What would my dog choose?

Here Dahlia shows off the wonderful freedom
she gets even without a shock collar

Recently I came across this post on the "truth about shock collars" page.  Now, don't be fooled here.  They're not really giving you the truth about shock collars, but rather their twisted version of the truth (it doesn't hurt, there's no pain, it's just a stim).  But here Robin MacFarlane asks her readers if they believe their dogs would choose to be trained using an e-collar (which is really the most common euphemism these days for a shock collar).

It's an interesting question to ask.  Would your dog choose to be trained the way you train the dog?  Would your dog choose to do obedience or rally or agility?  What sorts of choices would your dog make if given that sort of freedom?

Ms. MacFarlane cites many choices we make for our dogs: vaccinations, what they eat, and what dogs they interact with, among others.  I cannot argue with her there.  There are many choices we cannot allow our dogs to make because they would make poor choices.  I can guarantee my dog would love to eat any leftover meat she found in the garbage.  I'm sure she would prefer not to go to the groomer or ever have a bath again.  She sure wouldn't choose to be hosed down after taking a dunk in our rather disgusting pond and coming out smelling like the swamp thing (please note: I allow her to chase geese into the pond; she does this on command; it's fun for her but it does result in a dog who smells terrible and requires a bath).  In fact, making the choice to drink from the pond at one occasion was also a poor choice she made (resulting in rather a lot of stomach upset and a bacterial infection that required antibiotics).  Dogs aren't known for making the best choices.

But does that mean they would choose to be trained using something that causes a pain in their neck every time they do something wrong?  Would they choose an uncomfortable sensation when they do something wrong over a reward when they do something right?  I may not be a dog, but considering that dogs tend to be comfort-seeking "do what's best for me" types, I would imagine that dogs would answer with a resounding NO.

I know how my dog would respond.

She responds with stress signals to a harsh voice.  I'm not talking voices directed at her, but for example, we adopted our dog during the 2008 presidential election.  There were many evenings of angry shouts at the television.  We had to stop watching the debates because our dog was stressed out by our raised voices.

When we first got her, we didn't expect her to try to herd UPS trucks and when she tried to, in an emergency stop sort of situation, we had to yank her back hard by her collar.  She shut down and rolled over.

I've reached out to touch her and accidentally shocked her (dry winters around here).  She once wouldn't go near me for an hour and after a shock or two, she starts to flinch if I reach for her.

She flinches when I reach for her.

And this is not a purposeful shock.  This is entirely accidental, but it's enough punishment to make her hand-shy for a time.  If I inflicted that on her day after day, year after year, in the name of training how do you think she'd react?  I think I know how.

On the flip side, seeing how she reacts to being rewarded, how her drive in agility has increased as has her tug and toy drive, tells me that she loves the rewards.  Seeing how agility itself has become the reward tells me she loves the rewards as well.

So would my dog choose to be trained using a shock collar?  No.  I can say with absolute certainty that no, she would not choose that.

Free free to comment, shock collar users and trainers.  I will warn you that comments are moderated, but only to stop spam.  I will gladly allow you to have your say.

----
A clarification: My dog does not eat the garbage.  She goes into the pond when I let her.  Drinking the pond water was unexpected and happened as she raced into it, gulping the water as she went (chasing geese into the ponds is no longer happening).  My dog only flinches away from people after being shocked (a smart move, in my opinion).  She is not afraid to be approached by anyone (including young children, other dogs, and cats).  My dog is an easygoing joyful dog to live with, a happy dog who has never been abused in any way.  Any issues she had (e.g. her frustration reactivity to other dogs) has been dealt with in a positive manner.  She does not live her life on the end of a leash.  She is a wonderful dog who is granted a lot of freedom (not crated in the house when we're out, off leash hikes, etc.) because she makes the right choices and she knows that sticking by me and coming back to me are hugely rewarding.


Anyone who comes to this post and thinks I haven't trained my dog and am some sort of martyr with a bad relationship with my dog could not be more wrong.  Perhaps those people should read past this one post that they take issue with because they train using shock collars and I choose not to.

Wednesday: The non-wordless edition

I guess I haven't had much to say here lately.  Sometimes I get so caught up in my life I just forget that some interesting things are happening. 


Agility
Dahlia and I continue to improve in our agility classes.  We have not made it to another trial since the one in December.  Unfortunately, the handful of indoor trials in central NY during the winter months get overrun with entries and we were wait-listed in both January and February and never got into either trial.  After a rather disastrous "show 'n' go" in which Dahlia refused to (yet again) get up on the A-Frame and Dog Walk and acted like she had never done agility a day in her life, I wasn't terribly disappointed at not getting in.

We finally discovered Dahlia's problems with A-Frames and Dog Walks and it centers around her not striding properly.  She gets too close to them, has to take a short step, and then doesn't have the back end strength to push herself up onto them and so balks.  We've been working on increasing her back end strength, improving her striding, and making the contact equipment so rewarding that she just can't help but run at them full tilt.  All have been working well, but the latter is the best part.  She now runs out in front of me to take the A-Frame and occasionally does the same on the Dog Walk.  We're currently signed up for a trial later this month, so we may get a chance to see how this all works out in a real trial situation.


Dahlia's health
Dahlia is all healed up after her January surgery.  The hair is growing back and it's starting to be less and less noticeable.  She doesn't look like a Frankendog anymore!  On the flip side, she just recovered from a nasty intestinal thing caused by her taking an impromptu dip in our local (really disgusting and swampy pond) and drinking from it.  Amazingly, she never acted sick throughout the entire illness.  I was thankful for that.


Photography
My photography continues to improve and the major improvement lies with my obtaining a new Sony A580 body.  I absolutely adore the camera.  It's a huge step up from the A230 I was using before.  I've only had it for a few weeks (and unfortunately injured my back rather severely last week and so have not been able to take pictures for over a week now!) and there's still much to learn about it, but what I've gotten out of it so far has thrilled me.  I'll share a couple photos of Dahlia I took at agility class a couple weeks ago (only two days after getting the camera!).  Remember that this is inside the agility barn and all photos were taken at ISO1600.

If you're wondering how I ran her in agility and took photos, I wasn't running her.  My instructor took her out for a spin so I could take photos, which was an awfully nice thing for her to do for us.




 


I promise to post more often in the near future! 

Wordless Wednesday: Serious Woe Face Edition

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday: The Little Orphan Dahlia version

High ISO photos

With my tax return being much larger than I expected this year, I've been contemplating buying a new camera body for my lenses.  Yes I know, I only got this camera last April, but now that I've been using a DSLR for several months, I'm finding there are some things I need that a higher-end body would be better for.

Namely? Indoor agility shots.  I can't complain at all about how my outdoor agility shots come out with this camera.




But my early indoor shots looked like this:



Ouch.  That photo was taken at ISO3200, the highest setting on this particular camera.  And needless to say, it came out so grainy it was almost useless.  I gave up on trying to get shots of dogs in the agility barn.  Someone recently pointed out, however, that I really wasn't giving my camera a fair shake.  I had it set to Program mode, which came up with some weird settings now that I look at the photo (f/8?  Why on earth would I want it set to f/8?).  Last night I decided to try for some higher ISO photos.

The basic set-up I used was my 50mm lens, set wide open at f/1.7.  I shot in RAW instead of JPG.  Here's my favourite shot from the night.  This was taken at ISO1600 and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

 


This one was taken at ISO3200.  Quite a difference from the one up above!

  


I still plan to get the A580 (unless something newer and better comes out), but at least I know this camera isn't quite as bad at taking higher ISO photos as I thought it was.

Frankendog

Poor Miss Dahlia woke up with a swollen face this past Saturday.  She had one last October. It meant a tooth abscess and surgery.  So off to the vet she went and as it turned out she had a slab fracture of a back tooth which had (you guessed it!) resulted in a tooth abscess.  She also had a strange growth near it, which was likely an epulis (a benign oral tumor).

Monday she had surgery to remove both.  Coupled with that, we opted to finally remove the sebaceous cyst that had been plaguing her for over a year.  It started quite small but recently it's been getting larger and larger and had started to come to a head.  She keeps trying to bite at it, but it's not in a place she can reach.  Since it was irritating her and she was going under anesthesia anyway, we decided to remove it.

I had some sort of idea that there would be a tiny, 3" x 3" patch of shaved hair and a stitch or two.  Silly me had no idea.  Instead, she looks like some sort of poor Frankendog, with a huge patch of shaved hair and 5 stitches on her back.

With her thick fur it's exceptionally noticeable!

 

So now poor Miss Dahlia has her very own coat to wear outside.  She'll get her stitches out in another week and a half.  So far they don't seem to be bothering her too terribly much as she's leaping up on the couch and recliner with no problem.  It looks far worse than it actually is as the incision was not very deep (sebaceous cysts are right below the skin).  We'll likely even be doing a big agility seminar this Sunday, stitches and all!

A little (untrue) story

Let me tell you a little story...

I was out walking my DINOS and practicing LAT and BAT when I saw this ROAR across the road.  I shouted over to the person with the ROAR to keep that GSP away from my CKCS.  The other owner said OMG WTF.  I told him I was working on LLW and hoping to get a CGC and he told me to STFU.  I kept going, trying to get away from him, C/T every chance I had.  I'm still on a FSR you see.  My CKCS rushed ahead and got an NRM, but came back so more C/T.  The ROAR moved away with the owner muttering something that sounded like AFAIC MDIF.

Anyway I, I know it's kinda been a roundabout way of saying it
But I guess the whole point I'm tryin' to make here is:



I HATE ACRONYMS.

And I especially hate all these ones that seem to catch on like wildfire lately.  DINOS (dogs in need of space), ROAR (rover on a retractable [leash]), and MDIF (my dog is friendly) are recent ones I've seen used in blog posts and then everyone latches onto them like they're the best thing since sliced bread.  Frankly, every time I see someone tossing them off all I can think of is "you're trying too hard to be one of the cool kids." And I want to punch them.  Seriously.  (Or maybe not so seriously.)

I'm sure this will make me wildly unpopular (WU?), but it's been bothering me for awhile.  I love clear communication.  Silly acronyms and catchphrases aren't helping people communicate with others clearly.  And it also lumps all dogs into one category.  What is a DINOS anyway?  My dog loves other dogs, but she doesn't like them crawling up into her business or humping her.  She's on a retractable leash but she's not running up to these so-called DINOS (which is the implication behind the acronym) because I don't let her.  And because she needs her space too (OMG a DINOS ROAR???!!  Say it ain't so!).

And please folks, if you insist on using such acronyms, try not to call them DINOS dogs, because all that translates to is "Dogs in need of space dogs."  It's like calling it an ATM machine.

Why I love my retractable leash

A perfect reason to use a retractable leash!  Do you want
to step into that snow with her so she can explore?

It's making the rounds again. Retractable leashes are dangerous.  People who use retractable leashes don't know how to train their dogs.  They're lazy.  They let their dogs run up to other dogs or out into the road.  They're as bad as [insert aversive tool of choice].  They teach dogs to pull.  They should be banned!!

I hear these things a lot from other dog owners and trainers and while some aspects may have some merit, I tend to disagree with many of the statements. Can retractable leashes be dangerous?  Sure.  There's no denying that.  But knowing how to use it (which is ultimately not very hard) minimizes the potential danger of the leash.  Could dogs run up to other dogs or out into the road?  Sure.  The leashes do usually extend anywhere from 12 to 26 feet.  This gives a fair amount of leeway and if the owner is negligent and not watching their dog or what's going on around them anything could happen.  But that comes down to the owner.  I've had people let their dogs come up to mine when it was on a 6-foot leash and I've seen owners standing near the sidewalk let their dog wander into the road on a 6-foot leash.  And worse, I've seen plenty of folks walking untrained dogs off leash.  Do retractable leashes teach dogs to pull?  Not in my experience.  Are they as bad as choke chains or prong collars?  No.  That's a pretty ridiculous statement.  They are intended to be a means of containment not an aversive way to stop a dog from doing something.

Should they be banned?  Absolutely not.


I do, however, have certain rules for the type of dog I will use a retractable leash with and when/where I will use the leash.

Rules for the Dog

1. The dog must not be able to pull me off my feet if it hits the end of the leash at a full run.  This means I am likely to only use the leash with small to medium sized dogs instead of larger ones.  My dog is 50 pounds.  I use the leash with her.  I'm not sure I'd be comfortable using the leash with a dog who was larger or more muscular.

2. The dog must not be a dedicated puller.  A dog who pulls once in awhile is ok.  But if the dog pulls constantly and is always at the end of the leash then the reason for the leash is pointless.  I will only use a 6-foot leash with such a dog until he/she has learned not to pull.

3. The dog must not be an unpredictable bolter.  In other words, if a dog tends to be a squirrel chaser and gives no warning signs that they've seen the squirrel before giving chase, then a retractable is not the right leash for this dog.  My dog does like to chase squirrels but (a) she gives plenty of warning signs (e.g. she freezes in place and stares first) and (b) I've trained her to only chase when I give her the command so her freezing in place has become more pronounced over time.

4. The dog must be trained and under voice control.  It doesn't have to be perfect voice control, but a dog who is able to respond to "stop" and/or "come" is a good candidate for a retractable leash.  If it breaks (and in over three years I've yet to have one break), I want to be able to control the dog with my voice.


Rules for Me

1. I will pay attention to my dog.  If she is wandering too close to the street, I will reel her in and/or lock the leash.  If there is a dog nearby, I will reel her in and/or lock the leash.  If there is a squirrel she wants to chase I will allow her if it's safe (running with her so she doesn't hit the end of the leash) or I will reel her in and/or lock the leash.

2. I will pay attention to our surroundings.  I will be aware of where cars and other people are.  I will keep an eye out for other dogs.  I will not let her precede me around corners where I cannot see what is coming first.  I will never ever listen to music or talk on the cell phone while out on a walk with her.  What is going on around us is important.

3. I will not choose a knock-off leash made by some unknown company (I use Flexi brand leashes only).  I will not use a corded leash, instead using the "full leash" retractable leashes as they are less dangerous and break less often.  They are sturdier leashes, especially when used with a larger dog.

4. I will make sure I know how to use the leash and will keep it in good repair.  I will keep my thumb hovering over the lock mechanism and will use that mechanism at a moment's notice.


Rules for When to Use the Leash

1. I will not use a retractable in places where the dog must always be kept close at my side.  This includes festivals and walking in the city, among other places.

2. I will not use the retractable in classes or at trials.  Again, she needs to be kept close to me during class.  She also likes to tug on her leash as part of getting excited to go out and "work," and retractable leashes should not be played with in such a way.

So obviously I have thought long and hard about when and where and with whom to use a retractable leash.  People can call me and my dog whatever acronym they want (the latest annoying one is ROAR: Rover on a Retractable), but it's not going to prevent me from using my retractable leash.  I use it wisely and responsibly and my dog is happy to have the bit of freedom for sniffing that the leash allows her to have.

A quick comparison

What a difference a month makes (aka Dahlia's second agility trial!)

Dahlia's first agility trial was a nervewracking experience but in the end we had a lot of fun and brought home one qualifying ribbon.  It was far more than I expected for the first time out and so I was quite pleased.

But I kept watching the video of us at the trial over and over again.  I realized she was slow and hesitated because I hesitated.  Because I was scared she'd blow past an obstacle and I desperately wanted her to take them all.  It finally got through to me that if I just keep running, it's much more likely that she will keep running.  The week after the last trial, we looked like this in class:





We moved so much better together and we're both speeding up!

So I took that to the trial this weekend.  How did Dahlia do?  Well, she blew Standard entirely.  We seem to have a problem that is really surprising me: Despite rocking the A-Frame at class and being pretty comfortable on the dog walk, she completely avoids them in trial situations.  Admittedly, some of the issue the first time out was that I was so focused on the A-Frame (which was obstacle #3 in the run) that I looked away, disconnected from her, and lost her entirely before she even hit the second jump.  So our Standard run, while not a disaster (she hit every jump and tunnel past that beautifully) was not successful.  NQ.

The second two runs we did were Colors and Wildcard, both ones that we NQ'ed on at the previous trial.

Well, I'm happy to report that Dahlia totally nailed both of them.  We got a qualifying score with no faults on Colors (28.07 seconds) and Wildcard (30.43 seconds), which netted us our first (very small) agility title: The CTL1-H, Level 1 Entusiast Handler Games title.

Here's Dahlia sporting her fancy new ribbon and looking quite proud of herself!

On reactive dogs (and having one!)

I rarely speak of Dahlia's reactivity in public and it's certainly not something I talk about with friends and family. Sometimes I still fight against the stigma, against the way that people view reactive dogs.  

Aggressive

Mean

Vicious

Yet she is none of those and nor has she ever been those.  There are many reasons dogs are reactive, but the two major reasons are:

1. Fear.  Dogs that lack socialization often react to every little noise, every little thing they see.  That tall guy in the hat?  They've never seen something like that before, they get scared, and so lash out.  Barking and lunging will make the scary thing go away!  That dog who is easily twice their size?  They've never met a dog that big, they get scared, and lash out at that.  To the laymen it looks like aggression and while it's a form of aggression, the root cause of it is fear.

2. Frustration.  Some dogs have little frustration tolerance and so when they see something they want to get to but can't (because they're on leash or behind a fence), they lash out in frustration.  I liken it to a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. They lose all control of themselves and bark and lunge.  It looks nearly the same as the fear response, but isn't.

The body language for the two is different, especially in the ear set (back for fear, forward for frustration) and tail set (down much further for a fearful dog).

Dahlia came to me with frustration reactivity.  I had never heard the term before and while I knew a lot about the basics of dog training, I realized I better get off my butt and do a more thorough study.  I read a lot.  I spoke with a lot of trainers and behaviorists.  I watched DVDs and read books on body language.  I started to go out and study dogs and their owners and talking to people to figure out why their dogs were acting the way they were.  What caused the reactivity?

Then I set to helping my dog.  I figured out her triggers (other dogs) and how close those triggers could get before she started to react.  I figured out the little body language signs that meant a reaction was imminent.  And so I started the "Look at that" game.  "Look at that!" I would proclaim when we saw a dog just at the right distance away (close enough to be noticed, but not close enough to elicit and over the top reaction).  Dahlia, of course, was looking already.  And then she'd turn to look at me because of my excited voice.  At that point, she'd get a treat.  Something really delicious.

We did this every single day for months.  Little by little we were able to get closer and closer to the other dogs.  Finally she could walk by a dog who was on the other side of the road without reacting about 90% of the time!  So then we moved it closer, first stepping into the grass on the near side of the sidewalk then just off the sidewalk, always creeping closer and closer but always playing the "Look at that" game.

It took about a year to get to the point that we're at now.  Dahlia is almost completely non-reactive.  She has the occasional episode, especially if we're just leaving the house after she's been alone for a few hours, and we come across a dog who is too close and whose owner is jogging with him (the desire to chase is strong!).  But those happen so rarely that I would call her about 99% non-reactive.


The journey to that was long and a constant up and down struggle.  We'd make good progress, then something would happen that would set us back a bit.  She bounced back quicker and quicker each time, but it still was not a steady upward pace.  I've seen this same unsteady progress from other dogs I've helped out and I've read about it from many friends who have dealt with reactivity too.


Recently, I've been reading some stuff from folks who are harassing a friend of mine.  They gave her a dog who had been locked in a room for most of his young life and has a lot of fear and a lot of reactivity.  A lot more than my dog ever did.  It's been only a few weeks and they are expecting a miraculous recovery.  They're expecting this fear aggressive dog to be fine in the house with the person's other two dogs.  They're expecting her to film him outside while training.  They're expecting daily updates (which anyone with a reactive dog knows is pretty ridiculous due to the aforementioned ups and downs of working with reactivity).  It sure would be nice for this dog to learn to live in the human world, but when a dog lacks early socialization, it's hard and it takes a lot of time.


If you have a reactive dog, take heart!  You can work through it, but it will take time and dedication.  It's all worth it though, isn't it?  The moments when a dog finally walks past another dog, notices him, and then look at you instead?  They make it all worth it.

Dahlia's first agility trial!

This weekend we went to our very first agility trial.  For the first time, we opted to go with CPE (Canine Performance Events).  Everyone I spoke to, including our instructor, assured us that it was the most relaxed and most newbie-friendly of the venues.  And ultimately, they were right.

We had a fantastic weekend full of some ups and downs.  We did four runs, and NQ'ed on three of them.  Two were a total disaster.  But she got a qualifying score on one run (Jumpers Level 1) and a first place ribbon for it, both of which were nice to go home with.  I didn't expect her to get any Q's this weekend so I was really quite happy with that!

Perhaps the best part about it was how focused she was on me and how hard she tried through each and every run.  The one thing that threw her for a loop and ended up causing the three NQ's was "contact anxiety."  She wouldn't get on the dog walk in one run.  I had been worried about the dog walk from the get go.  She's comfortable with it usually, but this one was different from the others that she's seen.  It had no slats, was not rubberized, and I watched many dogs who hit it hard and nearly slipped off the ramp leading up to it.  It was also a little wobbly. Our instructor flat-out refused to let her dog get on it.  Dahlia was apparently smart enough to refuse it and instead of being a good human, I kept trying to get her on it.  After three times I finally gave up!

She also struggled with the A-Frame, flat out refusing it once and starting up it a second time but then deciding against it.  Like the dog walk it was not rubberized, though it did have slats and was more sturdy than the dog walk.  But I did watch some dogs slipping on the way down and so ultimately she was probably smart for getting off it instead of hurting herself by continuing up and over.  Had she been able to do it, we would have had a qualifying run for the Colors course and might have gotten one for Full House as well.

Overall, though, it was a fantastic experience.  I had my down moments (like when she totally blew the Full House course), but mostly I felt pretty good about what we had accomplished.  And now I know some things that need to be further trained!  I'm hoping to find some fun matches (aka Show 'n' Go's) in the area to get her up onto equipment she hasn't seen before.

But we'll also be going to another trial.  This one is on December 3rd.  We'll be doing three runs (Standard, Colors, and Wildcard) that day.  It should be great fun!

Dahlia was happy enough to model her ribbons.  Doesn't she look proud of herself?


 


And for anyone interested, here's a video of our second run of the second day.  This was the Colors course where she started up the A-Frame but then turned around and came back down before getting too far.  Unfortunately I forgot to have someone videotape her really good run!  Try not to laugh too hard over how slow she is.  She was faster the day before, but not by much!

Wordless Wednesday

I love my dog

Sometimes I'm really struck by how awesome my dog really is.  And not only that, but by how much the training we've done with her has helped her with her confidence level.

Today I took her out to the park for a Halloween photo shoot.  I had big plans for this one, much more than just a costume.  I was inspired by the purchase of a pair of Doggles (goggles for dogs, if you're wondering what they are) and the video of Weird Al Yankovic's Dare to be Stupid (which you can see here).

The idea required that Dahlia stand up with her paws on a keyboard while wearing a yellow t-shirt with the atomic symbol on it and a pair of Doggles.   Yikes!

I worked my way up to it in the following way:

1. Standing with her feet on a park bench.
2. Standing with her feet on the keyboard which was sitting on the park bench.
3. Doing #2 while wearing the t-shirt.
4. Doing #2 while wearing the t-shirt and the Doggles.

For each one I also worked on getting her to hold the position long enough for me to take photos.

In the end, this was what I ended up with*.



 

All of this was accomplished in less than a half an hour!  She's such an amazing dog!

*Green screen edited in after the fact.