Tag: Dog behaviour

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Hockey Dogs

sponge cake 2

Hockey training takes place on an oval in Fremantle. It is a multi-use oval with cricket nets and clubrooms shared by both the cricket and the hockey fraternities. For the cricket families it would be a refuge from the heat. Somewhere to get a cool drink and away from the sun. For the hockey mums it offers warmth and dryness.

The building is made from dark brown brick from the seventies or eighties. A building made when we watched Countdown and listened to ABBA. The textured masonry makes you think of a thick slice of chocolate sponge cake. It makes you long for a hot cup of tea. Inside old wooden honor boards with names in gold lettering line the walls. An asterisk beside a name signals the person is deceased. There are the ubiquitous stacks of stackable plastic chairs. Many families have spent hours huddled in here while young ones take to the turf. Already I can imagine being inside when it is cold out and the Juniors are playing, regardless of the weather.

Parents drive up with kids who exit high cars like horse-riders leaping off steeds – gripping mesh bags with their armour (shin pads and mouth guards) – hockey sticks like lances brandished by jousting knights. (Do you sense already I have sat here too long?)

Most parents leave. They have stuff to do. So do I. I could grocery shop. At least I could get toilet paper. I could clean my house. Instead I stay to watch. The children must run down the steep embankment to the field. It’s the kind of steepness you can’t walk down. It makes you run, like you are falling over yourself. The field is marked up with hula-hoops and cones for dribbling and pushing a hockey ball around. I watch from the upper bank by the car park and the charity bins, by the side of the chocolate sponge cake wall. An old swing set waits to be swung on.

Other cars pull up and dogs pile out. They are as exuberant as any child. Some dogs come to the park with owners on foot from nearby houses. It’s that time of night – dog walking time. Some owners bring plastic tennis ball throwers while others bring a tug rope. Some bring just their pooch (and a pocketful of yellow poop bags).

In one afternoon – a puppy dachshund, a Siberian husky, a newfie, two bostons, a bunch of poodles, a border collie, a blue stuffy, two whippets, a pit bull.

The dog walkers take to the perimeter. These are dogs used to the hockey. They don’t go for the ball. They’re not spooked by hoards of teenage girls, ponytails bobbing, running up and down the banks for fitness. The dogs have eyes for one another and perhaps their own ball. Politely, they sidle up and do the nose to tail greeting. They prance off. They ask another dog for a game of chase. A play bow is offered. Invitations are made. There is zooming and frolicking of the most infectious kind. Smile-inducing dog play. In a corner of the park a man flies a kite and the poodles are off and over; launching themselves into the air, barking, necks arched backwards and noses pointed up, wondering what that strange bird in the sky is doing so damned high.

As the sun begins to dip the swallows are out flying low across the grass hoping for an insect. They make for good chasing. They are, of course, uncatchable. It has never stopped a dog. If you have the energy to run, then run. If your legs hold out, keep running. Never give up, no matter that thing you are aiming to catch is a bird. Ceaseless trying – is a dog’s great attribute.

 

hockey dog 2

 

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Behaviour in Bankstown

I am attending the Association of Pet Dog Trainers in Bankstown, Sydney.

It is an annual conference where all the dog-lover types get together. There are trainers and breeders, animal shelter and rescue workers. There are people who work with animals for film and television, trainers for service dogs, and people who work with zoo and exotic animals and a handful of veterinarians and vet nurses. What we all have in common is the want and desire to see animals treated well and trained correctly. Positively. I get it, I do.

Let me generalise and tell you they are mostly women; older, with sensible hair, devoid of artificial colour, left to go grey because, well, who can be bothered with hair dye anyway. And it’s probably been tested on bunnies in the first place. They wear sensible slacks and sensible shoes and little or no makeup. They huddle around displays of interactive dog toys like, well, dog trainers.

It’s rare to be in a place with so many other dog-people. Granted, I am used to them, since I am a vet. But being here makes me one of them too. We are a bit obsessed. We are a bit preachy. Changing the world through dog training? Who are we kidding? Yet we persist. Amongst the converted it feels okay to be this excited about an interactive dog toy, and spending money on things a dog really just wants to chew up.

What I discover is that I am on the right track in regards to the advice I give owners with dogs with behaviour problems. I am following a well-worn path, laid down by the likes of Karen Pryor, Jean Donaldson and Patricia McConnell. These animal behaviourists follow a scientific approach. Behaviour is a response to environment. From the smallest to the largest creature – we all learn the same. If we perform behaviour and something good becomes of it, we are more likely to do it again. It’s all about reward.

With the rise of popular dog training shows, that do not follow positive reinforcement, there is a general public perception that dogs are out to dominant and rule the world. But dogs are not seeking worldwide domination – they are just looking for the tasty morsel and the easiest way to get it. They are sometimes scared and anxious, and lashing out at the unfamiliar because they have been unsocialised at critical periods in their development, or else have had a bad experience during these sensitive periods. Have we forgotten that dogs are animals? It seems to me, we often think dogs should be able to get over their distress without recognising that humans have irrational fears themselves where no amount of “buck-up, get over it” rids them of their alarm.

This was brought to light perfectly by one of the speakers, American trainer, Pat Miller. She flashed a series of large slides to the audience of three hundred dog-lovers. The images ranged from snakes to babies, to tattoos and praying mantises. Then she asked us to gauge our response – neutral, positive or negative. She asked if anyone had a very strong negative response to a picture. When it came to the praying mantis a woman sat with her hands covering her face. She was crying and shaking. The image needed to be removed before she could bring her hands down and tell her story. People comforted her as she got through it. She spoke of how, when she was a child, she saw a tree covered in hundreds of them. Perhaps the trunk appeared to be moving? She didn’t know if it was even a real image or something she had imagined. She could hardly speak of it. She was so terrified of the insect that she had sought therapy, which hadn’t been successful, and had once dropped her baby when confronted by the insect on the pavement. Pat Miller’s point was that there was no easy way for this woman to lose her fear. Even though she knew it to be irrational. She had an emotional response on seeing the insect. Something was triggering primal fear, deep in the amygdala of her brain. And this is akin to what dogs are going through when they are barking and lunging at the end of the lead in terror of the unfamiliar. They are having an emotional response. We cannot reach them then. No amount of correction or alternate behaviour training is accessible to a brain running on fear. Our job as trainers, she said was, to turn around the emotional response. Only then could we bring permanent change to behaviour.

So…not so easy.

And now let me tell you about my experience of Bankstown. It was mostly confined to the interior of the sports club. You know the kind of place. It has garish carpet that has had lots of beer spilled on it and still seems to ooze tobacco, even though people are no longer allowed to smoke inside. It has pokies. A section of the sports club is set aside for the glossy gaming machines that whiz and ping and occasionally burp coins. People sit in front of them, transfixed by the shiny baubles, and shove money at them. I guess it is the perfect example of intermittent reinforcement at work. Just like the dog, who sits beneath the toddler’s high chair, knowing that every now and then a treat is falling from above due to the baby’s low skilled cutlery control, the gambler keeps feeding the machine the coins, knowing somewhere down the track the windfall, however puny, is coming. Any minute now.

The ATM in the foyer has a sticker on it that tells punters the chance of winning is less than a million to one, and to THINK! of their families. Perhaps the print is too small.

It is its own whole world inside the sports club; there is a rain forest with brooks and streams and ferns and moss, and a Tuscan village, complete with cobblestones and drying washing from the high verandah window. In the cafe, while having breakfast, an elephant can be heard trumpeting.

One day, beginning to feel the claustrophobia of being inside the club, I decide to walk out into the street. I find myself in Vietnam. The grocers sell Asian vegetables and the meat shops are full of different cuts of meat. The fish shops have no fillets, just whole fish with fresh eyes agog. Old Vietnamese men in loose cotton shirts and long trousers play checkers on street corners smoking cigarettes. Small girls are done-up like princesses with shiny shoes and frill lace socks.

All roads and signs lead back to the sports club. It seems to suck people into its interior. It is cool. The perfect temperature. The drinks are cheap. Filled to the brim. There is entertainment for the kiddies. You can pretend you are really eating in Italy. You never need leave.

I find my spot back in the Grand Ballroom to hear more about the amygdala – the emotional centre of the brain. I love the word. Like Bollywood and Hippocampus. Like mandala and myriad. I think of it like a little hot spot in the brain – making mayhem. I think of my dislike (well come on, it’s almost phobic) to small and large rodents alike. It stems from a childhood experience when a mouse ran up my out-stretched arm, as I reached into a cavernous wheat bin, to fill a tin, in order to feed the chooks. It didn’t hurt me. It didn’t bite me. It wasn’t even that shocking, at the time. It just zoomed up my arm, leapt from my shoulder and disappeared. Now. It is their feet. Scurrying. It is their tails. Their hairless scaly tails. It is irrational. But they give me the creeps and I cannot handle the sight of them, the sound of them, or the knowing that they are nearby.

 

 

 

 

 

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Interspecies Love

I love my dog. Really. But I ask a lot of him for his species. We unfairly expect dogs to understand our intentions when our method of communicating is so different from theirs. I ask that he accept my adoring eye contact. I often hug him. I cuddle him as if he is a baby. These are not things that dogs, in general, as a species, appreciate. I talk to him like he can understand language; nuanced and particular. We show our teeth when we are happy, the exact opposite of what they do.

For a dog eye contact can be threatening. Between dogs, direct staring can be an invitation to fight. So look away from a dog that is feeling uncomfortable in your presence. Dogs prefer to greet one another side on, and sniff out each other’s rear ends. A dog that barges, head first into another’s space, is asking for trouble. Rude begets rude.

A wagging tail has been taught to children to signal a happy dog. But really a wagging tail is merely an invitation to engage. You need to assess the type of wag. The only truly safe wag is the windmill, whole bum wag; the one where the dog might be attempting to hula hoop, if he knew what such a thing was. The stiff tip wag of the upright tail can mean a fight is on its way. Beware the dog that approaches, ears forward, with the tail erect, like it has been stiffened by wire.

A teddy bear face invites the human to grasp the dog by the cheeks and bring it in close. Kiss it even. Our dog has grown up with our very forward advances. He has been well-socialised to endure the human embrace. What concessions does he make to his own comfort to accommodate our need to smother?

But children don’t often see such teddy bear-faced dogs as from another species. To them they are just like us, but fur-coated and made for canoodling. No one has taught them to stand back and see if the dog comes to them. Instead they rush up, arms flapping, squealing like prey and heading for the face. They fling arms around shoulders and over heads. Pat pat pat. No wonder so many are bitten. It is surprising that more are not. Just as we teach children at school the dangers of strangers and how to cross the road, perhaps we need to instruct on how to approach, or rather how not to approach, a species we have so surrounded ourselves with. I suspect that there is more likelihood of danger from a tethered dog than the chance of abduction from a stranger and yet we seem to let our children go on blissfully unaware of how to safely greet and engage with dogs. Instead we expect our canines to know our intentions are innocent and just submit to our embrace. We have unfairly asked so much of them….

A Youtube clip of a cat and Boston terrier – interspecies love

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NYC Dogs

In classic New Yorker style, correspondent Burkhard Bilger, reports on the canine units in Manhattan keeping the city safe from terrorists. It is a great article; lengthy and detailed, giving the background of the rise of the detection dog.

The article quotes some of the great trainers working today such as Karen Pryor and Ken Ramirez who have taken the basics of operant conditioning, discovered by BJ Skinner in the 1940s, and spread it through aquariums and zoos and are now seeing its use trickle down into dog training.

“Thirty years ago, if a lion needed a flu shot, it had to be tranquillised. These days, it will walk up to its trainer and proffer its paw. “I could give you examples all day,” Ken Ramirez, the vice president of animal training at the Shedd Aquarium, in Chicago, told me. “We have sharks that will swim from tank to tank, and a beluga whale that will present its belly for an ultrasound. Our sea otters hold their eyes open to get drops, and I have a diabetic baboon submit to regular insulin injections.” Not long ago, when a camel broke its jaw at the nearby Brookefield Zoo, it walked up to a table and laid its head on a lead plate for an X-ray. “It makes managing animals so much easier,” Ramirez said. “They do things as part of a game you’ve taught them.”

And I guess this is the message that good dog trainers are now trying to get across to the public at large. “Like so much in the dog world, the change mirrors a trend in child rearing – and provokes the same heated debate.(“The only thing two dog trainers can agree about is that the third dog trainer is wrong,”)

Guide dog training in the US has also switched to positive reinforcement with great results. In the past about 50% of dogs completed training and went on to become working Guide dogs and now it is closer to 75%.

In the training of detection dogs the dogs used to start out living with regular families, as do Guide dogs, but despite this some dogs still had phobias in some surroundings, e.g. scared of slippery floors. Now the Canine Detection Research Institute sends its puppies to prisons in Georgia and Florida to begin their lives under the care of inmates. Not only does this pairing help the prisoners but it also results in adult dogs more accustomed to noise, crowds, stairs, slippery floors, grates etc. The less fearful a dog is of new things the better. They have found 80% of the prison raised dogs will go on and complete the program and become successful detection dogs. General dog owners can benefit from this news; expose your new puppy to many varied surroundings as it grows up to teach it not to be fearful in later life. Socialisation is everything.

Watch a video here; NYC police dogs