Dr. Michele Wan: Does Experience Matter When Interpreting Dog Behavior?

During lunch at work today, I was watching a dvd I just ordered from Tawzer Dog because I am just that nerdy and can't think of a better way to spend some down time at work.

Anyway, the dvd presenter referenced a study done by Dr. Michele Wan which sounded so interesting I had to look her and the study up on google mid-dvd watching.  Feel free to skip the rest of this blog and just check out this link:

Dr. Michele Wan's Research: Does Experience Matter When Interpreting Dog Behavior?

Once I googled her successfully, I had to one-handed (dislocated thumb injury acting up) text my friend Lia, recipient of all of Keila's fascinating dog-related discoveries that must be discussed immediately.  I love this article mostly because I feel like I have misunderstood dogs (okay, Shadow) so many times and have just recently begun to put more of the pieces together.  Bottom line, I have been realizing over the last few months that I have thought Shadow was happy and holding it together a lot more often than he has actually felt that way.  And, apparently, I am not alone in my misunderstanding!

So read Dr. Wan's research/watch the video clips at the link above. Once you're done, show it to all your ignorant, well-meaning friends like me who don't understand their dogs.  And once you've done that, find some really good science-based information on what our dogs are trying to tell us and share that with those same friends.

Here's where I got started: On Talking Terms with Dogs - Calming Signals: by Turid Rugaas

And this is where I start the students in my class (thanks to Lia who introduced me to Boogie):  Boogie, the Boston Terrier's Body Language

Doing What Works for Us for Now

The more workshops I go to, the more private behavior or training sessions we schedule, and the more training classes I sign us up for, the more the notion that there are many ways to train or address any one dog behavior becomes more clear.  I love learning about all the options and experimenting with the one that works for us, but I am also finding relief in realizing that because I can't swing the-best-option-for-fixing-this doesn't meant I can't use a different method for now and get the same results or go back to the-best-option-for-fixing-this later.

When we first got Shadow, he was a wild child just winding up for the full swing of adolescence.  Everything was hard. EVERYTHING.  To sleep quietly in his crate, he needed a clay heating pad, NPR playing, a clock making loud ticking noises, a stuffed kong, and a crate full of toys.  There were months when we had weekly visits to the vet and daily phone calls just to get his digestive system sorted out.  To walk him, I brought along treats and toys to reward him for loose leash walking, practiced our rally tricks, coaxed, coerced, and dutifully played stop and go to the point that we could be gone for half an hour and barely have made it around the block.  Yes, there were times when I sat down on the side of the road and sobbed while he sniffed the grass and lowered his head glaring at an ever-so-fascinating-garbage-can-monster.

He bolted through doors.  He pulled so hard I went through four different types of harnesses because he had bleeding armpits.  He played too rough at the dog park.  He howled and spun in the car.  He knocked down displays and stole treats out of bins at the pet store.  He snarked at dogs who came near him in our training classes.  He lost his mind in ecstatic jumping/licking/mouthing when guests came over.  He paced and panted in the house.  He ate everything remotely edible (luckily he has an affinity for natural/outdoor items and a really good vomiting routine).  He howled and barked and stuck his head in our pant legs when we tried to get dressed.  Our dog walker, saint that she is, left us notes like "he behaved as well as he could" on our table.

He had only two things going for him: iron clad house training and an ability to cock his head with his one folded ear and look really, really cute.

In the midst of all of that, Mike and I sought professional help (and lots of it).  One of the issues we wanted to work on was him losing his mind barking his head off and scrambling around on our wood floors any time we remotely looked like we were going out.  When our trainer presented the "wait him out" routine (extinction I think is the fancy word for it), it only took Mike and I two or three tries before we realized that Shadow truly did have the upper hand in this situation and we were in no way prepared or able to actually wait him out.  (Much less intentionally set him off by reaching for his halter randomly throughout the day to desensitize him to us picking it up).

We did not have the mental and emotional stamina at that point and time to wait Shadow out on this issue.

Luckily for us, our trainer was sympathetic and talented and had other options for us.  So we trained a really good "go to your place."  We learned to hook him up/put him in a down stay before we reached for our shoes.  We put plastic tupperware containers of treats near the door and near his mat to convince him it was in his best interest to shut up and hold it together.  We snuck into our bedroom and closed the door so we could get out of our pj's without him seeing.  It was a lot of work, and perhaps the extinction route might have gotten us to our goal faster.  But addressing it this way was what we could handle - to us, the management routine was better than stopping the behavior by showing him we wouldn't respond to obnoxious demand barking.

Fast forward two years, and we have a dog with a good leave it and a solid GI system.  We have walking options that work for us: putting him in his joring harness and letting him haul us around the neighborhood or putting him in a regular harness, taking the walk at his pace, and enforcing a pulling = human-stops-and-waits-for-obnoxious-puller-to-reconnect/make-eye-contact rule.  We have a dog with an automatic down stay when we put our shoes on to go out the door.  We have a dog who has been trained to politely ask if he can come up on the couch.  We have a dog who's compromised with us and will jump up on our bed and lay their tail wagging while we put our pants on instead of trying to squeeze into them with us.

So now, when he gets over excited and loses his mind barking, we have the emotional and mental grit to sit back down on the couch and ignore him until he shuts up and offers a polite behavior like going to his place.  Because most likely, on that particular day, he's only done 5 obnoxious things and we're still under our threshold.

This is just one example - there are many more compromises that we've made with Shadow.  Or conscious "we're going to work on that later and focus on this now" choices.  I still struggle with this sometimes.  I think that if I was 100% perfect and consistent in my interactions with him everyday, we'd have all the wrinkles in our relationship ironed out much quicker.  I can't wait for my second, third, fourth dog when I have more perspective on the roller coaster of canine development and training.  But, for now - for today - I'm celebrating learning a little wisdom in realizing that "good enough for now" truly is good enough when balanced with everything else we're working on and training through.

Shadow's Training Agenda

Things Shadow has trained us to do:

- call him to come in: he'll wait at the back part of the yard, head down, intently staring at us until we call him; then he comes flying in - the payoff to him? his favorite treat, only reserved for him responding to "come".

- roll the back windows down in the car so he can stick his head out even when it's freezing (but we haven't caved on the freeway yet).

- 6 am daily pee break: one of us has to get up at 6 am and let him out to pee.  At first this applied to breakfast, too, now he's willing to wait until we get up for breakfast, but nothing can prevent his need to go outside at his set time.  At first he whined, when we resisted, he tried shaking/flopping around in his crate.  We resisted.  Now he will escalate to a combination of both until we let him out.  We get more sleep after a ten minute jaunt outside, so we caved.

- keeping the shades closed; opening the top half of windows.  I'm a sun-lover, and nothing makes me happier than open windows and open shades.  Nothing has a more calming affect on Shadow than closed shades and closed windows.  He won.  No sight of neighborhood cats to grouse at, no noticeable neighborhood dogs to crave play with, no glimpse of squirrels to chase = napping or playing happily with toys.

- frequent stops on walks so he can look around and take things in or meet other dogs: not in a casual, "oh, hello there" as we move on kind of way; but with every ounce of intention and focused energy he can muster toward each thing that catches his attention.

- daily stuffed kongs (sometimes two!)

Considering all the things he's been happy to learn for our benefit, this list could be more demanding.

Snack Tally October 14-27

In the last thirteen days, Shadow has eaten or attempted to eat (in addition to his normal food and treats; all found in our backyard unless otherwise labeled):

one banana peel
one peach pit
at least one whole garlic clove
two unknown fruit? specimens (see photo)
at least seven piles of dog park poo

In that same time, he's been on two prescription diets, an antibiotic, probiotics, panacur, and pumpkin

Of the last thirteen days, he's had normal GI function for 28 hours.

Littering construction workers are not my friend.

Accepting Guesses

Dog Park Misadventure

Shadow's happy face

One of our favorite play spots is our local dog park.  Chosen for its friendly, responsible core group of owners. (See Shore Dogs).  Just a hop up the freeway, and a trip down stop sign lane and we're there.  Pretty much from the first stop sign, if not earlier, Shadow knows where we're going and is excited.

His version of excited is turning circles in the back seat, sticking his head out the window as much as I'll let him, tangling himself in his seat belt, and whining as only he can.  He shivers he's so amped.  And each start after a stop sign is welcomed with renewed yips, howls, and whines.  By the time we pull in, he's over the top happy and I'm mad.

I won't get out of the car until he stops vocalizing.  I tell myself it's to teach him that calm dogs get to get out of cars.  But it's possible all I really want to do is get back at him for my frayed nerves.  The wait until he's quiet is as torturous for him as the loud crazy dance on the trip is for me.

The last time I dug my heels in, Shadow was so worked up by the time I got him actually in the dog park that it translated into trouble in the park.  Trying to avoid that, I took advantage of the first brief pause in the backseat chaos, and got us both out as soon as we could.  I even jogged the five feet to the entrance so he didn't hit my tight-leash-red-light rule.

At the point I took his easy walk harness off to get him in the big dog side, I realized that I had left his collar at home.  (I take it off at night so it doesn't jingle and keep us awake).  Back on goes the harness and a little voice in my head scolds me for leaving him microchipped but tagless out in the big wide world.  I imagine the raised eyebrows of the other dog park peeps (yes, I have an overactive imagination when it comes to the opinions of others), and say out loud to him, for their benefit "oops, we forgot your collar at home, didn't we?"

I open the gate and he rockets into the park, flying into, through, and past his welcoming committee.  They give chase and playtime is on.  I start to worry when another dog gets Shadow's hackles up with too rough play, but when Shadow moves onto a friendly, wiggly ball of labradoodle fur I hope I'm okay.  The other dog has springs and she and Shadow are quickly lost in a game of chase.  The labradoodle's dog-mom is exclaiming how cute they are together.  I'm quiet - the labradoodle is all silly goofiness.  Shadow's tense and too abrupt for his usual dog park playfulness.  He hasn't relaxed from the anticipation, and he hasn't forgiven the initial dog's rudeness.  Then all of a sudden, Shadow's nemesis interrupts their play, Shadow gets mad, the nemesis slinks off; but the poor, friendly labradoodle gets the brunt of Shadow's angst.  We get them separated, I get a dirty (well deserved) look from the labradoodle's owner, and leash Shadow.

I want to tell her Shadow's usually so friendly.  I want to tell her he just needs to calm down.  I want to tell her that I was so tired of trying to wear him out myself, that I just had to bring him today.  I want to tell her that he's been in training classes since we got him a year ago.  I want to tell her the names and accomplishments of all the private trainers we've hired to help us.  I want to tell her the three books I've read just this week trying to solve his quirks.  Instead I just sat on the picnic table defeated, holding his leash, as she moved to the far end of the dog park and started playing ball with her dog.  The rude dog's owner comes over, complimenting Shadow's odd mix of spare parts and asking me his breed.  Pretty sure he was relieved there was another dog with poorer manners than his own.  I manage to smile and thank him.

Unwilling to face the possibility of not burning off his energy, I let him off the leash once the rude dog has left.  He leaves the two dogs playing ball alone, but engages me in a game of keep away as he takes it upon himself to pick up (and consume) every pile of neglected poo left in the dog park since the last time it was cleaned.  It's a big park.  Apparently with a lot of careless owners.  I follow him around, coaxing, calling, moving slowly, jingling his leash, using all the tricks available to me.  And looking like a total fool.

When I finally caught him, I made no eye contact as I slinked out of the dog park with him.  We went for a run since we now both had some steam to blow off.  I had almost forgiven him by the time we got back into the car to go home, but then he started burping up his snacks.

He's grounded from the dog park.