In high school, I played on the varsity squash team.  Squash is not widely played in the United States, so many readers won’t be familiar with it.  It bears some resemblance to handball, though it is several centuries older, and the court has foul zones, so accuracy is required.  Players on the indoor court use racquets the same length as tennis racquets, but with smaller heads.  The ball is small, well under two inches in diameter, and one must have good hand-eye coordination to hit the ball reliably and well.

In the last half-century, a single Pakistani family has supplied numerous top players to the sport.  Hashim Khan, the the most influential of the multitudinous talented Khans, wrote a small booklet about playing squash.  The following advice therefrom is burned into my brain:

“Keep eye on ball.  Is one most important thing I tell you.”

Anyone who plays a ball game knows how important this is — “keep your eye on the ball” is a standard metaphor for staying focused on what is important. In doing behavior modification with our dogs, what is important is our dog!

Anyone with a reactive dog tends to do what the dog does:  Scan the environment for triggers.  If we can see the dog, the squirrel, the bicycle first, we can head off the  big reaction (we hope).  We spend a lot of time dodging stuff.  When I bring my dog to help a client’s dog learn an alternative behavior around strange dogs, my clients generally have a hard time taking their eyes off my dog, because they are used to needing to monitor the behavior of the trigger.  (Or possibly they are just admiring my very beautiful and talented dog… but I digress!)

Part of each training session involves reminders and practice in the client keeping their eyes on their own dog.  Not mine.  Their dog will tell them everything they need to know.  Can their dog take food?  Can he reorient toward his owner?  Then he is in good working order.  Is he chomping fingers and unable to turn his head?  Too close.  “Too close” is not a number of feet — it is defined entirely by our dog’s behavior, by his ability to cope equitably with the stimulus.  Get in the habit of watching your dog, especially his head.  For the most part everything else is secondary.

Now, you do need to look around.  You need to not walk into a telephone post or rose bush.  You might spot triggers before your dog does.  You need situational awareness to function well.  But if you do not keep much of your attention actively on your dog, you are going to overshoot, or undershoot, or miss warnings, or punish good behavior, or reward undesired behavior.  With practice, you will learn some key indicators that your particular dog shows.  It might be an ear position, or a tail position, or a weight shift.  Some dogs’ tails telegraph their mental states with complete accuracy; others’ tails are uninformative.  You’ll learn what specifically to watch and what you can relegate to peripheral attention, just as you do when driving.  With some practice, then, you can do both — maintain contact with the environment so you can walk safely and anticipate trouble, and keep steady attention on your dog’s key indicators.  But without that attention to your dog, there is no way to avoid blowing it.

Keep eye on dog!  Is one most important thing I tell you.

As part of Companion Animal Solutions, I’m lucky enough to work with Dr. James Ha, Ph.D., CAAB, an ethologist with the University of Washington.  This means I can run tricky or unusual cases by his experienced eyes to see what I might be missing in terms of assessment or treatment.  Occasionally, Jim mentions the cryptic term:  “Addison’s Disease.”  Addison’s has always been on my mental list as one of those diseases that can certainly cause behavioral effects; but, as with so many things in life, it took direct personal experience to really bring this home.

My second oldest dog, Cedi (pronounced “Seddie”), is an Australian Shepherd I adopted from Aussie Rescue when she was ten months old, back in 2001.  She is now ten years old.  She looks great — shiny coat, still slim and athletic-appearing, and no grey showing yet.  But she doesn’t feel great.  Cedi was my first flyball dog, and she was a star.  Around age 6, it seems, she received an injury to one knee (probably during a herding lesson) and it started to interfere with her playing flyball and fetch.  Fast-forwarding rapidly over extensive treatment and diagnostics, I now live with a ten-year old dog who has always been a bit anxious around other dogs, resource guards against them, and now lacks her lifelong outlet of vigorous “yahoo” sports to help keep her comfortable.  A couple of years ago, working with a local behavior-oriented vet, Cedi was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and placed on fluoxetine.  It helped… a little.

About a year ago, she had a major gastric crash. I was unable to stabilize the vomiting and diarrhea at home, but a bag of fluids at the vet’s, fortunately, got her back on track.  I discontinued her NSAID at the time, thinking it might have caused the distress.  For the last year, she has had no anti-inflammatory for her painful knee, though I’d give her some tramadol if it was bad.  (She was receiving a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement.)

But Cedi was still depressed, and over the last 2-3 years, it has gotten worse.  She would lie around, except when barking out the window.  (She’s always been the house “Sheltie.”)  If I talked to her, she would turn her head and droop.  She’d perk up for a walk or short game of fetch, then go back to drooping.  This formerly affectionate dog didn’t want to sleep in my bedroom.  I figured it must have something to do with the increased dog population in my house; she finds it a bit stressful.  I talked to vet behaviorists.  I said, “she just seems depressed.  The anxiety is not worse, but this depressed behavior is much worse.  She is anhedonic.”  (Anhedonia is the inability to enjoy pleasurable activities, a common symptom of depression in humans.)  Although depression is not a permitted diagnosis in dogs because its subjective component cannot be verified, experts said that yes, they sometimes saw what looked for all the world like “major depression.”  It probably exists — dogs’ brains have all the same parts and chemicals that participate in human depressive states.  But it will be diagnosed as GAD, which is an entirely objective diagnosis.

About six weeks ago, I brought Cedi to a flyball tournament.  She used to love flyball, and I usually leave her at home now that she can’t race.  I don’t want her frustrated, and her barking in the crate is no fun for anyone.  However, petsitting wasn’t available, so she came with me.  She stayed in her crate, silent.  She didn’t want to come out.  If she really had to pee, she’d pee and want to go back in.  I moved her to a car crate so she could be in a quieter spot.  I also crated Nano in the car, next to her; he was getting a bit too excited about flyball and, not yet being a racing dog, had no outlet for his emotions.  On Sunday, I went out to take her for a potty walk.  She tried to go into every crate we walked by.  She wouldn’t potty, and dragged me back to the car.  I offered her a treat; Nano reached for it, a normally suicidal act with my resource-guarding bitch!  But Cedi turned her head; she wouldn’t take the treat, and just wanted to be left alone.

I burst into tears.  For my dog, this was a flashing red light and siren saying unequivocally, “Something is terribly wrong!”  I imagined cancer and autoimmune diseases (she also had a scab mysteriously appear on her muzzle, which looked a bit like discoid lupus, a disease well-known in the breed).  When we were back over the border after racing that day, I left a message for my vet.

We got Cedi in a few days later and started testing: bloodwork was normal, and while her midday urine was a bit dilute, a follow-up morning catch was in the normal range.  Kicking around the options, my vet finally suggested we could run the definitive test for Addison’s Disease.  Apparently, most cases of Addison’s are diagnosed when the patient presents in an Addisonian crisis — very ill, usually with gastrointestinal symptoms, dilute urine, and electrolytes out of whack when bloodwork is done.  Cedi’s electrolytes were normal, and she also did not meet the standard profile of a newly diagnosed Addison’s dog (a young to middle-aged female; and Aussies are not among the breeds in which it’s known to be more common genetically).  My vet told me that Addison’s is known as “The Great Pretender” and usually takes a long time to diagnose, often being mistaken for renal failure, gastroenteritis, hypothyroidism, or other ailments.  I agreed to the test.

It’s an easy test:  The dog is fasted overnight and tested in the morning.  Blood is drawn; then, synthetic ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) is injected; after an hour, blood is drawn again.  Both blood samples are analyzed for cortisol levels.  In a typical Addison’s diagnosis, both the before and after levels are zero (undetectable).  This is because the adrenal gland has stopped working, so the ACTH, which normally would trigger production of cortisol, does not have this result.  It’s similar to diabetes mellitus; normally, sugar intake will cause a pancreas to produce insulin, which starts biochemical processes to metabolize the sugar.  If the pancreas stops working, insulin production can’t be stimulated.

Cedi’s results were unusual.  Her “before” result was undetectable.  The “after” showed a cortisol elevation, but it was only into the normal resting range, not into the normal stimulated range.  After doing some research, my vet suggested retesting the resting level after a week.  We did this, and even more oddly, that test showed a low, but detectable cortisol level.  This produced numerous conversations with the testing lab’s internists.  Finally, the chief clinician suggested that the week-later result was probably still slightly elevated from the ACTH stimulation a week earlier.  He advised treating with adrenocorticoids only, and testing again a few months later. Technically, since her electrolytes are normal and she is not receiving mineralocorticoid supplementation, her diagnosis is hypoadrenocorticism, not “Addison’s Disease.”  (It may progress, though she seems to have a very slow progression and is already rather old.)

We started Cedi on a small dose of prednisone every other day.  She’s now been taking it almost one month.  I have my dog back!  She’s still a bit anxious.  She still resource guards.  She still barks out the window.  But if I talk to her, she pricks her ears up.  When I come home, she pushes through to get a greeting scritch on the head.  No more drooping, no more avoiding.  Occasionally she wiggles her butt.  In other words, she’s back to normal — for her.

To me, it all makes sense now.  She had been affectionate with friends, but not with me — perhaps this was because seeing them was exciting enough to cause some cortisol production so she felt normal, whereas I was too boring and everyday to trigger this chemical response.  Likewise, she was more “normal” if playing a little ball or barking at an intruder.  Her sore knee was probably more sore because she was not even getting her body’s own anti-inflammatory effects (cortisol is an anti-inflammatory chemical).  No wonder she was depressed.

What I learned:

*I have a great vet.  OK, I knew that, but this closed the deal.  She thought of doing this test for a dog outside of the profile, not in crisis, with normal electrolytes.  It’s a relatively inexpensive test, under $200, and it’s definitive.  Turned out to be totally worth it.

*Addison’s can be really vague. I knew something was not right, but honestly, if the most overt symptom was “failed to resource guard a treat from a housemate dog,” what is a vet supposed to do with that?

*From the reading I did that diagnostic week (most of which was so unbelievably medically-Greek as to be incomprehensible), I learned that internists consider atypical Addison’s to be significantly underdiagnosed.  Hypoadrenocorticism without electrolyte imbalance is found surprisingly often — it the test is done.  But since the test is rarely done until there is electrolyte imbalance, a lot of cases are missed.

*The primary symptoms were behavioral. Droopy, depressed, sad, lethargic.  That gastric episode last year may have been related.  Hard to know.

Cedi is now drinking more water and having to pee more often… this is normal when a dog takes prednisone.  I don’t care and I suspect if I could ask her, she would gladly make the trade.  She’s no longer a little puddle of mute, undifferentiated misery.  I’m sure she still is sore and misses flyball, but at least she can enjoy me — and I’m who she’s got.  She can enjoy walks and a little fetch and training sessions.  I bet her knee feels better, too.

I’m seeing it behind every tree right now… though, interestingly, every dog someone tells me about that makes me think of Addison’s turns out to be a young to middle-aged female…. Hmmmm!

I know I’ll be mentioning it more often with behavior clients.  I don’t practice veterinary medicine, but I do share observations with clients and sometimes their vets, which they can follow up on if they choose.  And it often pans out; my sense of “something being physically wrong” is increasingly keen.  Hey, if I think “Addison’s” and it turns out to be Cushing’s, or renal failure, I’m OK with that — at least it got the dog on the way to help for a real problem.

If you’d like to hear Cindy Lewis-Bruckart from Regarding Rover interview me (Greta Kaplan) about the sport of flyball, head over to blogtalkradio to listen. Now, on with the rest of the post…

I teach and coach flyball, a fun dog sport that is not often shown on TV, so most people have not seen it played before they come to class.  Many people hear about the sport, and focus on the name of the game.  Unsurprisingly, they think it is a ball game, and they conclude that because their dog loves balls, this would be a great game for their dog.  It will never happen, but as a coach and instructor, I often wish we could change the name of the sport to remove the word “ball.”  Flyball is not a ball game!

Flyball has  been around in its current form for about 30 years.  It resembles a cross between a drag race and a relay race.  Every racing team consists of four dogs.  In competition, two racing teams compete in parallel lanes.  On each team, the following progression unfolds in each heat:

*The start dog runs, trying to cross the start line at top speed at the exact moment the start light turns green.

*The dog strides over four low jumps, set ten feet apart.

*He then approaches the flyball box, a spring loaded contraption with an angled, rubber front that spits a ball out of a hole when the dog’s feet hit the rubber.

*The dog simultaneously executes a U-turn on the angled rubber front of the box while grabbing the ball from the hole.

*The dog returns over the same four jumps and carries the ball over the start/finish line.

*The dog goes straight to his handler, releases the ball, and receives a reward, often a vigorous game of tug, or perhaps a food treat or some other type of reinforcer.

Meanwhile, the next dog’s handler releases her dog some dozens of feet back from the start line, aiming to have her dog’s nose cross the start line (measured by an electronic beam) just as the returning dog’s nose crosses the same line as he returns to his handler.

By the end of the heat, all four dogs have run down and back, stayed in the lane, carried the ball all the way over the line, and gone to their handlers for an reward (usually a game of tug, or a treat). Since this is happening in both lanes (about 30 feet apart), there are now eight high-energy, highly-aroused dogs, eating, tugging, barking, and bouncing around in a space the size of a large living room, getting ready for the next heat.  (There are three to five heats per race.  Each team has several races per day, for a total of about 20-30 heats.)

Now, review that description paying special attention to the role of the ball.  The dog traps the ball at the surface of the box, takes it into her mouth, and carries it at least 51 feet until after she has crossed the finish line.  The ball barely moves on its own. It is not thrown.  It is not rolled.  It is just something to be carried a specified distance, like a dumbbell in obedience, or the morning newspaper.  As you can see, it’s really not about the joy so many dogs experience when we fling a tennis ball out over the grass, and our dog stretches out and runs, tracking it in the air, pouncing on it when it lands, and bringing it back so they can experience that predatory-based ecstasy all over again.

What if your dog really, really loves tennis balls?  Many dogs do!  I don’t know what they put in those things, but for some dogs, tennis balls are truly like crack — they are a mind-altering drug.  If there is a tennis ball around, the dog cannot think about anything else.  Not me, not my tug toy, not even a piece of roast beef in some cases.  If there are five balls on the ground, this dog may obsessively try to pick them all up, inevitably dropping one, making it move so it has to be chased again, and so on.  He can’t do a recall, or a sit, if there is a ball on the ground because his top priority is to get to that ball, and to chew it, or bring it to you and drop it at your feet.  Let’s call this imaginary dog “Lola.”

Lola comes to flyball class, and we try to teach her to do a box turn.  A well-done box-turn is a somewhat difficult skill.  The dog must do a U-turn, at an angle, with all four feet striking the box (either simultaneously, or first front feet, then back feet, in rapid succession as the dog flips around in the air).  At the same time, she must grab the ball.  It takes a lot of coordination from any dog, and we spend a lot of time on it.  We start without a ball in the box, and Lola is a star!  She is pouncing on and pushing off, joyfully doing her turn for a food treat.  Then it is time to introduce the ball… because, you know, you have to retrieve a ball to do flyball.  And Lola sees the ball, loses her concentration, rushes to the box, runs her front feet into it with her body pointing straight at the box surface, grabs the ball, and settles down to chew it in ecstasy.

What happened to my carefully trained box turn?  Oh… right.  Lola can’t think around balls, so she went into a primitive lizard-brain place and all that training was left behind.

Of course, we have ways of helping the dogs learn to cope with this tension (do I get the ball ASAP vs. do I do what I was taught to do?).  It can take months, or even years, longer for a Lola to learn to do a proper box turn, with ball, than it does for a dog who is eager to return to a tug or a disc, but it can be done.

Is Lola going to be a fast racing dog?  On the way to the box, she will run like the wind! Her ball is down there!  On the way back… not so much.  She’s got her number one prize, and she knows from experience that she’s not going to be able to go play an extended game of fetch once she gives it up to her handler.  She may dawdle a bit.  Sometimes we can fix this with careful, extended training… and sometimes not.

How is Lola going to handle it when she sees a dog in the other lane heading for another box, with a ball in it?  Likely, she will get quite anxious; that other dog is going to get a ball, and any ball is hers!  She must get to it!  She is at a high risk of crossing over to the other lane, distracting and possibly injuring the other dog, or herself, even if she does not direct her frustration at the other dog.  Or maybe she does aggress.  That’s obviously very bad news in any sport, and especially one where numerous dogs are in the ring, offleash, at once.  (Two written-up offenses result in expulsion from competition.)  With careful training, we can convince Lola that she still gets her ball no matter what is going on in the other lane, but it can take time, because this is quite an emotional issue for Lola.

What if a dog running before Lola in the lineup dropped his ball in the lane? It happens sometimes; it’s an error, and we try to train the dogs not to do it, but if they get a bad grip or bump a jump or the dog loses focus, the ball can drop early, between the jumps.  Not a problem for the dog who’s focused on getting back to his handler for a tug, but a huge problem for Lola, who may skid to a halt, trying to pick up the other ball, leaving the lane, preventing another dog from running and causing the heat to be called off and her team to lose that heat.  We can teach Lola to ignore loose balls on the ground in the lane, but it takes work.

Now, what about the part where Lola has to carry this ball back to her handler?  Her handler is on the far side of the start/finish line, along with seven other handlers and dogs.  Every one of those dogs may have carried a ball back over that line, and then dropped it.  The balls rolled around… that is what they do.  Lola is now confronted with a plethora of ball options.  Being Lola, she loses it!  She pounces on one, then another.  She runs in front of a running dog to get to a third ball, oblivious of her handler calling her back.  She might get into a fight with another ball crazy dog after the same target.  It takes her handler extra long minutes to regain attention and control, to get the ball out of Lola’s mouth, and to get her set for the next heat.  We can teach Lola to give up the ball even in the height of arousal with a lot of competition, but it can be really difficult because we are trying to contradict a very intense instinctive behavior for her.

Often, Lola is not even having fun.  Her ball obsession is so intense that having a million rules around what  balls she can and can’t have, and when, and what she has to do to get them, when other dogs want them, is very stressful.  Meanwhile, she is tripping dogs and people, or smashing into them in her fanatical pursuit.  She’s costing the team time if not throwing the entire heat with a technical error.  She’s delaying starts.  People are getting frustrated with her.  She’s stressed!

Compare Lola with Cedi, my wonderful retired flyball Aussie.  Cedi loves balls, but she’s not obsessed with them, and she really loves her soft disc, too.  Cedi waits quietly at the start line.  She runs to her box, brings the ball back, and drops it to get to play with her frisbee.  Because she could think around the ball, she retains a very pretty box turn.  She does not leave the lane to pick up stray balls, nor does she get agitated if another dog heads for her box.  (And I should add that Cedi is a grumpy, dog-reactive resource guarder in real life.)  She runs down fast, and back faster, because the best part of the game awaits her in the runback:  A game of tug with me and her soft disc.

Flyball is a team sport.  It is a complicated, multi-skill game.  The hardest skills for most dogs are the box turn and staying on task around other dogs running straight at them or close past them, or playing tug violently a couple of feet away.  The ball retrieve is just one part of it, and it is much easier to train to a regular old dog (not ball-obsessed) to do a simple obedience retrieve than it is to train a ball-obsessed dog to do all those other skills in the presence of balls.  Flyball is not a ball game!

Ball-obsessed dogs remain welcome in my classes.  Some owners get discouraged and quit.  Some, like the owner of the real-life Lola (an absolutely wonderful dog — and owner — by the way!) stick with it.  Lola, a happy, intelligent, and athletic dog, might possibly earn her very first points in just two weeks.  It has been more than two years since she started training with me, and about 20 of those months have been spent in simply teaching her to be able to do the whole routine with balls around.  Most people do not want to go through this… and I don’t blame them.  If only folks with tug-obsessed dogs thought flyball was great for their pets!  That would make this all so much easier.  On everyone, including Lola!

I read a tragic news article:  “Puppy Owner Pleads Not Guilty for Choking Animal to Death,” Associated Press, February 26, 2010.  According to the article, the owner admitted holding the 10-week old Labrador puppy down for 20 seconds after the puppy bit the owner’s girlfriend on the nose, causing what the Animal Services officer called “a minor scratch.”.  According to the officer, the puppy was taken to an emergency vet where he “couldn’t walk, was breathing poorly and had reddish saliva and blue gums.”  The puppy died.

Without further information, of course, we do not know what motivated the owner.  Perhaps he was really angry and lost his temper, badly enough to kill the puppy.  Certainly, this does not match the description given.

If we accept the description given, the owner deliberately held the puppy down, using quite a lot of force.  It appears this holding-down maneuver was intended as a consequence for a bite to the girlfriend’s nose.  It’s reasonable to conclude that the owner believed two things:  First, that the bite to the nose was a seriously unacceptable, even aggressive act that justified severe discipline; and second, that holding a puppy down with severe force is an appropriate way to discipline a dog, including a ten-week old puppy.

Both of these propositions are false.  First, puppies this age bite.  It’s developmentally normal and almost never “aggressive.”  (Serious aggression in puppies this age is so rare that it causes a flurry on trainer email lists if observed; many trainers simply never have seen it.)  Second, holding a dog or puppy down as a form of discipline is dangerous and unnecessary.

The danger can be to the person if the dog is an adult, particularly a large one.  Holding a large adult dog down puts the person’s face near the dog’s mouth, and a dog who panics, or decides not to put up with the human aggression, is very likely to target the face simply because it’s nearby.  It can also be dangerous to the dog, as in this case, where the size and strength disparity was extreme.

This type of discipline is unnecessary.  Dogs simply do not use “holding each other down” or “rolling other dogs over” as a way of punishing or enforcing status.  Wolves may do it, but they do so extremely rarely; but in any case, dogs are not wolves; and even if they were, we are not wolves and do not remotely understand how and when to apply this type of serious, dangerous consequence.  There are numerous other safer, saner and more effective ways to influence your dog’s behavior.

Where, then, would an owner get the idea this was a good tactic?  One popular dog training book by The Monks of New Skete advocated the “alpha roll” in its first edition, about three decades ago.  The second edition, much more recent, retracted that advice with an apology.  However, the original edition is still out there; I recently saw a client who’d done a few alpha rolls on her young dog, based on that very book, which she’d picked up secondhand.

Realistically, though, not many people read that book any more.  On the other hand, every week, millions of people watch a television star who often performs maneuvers very like the one that killed this puppy.  You can watch, on YouTube and the National Geographic website, as this entertainer grabs dogs and pushes or slams them onto the ground.  In some clips, you can literally see the dog’s tongue turning blue after some time on the ground.  No wonder many pet owners might get the idea that this is a potentially appropriate response to perceived aggression from the dog.

And, this same performer often delivers this type of consequence for behavior described as “dominant.”  I don’t doubt that he might describe normal puppy biting as “dominant.”  So again, it’s no wonder that a pet owner might be led to perceive normal puppy biting as “dominant,” and to respond in a way he’d seen repeatedly modeled on TV.

I do not know whether the owner of the dead puppy, who is being charged with felony animal abuse, has watched “The Dog Whisperer” on TV.  However, I don’t know one competent behavior consultant who did not immediately, on seeing this tragic news story, make the same guess I did.  This type of human behavior is repeatedly modeled by a charismatic, persuasive, and apparently effective role model on an extremely popular television show.  It is inevitable that someone was going to “try this at home” with disastrous results; and this puppy’s death might be that disastrous result.

When I got Nickel, my oldest dog, I heard about flyball and decided to take him to class.  He seemed to enjoy it, and did all right, and I had fun.  Since I knew little about structure, sports training, or related topics at the time, it took me a while to figure out that Nick actually was not cut out to dedicate his life to performance sports.  He’s plenty smart, but low-key, and his structure isn’t so great, so he’s not that fast or efficient.  He was satisfied after a few minutes and could not see the point in doing it another ten times.  We wanted to adopt a second dog as a companion for him, and so I gave myself a crash course in dog structure and started identifying traits I hoped to find in a dog who would really love to do flyball with me.

After a careful search, I found a tremendously athletic, drivey, and beautiful female Aussie in rescue.  In addition to these traits, I discovered, Cedi was also quite anxious and dog-reactive.  Between that and various other life circumstances, a couple of years passed before we were really ready to dive into flyball.  She had no trouble with the physical skills — running, jumping, box turn, ball carry.  The mental skills, staying focused on me and unreactive when there were a lot of dogs zooming around and barking, were much more difficult.  I got tremendous lessons in helping a reactive dog as I took her first through some basic obedience classes (no running, no balls), then some agility classes (running dogs, no balls!), and then back to flyball classes (running dogs carrying tennis balls).  She became a stellar athlete, running any position in our club’s “A” team, participating in the team’s record time that stood for a couple of years, and often double-running the whole weekend with nary a mistake.  One year she was even among the top 250 point-earning dogs in NAFA: North American Flyball Association.  Flyball reduced her reactivity.  She could walk around a tournament without a growl, and even just once-weekly practice took the edge off so she could live a comfortable life.

When she was six, she and Nickel and I moved from California to Oregon.  I’d planned to join a team an hour from the house I bought, but this turned out to be a challenge.  There was no competition-oriented team closer to me, so I started one myself.  I then realized that no one in the area seemed to know how to teach a good box turn.  Though I’d only assisted at my old club’s classes, I felt I had something to offer in this new market, so I started teaching classes.  Meanwhile, it was time to add a puppy to my family, so I brought home Mellie, a Border Collie from a carefully researched breeder.  I knew so much more now; it was so much easier to teach flyball to Mellie!

Flyball is now one of the main things I do for fun.  My club, the Portland Tail Blazers, has grown slowly with a solid core of members who get along reasonably well and share goals of training well and competing with dedication and integrity.  Flyball is a team sport, and attending tournaments can be grueling.  Tournament days can be long, eight to ten or sometimes even twelve or more hours.  In our region, the majority of the tournaments are held in British Columbia, at least a five or six-hour drive from Portland.  Tournament days are a combination of “hurry up and wait” punctuated by several ten-minute intervals of intense excitement when your race comes up on the schedule.  Exhaustion and stress can make it harder to get along even with people you get along well with!  Having a wonderful group makes all the difference.

I should add that there is also some “non-team” flyball now.  The newer league, United Flyball League International offers singles and pairs racing in addition to the regular four-dog format.  Unaffiliated dogs can race, and the singles format allows for very accurately timed speed trials, making for some fun statistics.

In addition, we get to do some fun stuff closer to home.  We receive quite a few requests to do demonstrations at events such as dog park fun days, and every year we participate in a number of these.  Our favorite demo opportunity is half time at Portland Trail Blazers games.  The staff get our equipment onto the court and set up in about two minutes; then we race six or seven rapid-fire heats; and then we get out.  We often make the races a little closer for entertainment purposes, and put a little verve into our tug and disc rewards in the runback.  A little showmanship doesn’t hurt!  We’ve played to a full house a few times, but even when the game is not sold out, it’s exhilarating to feel the energy of around 20,000 spectators.  The dogs seem totally unfazed.  They see their jumps and box and know what to do!  The more social ones often get to pose for pictures with Blazer Girls, and Spam, the tiny Staffordshire Bull Terrier, invariably gets a huge amount of attention as she looks like a toy pit bull. (Spam is the model for our club logo, and one of the reasons we take a firm anti-BSL stance.)

Although flyball seems far removed from my “real work” of being a dog behavior consultant, it’s actually been a big help for me.  In flyball contexts, I work with some very intense, aroused, high-drive dogs.  I’ve learned to tug like a pro, and how to use and control tug (and other intense play rewards) in a safe and positive way.  Flyball directly presents the issue of a dog being able to focus and behave safely in the immediate presence of things that often trigger reactive or aggressive behavior:  Running dogs, growling or barking dogs, people who run, yell, or wave stuff around, and so on.  A flyball dog must pass another teammate nose to nose with both running near top speed, in a lane two feet wide.  Being able to do this really helps dogs stop worrying so much about a dog invading their space!  All this experience has built my confidence in working with dogs that intimidate many people (including some trainers) and has given me tools to help them more effectively.  I just talked to a new client who specifically sought me out because I had experience with high-drive, reactive working dogs.

Of course, as Nickel taught me early on, flyball is not the right sport for every dog. In my next blog, I will talk about another specific type of dog that, surprisingly, may not be a good candidate for this sport.

Do you participate in flyball with your dog? What is it like to train your dog for flyball? Do you enjoy competitions? What is your favorite thing about this sport? What’s your least favorite? I can’t wait to hear from fellow flyball enthusiasts!

Our afternoon at the Entlefest involved participating in an experiment:  For the first time, a breed-specific European-style working temperament test was administered to Entlebuchers as part of a three-part breeding fitness exam.  (The other two parts involve structure and movement.)  Because so many owners wanted to participate, we divided the duties.  My wonderful assistant Jett judged the second half of the test, while I judged the first half.  The club committee had set up the test grounds very efficiently and practiced the choreography to move dogs through as quickly as possible.  In the end, about thirty dogs participated (nearly twice the number originally signed up).  We quit right after the sun had disappeared below the California horizon.

The test first involves a series of exercises to see how bonded the dog is to the handler and how the dog responds to social pressure.  We had the dog and owner walk through a crowd, walk along alone together, play together with and without toys, and sit quietly while a circle of people closed in.  We then had a helper hold the dog’s leash while the handler went to hide behind a tree at least 80 feet away.  We noted the dog’s responses both when separated from handler and when released to find the handler.  Most of the dogs watched intently as their handlers walked away (peering through a forest of knees) and made straight for the handler on being released.  It was quite windy and these dogs uniformly followed an arcing path downwind of the handler’s actual footsteps. It was neat to see such obvious nosework in action.

In the second half of the test, the dogs were exposed to a series of visual, aural and tactile challenges.  Most of the dogs handled these quite well, with perhaps an occasional startle if a sound came from behind.  Last was the defense test:  First a scary stranger approached while the dog sat with his person; second, the handler disappeared and scary strangers ran around waving sticks while the dog sat tethered.  Again, most of the dogs were remarkably stolid about this.  One moved into position between handler and stranger, and one (whose owner has been working on his reactivity for years) did some barking in both situations.  These Entles seemed less reactive and more thoughtful and quiet than many herding breed dogs of my acquaintance.  I was impressed.

This test was based on the test used by the Swiss Entlebucher club.  There, dogs must pass the test to earn breeding privileges.  Here, it is being used as a tool to help owners understand and evaluate their dogs.  No one passed or failed; each owner got a copy of his or her evaluation sheet with comments including training recommendations.  Only a very few dogs displayed really troubling temperament issues (fearfulness).  I found myself wondering, “Why is that dog intact?” in some cases, and “why on earth is that dog neutered?  He’s wonderful!” in others.  Of course owners have all sorts of reasons to neuter or not neuter other than breeding so I kept my questions to myself!

I see a breed club faced, early on, with a choice that has plagued many other working breed clubs.  A few of the dogs we saw were real working dogs: high in drive, tough, intense, intelligent and persistent.  They are not always the easiest pets!  Many were much lower-key and would not make good workers, but were wonderful companions.  Should breeders try to breed for versatility? Split the  breed into two lines?  Give up on working ability since it’s unlikely this breed will be called upon to work in the US?  Acquiesce to a split with the Swiss club’s breeding goals?  Aussie, Border Collie, Doberman, German Shepherd, Lab, and other breeders struggle with questions of this type all the time and I don’t know that there is any one right answer.  I wish these dedicated Entlenuts good luck in figuring it out.

At dinner, immediately after, we enjoyed yummy food and ice cream sandwiches for dessert (I swear, this was just a happy accident).  After covering some club business, our hostesses re-introduced us to the gathered Entle fanciers.  We were stunned and blushing when polite applause turned into a standing ovation.  After that, we went to bed feeling very cheerful!

The drive home was a lot like the drive to Tahoe… minus the police stop.  We rested in Tulelake to run the dogs in a schoolyard.  There, a group of preadolescent kids joined us on their bikes and after showing some initial timidity, got interested in throwing tennis balls for the dogs.  They were amazed by the fetching and had a positive dog experience.  When we drove away, we spotted this little “gang” a couple of streets away and we all waved goodbye at each other.  I spent the rest of the drive thinking that I could look up the significance of this or that geological formation “if only I had an iPhone!”  We ran into some intense snow showers passing over the Cascades and made it home an hour or two after dark.  All in all, we had a great time, but were exhausted and we’re still recovering.  (The dogs are fine.  They do not need any more recovery time, please!)

Last week I traveled to Lake Tahoe to give a half-day presentation on Control Unleashed at the Entlefest.  I realize this requires some translation.  The Entlefest is the annual national breed club meeting for the National Entelbucher Mountain Dog Association.  An Entlebucher (Entlebuch Sennenhund) is one of the four Swiss Mountain dog breeds.  Many are familiar with the two bigger members of this group, the Bernese Mountain Dog and the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.  The smaller members, the Entlebucher and the Appenzeller, are much less common and less well known.  The Entlebucher is rather low slung and powerful, and was specially bred to gently but firmly herd prized Swiss dairy cattle without knocking them off the numerous cliffs.  Entles in the US do not do much herding, but enjoy lives as pets, obedience dogs and sports companions (there are a few very fast flyball Entles).  The question most often answered by Entle owners is, “Is that a Beagle/Rottweiler mix?”

I was honored to be asked to present.  CU author and developer Leslie McDevitt personally recommended me to the NEMDA members who inquired many months ago.  Committee members Linda Planting and Leelee Stefanki were very patient with me as we worked out scheduling, programming, and accommodations.  I was even more excited when they asked me if I could add another activity for the afternoon of the same day:  Judging a European-style working temperament test for the dogs in attendance.  I will write about that separately.

Along with able assistant Jett Wyatt, her Aussie, Kiva, and my Border Collie, Mellie, we drove the 600 miles from Portland to Lake Tahoe the day before the presentation.  It was tiring and I’m very grateful to the nice policeman who decided not to ticket me for speeding near the Lava Beds National Monument.  We were hoping to arrive at the lake before dark so the dogs could have a good run, but we didn’t quite make it.  We stopped in Carson City to buy a good flashlight and the dogs got a short ramble on the beach before we collapsed.

The presentation started at 8:30, and I spent the first 20 minutes arranging the participants so that their dogs were in the most restful spots possible.  A very big part of CU is learning to set up your dog’s environment to reduce arousal and stress.  Instead of allowing participants to put crates in rows along the tent walls, I had them spread crates out to minimize strange-dog proximity stress.  Then we got started.

We had anticipated about a dozen working dogs, but in the end, nineteen dogs’ owners wanted to participate.  I decided to arrange things so that every owner got at least one participatory slot.  I selected six dogs to work all the way through (three sections), and then divided the rest into thirds and assigned each third to one of the three sections.  The owners’ questionnaire responses were invaluable in helping me to select which section would most suit each dog.

I talked about theory for about 15 minutes and then we launched into the first working section, which was about body language.  As each dog entered the “box” (the working space in CU), the audience called out their guesses about how each dog was feeling.  I was thrilled that so many members readily identified sniffing and lip licking as signs of stress.  We added some more signs for them to recognize and apply:  stretching, shaking off, yawning, and so on.  The last demonstration was possible because one of the applicants for a working spot had an elderly dog who’d gone blind.  We had her interact with a stable younger dog so that the audience could see what the younger dog did when the older one inevitable was unable to recognize early body language and continued into the younger one’s personal space bubble.  The older dog handled herself fine and I hope the lesson was clear:  Dogs are communicating by tiny body language signals all the time!  A lot is happening before there is a growl or snap.

We then moved onto demonstrating the Give Me A Break game.  This game is hard to visualize from reading the book.  We had the usual range of dogs who were Velcroed to their owners to dogs who needed really long breaks.  The audience was getting good at telling sniffing for information apart from stress (displacement) sniffing.  All the dogs shortened their “breaks” on their own and the owners started to feel the value of allowing the dogs to choose attention rather than trying to compel it.

Last we examined the Look At That game.  Probably the best known of the CU games, it’s a very useful one.  We supplied distractions to suit each dog as best we could.  I ran around one dog who sometimes grabs running children.  (She was great, very hard to distract!)  We brought in Mellie to tug, walk, or run near some of the other dogs.  We banged a crate door and dragged a chair for one dog who startles at sudden noises.  Finally, we worked with a formidable titled athlete who is obsessed with tennis balls.  We showed how we could get him to “LAT Tennis Ball” as a way to get him to leave it alone.  After five minutes, he was looking at the ball as Jett and I rolled it back and forth between us just a few feet away.  His owner was impressed and could see how to expand this result to a more normal situation.

With this dog I also detoured for a few minutes to show how to teach a good Out with a tug.  He is a mature, powerful dog who has spent 6 years being very hard to get toys from.  In five repetitions I had him releasing his tug extremely readily and was starting to put a cue on it.  Once I recovered my breath (we were at 6200 feet!), I could see that quite a few audience members were busy taking notes.

We wound up when the lunch crew was busy setting up tables.  Our tent had become the lunch tent!  People had lots of questions and I finally had to defer so we could give our hardworking dogs a break before the afternoon activities started up.  We were thrilled to notice one of the attendees playing Look At That dog in the parking lot.  I’m certain he’s on the way to agility success with his beautiful, athletic young Entle boy.

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

When we talk to clients about what we’ll do at our initial consultation, we explain that we’ll take some history about the situation, discuss management that needs to be put in place to ease tensions and help the training work better, and then talk about and actually start training your dog to exhibit more desirable behavior.  I imagine that clients are often eager to get to the training part, thinking that that’s the “meat” of what we do.

But sometimes, the most important piece of the session is the management piece.  That can happen for several reasons.  One, the behavior modification may really be very hard for the owner to accomplish.  Someone who *must* work a full time schedule out of the home may not be able to implement a full separation anxiety protocol; in that case, doggie day care, a management solution, might be the most effective way for dog and owner to get relief from the paralyzing anxiety of this condition.  Two, some behavioral issues are not really amenable to behavior modification.  We can change any behavior, but that doesn’t mean we can always change it enough to make the critical difference.  For example, we can generally teach a very predatory dog to recall off of chasing prey… but not to choose not to hunt prey when there’s no one around to call the dog!  In that case, keeping the dog from being around prey when unsupervised is critical.

Several months ago I saw a client who had two young adult dogs of the same breed.  The two dogs were fighting.  Doggie housemates who bicker aren’t uncommon.  What *is* uncommon is when one is trying to kill the other,  In this case, the female had been in numerous scary fights with the male.  In the next-to-last fight, she’d bitten his back foot badly.  In the last fight (before the owner called me for help) she’d slashed up his inner thigh.  The severity and location of the wounds, and the nature of the fighting (she was silent and extremely fast when she attacked him) told me that she was just trying to sharpen her skills so that she could kill him.  (Killing takes practice, especially when there isn’t much size difference between predator and prey.)  We talked over options, including the possibility of medication, but I had to tell the owner honestly that this kind of behavior was not really amenable to behavior modification.  We talked about how terrified the male dog must feel a lot of the time.  She started separating them and trying to add enrichment to relieve some stress, but we both knew there was only one real answer.  She found a new home for the female — who was very people friendly and was even appropriately friendly with strange dogs — in a mansion with a huge yard.

She called me back recently because the male was exhibiting some breed-typical dog reactivity and other mild aggression.  (By the way, these were *not* pit bulls, but a relatively rare breed which I’m not mentioning to protect my client’s privacy.)  When I got to her house, I saw a dog I’d never met before.  The male was cheerful and playful with me, engaging in games of tug and fetch.  When I introduced him to my helper dog, he had one moment of a bad reaction, but pulled himself together remarkably quickly.  My assessment was that he’s really a pretty normal dog who has recovered extremely well from what must, essentially, be a pretty hideous case of post-traumatic stress disorder.  We went over how to work with the mild food guarding, dog reactivity, and handling sensitivity and I was able to normalize the dog’s behavior and reassure the client about the prognosis.

None of the behavior we worked on at the recent appointment had even emerged before.  At that time, this dog was afraid for his life and was very shut down.  And the only answer for that problem, a much more severe one, was management.  Some owners choose to keep both dogs when this happens, and to simply keep them separated (or struggle endlessly to re-introduce them).  I was, frankly, relieved that this owner decided against that quickly, because it’s an exhausting and heartbreaking process for all concerned.  (However, if owners I’m working with make that choice, I will support them to the best of my ability!)  But the payoff here is obvious: Her boy is a new dog, doing normal doggie stuff, and needing what is (from my point of view) relatively straightforward behavior modification to heal some of the wounds left by his traumatic puppyhood.

Sometimes we’re going to tell you that the best choice is management.  A 12 year old dog exhibiting extreme predation toward the cats is probably not a good candidate for extensive behavior modification.  The behavior modification will take the rest of the dog’s natural life.  Management makes more sense.  Part of what you’re paying us for isn’t just our ability to modify behavior, but to know when it does and doesn’t make sense to modify behavior.  We know which things are typically easy to change… which are nearly impossible.  We also have lots of ideas about management that may smooth the process and enrich your ideas.  It’s not just about knowing how to do it, but knowing what to do, and when, and when not to.

I teach puppy classes.  It’s a weird category, and people have different expectations from a class called “puppy class” or “puppy kindergarten.”  If you take my flyball class, you expect to be taught how to do flyball and help teach your dog to do flyball.  If you take a class in competition obedience, you know you’ll be learning, among other things, how to teach your dog to heel, front, finish, sit, stand, down and stay.  What is puppy class for?  Doesn’t your puppy already know how to be a puppy?

Yes – in fact, for many, that’s the problem!  They want help in teaching their puppy to be clean in the house, not bite them with that mouthful of needles, and not play tug with their pants leg.  Also, it would be nice if the pupper didn’t scream when put in his crate.  But at the same time, puppy owners’ last class was often a more traditional obedience class, and perhaps without thinking about it, they expect to do some sits, downs, stays, and heeling.

Truthfully, what I could cover in a puppy class would fill pages of bulleted lists.  Puppies are sponges! The trouble is… well, there just isn’t time to teach them “everything.”  We have an hour a week for perhaps six weeks.  So my goal is to pare it down to a list of Stuff That Is Critical to Learn Now and Which They Quite Possibly Won’t Learn Anywhere Else In Time.

What is this “now” – this “in time”?  Puppies are in a critical developmental period that ends around 13-16 weeks, depending on which study you read and on the breed and the individual puppy.  If the puppy has not learned certain kinds of skills by this age, she is at a much higher risk of being fearful of new things, and, as we know, fear generates all sorts of uncomfortable and difficult consequences such as inability to go out into the world, or aggression, or stress-related illnesses.  Some pups are genetically bolder than others, but if we can get these skills installed by, we’ll call it 14 weeks for purposes of this entry, then we’ve maximized their potential.

During this period, puppies are learning the two most essential skills in life:

1. How to relate socially to other animals of her own species and in the case of dogs, with humans, their “substitute” packmates. Technically, this is what is known as socialization though dog people tend to use the word more broadly

2. How to handle novel things in their environments.

You’ll notice that sit, down, and heel are not on this list.

A class may be our only chance to teach the puppies’ owners how to teach their pups new skills and to solve problems that are bound to arise.  Many dogs’ only class ever is Puppy Kindergarten, so it’s our opportunity to help owners understand learning, teaching and management.

Actually, skills like sit and heel, or tricks like shake or roll over can be taught and learned any time in life.  We teach some of them in puppy class because they are useful skills for other purposes.  A puppy who has a nice solid sit isn’t eating the couch or jumping on visitors!  Also, a peppy sit is a great tool for the pup to learn to use to say “please,” to politely request interaction.  We can use “sit” to start making life rewards contingent on good behavior (“nothing in life is free” or “sit to say please” programs).  So yes, we do teach sit (and down).

Socialization doesn’t mean taking your pup out willy-nilly and throwing the world at him.  Just as he is very sensitive to learning good things right now, he is also going to be sensitive to bad experiences.  He’s more likely to have one-trial learning; for a genetically skittish dog, one bad experience with a man with a hat can make for years of fear of men with hats.  Class should expose puppies to some new and odd things in a brief, upbeat and yet low-key way.  Puppies can have an opportunity to wander onto and off of odd flooring or tippy surfaces.  They can notice wheelchairs or crutches being used, or hats being worn.  They can meet all the other owners in the class.  But they won’t be forced to deal with anything scary to them.  “Pass the puppy” is a good game if it allows the puppy to check out new folks at his own speed; it can be a disaster if a terrified, squirming pup is forcibly held by a series of strangers!  And look for the instructor to explain how to do more socializing out in the world: in a way that’s not scary, but is thorough.  The instructor should mention that this is time-sensitive and suggest possible stimuli to expose the puppies to (trains, people of different races than its owners, people who use crutches or walk with a limp, crowds, cows, grass, concrete, and dogs with many different looks).  She or he should also bring some stimuli into the class so the puppies are correctly exposed in the class, and the owners can see correct exposure techniques modeled.  The instructor should help the owners observe the pups’ body language to identify fearful or aggressive responses so that owners can respond quickly in the real world.

What about puppy play?  It’s important for puppies to play with puppies, but it’s not important for them to do it a lot.  In play, they learn a lot about inhibiting their bites; we think that’s probably why Mother Nature gave them all those horrible needles!  They also learn that if they play too rough, another puppy might get mad and retaliate, or might leave… or that the human in charge will end the game.  We need our dogs to care about us and respond to us under conditions of distraction, so play should always be serving multiple purposes: In addition to allowing the pups to say hi, burn off steam, and practice their inter-dog skills, it can be used to allow the owners to practice recalls from a big distraction, and can be used as a reward for good behavior.  If I can show an owner with a socially driven puppy how we can use releasing the pup to go play with her boyfriend as a reward for sitting when she really, really wants to get away and go do her thing, then the pup’s just learned a lesson in self-control… and the owner’s just learned a huge lesson about controlling reinforcers!

The one obedience skill I try to emphasize in puppy class, besides a snappy sit, is loose leash walking.  Why?  Because it is a huge issue for owners once the pups get a little stronger, and once the dog has learned to pull, it is very, very hard for the dog unlearn.  Then we end up using some kind of aversive, and/or the dog stops getting walked, desocializes and perhaps ends up being rehomed.  It’s such a critical issue that I like to get everyone started early.

Finally, we use talking time in puppy class to go over basic strategies for accepting and handling puppy biting, housetraining, alone time, and puppy relations with young kids and elderly dogs in the home.  We also use talking time to gently restrain and massage the pups to help them relax.  Learning to relax out of arousal is a key adult skill and the earlier we help them learn it, the better they will function as adults.

First, we love TWAAW because it is very funny.  Food Lady is just a funny writer and her great photos really give her lots of opportunities for humor.

Second, we love TWAAW because there are lots of great photos of dogs being dogs.  Food Lady does not hide the fact that Piper is, well, a bitch.  We love Mad Teeth ™.  We love the bizarre lip configurations when dogs shake off.  We love the photos of the Woofs interacting with strange dogs, too.

Third, we love TWAAW for a reason that is a little harder to describe.  There are lots of great dog photos (though fantastic quality photos of dogs out just doing their doggie thing are rarer), and there are lots of great writers who tell us truthful things about dogs, and there are lots of people who are very funny about their dogs… but almost no one is all three.

Food Lady often puts words or thoughts in her dogs’ mouths (or heads).  And sometimes these are not thoughts a dog’s lemon-sized brain could generate.  But these are usually obvious; Food Lady knows, and lets us know, that she’s joking.

One great example is in the entry called Conversations with the Dogs (Sept. 19, 2008). Food Lady asks Tweed what is the matter.  Tweed says:  “I see dead people.”  We can be pretty sure that no one really thinks Tweed is seeing dead people… though he does look a bit spooked for some no-doubt legitimate canine reason.  Because Tweed’s expression does look like a dog might look if he could see dead people, and because we all know that Food Lady isn’t silly enough to think Tweed is actually seeing dead people, we can enjoy the wonderful humor of this piece without being bothered by fussing about misleading anthropomorphism.

And people who are reading the entry without having any concerns whatever about whether Food Lady is anthropomorphizing will still realize that she is making up a fun story, not seriously attributing a human and psychic act to Tweed.

I guess I love this because so much of what is written about dogs out there is, well, wrong.  And sometimes damaging.  As a professional dog behavior consultant who constantly deals with the fallout of faulty and damaging beliefs, and who rarely finds dog humor funny simply because it tends to contain these damaging beliefs (about which I am now highly sensitized), it is a tremendous relief to be able to laugh at dog humor that doesn’t promulgate harmful beliefs.  Yeah.

Go Food Lady!