Things that make you go hmmmmm….

You know how you can go along in your daily life, meet someone and think you know them and then BOOM, something happens and you are completely taken off guard? Yeah, that doesn't usually happen to me. Not to toot my own horn or to sound overly judgmental but I feel that for the most part I am a pretty good judge of character, although I will admit I have been hoodwinked in my life although mostly it involved some serious denial on my part about the reality of the situation. My point is…I find this to be pretty true when I meet dogs as well. I find I get a feeling about a dog and if I can't shake it, it's usually confirmed by a formal assessment. There have been times when I've been wrong or not seen some significant behaviors but for the most part, so far in my dog "career", I think I've been a pretty good judge of character. Unfortunately, in the case with dogs, that is a pretty sucky thing to excel at!

Sometimes I wish I could be blissfully oblivious and just love every dog I come across as most people claim they do. I wish I could have no qualms about sticking my face into a dogs and hugging and kissing it. I wish I believed when a dog is frantically climbing my body and jumping at my face that it is a sweet gesture. I don't. I can't even try to make myself. I cringe nearly every time I see people interact with their dogs or more often than not strange dogs. I wonder daily how more people don't get bit and I've come to the conclusion that dogs are far superior to us and we don't nearly give them enough credit for allowing our stupid species to continue to exist in blissful ignorance while they bare the brunt of the responsibility to inhibit themselves to keep us safe. Admittedly there are dogs that don't give two "you know what's" about our safety and will tell us off with those wonderfully powerful teeth of theirs. And yet somehow the burden of blame always falls on them.

But that is where my conundrum starts, I believe we should not inhibit the dogs ability to express his fears or anxiety but I think dangerous dogs should not be languishing in rescues or shelters or homes even. First it is not fair to the caretakers and society as a whole and second it's not fair to the dog. Can you imagine living your whole life in a constant state of fear or anxiety and alertness for the first sign of danger? I realize people do it every day but they have the ability to talk and express those fears and rationalize and seek help if necessary. Dogs can't do that. Some dogs live their lives as if they are in a constant state of warfare where it is kill or be killed. That is a great amount of stress to bear. It must be exhausting. While these dogs are languishing there are more stable dogs roaming the streets or languishing on a backyard chain or in an animal control facility facing euthanasia because all the rescue groups are full! Where is the justice in that?

We can't save them all and the general adopting public are not certified trainers or behaviorists and are not looking for a problem dog to work on and "cure". They want that sweet, friendly dog that will tolerate and endure all the hugs, kisses and silly things we humans do to objects of our affection. So my job is to find those dogs, to use that judgement I have developed through studying and observing and trusting my gut. It is my job to help make room for those diamonds in the rough and help them shine. It is my job to teach the public that hugging a strange dog is a BAD idea, that giving a leash correction on a choke chain carries so much baggage with it and causes a myriad of other problems, that when a dog stiffens or growls the best thing you can do is give the dog space because that is EXACTLY what he is telling you to do! Some days my job sucks, some days "feeling" what the outcome will be of an assessment and then being right is very draining; but then finding that really great dog and teaching her all kinds of tools to help her find a great home helps ease the tragicness of the other. Most days I have to remember what I do makes a difference to that one dog, and really that's all anyone can hope for in life, to make a difference in one life. Here's hoping I make a difference in your life Infinity.

Infinity is waiting for her forever family in the Humane Society of Southwest Missouri.

I met an icon!!

It's taken me a while to write this post, I'm still processing everything I saw and learned almost two weeks ago in a one day seminar by Sue Sternberg. If you are unfamiliar with her you should definitely check out her link! She has been an outspoken advocate for better quality of life conditions for the country's shelter dogs and has been a controversial figure at times because of it. She believes greatly in the quality of a dogs life versus quantity and it has at times pitted her against the "No Kill" movement. Regardless of the controversy she is a gifted trainer, great speaker and has developed some wonderful tools for shelters all over to implement into their programs.

The seminar we attended was the last day of a 3 day seminar and it focused on body language, evaluations and dog/dog interactions. It was eye-opening to say the least in discovering little nuances a dog may provide that would otherwise go unnoticed; the difference between a side nose lick or a front nose lick, a partial freeze and a total freeze, a play bow with an edge versus one with a soft body…I could go on and on, it was amazing! We saw all these things on live dogs and got to experience the evaluation right along with her. We saw some jaw dropping things and some common things we may dismiss that should not be dismissed.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, she is a wonderful speaker and for me the best part was holding her dog while assisting her in a dog/dog introduction. An experience I won't soon forget! I will see her whole seminar again someday and I hope this is the first of many seminars, by other amazing icons, to come! I am dying to see Patricia McConnell!!

Here is a picture of Sue and I ( I totally geeked out and had her sign my book and pose with me, I get a little weird around people I find important!)

Thanks for visiting!!

A new training milestone!

Last night I graduated my very first puppy class! I was the lead teacher for 7 weeks with these puppies and their owners. It was so much fun and not as nerve wracking as I thought it would be. Of course it was nice to have my guru there as a safety net, Misti Fry, so I knew I couldn't screw up too bad; she wouldn't let me! =) I learned a lot throughout these 7 weeks about how to teach a class versus a private lesson, which I thought I was going to have a lot of trouble with. The way Misti sets up her classes makes it easy as she has assistants to help the students as well as the lead teacher. It's kind of like how we teach the owners to train their dogs; set them up for success and make training fun! These owners and puppies came in eager to learn and boy did they ever! Puppies walking nicely on leash, coming when called, sitting, staying and doing all kinds of tricks! Plus the owners have an arsenal of strategies at their disposal to deal with any issues that come up! I hope they all continue on with their training and have a long, happy relationship with their pups! I can't wait to start the next session, hopefully there will be enough pups signed up so I can have my own class again!
Here are a few photos from last night's graduation:

Stay

Mat Game

Loose leash walking game

Recall game

A trainer gets taken through the Ringo(er)...

So on this journey of becoming a CPDT, I am taking on more responsibility and new and exciting (sometimes scary) tasks. I've gone on many private lessons with Misti and Carrie, helped teach shelter volunteers how to train dogs and recently started being the lead trainer in a puppy class! I though I was on a pretty good roll..HA, enter this cute little elderly lady and her cute little shih-tzu!

 I was charged with the task of crate training her dog because she was moving and he barked too much and was having housebreaking issues. Seemed pretty straight forward. I picked up this little boy Ringo and all his belongings to come stay at my house as a board and train client. He was to be with me for 5 days and then we'd assess the situation and see if more time was needed. So because this dog was not completely housebroken, I kept him attached to me by leash anytime he was out of the crate, basically treating him like a puppy. Pretty quickly I noticed his urination just did not seem right, so a sample was brought into the vet and sure enough he had an infection as well as crystals! Once we got him on meds and better food he started perking up and was given more freedom in the house. As far as the crate training, it was a horrible disaster! Turns out he has terrible separation or confinement or isolation anxiety, pick one, either way what it meant was that anytime he was crated he would be traumatized; barking and shaking and drooling, scratching at the door and whining/crying. The first night he did this for 2 straight hours! Then he must have slept from exhaustion only to wake up a couple hours later and start all over again! It was nearly that bad every night after that. Even when I crated him and he could see me he'd go into a panic. It was torture on us both and all the while I knew this was something that could be worked on in a slow and lengthy process, which required time we didn't have as he was moving in only a few weeks! Also to contend with was the near impossibility for his mom to comply with a complicated set of instructions.

  So began the first crisis of new trainer conscience. I questioned my abilities, my knowledge and even after much sleep deprivation wondered if my "guru" was setting me up, testing me somehow (she was not by the way!) Finally, I think we all took a deep breath and took a step back (at least us trainers did) and assessed the situation with clearer eyes and saw the reality of the situation. We got to the heart of what REALLY needed work on, the barking and housebreaking, and set up a plan for that! Ringo was much improved with his housebreaking now that the medical stuff had been taken care of (on a side note, he never once had an accident in my house) and as for the barking, I videoed him left alone in my house when I left. He slept nearly the whole time and only barked when he heard the garage door open, a sign to me that his barking was due to hearing voices in the hall outside his door. We recommended she turn the TV on for him when she left and that he get really special bones to chew on only when she left the apartment. I wrote down simple, very specific instructions for her on his feeding and pottying schedule and then handed him back to her with all my fingers and toes crossed! That was a week ago and so far he's had no potty accidents and there has been no reports of barking. She was so happy to have her companion back and he was just as happy to be home.

It's been a good lesson for me to listen to my gut and see the reality of the situation and try to work within the confines of that as a trainer. Trainers are faced with those confines all the time, from the family with 6 kids that are constantly running around with food the dog wants or the couple that works insane hours and have a reactive dog. Being a trainer means helping people teach their dogs how to be good family members, being a good trainer means helping the owners be good pet parents, a great trainer is resourceful enough to do both and make everyone happy! That is my goal.

New Foster Dog

Summer has arrived early, well, not really, our new Foster dogs' name is Summer! She is about 16months old and has already weaned at least one litter of pups that we know of. They too were in the rescue program. She came to me as a temporary foster, she already had a pending adoption and one more in the wings. Unfortunately both fell through within days of each other. So we figured we'd be in it for the long run, which was fine with me as she is soooo easy and really could use some stability and time to get healthy. She is on the extremely thin side at 67 lbs and her coat was a mess! Mats everywhere, dry and brittle and dirty.

My first observation of her was she's no typical house pet that got lost or dumped. She was most likely an outside dog or a farm dog that got lost or dumped. She seemed very restless in the house for the first day or two and would sleep contentedly outside all day long if I let her, which frankly I pretty much did as it was beautiful weather and it made her more at ease. She had beautiful body language with Beanie and play was instantaneous and perfectly appropriate (minus the occasional mounting from Beanie who couldn't resist her flirtatious postures!)

I finally gave her a bath tuesday night and you would have thought I insulted every member of her family the way she reacted. It was as if she'd never been washed her whole life, and likely she hadn't! She was patient and tolerated it; the dryer was another matter altogether. She literally tried climbing onto the counter to get away from it! This morning she must have decided she was clean long enough and promptly rolled in the dewey grass then laid in the dirt ditch she has excavated for herself under the kids swingset!

I got good news today though, she now has a third adoption on her and will in all likelihood be moving on next wednesday. I am hoping I can put some good weight on her by then. She's eating 3 meals a day of the same food Beanie eats so she's definitely getting good nutrition.

It's weird, one of my friends mentioned that she sounded like a keeper, and honestly she is really easy, sweet, calm and gets along so well with everyone; she should be a keeper. But I don't want her. She's pretty and I love on her and I'll be sad to see her go but I guess I just haven't found that spark with another dog yet. And you know what, I'm not sure I will. Beanie may be it for me, I may not have room in my heart for 2 dogs. Who knows, in my life I have learned to never say never and that when something is right you just know it! That's how I married my husband and it's worked for me so far! =)

Who is the trainer here??

It occurred to me the other night that I am in the throws of a superstitious behavior brought on by a very huge reinforcer! Let me explain, my kitten Sherman has had a pretty rough start to his life; he was found all alone as a stray at only 5 weeks old. He was bottle fed at his foster home and within 2 weeks adopted by us (just by chance). He came down with a nasty upper respiratory virus and was so tiny and skinny! Thankfully (and after many vet visits) he healed and started to grow and thrive. Then we discovered he was a bilateral cryptorchid; that was fun (not to mention EXPENSIVE). In the mean time he was battling some diarrhea issues. We thought it was from being on and off so many antibiotics within such a short time frame. We cut back on his wet food, switched it to Science Diet ID, and started adding a probiotic to his wet food daily. Then it happened...he pooped on the tile by the garage door, easy to clean you say? Not so much; it was in the corner, so naturally it was in all the crevices of the baseboards (stop reading now if your stomach turns easily!). I chalked it up to the anesthesia since he had just had his neuter surgery the day before. But then it happened again down in the basement on the carpet this time and then again in the same general area and the last time was actually in my shower! So he got on meds, I cleaned up the spots with an OCD fervor, placed a feline pheromone diffuser downstairs and started following him around the house! I quickly discovered he had potty signals just like a puppy! He would sniff around, usually in the general vicinity of the previous accidents, even crying at the doors of my closed shower! I would scoop him up and bring him to the litter boxes and he would use them perfectly! I started to realize he needed to go potty almost directly after eating his morning wet food, so after he finished I would coax him downstairs with me and he would accompany me while I scooped the boxes and then he'd use them! For the first day or two I scooped the boxes 4 times a day! Now a side note; I am notoriously a horrible cat box scooper! I forget for days on end, just ask my old timers! I was lucky enough to never have an issue and got off scot free being so lazy! But here I was being a diligent, almost obsessed, scooper. BUT (and here is where the superstitious behavior comes in) he hasn't had one accident since I've started doing this! Could it be the medication? Possibly, although he does still have the diarrhea. Could it be the diffuser? Certainly, but it could also be my twice daily box scooping! And because there is that possibility I am not going to tempt fate (or my kittens intestinal tract) by stopping! I have been trained into a superstitious behavior because the most reinforcing thing for me is to not have cat poop on my carpet!

Man I have smart pets (and I must say I am pretty highly trainable)!

Some musing after our PT visit...

Last week we had a fantastic visit at Jordan Creek. The people were lively and so happy to see Beanie and he was so obliging to everyone. As we walked around and saw some of the really sick bed-ridden patients and I watched Beanie really sniffing at them, it hit me; some dogs can be trained to detect diseases by smell...what must Beanie be smelling? I can't even to begin to imagine the olfactory overload he must be experiencing in a place like that. All at once it made me appreciate what he does, and what all therapy dogs do, even that much more. I know how distracted and repulsed I can be by smells that it is nearly impossible to concentrate or function in the vicinity of whatever the smell is, but the fact that he can stay composed and offer himself for their enjoyment is really an amazing feat. I don't think most of us give dogs, even if they aren't therapy dogs, enough credit.

 My favorite saying as of late is "it is a testament to dogs that people aren't bitten more often". It is amazing how poorly we conduct ourselves with them and still they have the utmost patience and tolerance when dealing with us. Sometimes I wonder who really is the smarter species!

 I also think we underestimate dogs on a very regular basis, I know I often do that with Beanie. I hesitate to teach him something new b/c I don't think he can do it or I think it will be too hard to teach him to do it and 99% of the time he shocks me and reminds me that he is quite extraordinary and I should never limit him, or anyone for that matter, in my mind about what they can or can't do!

I love it when Beanie teaches me new things, I guess you can teach an old girl new tricks!