Emily Fisher, CPDT-KA, of Scratch and Sniff Canine Services offers dog training and dog walking in Toronto, Ontario.
Use the navigation bar above to find out more about walking and training services or browse our archive of blog posts below for dog-related thoughts, musings and articles.
(Please pardon the changes, this website is still under construction)
Elsie is wiped after two days working at the seminar!!
At the beginning of the month I attended an absolutely saturating series of seminars. Friday through Sunday were lectures on the topic “A Scientific Presentation and Study of Working Dogs” presented at the University of Guelph by Professional Animal Behaviour Associates. Topics included Urban Search and Rescue, canine ergonomics, conservation strategies involving working dogs, demos by Canadian Border Control, Animal Assisted Therapy, welfare of working dogs and more.
Immediately following was a two-day workshop by Steve White, Karen Pryor Academy faculty member and Seattle Police K9 Unit handler, trainer and supervisor. Day one focused on HITT (hydration intensified tracking training) and day two focused on scent detection skills. Elsie worked both days.
HITT emphasizes tracking training on hard surfaces – concrete, asphalt, gravel, etc – prior to tracking training on grass, despite most tracking trials taking place on grass. By introducing dogs to tracking on grass, particularly starting them on tracks that have not been aged, a dog can come to rely on the scent of crushed vegetation rather than the scent of the human track layer. This shaky foundation is why there is a 5% pass rate for the VST title (Variable Surface Tracking – that is, on surfaces other than grass). An important aspect of HITT is classically conditioning human scent with Good Things (food) and back-chaining the article indication (i.e. letting the handler know when there is a human-scented item on the track by sitting/lying down/retrieving). The result of this, properly executed, is a long behaviour chain of Search-Locate-Report (this link is to a video on the i2iK9 page). See this article for details.
Purposefully-built behaviour chains are unique to behaviours trained with positive reinforcement. During the lecture, Steve addressed older force-based methods of tracking on their pitfalls. The intent was to negatively reinforce “nose-in-foot-print” through an ear pinch. The choke would be snugged up behind the dogs ear and the handler would twist the dead ring of the collar into the dog’s ear prior to pushing the dog’s nose into the track. The pressure would then be relaxed and the process repeated on the next foot step. If the dog’s nose was in the foot print, she knew she was safe from pain and fear. While this method can create a fairly reliable dog in many circumstances, it certainly doesn’t create a problem-solving dog. Steve went on to detail experiments done with these forcefully trained dogs in which the researchers concluded that dogs cannot distinguish human scents. Actually, though the teaching process the dogs learned only that the smell of crushed vegetation was safe and human scent was inconsequential. Their learning didn’t go beyond this because they had learned the most efficient way of avoiding pain was to follow the most obvious scent – that of crushed vegetation.
Building a strong behaviour chain through back-chaining positively trained behaviours means that the dog is motivated to find and follow the scent because it is enjoyable and not because the track is the only place where they do not experience pain (a la negative reinforcement). There is a big difference between doing something that is fun and doing something because doing anything else is painful.
The second day of the seminar focused on article indication. Indication refers to the dog reporting to the handler (often by a retrieve or down) that they have found an article that has the same scent as the track they are following. This process was similar to what I was working on with Arlo in Mirkka’s Scent Skills class. Teaching the indication separately and to fluency means that the opportunity to indicate acts as a tertiary reinforcer when the dog comes across an article on the track – similar to how a cue can act as a tertiary reinforcer. With some understanding of clicker training, you may comprehend how valuable this is!! In the context of a tracking trial, it breaks up long periods of following a track with no reinforcement other than what may be gleaned from the act of tracking itself (which, for many dogs, is innately powerful). To get a sense of how long a dog has its nose on the ground with no external reinforcement – a TD test, the lowest title, is 400m with a couple articles. If trained correctly, that long 400m track can be infused with the variable reinforcement that comes from indicating the articles.
Here’s a video of Elsie on a HITT-style track from day one of the tracking seminar:
I’ve been feeling neglectful of Arlo’s brain these last 20 months since adopting Elsie. Since she is so much more reinforcing for *me* to work with, Arlo fell into a sort of retirement at the ripe old age of 7. I’ve done a little bit of tracking on grass with him, but never really took it past a track on the odd weekend morning. I went to a nosework seminar several weeks ago, and I think I finally found an activity that will work for us both! (Meaning: Arlo gets to sniff and poke stuff, and I don’t have to lay and age tracks. It’s less fun than it sounds.) Nosework is the foundation of other very practical activities (that can turn into paid jobs! I will tamper my aspirations for the time being.), such as detection of bombs, narcotics, termites, and bedbugs as well as search and rescue.
Conveniently, Mirkka Koivusalo at Mindful Behaviors happened to announce a Scent Skills class starting soon after that workshop. I signed Arlo up and we just completed our second class this past week. The Scent Skills class is geared more along the lines of tracking in that it focuses on the indication of a human-scented article rather than an essential oil (as in nosework). Otherwise, the process can be trained similarly.
I am using my keys as the first article. In a nutshell, teaching an indication is a behaviour chain. To start, I had Arlo nose target the keys in my hand. Down is my indication behaviour and that is trained as you would any other chain (target-down). After that, I worked on having him do the same thing with the keys on the ground, then at a distance from me, and finally (where we’re at now) blocking his view of where I put the keys and release him to find them among other objects.
I’m quite pleased with him and he’s enjoying the training quite a bit. His favourite behaviours, not including sleeping and peeing on everything, are nose targets, lying down (preferably targeting something) and smelling things. What better activity could I have gotten him into?!
I’ve also registered for Steve White‘s seminars following the PABA conference (“A Scientific Presentation and Study of Working Dogs”) this May. I’ll be there with Elsie (since, unlike Arlo, she doesn’t need a nap every 20min) in the “Hydration Intensified Tracking Technique” and “The Keys to Reliable Scent Detection Work” seminars.
Here’s Arlo last Friday at the Scent Skills class:
This video is an unintentional showcase of how calming/stress signals escalate.
This Beagle, “Emma”, did her best to tell “Muffin” the cat that she was feeling threatened and uncomfortable. Watch her ears drop and the lip-licks when her chin is on the floor, and again when she lifts her head. She is stiff and staring. She looks away from the cat, softening her eyes some, telling her “you’re making me uncomfortable, please go away”. At around 0:28, she shows “whale eye”, a stiff and wide-eyed look to the side, showing the whites of her eyes. She looks away again, but when the cat steps in toward her at 0:35, Emma escalates from “please go away” to “go away or I’ll make you”. Look at the whale-eye and frozen posture. This is not a comfortable or happy dog, she is barely tolerating Muffin’s behaviour. If I see these behaviours from a dog I know that she is a moment away from a reaction and I’d better do something (or stop doing something) if I don’t want to know the nature of the escalation! The cat backs off a little bit and Emma is ambivalent, likely still hoping to diffuse the tension without conflict. The last straw is the cat batting her face, which she gets away with once before Emma becomes fully offensive. Just before the second bat, Emma’s lips contract, her commissures shortening forward and lifting. She doesn’t make a move forward until after being batted the second time.
Other stress/calming signals available to Emma, in addition to the lip licks, whale eye, freezing/tension, head turn/averted gaze and stiff ears (forward or back), could have been yawning, panting, closing the mouth if she were panting (usually accompanied by stillness), ridges of tension around the eyes, mouth, and forehead, puckered lips, elevation from the base of the tail, and standing on her tiptoes.
What happens with Emma and Muffin from here is known only by the poster of the video. I would like to hope that it was entirely ritualized aggression since it has been posted on the internet!
This whole interaction was one minute and three seconds in length. Emma spent that full minute, and likely some time before the video started, telling Muffin (in as polite a way as possible) that she was uncomfortable with her presence and/or behaviour. Muffin, a cat obviously not savvy when it comes to dog behaviour, did not heed this message and pushed Emma to escalate. There were at least two people in the room (camera person and the legs) who watched this play out without heeding Emma’s signs of discomfort. Muffin may be just a cat doing the weird things that cats do, but she was infringing on Emma’s space and making her very uncomfortable. Emma tried many times to diffuse the tension, but to no avail.
How many times does this play out with people? How often are dogs forced into uncomfortable social interactions with each other? How often do we poorly equip our dogs for social interaction through poorly executed or non-existent socialization? How often do trainers get calls because the trusting and loyal family dog “suddenly” bit their child, “out of the blue with no warning”? Dogs are very tolerant of us, when you understand how to see stress it becomes all that much more obvious just how much we put them through, from daily life to teasing to abuse passing as ‘training’. When we don’t heed their quiet stress behaviours as their method of communicating with us, their behaviours get louder until we hear.
Pop quiz: What is this dog telling its people? What would be an appropriate action to take to prevent escalation of this behaviour, as we saw with Emma and Muffin?
(embedded viewing seems to be disabled, but click the link that comes up to watch on Youtube)
UPDATE:
Coincidentally, the day I posted this blog a news anchor was bitten in the face by a Dogo on live TV. The reason? He was stressed, restrained and she kissed his face. This bite did not come out of nowhere (and had nothing to do with the dog’s breed).
See an interview about it here: http://www.myfoxhouston.com//dpp/living/myfox_pets/120210-anchor-bitten-by-dog
And another great article here: http://wagandtrain.blogspot.com/2012/02/perfect-storm.html
For more information on calming/stress signals:
Contrasting Happy vs. Stressed Dogs (video)
“On Talking Terms with Dogs: What your Dog is Telling you” by Turid Rugaas
I have teamed up with Marlo Hiltz to write the “Ask the Trainer” column for the Speaking of Dogs newsletter. It was my turn this month, and the topic was “Dominance”.
Take a look at that column here, and while your at it read the rest of the newsletter and consider fostering or adoption!
Bruno, my first foster, was breeding stock from a puppy mill
I’ve been thinking recently about responsibility. Specifically, about if and how people take responsibility for their dogs, their actions, and their choices. I’ve heard several anecdotes in recent months about potential adopters choosing to buy a pup from a pet store or Kijiji when their application for a rescue dog was declined or if the rescue simply took too long to process them.
To be clear, responsible breeders do not sell their pups in pet stores and the large majority of Kijiji pups are from mills, brokers, and backyard breeders (BYBs). I once asked a pet store clerk if the pups, living on grates behind glass at the back of the store, were from a mill. Of course, she assured me that they were from only responsible breeders. What ‘responsible breeder’ would pull the pups from the bitch early to prolong the period of ‘cuteness’ in the store window, deprive the pup of critical socialization by placing them in a glass box – sometimes in isolation – and allow the store to sell to impulsive consumers who have had no screening or background checks? If the sale doesn’t work out, who is the pup returned to? (Often to rescue, in fact) By definition, that breeder cannot be responsible. If there are any doubts about the conditions of dogs in puppy mills, watch one of the many undercover videos of puppy mills and reports on mill raids (such as this recent seizure of over 600 dogs from Canadian mill, Paws R Us).
It frustrates me when I hear this reason for a pet store/Kijiji purchase: “the rescue made me do it!” This justification for fulfilling immediate gratification attempts to shift the blame to rescues, but it is not their blame to own. Who really gets hurt by this decision? The buyer does, for one. Mills and BYBs don’t have good track records on things like genetic testing, sanitary conditions, and responsible breeding, and the puppy they buy will come with this genetic baggage (do you know what happens when you breed two merle-coloured dogs?). More importantly, the parents of that puppy pay the greatest cost. Buying a mill puppy may be a great turn of events for that one, single puppy, but it means profit for brokers and mill owners. The bitch will be bred once again to feed the demand generated by the sale of that pup.
Any responsible seller/adopter will have a thorough screening process for their animals – something that doesn’t happen in a store. It is not only necessary to be sure that the pup is going to a good home, it is also important to be sure that the pup is the right breed/type/individual for that good home. A Viszla breeder would be irresponsible to sell a pup to someone who wants a couch-potato dog. A Bulldog breeder would be irresponsible to sell a pup to someone who is looking for a partner with which to run marathons (on that topic, this is a very interesting article from NY Times, “Can the Bulldog be Saved?”) Likewise, a rescue looks to place their dogs in homes that are not only generally suitable homes, but also a good match for the individual dog’s needs. Pups in the pet store window are sold on the spot, no questions asked. Not only does thorough screening prioritize the well-being of the dog, it also seeks to place dogs in to homes would would most enjoy the individual dog. That jogger would be none too happy to eventually find out that their Bulldog can’t run a marathon without serious risk to her health – or even to her life! (In fact, this summer an American Bulldog down the street from me died from heat exhaustion after the owner took him jogging)
I expect the screening process may take longer for a rescue than for a breeder simply because of the number of applications coming in for a single dog at one time. Since the dog is already “there” (not yet-to-be-born), there’s a greater expectation of speed of adoption. Why should a person wait for rescue volunteers to sift through a stack of applications if they can walk into a store and walk out with a pup? Why should they accept that a rescue denies their application when a BYB Kijiji pup is a click away?
People adding a dog to their household need to take responsibility for their actions. If they truly believe rescue is the right route, if they know that pet store pups come from mills they can’t pin their decision to financially support these vendors on a rescue for ‘taking too long’ or declining them as adopters. Rescues are volunteer-run, they are not publicly funded institutions that are or should be expected to have the resources to immediately approve an application. Somebody’s decision to hand over a credit card in exchange for that puppy-in-the-window is just that – their own decision. It cannot be placed on rescues.
The matter of ‘taking too long’ is a matter of learning patience, not something that is in good supply currently. “Good things come to those who wait.” But what about the person whose application is declined? Of course, that can smart. No one wants to be told that they are unsuitable owners, whether it is a matter of meeting the needs of an individual dog or in a broader sense. Sometimes rescues will decline an application for a silly reason – for example, they may not adopt a dog into a condo building despite an otherwise perfect application and that the individual dog would be perfectly happy to live in a small space. If this is the case, my suggestion to the declined applicant is to brush it off and move on to another rescue. Privately run rescues are just that: private. The dogs are privately owned by them, and the rescue decides on their own terms where each dog will be placed. If you feel inclined, perhaps offer some polite and constructive feedback and move on.
Often, though, the reasons for declining an applicant are serious and credible. Perhaps that trivial-sounding reason is actually valid and the reason was not made clear – that condo owner’s application was denied because the dog will bark incessantly or perhaps is terrified of elevators. A declined application may also be due to preferred training techniques (alpha rolls or rubbing a pup’s nose in its own feces) or safety issues (an application from a family with children for a dog who is not child-safe). It can be a tough lesson to learn but on more than one occasion I have had previously declined applicants asking for resources. They realized that they were declined for a valid reason and they want to further their own education to become better dog owners. I have a lot of respect for these people, it’s not an easy thing to concede, and am happy to direct them to many resources.
Other reasons cited for these purchases include not finding the right breed in rescue. I have to wonder where they might be looking if this is the case. Unless a person is trying to find a rare breed, shelters and rescues have a huge variety of breeds and types. I also have to wonder about the drive behind a person’s desire for a particular breed. Do they want a Jack Russell because they saw “The Artist”? Do they want a Dane because they think harlequin is a pretty colour? Do they want a pug because they make funny noises? Perhaps potential adopters can broaden their search criteria and they will find their ideal companion in rescue – dogs are so much more than their appearance or breed standard. Another factor that comes into play here is the amount of time a person spends looking for a rescue dog. If they check Petfinder.com once or twice, it is very unlikely that they will find a dog who looks to be a good fit. New dogs are constantly coming into rescue, this is an unfortunate truth, and since rescues are volunteer-run these sites are not necessarily updated daily.
It should not be an impulsive decision to acquire a dog, no matter the source, and this includes the process of the purchase or adoption. Whether a person buys from a responsible breeder or adopts from rescue, there will be a screening process and a time of waiting before bringing the dog home. Buying a pet store or Kijiji puppy is an active decision, not a passive fate, and the purchase of this pup feeds directly into the cruel industry of mass for-profit breeding. No one has the “right” to a dog – it is a privilege. It is not in the best interest of the rescue nor adopter to prioritize speed of adoption over appropriate placement of dogs. The screening process is a necessary step if the dogs’ best interests are to remain a priority.
Further Resources:
Rescue resources:
http://www.helpinghomelesspets.com
Finding a good breeder:
http://www.hkc.org/breederchoice.htm
http://dogtrainer.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-find-a-good-dog-breeder.aspx
http://www.almosthomerescue.org/breeders/breeders.htm
Problems with Purebreds:
Someone needs a nap, those are her 'tired ears'. Elsie with her Novice Title ribbon and two Q/placement ribbons
I just got in from our second rally trial, this time at the Red Barn Event Centre in Barrie, ON. It’s a really nice venue (though I drove past it three times before I finally found it!) and, like my previous experience at The Poodle Farm, the event organizers were lovely and helpful. It was a very small trial with 5-7 dogs each in Novice and Advanced, probably because of the cold weather (-22C with the windchill).
Even if courses themselves were disastrous, I would have been thrilled by Elsie’s behaviour in the building. She can be reactive, particularly indoors around other dogs, but today she didn’t show even a hint of it! It was also helpful that the space was large and the competitors few. We encountered some difficulty at the last trial because Elsie’s stress levels sky-rocketed when Jen and I parted ways (for instance, when I left them to walk the course). Since it’s not a ‘daily problem’ I haven’t put much effort into training that issue since the last trial, so to manage the situation Jen stayed out of Elsie’s sight for the duration of the event. That worked out very well and Elsie was able to keep her head about her.
I had entered two Novice runs in the hopes of getting Elsie’s last leg for her RN title, and luckily that did happen. Instead of staying in Novice 2 as FEO (“for exhibition only”) as planned, I decided to move up and enter the second Advanced run as well. According to rules, I could only enter Advanced 1 as FEO because I qualified in Novice 1. It’s a technicality thing, but that worked out fine for me.
In Novice 1, we were off to a shaky start when Elsie investigated the very first sign, 360 Right (-2 points) and then sat down to scratch herself (skin problems). We got back on track from there, and things went pretty smoothly, with the exception of a down instead of an auto sit (-1 point) and Elsie trying to do a go out around a pylon (something we’ve been working on recently, and obviously need to do more work on stimulus control!). She didn’t knock it over, so no points were deducted there. We scored 197/200.
In our FEO run during Advanced 1 I decided to feed ‘illegally’ a couple of time just because I could. I wasn’t training for this trial with the expectation of doing an Advanced run and I was concerned about how a couple of the stations would go. Since I wasn’t being scored, there was no problem feeding in the places I did. Just after sign 14 I felt like my legs were moving faster than my brain (you know that feeling?) so I stopped to regroup and Elsie sat. If I had done that sign properly, I should have walked out of that station and kept going. Had I been judged, that would have counted as an NQ (non-qualifying). Good thing no one was keeping score! All the go out training we’ve been doing paid off when she was able to take the jump confidently in this run and the next.
The third run was Advanced 2, in which we took first place with a score of 199. Go Elsig! The one point was deducted for a crooked front from the recall. I was thrilled with her focus during the food bowl exercise (far right corner of the ring in the video), we haven’t trained for that one in the least and I was expecting that we might NQ during that exercise. She took a peek going in but came back quickly and maintained a tight heel for the second and third pass by the food bowls.
Overall, I was quite happy with how today turned out. As I mentioned above, even if we’d bombed the runs, she was on her best manners and her stress levels were low and I would have been happy with that. My nerves, on the other hand, were still jittering. I’ve never been one for exhibition or competition! I’ve continued to use food in the ring though the next level after Advanced doesn’t allow for it. I’m thinking I’ll pitter around here in Advanced for a couple trials, FEO after the next two legs, until I find my own legs in this trial environment. I did, however, find this one more enjoyable than the last simply because Elsie and I were less stressed. I’ll certainly be back to the Red Barn for another trial in the spring, I think the whole process is growing on me!
If you screw up, it’s not your dogs fault.
That, and all its implications, is probably the best tip for becoming a great owner and trainer.
