking, it means nasty cold weather, the kind that makes slick-coated Dobermans very uncomfortable on long obedience downs. I've threatened to dig out the honor down spot on the field and bury a radiant heating pad; I wonder if the judge will notice if there's no snow there?!

Anyway, I can't slack off, but I am not panicking, either. I hope I don't have to eat those words later!

Fat Lot of Useless! A funny story about a lack of practical skills.

"Do more night tracking." This was the advice of a training buddy while I was having trouble with Laev. His dog was sighting for articles and it had helped them as a team.

Laev's issue wasn't sighting for articles or flags, and more night tracking would probably just result in greater injury for me faceplanting while Laev tracked at high speed. However, I didn't get to leave as early as I wanted tonight, and we reached the park at twilight. So I quickly laid a track and tried to get started before dark.

We just barely made it, though well after technical sunset. I could see my hot pink tracking flags when I was within ten feet of them. I certainly wasn't giving Laev any help on the track, that's for sure!

We didn't spend as long settling before the track, because I was worried about the light. I had my phone clipped to my jeans and a protection-trained Doberman with me (meaning that at a word I could set her to looking nasty enough to call someone's bluff, even if she isn't trained to bite a regular human), so I wasn't as worried about being alone in the park at night, but I did want a chance of success on the track and I wanted to be able to see if Laev missed a corner or veered too far from the footprints. So after some sit-fronts and calm downs, we started with a trail of kibbles to the start flag.

Laev launched, it was ugly, and I disgustedly pulled her back to restart. I got her eating off the scent pad and we started again, still emotionally higher than I'd like but at least really tracking and eating. Already I'd lost the correct direction of the first leg but I trusted my dog and the reassuring crunching of kibble telling me she was indeed on the track. Her first corner caught me totally off-guard, but she was correct. At least I know she's not secretly reading the track from me!

I'd added articles back onto the track, and her first article was very nice, even though I barely saw it before she did. Whee! At least that's held together! I know my cue to track is extremely loaded, and so I just breathed it as a whisper at the same moment that I set a little pile of higher value food between her paws. She ate it and then set off down the track.

Trouble came a few minutes later when Laev realized there were CRITTERS coming out of the woods. Hey, at a popular park, the local wildlife probably eats well and has little fear. Laev started to get frantic and I downed her. We waited, Laev staring intently into the dark toward the trees, me watching Laev, until she finally relented enough to eat a kibble off the track while she watched. I reached into my treat bag, fed her some higher value food, and cued her to track.

LAUNCH! Laev careened down the track, pouring all her critter frustration into her work. I couldn't even properly fix her, without being able to see where exactly the track was. Somehow she fell onto the right path and an incidental pile of kibble, and I guess the fact that it was dinnertime won out. She slowed enough to eat the pile and proceeded to track, though fast, to the next article. There she downed promptly. "Oh, yeah, this!"

She wasn't calm enough to start slowly again, though. She leapt right over the offered food and set off down the track, clearly torn between track and critters. I think, though I am not sure, she missed a corner and picked up the next leg, but she did end cleanly (if speedily) and downed nicely on the final article. I fed her copiously and took her back to the car.

RACOON! Laev scented it, but I saw it before she did, hiding behind a bush. It ran as Laev was clearly hunting it, and she shrieked her fury at being unable to give chase. She did hold herself, actually, after the first couple of seconds, and she sat between my legs and screamed. I apologized for being a terrible mean handler who wouldn't let her chase the local wildlife and loaded her into her crate. Collar off, line coiled, treat bag and articles put away, mobile phone--

Mobile phone. I'd lost my phone.

I looked over the dark field. Stink. There was no way I was going to find it in the pitch blackness that we had now.

But I had a tracking dog! The phone was somewhere along the track, that was certain. And it was saturated in my scent. Laev couldn't ask for a better article.

Unfortunately, Laev's thinking was that we had already run that track once, a second time would be boring as heck and there were RACOOOOOOONS in the dark! Prey prey prey prey prey! So our search ended up being me scuffling along behind Laev as she scanned for critters. Fortunately I hadn't been stupid enough to give any real cues; as my husband quotes, "A good general is one who doesn't give an order he knows won't be obeyed."

Maybe now is a good time to mention that last night, the same training buddy who had recommended night tracking had lost his phone on the training field. He found it himself, as our club field is well-lit. Hmm.

I kept an eye on the car that cruised slowly past, but it wasn't security -- whom I would have asked to call my phone -- or anyone who stopped for less altruistic purposes. Laev glanced briefly at the car and went back to sniffing the air.

So picture us, unable to find my phone. At all. And it's not necessarily Laev's fault, as I had picked up our tracking flags and had no idea exactly where our track had run. It's a big field and I couldn't see any landmarks at all in the dark. I was wishing now I'd trained for the StP (Random Article Search); at least then I could put Laev on a long line and send her back and forth to search for anything with human scent.

Still, there I was, in a field, with a very talented scenting dog and no way to find my lost article. This was pathetic.

But Laev is not interested in human scent, she wants racoons. I want my phone, which has all of my business information on it. Finally I return to my car and, in a fit of inspiration, get my Bluetooth headphones I was using to listen to an audiobook. If I could get within 30' or so, I would be able to get a signal between headphones and phone!

So I began wandering the field pressing the voice dial button on my headphones, waiting for an answering beep. I didn't even know if the headphones would wake the phone, which would have shut itself down by now. Meanwhile, Laev was dragging hard toward what must have been a racoon party, but I held my ground.

Success! I got a static-y response from the phone, and I quickly told it to dial my husband's number. If I could just get him calling my phone, I could track the sound of the ring!

Straight to voicemail. Bad husband! I started swinging about, heading in different directions as the static increased or faded while the chirpy automated voice told me I could leave a message. I felt rather like one of the Baileys' spy cats, tracing a directional tone. By the time the voice stopped, I had achieved a pretty solid connection, and I guessed I was within 25' or so of the phone.

I tried another voice dial, thinking of others I could reach to ask to ring my phone, and as I spun around I was rewarded with a glimmer of light from the black ground. My phone! That was my screen, lighting up for the voice tag!

Laev and I hurried toward it, and she gave it a cursory sniff. I quickly cued her to "find it," an informal cue to indicate, and she picked it up. Dummy. I had her drop it and indicate, and I treated her for pointing to the phone. Who knows, maybe that will come in handy in the future.

Hm. Maybe I will train for the StP.