Exhaustion and Emily the Pitbull

Posted on July 12, 2013 by annieriecken

Caesar Milan practices the opposite of positive dog training. The video turns my stomach, but the chart explains why Chico can’t hear me call his name when he’s all riled up by an approaching dog.

Caen Elegans's avatarScience and Dogs

Understanding animal behavior often requires knowledge of physiology. Without an adequate knowledge of involved processes, less informed dog trainers resort to story-telling involving “energies”, “magnetism” and “submissiveness”.

Case in point, Emily the pitbull; here Cesar Millan mistakes physical exhaustion – and probably hypoxia from the leash on the trachea – with submissiveness and relief.

For 8 more seasons Millan would continue to induce a state of hyperarousal, fight the dogs into exhaustion and then declare he had achieved “calm submission.” The trend has continued into his new show, Leader of the Pack.

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It’s like posting without stirrups

Posted on July 10, 2013 by annieriecken

Some of you will know what I am talking about when I say that. For readers who did not spend large portions of their childhood trying to master the art of riding hunt seat, I’m describing a sports drill where you do something tricky or different with one part of your body while you do something you always do, thus doing it differently and becoming aware of or developing a part of your body involved in that thing you do so often.

In this case, we ran an agility course without using our hands. It was challenging, and fun. And the interesting thing I noticed was that most of us also stopped using our voices. This raises the question, “Do agility handlers need their hands to talk?”

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Mosquito net, in use

Posted on July 8, 2013 by annieriecken

… but not by me.

image

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More science on what dogs get from us

Posted on July 3, 2013 by annieriecken

I just read about a study where researchers ran experiments trying to find out if an owner’s reaction to something influenced the dog’s reaction to the object. They used “a 50 centimeter tall and 34 centimeter wide electric fan, with plastic green ribbons attached to it. This object was selected because it evokes a cautious reaction in most dogs, neither very positive (approaching directly and touching) nor very negative (running in the opposite direction or strong stress such as trembling, or hiding.)

The dogs were exposed to the fan under different circumstances (with their owner giving a positive reaction to the fan, with their owner giving a negative reaction to the fan; with a stranger doing the same things), and “…when a positive message was being conveyed, significantly more dogs interacted with the fan if the owner, rather than the stranger was the informant. These results are similar to those in infant studies.” So the “opinion” of the known and trusted owner is of more value than the “opinion” of the stranger. It makes sense that in an uncertain situation the known person would be more reassuring than the unknown one.

The conclusion that interested me was “The results from this study indicate that dogs are able to distinguish the informant’s emotional message.” This is why if I present a new thing to Chico as a happy experience, he’s much, much, much more likely to accept it as non-threatening. So being proactive, pointing things out to him before he has a chance of forming his own opinion about them (usually that the whatever it is is scary and thus dangerous), gives me a chance to introduce new things with a positive slant on them, reducing the chances of some kind of Chico-explosion.

Now, how to tune up my senses so I can see and hear things before Chico does?

Here’s a link to the article I read which describes the study:  http://www.usdaa.com/article.cfm?newsID=2370

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Finally

Posted on June 29, 2013 by annieriecken

Video of our runs from the trial in Sacramento, CA in, ahem, March of this year.

Standard:

which was in many parts kind of a disaster, but the closing was very nice.

The Jumpers run was the one where I missed the chance to walk the course before we ran and thought we did pretty awful, but still had a qualifying run. In retrospect, it’s not as ugly looking as it felt at the time.

Here it is:

It shows that he’s looking to me for direction. The rear cross at the weave poles in this run almost threw him off, but he recovered. That’s my boy! Doing his best to understand what I want, then giving it to me. When I look at the standard run, there’s a place where Chico comes off the dog walk and goes up the A-frame instead of through the tunnel, but when I look, in managing his descent (where he was poised to leap over the yellow ‘contact zone’ that he must touch on his way off the dog walk) I had gotten myself off course, I was no longer headed right for the tunnel, I was angled more towards the A-frame. He just did what I told him to.

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Interesting science

Posted on June 29, 2013 by annieriecken

I just read about some research that demonstrates one effect owners have on their dogs. Like a child in the presence of a known and trusted adult, dogs will work harder and longer at challenging tasks if their owner is present. What I get from this is that we really are a team when we work with our dogs, that both of us (probably) are smarter and better when we’re together. Perhaps it’s wishful interpretation of data by a dog lover. Perhaps not.

Here’s the abstract:

The importance of the secure base effect for domestic dogs – evidence from a manipulative problem-solving task.

Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Clever Dog Lab Society, Vienna, Austria.

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that dogs display a secure base effect similar to that found in human children (i.e., using the owner as a secure base for interacting with the environment). In children, this effect influences their daily lives and importantly also their performance in cognitive testing. Here, we investigate the importance of the secure base effect for dogs in a problem-solving task.

METHODOLOGY PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a manipulative task, we tested dogs in three conditions, in which we varied the owner’s presence and behavior (Experiment 1: “Absent owner”, “Silent owner”, “Encouraging owner”) and in one additional condition, in which the owner was replaced by an unfamiliar human (Experiment 2: “Replaced owner”). We found that the dogs’ duration of manipulating the apparatus was longer when their owner was present than absent, irrespective of the owner’s behavior. The presence of an unfamiliar human however did not increase their manipulation. Furthermore, the reduced manipulation during the absence of the owner was not correlated with the dog’s degree of separation distress scored in a preceding attachment experiment.

CONCLUSIONS SIGNIFICANCE: Our study is the first to provide evidence for an owner-specific secure base effect in dogs that extends from attachment tests to other areas of dogs’ lives and also manifests itself in cognitive testing – thereby confirming the remarkable similarity between the secure base effect in dogs and in human children. These results also have important implications for behavioral testing in dogs, because the presence or absence of the owner during a test situation might substantially influence dogs’ motivation and therefore the outcome of the test.

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Dog biscuits? Not so much

Posted on June 24, 2013 by annieriecken
place

On the way home from the Collie Club trial we stopped for ice cream. Usually Chico has a kiddie cone, but Papa’s sells a dog serving for the same price as a kiddie cone, so I tried one. It comes in a bowl, with a pair of dog biscuits on the side. And my discerning eater was so full after eating the ice cream that he left the less desirable bickies to the side.

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I notice a difference lately

Posted on June 22, 2013 by annieriecken

It’s hard to say when it happened, let alone guess at exactly what happened (well, maybe all the training and canine psychology and treats and practice and dog trials are paying off), and impossible to take a picture of it, but for the last little while Chico has been much more civilized with strange dogs.

It may have been happening for a while, but I noticed it this week,

On Tuesday, I went for a ride with Sally, and we ran into MJ, the aged Labrador Retriever-cross that lives at a nearby horse farm. She and Chico gave each other a sniff, and each went about their own business, even though MJ decided to join up with us and enjoy our ride. Chico was perfectly happy to let her come along. That’s it. No drama.

Later, at the Lyceum, Chico met Tick, who was about the size and shape of a Beagle, but reddish colored like a hound, and they sniffed each other and wagged their tails and got along. That’s it. No drama.*

Then, on Thursday, I took the car for an oil change, and we passed the time by taking a walk around the neighborhood. Chico was off leash, sniffing in yards and staying with me, when the resident dog barked at him for being on her lawn. Chico didn’t rise to the occasion. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t go to investigate. He instantly turned a sharp right, away from the dog and right towards me. That’s it. No drama.

Later in the same walk, there was a medium sized dog chained in a yard. I saw it first and called Chico to me. He saw the other dog, but was willing to walk along right next to me, ignoring the other dog’s posturing and threatening growls. That’s it. No drama.

These are all things that came as happy surprises to me. It’s what we’ve been working towards for so long, and now it seems like it’s happening. None of the other dogs were larger than Chico, a known trigger for unreasonable behavior on his part, so I’m not saying he’s “cured of dog aggression” but my, my, my, things are looking up!

*Though Tick’s person was interesting. His belief is that (I’m paraphrasing here, but this is what I got from his explanation of why Tick doesn’t do any tricks – like sit on request): dog tricks use food to bribe the dog to do stupid things for the pleasure of humans, thus perpetuating the male-dominated, capitalist, paradigm which places humans as superior to other animals. Or something close to that.

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Beach walk

Posted on June 19, 2013 by annieriecken

Every time we go to Eva’s, we walk at Plum Island because it’s a no leash beach. And almost every time we go, I take pictures and feel compelled to share them.

To the east there's a big wide cove with good sand for walking.

To the east there’s a big wide cove with good sand for walking. Lots of seaweed washed up right now.

 

Chico is a champion wader, in salt or fresh water.

Chico is a champion wader, in salt or fresh water.

Thank goodness the point is protected, or it would be built up like the rest of the shoreline.

The point is protected, or it would be built like the rest of the shoreline.

 

Beach roses.

Beach roses.

I've always been attracted to this jumble of shapes and colors along the beach.

I’ve always been attracted to this jumble of shapes and colors along the beach.

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Sunday at the trial, and after

Posted on June 18, 2013 by annieriecken

Undeterred by our poor showing in competition on Friday, we went back for more on Sunday. In Standard, Chico went off course, had trouble with the weave poles and did something else “wrong” that I can’t quite recall, BUT he made all his contacts (jumping off the A-frame before entering the contact zone during competitions has been a real issue for months). And in Jumpers, the course was again challenging, and he took down a bar and made a couple other mistakes, so not a qualifying run, but I remembered the course, and maintained my composure and finished the run.

Then we found a place for a kiddie size vanilla soft serve cone, our post trial treat and found a place with water access.

Nary a word about a dog policy.

Nary a word about a dog policy.

Gazilions of broken clam shells.

Gazilions of broken clam shells.

Open space.

Open space.

And interesting things washed up by the tide.

And interesting things washed up by the tide.

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