Training

...now browsing by category

 

The Hidden BSL of “Those Breeds”

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Here’s a terrible truth.

There is BSL, and that is bad enough. However, there’s also a hidden version of the same thing that works via nudges and winks in your state, county, or province. It’s a Breed Specific crapshoot, and if you are an owner of a “protection breed” (such as the Rottie, Boerboel, or Dogo) and think it’s not an issue for you, please take a minute to read on.

"Pitbull type" dog, restrained and muzzled

"Pitbull type" dog, restrained and muzzled as per BSL

Here’s how it works:

1. First, someone is scared by your dog. It can’t be a random person, it has to be someone who sees you over and over, and every time they see you they reinforce the “those are scary dogs” view. This is partly your fault: You don’t spend enough time “working the crowd” because you’re trying to finish a run, or you purposely don’t stop because someone typically has a dog off a leash and you never had time to figure out if that off leash dog is trustworthy enough to meet your dogs while you are running, or you’re just working too hard or too often away from home or whatever. Taking the dogs to the office to help socialize them is not enough. You have the wrong crowd there. This person is watching you, and they are not bad, they are just scared.

2. An incident happens. Your dog growls at a human, or nips a dog that is on your driveway. Maybe they just look scary. Typically, with a Shi Tsu or even a Golden or a Lab, people apologize, they offer to pay vet bills, they promise to never allow another incident, or if it’s “the look” they just put the dog away when people come by, etc. and that will be enough and people get back into the barbecue circuit. If the dog is “one of those breeds“, however, the chain of events can change:

You can offer all you want, but the people may decide they are preventing another front-page incident if they only take action against you in the strongest possible way. They like you, you seem nice enough, but what if your dog goes all Cujo on the neighborhood toddlers???!

3. What happens next is a decision is made by that party to report you. This is, frankly, mostly thanks to your failure in #1. This can take on different meanings depending on jurisdictions, but really, where I live, it’s a parallel to what happens if you get into a “fender bender” car accident as we call them – an accident where the damage is minimal – and one where a dialog is started, basically as follows:

Me: “Do you have insurance?”

Kid who hit me: “Yes”

Me: “Do you want to go through insurance, or do you want to settle this ourselves?”

Kid who hit me: “Let’s keep the insurance out of this – it’s a pain in the ass”

Me: “Fair enough. I’ll just get three quotes for this, if you pay for the cheapest”

Kid who hit me: “Cool, thanks, man.”

The point is that the offer of courtesy is made to a total stranger – even when you are totally angry that the car you spent your life restoring is a crumpled heap before you. :P However, it’s worth noting that there are times where that is not done: For example, if the guy who hit you is obviously drunk. He seems totally not able to comprehend what he did, and he is likely to reoffend. Instinct is to squish him, not help him, so you avoid the courtesies. :)

The parallel of that meandering tangent is, if your dog is “one of those” who are not pretty or fluffy (I am thinking of Pitbulls, Rotties, Dogos, Boerboels, etc. basically the arbitrary 13 or so banned in Denmark) you are sometimes dropped into that “no courtesy required” slot if you did not do your duty in #1 (above) to try to get yourself out of that slot.

Thus you do not get asked for the neighborly path, and the scared folks go strait to the authorities, whether it is a nip or a growl. Once the authorities have you on the books, it’s a rare one that does not see it as an opportunity to ensure a job well done by an enforcement officer who may take a few statements, but who often does not even bother to pop by to see the dogs in question.

3. This bylaw officer adds a certain legitimacy to the event by not checking out the dogs, by not doing due diligence. Once he or she hears the breed they say “oh my!” and write up the report with more adjectives and verbs than a Labrador would get.

So, how to fix this?

1) Go out and “happen” to meet your bylaw people, with your dog.

Ya, this is a manipulative thing, but trust me: Getting that person onside is crucial. I have had a police officer once come by to talk to me about a dog I had visiting for a few weeks, and the rapport we had talking about SchH3 dogs took the incident from a “please shoot the dog” to a discussion about fences and frost lines. I’m a dog person, not a people person, but the lesson isn’t lost: If your dog can be good, reinforce it, and show the world. It’s okay to brag a little bit.

2) Be a good neighbor. What’s the phrase, honey vs. vinegar and flies or something? (I mean, I never wanted flies anyway! :P ) Well, it matters. Sales are needed to be made across fence lines. Sometimes you can try too hard, but to not try is a guaranteed failure. Some people hate dogs. Deal with that: Keep them away. Some hate “those dogs” and there you can find valuable leverage with… tail wags!

3) Be an advocate. Hang out at the park (though maybe not the dog park), and tell people about your breed, and if your dog is safe, let the kids crawl all over them, etc.

This is a post-screwup note, so ignore it at your own peril if you have “one of those breeds” and in the mean-time, I’ll continue to fight the incident in question, and any sort of “breedist” discrimination in general.

Posted in BSL, Training | No Responses »
Tags:

Where does the “time” go??

Friday, July 16th, 2010

This is another post in a series about what is “bad” about owning dogs

Of course, this isn’t truly a “bad dog” issue, it’s about people’s expectations. In full disclosure, I am planning a single breeding from my dogs, but I cannot do so lightly, having recently seen so many dogs in rescue situations. Thus I feel it’s my duty to harp on all the bad things that may happen just to be sure that anyone who gets through this gauntlet of warnings will truly be motivated to “be in it for the long haul” which is what this rather depressing series is about. I’ll offset it with more positive posts shortly. Hang in there. :)

Now, as this is a Boerboel site, arguably the issues with Boerboels will be a bit different mostly because there’s a non-trivial cost involved: People might tend to pay a bit more for the dogs because breeders are paying a bit more for hip certifications, importing, etc. so the buyer is maybe taking a little bit more time in considering how much time and commitment they honestly have. I know I have had that “whoa, okay, this is something I better be pretty sure about…” conversation upon calculating the price (I’ll write some more on the Boerboel specific issues when I wrap up that other article.)

Anyway, over and over again I see people giving up dogs because they “don’t have the time they deserve”. Here are some notes from a few random classified ads found this morning:

I have to sell [my Doberman puppy] only because my family does not have the time for her anymore, or i would never give her up.

And…

We are having to place our purebred English Bulldog in a new home. She is loving, affectionate and great with kids. She has been fully vaccinated and fixed. We just don’t have time to give her the time and attention she needs due to our crazy schedules.

And…

hi i am selling my female american bulldog, i just dont have enough time to train her or watch her like i need to shes a awsome dog well behaved she gets along very well with other dogs

And…

advertised as "free to good home"

Dont have time for her [yellow lab] any more. Her name is Tia.
Free to a good home.

My question is, are these people really being honest? Is time really the issue here?

If “time” is not really the issue, what else could be? I have been through some pretty annoying dog habits, so here are some alternatives I could see being possible issues that are not being voiced directly. I would assume that if they were part of the reason they may be “hidden” from the advertisement because they don’t want to wreck the “sale”:

1) Cost (not expecting some chronic vet expenses? cost of boarding?)

2) Behavior (totally wrong assumptions about what a dog does when you’re either there, or away? Did the owner assume the dog would sit on the deck all day beside your chair, like out of a Norman Rockwell scene?)

3) Soiling, etc. (is it just that people are working too long a shift, and come home after twelve hours to find carpets soiled, etc.?)

4) Destruction (not set up for surviving the entertainingly challenging “puppy years”? Bladder/bowel control issues compared to time away from home, which leads to anxiety?)

5) One spouse/family member, etc. not as accepting as the other of the commitment (sometimes one person is 100% committed to have a dog in the family “until death do us part” yet a spouse may be willing to jettison the dog at the first chewed shoe.)

I sort of expect that the “we don’t have time” is often a cover for some of the above, however, I still do think time is an issue. So, let’s look at what time does a dog take, and when?

First off, I think time becomes a massive problem in the puppy months, of course, but at that time the dog is new, cute, and the cost is still fresh in our mind. We are eager to go to those puppy classes, the chewed shoe is still cute, the “didn’t sleep because of the pup” is still a funny story for the coworkers.

Hopefully, up until the doggy “teen years” (8-20 months or so) — and even through — these months, you are going to training classes. This would be great for learning training, but it’s also a relatively safe place for socialization, and frankly for some group therapy: It’s great to hear someone else’s horror stories. Misery loves company… or something. :)

It’s usually not until around 8-14months when the “free to good home” ads start up.

At this point, I have a hypothesis. I think there’s a bit of a behavior thing that goes on, and people realize that they should have been spending more time training instead of watching Lost or playing World of Warcraft or whatever. This leads to thoughts and discussions of a “Can we do this? Are we up for this?” flavour. I suspect at this time, people decide they are not ‘up for it’, they made a big mistake. They want out. They’d rather be watching Lost instead of going to puppy classes after all.

The unfortunate thing is that IF you can get through the “teen years” with your dog (the 8-20 months or so) things tend to calm down into a better routine. The trick is getting through there with enough structure that the other end is a tolerable routine, not a convoluted “work my life around my dog’s quirks” thing.

If you haven’t been up on all the training, etc. you’re still in luck: You can teach old dogs new tricks, and dogs at this age are still pretty malleable. I’d suggest a training class, unless they’re totally anti-social, in which case I’d suggest more of a one-on-one setup with a trainer.

Also, in the time category, there’s exercise. This is also not so compatible with TV and WOW. If at all possible, it’s worth taking dogs for good exercise workouts once a day. Before work is great, as it burns off energy, gets you and the dog in a good headspace, and gets the bowels moving so you have no surprises later in the day. Sadly, sometimes that daily run or walk isn’t possible. If it’s never possible, and you find you’re just opening a door so a dog can pee then it’s all over, you probably shouldn’t have gotten a dog (unless you can drop them off at doggy daycare during the day.) Not that if you don’t have a dog yet and would like to get one to force you to start an exercise regime, be honest with yourself: Will you really be going for runs with the dog, or is that just a fantasy like the “I’m going to join a gym in January” or “I’m going to quit smoking” or any of the other resolutions that you have made and broken?

Finally, there’s… time. It’s sort of common with parenting now to discuss the difference between quality time and quantity time. The thing in the 90′s was to spend very little time with your kids, but to do so intensely. You’d book an appointment with Johnny and go do two hours of rock climbing, or fishing, or whatever. But then you don’t see him again until the next ‘appointment’, but it’s such great quality time that you must be a good parent! I think now people are realizing that you’re a role model for the other, boring stuff. The trudging to the grocery store, waiting for an oil change, fixing the fence, reading at home, sitting in the yard and talking about nothing important. I believe there’s a good parallel here, in that most dogs really gain a lot out of this sort of time with The People in their lives, and if that can be maximized by taking them along to work or wherever, it doesn’t matter, just spend time if you can. I recently took a dog on a vacation that ended up being so much more memorable thanks to having the dog hanging out in crazy places (up on 8000′ mountains waiting for the kids to come in from the ski slopes, in the back of MGM Grand in Vegas, sneaked into hotels, etc. etc. :) )

I guess the point is, dogs take a hell of a lot more time than you expect, especially in the first year or two. Know this before you buy one, really think about it ahead of time so that you don’t end up putting your pup on some classified ad a year from now.

Posted in Rescue, Training | No Responses »
Tags: , , ,

Introducing a new dog to “the pack”

Monday, November 16th, 2009

As always, I want to do my caveats. Surely you know by now that stuff written on the internet is just opinion, but … without this caveat, that, hey, I’m just this one guy, after all, I worry you’ll think I’m an expert of some type, some sort of guru papered with a “PhD in dogs” :) …

Not at all, of course, but I’ve introduced four dogs recently and I was trained by a Rottie rescue owner (he had three living together, two who wanted to kill each other at first) and a friend with a couple of Boerboels and other dogs and lots of kennel experience. Before I get into any of my thoughts, let me talk a second about the advice you read on the web: Mostly, the theory is, you get together in a bright green park, using various techniques (fences, neutral territory, parallel walks on lead, etc) you introduce your dogs, give lots of treats and praise, and after a couple of corrections and a couple of minutes they’ll play bow and be best friends and your job will be done — bring them home and they’ll curl up by the fireplace together.

The problem with that idealist theory is the correction point: If we are dealing with a couple of smaller dogs, if they decide they want to start a scuffle it’s fairly easy to reach in between and pull them apart and give them the Cesar Milan tsssssk!, but if you’ve ever tried this with a Boerboel, it’s a slightly different, more intense issue. However, this image of a scuffling Boerboel in a park may make you think of all sorts of chaos and kids running from the park, letting go of balloons, people running away, my god this is too much for me, it’s all going to be too hard … Stop. It’s okay. You can do it, if you’re willing to take this way more seriously than some of the rescue sites will say.

Just note that the above meet at the park could – and often does – go really well, as some dogs are social butterflies and just love meeting new “people” and thus a lot of this will be overkill. This is based on a couple of dogs I have known who came into a home wanting the other dog gone, maybe even dead — and moving up from there to sleeping on the bed together, using each other as pillows, while I’m typing this (actually, one just rolled off and woke up on the floor, surprised. :P :) ).

1) First off, give each a safe place.

The “new dog” will be stressed. This house smells owned. I don’t belong here, etc. Set up a place where they can feel safe when things become too much. Feed there, etc. and don’t let the other dog go there yet. Eventually that’ll be fine, but off the start I’d say keep it safe and his or hers only. This place should have a view of the house, so that he or she can watch the flow of the house for a couple days at least before coming into the flow.

2) Be prepared. Predict, don’t react.

You are like a director. You are setting the scenes. Checking the exposure. Calling for makeup. Okay, not literally, but you sort of playing that role, making sure that all variables are under control. If you’re getting two dogs to interact, take a look around. Are the doors locked so that kids don’t run in crying? Are you using a baby gate too soon, where a grumpy 150lb dog may lean against it and pop it off the hinges? Did you leave food on the floor? Have you considered everyone’s mood (anyone need to go out? hungry? etc.) If things get out of hand, do you have a broom around, or a pot of water, or anything to break up a scuffle?

By preventing, you are both decreasing the randomness of a scene, and you are increasing the chance things will go well, and thus you’re projecting a lot more confidence.

3) Are you going slowly? Well that’s too fast!

There’s no harm in going too far, too slow. My friend Craig told me his three Rottweilers started out with two who hated each other. He said this:

I chained them up carefully so they were just within a foot of each other but couldn’t hurt each other. Within 30 days they were best friends. Any aggressive dog would be fine in 30 days.

I had a fearful dog once that took more like 45 days, but this is the same dog that I learned off of, so he had to tolerate me not doing any of this stuff in an organized fashion until I realized what wasn’t working. Poor guy. :P

4) Avoid forcing tentative dogs together. Go at their pace — if you have to go that fast.

Oh, I regret this mistake. We lived in a century home and the front room was tight. REALLY tight. Dogs who are unsure like their space. I could barely stand in it with the dogs while getting the door open, getting my shoes on, etc. thus the dogs were jostled into each other. A terrible plan. Ended up with a scuffle in that tight space that caused injuries to all three of us, simply due to bad planning. While I corrected the instigator, really at that stage in their introduction, I was the one who needed the correction: They were not ready for that, at that stage. I knew that, in hindsight. In my more recent dog experience, I could at a glance at a room and say “that chair will need to move for two weeks, so that the dogs can move in and out without trapping each other”, etc.

5) You are increasing challenges, but eat an elephant a bite at a time

You are testing them. Sure they got good at meeting through the closed door, but how about the baby gate? Okay, a week of tail wagging through the baby gate looks great, how about outside in the yard? Etc. Just try to increase the pressure slightly, but only when the old routine has become routine.

6) Get two dogs stable first, then get another two stable. Don’t introduce one new dog to multiple old dogs.

Pick the most social dog of your existing pack, and use him or her as your “crash test dummy” — carefully. Then, when those two are through the program, put him or her away and get the other introduced. Two dogs are stable, more than that is a bit too much like a circus for all but the much more alert dog owner.

I guess this is a start, anyway. Eventually, you can get to the point that you can lock all of your intact, dog aggressive dogs together in the car (yes, on a cool day!) and go in the office and come out four hours later to no drama and tail wags.

If anyone else has any thoughts or ideas, please tell me or add them to the comments section! Also, I posted a bit more on advanced social training elsewhere in the blog, which should be looked at as well as it comes at this via another angle.

Thanks again,

Ron

Posted in Rescue, Training | 2 Responses »
Tags: , , ,

The Dominance Myth

Monday, October 19th, 2009

I was just talking to someone on the weekend who was a long term breeder, and he was still a believer in all the Dominance stuff that they used to teach back in the 80′s and was sort of shocked that I wasn’t, so I promised to publish a few links here. Before I go on, remember that I am posting things based on cited, scientific references. I’m sure, for example, you can find lots of people with opinions that are different, but please only use cited references if you believe anyone is “out to lunch.”

First off, a (cited! :) ) definition from the American Vet Society of Animal Behavior:

Dominance is defined as a relationship between individual animals that is established by force/aggression and submission, to determine who has priority access to multiple resources such as food, preferred resting spots, and mates (Bernstein 1981; Drews 1993).

I’m pressed for time, so I’ll cop out and just jump right into the Position Statement on Dominance of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) which states:

In our relationship with our pets, priority access to resources is not the major concern… [W]hat owners really want is not to gain dominance, but to obtain the ability to influence their pets to perform behaviors willingly —which is one accepted definition of leadership (Knowles and Saxberg 1970; Yin 2009).

They also state some position points on trainers:

• The AVSAB recommends that veterinarians not refer clients to trainers or behavior consultants who coach and advocate dominance hierarchy theory and the subsequent confrontational training that follows from it.

• Instead, the AVSAB emphasizes that animal training, behavior prevention strategies, and behavior modification programs should follow the scientifically based guidelines of positive reinforcement, operant conditioning, classical conditioning, desensitization, and counter conditioning.

• The AVSAB recommends that veterinarians identify and refer clients only to trainers and behavior consultants who understand the principles of learning theory and who focus on reinforcing desirable behaviors and removing the reinforcement for undesirable behaviors.

Now, as an aside I think some Boerboel breeders and trainers would argue there is a bit of a place in being sure your dog at least understands that he or she is still in a “correct place” in the home, but that is typically far less of a hierarchy or dominance issue than it is a “you had best make some good judgment calls” issue. While people often say to me “but The Dog Whisperer believes in Dominance!” I say yes, that’s true, his words say that, but his actions and instincts of being clear to the dog that I Mr. Dog Whisperer have a plan, and you, my friend, are going to follow it now, are actually dead on and effective regardless of what you call it (“having a plan” is what a friend of mine with many years of dog training experience calls that “calm assertiveness” thing that is basically what Cesar does so well.)

The position paper clarifies on leadership vs. dominance as follows:

… dominance and leadership are not synonymous. In the human-related fields of business management and sociology, where leadership is studied extensively, leadership is defined broadly by some as “the process of  influencing activities of an individual or group to achieve a certain objective in a given situation” (Dubrin 1990, in Barker 1997).

Despite this definition, which includes influence through coercion, scholars in these fields recommend against the use of coercion and force to attempt to gain leadership (Benowitz 2001). Coercion and force generate passive resistance, tend to require continual pressure and direction from the leader, and are usually not good tactics for getting the best  performance from a team (Benowitz 2001). Additionally, those managers who rule through coercive power (the ability to punish) “most often generate resistance which may lead workers to deliberately avoid carrying out instructions or to disobey orders” (Benowitz 2001).

Similarly with pets, leadership should be attained by more positive means—by rewarding appropriate behaviors and using desired resources as reinforcers for these behaviors. Leadership is established when a pet owner can consistently set clear limits for behavior and effectively communicate the rules by immediately rewarding the correct behaviors and preventing access to or removing the rewards for undesirable behaviors before these undesirable behaviors are reinforced. Owners must avoid reinforcing undesirable behaviors and only reinforce the desirable behaviors frequently enough and consistently enough for the good behaviors to become a habit (Yin 2007).

A few more resources (oddly, some of these intersperse Alpha Male Theory — also debunked and surely to be my next rant :) )…
International Positive Dog Trainers Association article ( http://www.ipdta.org/#The_Dominance_Theory ):

Although it may seem as though we are “splitting hairs” with terminology, the main difference is this. According to The Oxford Dictionary, “Dominance” means “in control over a group” and “assertive” means “to insist”. An assertive dog is challenging a person or another dog to win resources that it wishes to control, not in order to control the other person or dog; therefore, a dog’s competing for a desired resource has nothing to do with ranking.

Quotes from wolf expert David Mech via NY Times Article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/opinion/31derr.htm )

“The typical wolf pack,” Dr. Mech wrote in The Canadian Journal of Zoology in 1999, “is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of a group in a division-of-labor system.” In a natural wolf pack, “dominance contests with other wolves are rare, if they exist at all,” he writes.


So, what does this all mean in a day-to-day “what is my Boerboel thinking” sort of way? Basically, I’d say your relationship with your dog may not be as adversarial as you may have imagined. Furthermore, I’d propose that this likely extends to a large amount of his or her interactions within your “pack” if you have multiple dogs. Finally, some of the symbolism we’ve been told to look out for (for example, NILIF (Nothing In Life is Free) training, “never let a dog enter a room in front of you” or “never let a dog on the furniture” or “never let a dog go first when playing Monopoly” :) ) may not be as important as we may have been led to believe.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day — next time, I may take the on the alpha wolf. :)

R

Posted in Training | 1 Response »

Dogs will be Dogs — Part 1

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

[Legal speak: This is just my opinion. Don't use it without using your brain. -- I discuss some pretty hairy concepts here of dog interaction, and while it works for me, it may not for you. Some dogs will always be a problem with each other, and this will NEVER work with them. Know your dogs. Also, accidents happen, and are more likely to happen with unfamiliar and younger dogs, but not eliminated even when dogs are totally "cool" with each other. Risks aplenty, don't even read on if you are not willing to take responsibilities for your own actions.]

I stumbled on this article while researching another upcoming installment of my “Dogs will be Dogs” post, and thought I’d mention this first.
Some researchers suggest eliminating challenges to reduce aggression:

“Treatment of inter-dog aggression with normal dogs that are fighting is easily achieved by establishing “hierarchy”. The dog that is physically most likely to win will be fed, walked, or given attention first. If the fighting only occurs over special food items or toys, these triggers can simply be removed from the environment.”

I actually find myself disagreeing with rather a lot of the above (the whole dominance/hierarchy myth is another topic entirely and is pretty embarrassing in a document dated 2007, IMHO, but I’ll ignore that for now). Note that I suspect that it would partly work, especially the removal of the “offending toy”. It’s like seeing your child attempt to ride a bike. If you stop them, “Whoa there, son! What are you thinking? Let’s just put that crazy thing somewhere safe. There we go.” they will not get hurt. Remove the bicycle. Done. Problem solved. But, wouldn’t you rather see your child learn the SKILL of riding? Learn that falls do happen, but they are not the “end of the world”? With dogs, especially dogs that are bred to be intelligent enough to make judgment calls, shouldn’t we be considering the teaching of social skills to be just as important as “doing what you’re told”?

We have in fairly recent history gotten into the habit of exerting so much control on our dogs’ world, that it’s almost at the point that they are hardly even able to remember what it is like to be a dog. This actually can be handy for non-working breed dogs that are not bred to have judgment as part of the breed goal, but for a Boerboel, it’s sort of wasting a lot of grey matter, IMHO.

Here is an alternative strategy: Just last night after feeding, I gave a single bone to one of the dogs in isolation (he is a V rated Schutzhund (SchH) 3 GSD who has tons of extra energy, and he gets a few extra perks for that sometimes) and once he had taken a good amount of the meat off of it, I allowed all the dogs to be together, with the one (still meaty) bone. One of these dogs is new and still learning to deal with SchH-guy as she doesn’t really like him, but LOVES food items. This can only be described a challenge for all the dogs. Who gets the bone?

Before I go on, a whole LOT of caveats:

  1. This is not something to try if you’re a passive person, if you’re not able to control your dogs or break up a ‘real’ fight if one escalates to that level.
  2. I’m not a “dog whisperer” just some guy on the internet with an opinion, so make sure it matches with your opinions.
  3. This is not a “Dogs 101″ lesson. I’m doing this as a more advanced lesson, after already letting them stress over space issues (sharing a space in the yard, then advancing to the house, then a couch, then the tight space of a car, etc. etc.) and while I’m pretending to ignore them, I will not leave them unattended while they work through this. As I mentioned, some of the dogs are new, but they have been worked through “getting along” exercises for two months before I deemed them ready for this.
  4. These are relatively intelligent, stable working dogs, Boerboels and GSDs, with known pedigrees and basic manners. They have been bred to make judgment calls.
  5. We have already set down rules, and I spent over two months ensuring they all know them. Rule one is “we do not eat our friends” as we jokingly call it: We don’t fight if at all possible, unless they have been provoked, and even then, only correct others within reason (more on symbolic fighting another time)
  6. You probably don’t want to do this sort of food based challenge regularly, or when they are hungry. I did this after a feeding, and typically it’s best to have more bones than dogs, so that it appears to be an endless fountain of bones out there, a well of yummy calcium and gristle that will never run dry, as this will desensitize them to the NEED to protect over them.
  7. Reduce variables. Don’t do this when the cable guy is over to wire up the new TV, or when the kids are having a sleep over and having a pillow fight. :P

On the point #5, above, if my one Shep decides to bite the other just because he’s chasing a stick (that — the “bite the running GSD” — seems a popular game here, for some reason) the one who was running is totally within his rights to say “stop that!” with a symbolic fight (which tends to leave the biter on his back saying “uncle!”)

So what happens with the bone? There is a lot of really tense negotiations over it. One dog will leave it on the ground, possibly because he or she is done with it, possibly because they can’t stand the pressure of the others watching (this actually reminds me of what it’s like for me when I take a drink from a busy fountain on a hot day. Your “empathy sense” will make you either say “screw those behind me in line” or “ya, well, I guess I can come back in a bit and get in line again”.)

Describing this sort of setup to a more traditional “Dominance” based trainer will raise their hackles (so to speak :) ). I have discussed this to a long term show breeder and he says simply “I don’t tolerate that.” While I see his point, that’s not exactly the skill sets and judgments that I am striving to achieve here, but I do believe that truly “working your dog” via Schutzhund, etc. will also teach some of these framework skills, at least as far as judgment goes.

Eventually the bone have been passed from one to the other all evening, and once the Boerboel bitch is sure it has been stripped of every scrap of sustenance, it sits unattended in the corner while all the dogs sleep together.

Anyway, if you do allow your dogs to discuss things like bones, expect a bit of growling. With more socially aware dogs, growls are just a tool, a part of the language. I sort of imagine it like those crabs in Finding Nemo who look at each other saying “Hey!” a lot. :P Really, it’s communication, and fundamentally it’s fine — in moderation. If they are not getting along, then I prefer if they would just time themselves out. Once the dogs get comfortable with each other, they sort of hone listening skills and can tell the fun little playful “my bone” growls, to the more serious “if you come any closer I swear to god I will flatten you and those you love!” sort of growls. It’s actually quite fascinating.

Posted in Training | 2 Responses »
Tags: , ,