Dogs And One Idea

It isn't unusual that some dog problems just need one new good idea. 

I've seen that countless times.

Plan accordingly.  

What Do Dogs Do With Their Time?

Have you ever considered what dogs do with their time? Their activities can be divided into two types. They are either 1.) “looking” to satisfy their biological needs or avoid danger; or 2.) processing and making adaptive responses to the stimuli they internally generate or encounter along the way... (MORE)

Dogs And Learning Curves

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) came up with the concept of a “learning curve” while studying the effects of repeated performances of a task and its effect on memory. Generally, the more an activity is practiced, the more likely it will be remembered and repeated. Thus, you could plot the increased performance on a Cartesian graph, with one plane, call it the X axis representing the number of learning repetitions, and the other plane, call it the Y axis, representing the correctly performed repetitions, and a line that slopes upwards between the two axes representing the improved performance of that skill over time. Similarly, Ebbinghaus postulated a “forgetting curve”, which showed the opposite effect, which shows the down sloping curve, representing the deterioration of the skill when practice stops over time... (MORE)

Dogs And Christmas Safety

Can you ensure the safety of your dogs during Christmas? 

For example, are relatives bringing their dogs over to your place?

 

Are all your relatives good with your dogs? 

 

Have you sent out rules to parents with kids as to how to treat your dogs? Are you sure that everyone will treat your dogs safely?

 

Have you a plan for securing your escape points, such as the front door and side gates, including rules for everyone?

 

What about keeping the dogs out of the presents and wrapping paper?

 

What about the cat? Have you got a plan to keep your cat safe from your dogs?

 

Have you a plan to keep forbidden foods from your dogs?

 

How about the plan for potentially poisonous plants?

 

If you are taking your dogs with you to someone else’s house, have you a similar set of plans and rules? And do you have non-slip collars (such as a Martingale collar) and leashes for all the dogs as they ride in the car and go from car to house and back again?

 

IF NOT…

 

Plan accordingly… NOW 

Preparing Dogs For Babies

I found out that some past students, husband and wife, are expecting a baby! That’s awesome news. They are going to be great parents.

Good thing they have diligently trained both of their small dogs. I don’t foresee any problems at all.

 

I see way too many couples wait until the last months to figure out they need to do something with their dogs before the baby arrives. 

 

Look, you are going to have your hands full those first couple of months after delivery. Getting your dogs ready well in advance makes plenty of sense. 

 

Plan accordingly. 

Dogs And Anticipation

We set a lot of dogs up for failure by building unrealistic expectations about our dogs and in our dogs. An anticipation is a learned, sustained belief in some kind of good or bad outcome. So, let’s take that apart... 

Christmas Puppies

YES, it is GOOD to get a Christmas Puppy. It is also GOOD to adopt an ADULT DOG. 

IF you want a dog, and will provide a commitment to a good life for that dog... don't be a GRINCH, go for it!

Dogs And Managed Intake Animal Control Shelters

The latest fad in animal control operations is selling the public on the idea of "managed intake", meaning the shelter only takes in a certain amount of animals, and tells the public if they find strays to either hold them or release them back onto the streets. The rationale has even gone so far to say that most animals find their way back home if you let them loose. 

Do you really believe that?

Is managed intake is a moral solution? Is it an excuse not to modernize and improve operations?

Is it a sick joke, especially for lost dogs and desperate owners? What if stray dog populations are exploding across the country? Even when state laws mandate the intake of strays by animal control, is it moral to find ways of working around those laws with administrative rules?

Are there not other solutions? Aren't there professionals who have the management skills to turn this around? Is it easier to cover up problems and avoid the pain of reforms while at the same time collecting paychecks that somehow confirm incompetency and the ability to cover up what is really wrong? We should also be asking if this another reason why they can't keep volunteers, often those who complain when they see these atrocities. Is it easier to just shut them up? Is it easier to build bigger shelters that are really just great big warehouses to process euthanasias? 

Just my humble opinion... managed intake is an ineffective and inhumane answer.

Plan accordingly. 

Why Should You Train Puppies?

What have I seen regarding the differences, other than physical, between puppies and adult dogs? When I evaluate a puppy, or any dog, I am looking at the cumulative past experience that dog has had, which will be the interplay between innate abilities, maturity, and acquired learning. 

Dog Training And Suppression

I see way too many dog training programs that rely on suppressing everything that makes a dog a dog. 

For example, novice dog training classes that are focused on immobilizing dogs on a dog cot. Or classes that focus primarily on forcing dogs to do long Down Stays and leash walking, all based upon using Negative Reinforcement and Punishment. 

I had a student with a 12 week old puppy. The significant other decided the puppy was too active, so they sent the pup to a board and train program that focused upon the above. Yes, the dog came back less active. But was that fair to a young puppy? Can't be a puppy, just needs to lay there and not do anything?

I do not support the idea of trying to make a puppy act like an old dog. Something is wrong when people want this result, and something is wrong with a dog trainer that would agree to do that with a puppy.... IMHO... 

Plan accordingly. 

Australian Cattle Dogs?

I get the most interesting stories from students that have Australian Cattle Dogs. They are super smart. You hear about crazy stuff they figure out. I like them.

They aren't everyone's cup of tea, however. Do your homework. Some can be quite suspicious of strangers, and that might not work for your lifestyle and home. 

Dogs And Tolman's Cognitive Maps

In 1948, Edward Tolman proposed the idea of cognitive maps. The concept was that the brain learned about spacial relationships, such as navigating a maze, without reinforcement. Such talk at the time, was considered heresy by the S-R (stimulus-response) crowd, and his work was forgotten. Eventually, scientists took a second look at his ideas and decided they were quite relevant. 

 

Here is the basic idea. Take a population of rats, put them each in mazes and let them look around. Later, take each of those rats, put them at any entry of the maze, and let them figure out that in a certain room in the maze, there is food. Take a second population of rats, put them in mazes they have never been in before, and let them figure out that in a certain room, there is food. Now have the rats enter other doorways to the same mazes and have them find the room with the food. Result? The rats that had the chance to look around first learned to finish the mazes faster. Some of the second group of rats never learned how to navigate the maze test.

 

Why is this important? Because the S-R crowd said all learning required some kind of reinforcement first. Reward for going this way, punishment for going that way. The map idea meant that an animal could learn about an area without needing reinforcement to find their way.

 

Now, a real-world example. I think I have all the details correctly remembered. A student of mine took her dog for a regular 1-mile walk to a nearby park frequently. One day, at the park, she tied the dog's leash to a chair and went into a building to buy an ice cream treat. While she was in there, something startled the dog, it moved, the chair fell over, that startled her, and she ran off. She saw her dog running away with the chair bouncing along behind her. She tried calling her to Come, but she was too afraid. The chair eventually became untangled from the leash, but the dog kept running. 

 

The owner was in a panic as she ran after her dog, but try as she could, she was too fast, and she lost her. The owner looked all over the park. Discouraged, she went home. Her dog was at her front door. This dog had not only run across the park at an angle that the dog had never walked before, but it had also run across a very busy road, and through her neighborhood, and made it home. 

 

That dog, I'm 100% convinced, had developed a mental map of the area and that facilitated how that dog got home. 

 

This idea of mental maps is why I am a big advocate for taking your dog for walks all over your neighborhood. Think of it this way. If it was relatively safe to allow your dog to roam the neighborhood, your dog would most likely come home every day. They would know the neighborhood. Outdoor cats do this all the time. In suburban and urban areas, it isn't safe to do this, but a dog can still develop a mental map of where they live. I also believe that these walks shouldn't be like a military parade in which the dog can only just be glued to the owner's side and not have a chance to sniff and look around as you take a walk. 

 

Does this guarantee that your dog will find its way back home if it gets out the door? I can't guarantee that. But I do believe it probably increases the probability they can do so. I also think there are some exercises you can do with dogs to help them find home, such as off leash nature walks, tracking/ trailing training, hunting dog work, and some special obedience work (especially in the neighborhood). If a dog has never had a chance to discover how to find you, that hinders them. And if a dog has never had a chance to explore the neighborhood, I think the chances of them returning on their own are even less likely.

 

I had a second student that had something similar happen. In this case, the front door was left open by her roommate. Her little white fluffy dog got out into the neighborhood. We had been doing exercises prior to that in the lessons for her dog to find her. She called her dog several times, kept calling. The dog came home. She saw her pop her head around a corner over a block away, and it ran to her. I think all of this contributed to helping her dog come back. 

 

Something to consider. 

 

Both dogs were fine in the end. The first dog was a bit shaken up, but a few days of fun and the dog was back to normal. The second dog hadn't been through such a traumatic event, so there wasn't a need to help her recover.

Another French Bulldog Theft

Surveillance footage captured the dog-napping in action, and Jason Bitonio is now using it to publicly ask the thieves to bring home the 12-year-old French bulldog – no questions asked.

Got one? Thieves want it. 

 

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Falconry

I have studied dogs for a long time. Before I started training dogs professionally, I would check out library books about dogs… dog history, uses, breeding, breeds, training (of course), fiction stories, and such. I also purchased (and sometimes lost) a lot of dog related books and materials over the years.

But, even with all of that, there is no way I could, or anyone could, know everything about dogs. So, I was interested when my YouTube feed showed me a video about hunting small game using dogs and falcons. I didn’t know that was a thing. I picked up a few interesting details, such as types of dogs. For example, some dogs might be vulnerable to a large raptor. The bird might be a danger to the dog. Didn’t consider that. There was a discussion of this person’s preferred breeds. I was surprised a bit on the choices. That was also interesting. Then I found some other videos of hunters using other bird species with dogs. All very fascinating.

 

In AZ, small dogs are at risk of being attacked by large birds, such as owls and hawks. But in other parts of the world, there are some very large bird species used for hunting that could take down an animal much larger than just a small dog or large rabbit. So, one of these birds could most likely kill a German Shepherd sized dog. That's amazing.

 

I haven’t studied if you need to raise the dogs and birds together from a young age to get them to accept one another. I’m guessing that plays a role. I’m sure there are other things you must do for the dog to not mess with or hurt the bird, and vice versa.

 

I know dogs have been used to hunt game for centuries, same with birds. In modern society, we don’t see much of that. In fact, city folk try to ban hunting using dogs. Ignorant people detached from nature. But in the Old World, hunting is still practiced the old ways. It is clearly a specialty, probably taught old style from father to son. I'm sure you couldn’t successfully hunt this way without experience and learning, and I'm guessing there aren't such classes at the local box pet store in those rural areas! I might take some time to learn more. Not that I’m planning on hunting with a dog and a bird, but to understand the dynamics involved. I don’t know what I might uncover, some new insight that would be useful for what I do. 

 

Go check it out. Very interesting (to a dog enthusiast like me).

Renewal Of Dog Problems In Bad Home Environments

A person lives in a bad home environment, then leaves to get their life sorted out and live with another family that is loving and functional, our they kick out a bad person to get their life together. In the bad environment, this person was not at their best on many levels. In the new safe environment, they make healthy and appropriately adaptive changes, and the goodness happens. They then go back to living in that bad home environment, there is a good chance they will relapse into old behaviors that they never wanted to experience again. 

Part of changing from a bad home environment is setting up new ways of doing things. Good behaviors are possible and then rewarded appropriately. The other part is the new context in which these new ways are practiced. However, the context of any living situation greatly influences the success or failure of any such program. Thus, if you take someone who has changed for the better, and put them back into a bad situation, the old ways are very likely going to come back. In a similar way, if you bring someone into your home that has a lot of problems, they can undo all the good in your home.

An old saying talks about not putting new wine into old wine bottles. That destroys the new wine.

Likewise, let's say you take a dog out of a bad home situation, train the dog properly, and get everything sorted out. Now, put that dog back into that bad home situation, and all those fears, anxieties, bouts of aggression, obnoxious behaviors and actions, are all likely to sprout up again. Or, you take a well trained and adjusted dog, and bring in a bad influence, whether a dog or person, that has significant unresolved problems and you will most likely see your dog deteriorate and your family have lots of problems. This is partly why I am not a supporter of board and train programs because what might work at the trainer's facility doesn't necessarily carry over if the dog is put back into a home where the original conditions haven't changed for the better, or a new bad influence has come into the home, and the residents don't have the combined skills, motivation or care to treat the dog differently. 

Plan accordingly. 

Five Years Prison Time For A Dog Attack?

Morris' five loose dogs attacked and killed Stanley Hartt, 64, of Tucumcari as he walked near Mesalands Community College in February 2023.

There is a serious stray dog problem in many metro areas across the country. Some of these dogs don't have an owner. Some do. 

Let your dogs run stray? It's not smart. 

The owner is now going to prison for 5 years. 

Plan accordingly. 

The $100,000 Dog

Ever since I got into dogs, I've seen breeders tout their Elite Jedi Master Of The Universe Superhero Executive Protection Dog®, or some other such nonsense. They offer to sell these dogs for astronomical amounts. 

For the ones I've checked out... uh... what is going to happen one day when this dog doesn't do what it is claimed, someone dies, and the dog turns out to be the equivalent of a walking carpet?