BRAVE HORSE

Sometimes dreams come true.  I have wanted to own my own horse for my whole life, and now finally I own my own horse.  I get to go out in the middle of the night and sit in my barn, with my mare beside me, munching on her hay while I sit on a bale of straw beside her.  I can go out early in the morning and there she is.  It is kind of magic.  There is only one problem.  I am a somewhat nervous rider.  In my teens I was in a bad riding accident and since then I have lost my confidence as a rider. 

All was going well with my young (four year old) mare, Kayak, until she started trying to buck me off.  Now although I am a nervous rider, I am a fairly competent rider and in five tries she has only succeeded once.  The problem is that although I landed on my feet, and although I have sat through her shenanigans four more times, she scared the heck out of me.  In fact, she scared me enough that one night this week, I talked myself into a tizzy and had an overbearing sense of doom about riding her.  For sure I was going to fall off.  I got myself into a real state of fear.  

Never the less, I talked myself down enough to go down to the paddock and groom her to ride.  While I was grooming her she was a bit uptight and moved around a fair amount.  My sense of foreboding got worse.  I tacked her up, and strapped on my helmet and led her to the paddock gate.  I took her out of her paddock and mounted her; she stood to mount and was well behaved and walked out nicely when I asked.  I was pretty tense though.  When we got to my laneway, I asked her to turn left and very nicely, so she did.  We walked toward the road at the end of our lane, and as we approached, a robin landed in a puddle in front of us.  Kayak snorted and jigged a bit, and I said to her “don’t worry, it’s just a bird.”  I got more nervous though. 

We got to the end of the lane and turned around and passed the bird again and I said “It’s okay, Kayak, good horse, it’s just a bird” and I got more nervous again.  Kayak responded by tensing up a bit.  We approached my giant white Dogs in the Park truck and Kayak stepped to the side.  “Silly horse,” I said.  “It’s just the truck.”  And I got a tiny bit more nervous.  Kayak continued along our laneway towards the other end, and stopped suddenly beside Eco’s Frisbee and snorted again.  “It’s okay, it’s just a Frisbee, Kayak” I said.  More tension passed through the reins between me and Kayak.  She started to raise her head up high and started to look around for more things to worry about.  She stopped at a pop can crushed on the road, and tossed her head and again, I tried to reassure her; “It’s okay Kayak, it’s a pop can.”  Suddenly I realized something.  Something I tell my students every day.  Something really important. 

When I tell my horse “It’s okay” or “Don’t worry” I get tense.  I worry.  I get more nervous.  And those nerves pass themselves down the reins straight into my horse’s mind.  No, I don’t do telepathy with my horse, but she sure can tell from my posture, from how I hold the reins, from my movements, that I am tense.  When I am tense, my horse gets tense.  I have seen just the exact same thing in the dogs I work with.  When the handler anticipates that something bad will happen, they transmit that tension through the leash and the dog responds accordingly.  When the handler is tense, then the animal is going to take that information and use it; my tension translates into my animal’s vigilance.  If I am tense, and I have a good relationship with my dog or horse, they trust that I have a good reason to be tense. 

In order to undo that, I need to do something that will counteract that tension I am feeling.  What I usually tell my students to do is to tell the dog that they are brave.  “Look at that, brave dog” can go a long way to convincing me that we are going to get through the situation in one piece.  Low and behold, when I turned around at the far end of my laneway and I said to her “You are a brave horse.  We can do this together” it was like turning a mental corner together.  Suddenly, I relaxed and just as suddenly she relaxed too.  We approached the pop can and I said to her, “Brave horse, you can walk right by that can” and when we approached the truck I said “Brave horse, we can pass the great white whale of a truck together.”  We passed the Frisbee, the bird and then approached the busy road to look at the cars.  “Brave horse,” I said, “We will look at the cars together” and amazingly, we did.  Calmly and confidently.  She is a brave horse and I am a brave rider and we did it together.

Together is important when we work with animals.  When we work together, we can achieve greater things than we individually achieve alone.  Together, I can throw the ball and my dog can fetch it up.  My horse can carry me farther than I can walk, while I provide feed and shelter for her.  My dog can gather the sheep which provide us both with meat and milk.  When we do things together, we get a sense of one another.  We get an understanding of what each of us wants out of the relationship.  When the relationship is meaningful we take one another into account.  When one of us is tense, the other picks up on that and when one of us consciously relaxed, we share that between us. 

Brave horse.  Don’t be scared.  The two sentences seem to have similar meanings but they really have something different to say that is important in how we share ourselves with our animal partners.  Brave horse recognizes our triumph.  Don’t be scared is a warning of impending danger.  When we phrase our interactions in the context of impending danger, we both tense up and get frightened.  When we phrase it in terms of our joint triumph, we both win. 

What is ironic in this story is that for many years, I have been telling my students to phrase their interactions in a supportive, constructive voice, and yet, when I was nervous about my horse, I dropped right into the language that I know leads us down a dangerous path of nervousness, of fear and of reactivity, and that is exactly what I got with my horse.  When I rephrased it, I got a different response.  A response I think is much better for both of us. 

This morning I went out to ride again, but this time it was different.  I hadn’t set myself up to be afraid of my horse by thinking all night about all the things that could go wrong.  Those things could and might still happen, but they weren’t the most important thing on my mind.  A friend came over today to meet my horse, and we groomed her together.  We tacked her up, sharing ourselves with Kayak.  I was relaxed and so was Kayak and we were enjoying the company of my friend.  We took her out of the paddock and I mounted and she stood stock still for a moment once I was up.  Suddenly, she dropped her head way down low and stepped forward three steps with her front feet.  Then she leaned back and stretched herself right out, like a dog bowing in play.  She pulled herself upright and stretched out her back legs too and then walked herself back upright and stood waiting for my signal to walk on.  I was startled but not frightened when she made this very novel move, and I am left to wonder if she has a sense of humour and is stretching and laughing because I am relaxed enough to enjoy the joke.

The Bucket

Once upon a time there was a tap that dripped and underneath the tap was a big bucket.  Every day, drip, drip, drip, water leaked out of the tap, and every day, drip by drip, the bucket began to fill.  The song birds in the garden would sometimes stop by, and perch on the rim of the bucket, and dip their beaks into the bucket and take a drip or a drop out of the bucket, but bit by bit, the bucket began to fill.  Once a fox happened along and took a big drink from the bucket and dropped the level down quite a bit, but overall, the bucket continued to fill. 

One day, the water reached to top of the bucket, and in turn, the bucket began to drip over the edge.  At first, the soil below became damp and a few plants began to grow there, but day by day, drip by drip, the soil became saturated and the soil became muddy and nothing was able to grow there.  As the season went on, the rains came, and the dripping bucket was eventually surrounded by a puddle.  The birds came and bathed in the puddle, and insects visited, but the puddle got bigger and bigger and bigger, and the yard became muddier and muddier and muddier. 

In the house attached to the tap lived a little boy who loved to play in the yard, and who particularly loved to play in the mud by the puddle around the bucket.  His mother was less enamoured of the little boy’s favourite practice-and she stopped allowing him to play in the yard.  This resulted in the little boy spending more time in front of the television, eating snacks and staying clean while he became less and less healthy every day.

Eventually, the water bill came in and the mother noticed that she was using a lot more water than she thought that she ought to be using so she called the utility company to come out and investigate.  Of course the plumber they sent noticed the bucket right away, tipped it over, looked at the tap and recommended that a new washer be installed in the tap in order to stop the leak.  The washer was installed, the tap stopped dripping and the bucket went along to a new career as a goal on the ground for a random version of basket ball that the little boy and his best friend to play with in the now dry yard.  The little boy sat still less often, the tv was turned off and everyone lived happily ever after. 

And what does this have to do with dog training?  A lot.

When I have a veterinarian refer a client to me for puppy class because the pup is tremendously fearful, and the client decides not to attend, then the family misses out on the support they need to help that puppy overcome his fears.  When the pup is six months old, and he begins to have big problems with anxiety, this is a dripping bucket.  The fears add up, drip by drip.  And then...they tip over to become a bigger problem.  When that same dog doesn’t get help, drip by drip the anxiety he had becomes overwhelming until he just cannot cope and bites someone.  Drip by drip.  Behaviour problems don’t usually appear over night.  They appear drip by drip until the people who live with the dog with the problem finds themselves in the middle of a giant muddy puddle. 

When this same dog ends up at the shelter, and someone there takes a shine to him, he might be placed in foster.  Let’s just say that he is placed into a foster with a family who doesn’t have the skills to recognize the problem.  Maybe this is a family who has never lived with a dog and they don’t recognize that the dog is afraid.  Drip by drip, the dog settles into the family, and is afraid, but the family doesn’t know enough to prevent the dog from being exposed to the things that frighten the dog.  One day, the fearful dog tips over into anxiety, and then tips again into aggression.  The dog is sent back to the shelter, and the staffer who took a shine to the dog protects the dog and places the dog in another family on a permanent basis.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.

The first family, the foster family, is now turned off dogs.  The drip of fostering this dog is that they now don’t want to foster dogs, they don’t want to adopt a dog, they don’t want a puppy, and when a family member gets a service dog, they won’t visit that family member.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  One drip at a time, the effect of a fearful puppy who didn’t go to puppy class builds.  Now he has passed through the family of origin, to a foster family and both families suffer because of the fear that he lives with day in and day out.

The next stop on this poor dog’s journey is the family that took him on a permanent basis.  If this family is any more savvy than the foster family, they will avoid some of the things that frighten him.  But drip by drip, this effect changes the family in ways they had never anticipated.  Drip by drip, the family stops having visitors-the dog is too afraid to meet.  Drip by drip, this means that the kids cannot have friends over any more.  Drip by drip, this means that mom cannot invite her friends over for coffee.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  The dog has to be put away when contractors come in to work in the home.  Drip.  And still the dog lives in fear and anxiety, all day, every day.

Eventually, the inevitable happens and the dog bites again.  And this time, the family decides to euthanize the dog.  DRIP.  And the family gets another dog, but their middle child, the victim of the bite, is afraid of dogs for the rest of her life.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  The dog has three known bites on record, the family of origin is traumatized and the foster family is traumatized and lost to the world of rescue, the family of destination is also traumatized and one person in that family will never trust dogs again.  Drip, drip, drip.  And in the end, the dog pays.  Drip.

Rescues are full of dogs like the one I describe; an amalgamation of three dogs on my case load in the past year.  The problems are sometimes resolvable.  They are often avoidable.  And when a dog like this comes into rescue, there are other dogs in the shelter who don’t have behaviour problems.  Here is another small problem-a drip.  When this dog is placed in foster a behaviourally healthy dog looses the chance to be placed.  Drip.  And when the fearful dog comes back into the shelter, that is another behaviourally healthy dog that looses a chance.  Drip.  And when the fearful dog is eventually killed because he has bitten a member of the destination family, several behaviourally healthy dogs lose their chances to live in that family.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.

Dogs are interesting.  They co evolved with us around about the time we started living in villages.  They hang out.  They eat our leavings.  And in some cases they live closely with us.  They are frighteningly similar to us.  They have similar social behaviours, and similar developmental schedules.  Some of them live successfully and without significant stress on the periphery of our societies.  Some of them live happily and contentedly as working dogs who accompany us as guides, as searchers, as sentries.  Others live in our homes as pets.  No one way to live is the “right” way to live; dogs are able to fill all these many niches within our various social spheres.  The net effect is that when we breed and capture dogs, we create situations where the drip effect begins to hit our joint destiny.

When we indiscriminately breed dogs predisposed to behaviour problems of any kind, the drip effect results in pups like the one described above.  When we spay and neuter indiscriminately and we lose valuable genetic material, and more drips happen.  When we fail to properly socialize pups, the bucket drips over.  When we place dogs in families who are not prepared for fearful or aggressive dogs, more drips happen.  When dogs who have behaviour problems are accepted into rescues and shelters, more drips occur.  When dogs with behaviour problems are fostered out, then more drips happen.  When these dogs are placed in families, more drips occur.  When dogs are stolen off the streets and beaches and a tourist takes one such dog home, another drip falls out of the bucket that is the problem we face with dog populations today. 

I see one hope for the dogs who are currently sitting in rescues and fosters and shelters.  It is time for someone to come along and replace the washer in the tap.  That someone, or those people in fact are the consumers of pets-we don’t eat them, but we do purchase them and adopt them and take them in.  It is time for a consumer revolution that will stop the need for rescue.  When families begin to choose dogs based not on needing to help the dog, but on making a good match for both the dog and the family, we will have put a washer on the dripping tap.  This means that we as a society have to begin to make better choices about who our furry family members will be.  We need to do this on a system wide basis, but like the green movement, we have to make small local choices that will have big global effects. 

I WANT YOUR JOB

      

Yes, in fact, I want you to lose your job.  In fact, I want me to lose my job too.  Not because I don`t like you or because I don`t like the work that I do; I probably would like you if I knew you and I love the work I do.  The problem is that our jobs are really fixer upper jobs.  The jobs I would like to see gone (and I am not actually thinking they will be gone any time soon!) are all the jobs in the industry of fixing dog problems.

If you work in a shelter or rescue, I want your job.  I want to shut all the rescues and shelters.  When your building is empty, and there are no more barking dogs looking for new homes, your job will be obsolete.  When every dog starts out in the home that he dies in, you won`t be needed any more and you can find something else to do with your days. 

If you work with families who live with dogs with behaviour problems, I want your job (and am willing to lose my job too).  I want every puppy to go to a loving family who will take great care to choose the right dog, socialize it, train it, and live and love and play and work with him.  Yes, if you are fixing dog behaviour problems, I want your job. 

If you are a dog catcher, animal control officer or humane society inspector, I want your job too.  I would like everyone who is involved with dogs to care deeply for them and to take care of them too.  Yes, if you are involved in animal control, I would like to have your job.

If you breed indiscriminately, and place without thought or consideration for the implications, I would like to have your job.  I would like there to be no more market for your services.  If you work in a pet store that sells puppies (or other pets come to think of it!), I would like you to be out of work too.

The bottom line is that we need as a society to do a better job of meeting the needs of the dogs we share our lives with.  Our dogs deserve to have good genetics, safe homes and good food every day.  They deserve good veterinary care, and training and education and someone who likes them and likes to do stuff with them.  They deserve to share their lives with people who care and have time for them.  And if every dog started out with his needs being met, and a plan for what will happen in the event that his family`s life goes haywire.

And in exchange for this little dream of mine?  Well, I guess I would be willing to do something other than what I now do for a living.  I just don’t see it happening any time soon. 

Imagine

Imagine for a moment that every litter of puppies born was the result of a planned breeding of two healthy, stable dogs, and that the breeder had found appropriate, committed families for every puppy.  What would the impact be on the pet population situation?  What would this look like?

To begin with it would mean that every bitch bred out there would be healthy and a good representative of her type.  There is a difference between a purebred dog and a purpose bred dog.  A purebred dog has to have two parents who are also purebreds of that breed.  Thus, a Golden Retriever has both a Golden Retriever dam and a Golden Retriever sire.  A Shi Tzu has a Shi Tzu dam and a Shi Tzu sire.  To be a purebred dog, you don’t have to have healthy parents; you just have to be the offspring of two purebred dogs of the same breed.

A purpose bred dog is a healthy dog who has two healthy parents.  Suppose for a moment that you were a dairy farmer and you had a farm dog who brought in the cattle.  And suppose that this dog was female, and very talented and healthy.  You could make a great argument for finding an appropriate sire and breeding your bitch to produce more nice puppies, provided that you have homes for the pups you don’t want to keep.  Introducing more genetic variation in this way can sometimes help to keep a population healthy.  Provided that your dog is healthy and does the work you want her to do, you can often produce really nice puppies this way, who will grow into really nice adult dogs. 

An outcross like this is much more likely to produce healthy, desired adult dogs than might a breeding of two dogs who are unhealthy, even if they are of the same breed.  So if you have a German Shepherd but she is very nervous, and limps sometimes, then you don’t want to breed her at all, even if her parents are champions, and even if you really like her.  If she is not an outstanding example of her breed, she should not be bred.  Then consider what happens when a dog like this is bred to a sire who is aggressive and who also has some structural problems.  The puppies are much more likely to have behaviour and structure problems, and even if you have found homes for all of them, they are much less likely to stay in those homes for their entire lives.  You can breed nice dogs, or you can breed not nice dogs, and which you choose to do will have big impacts on the pet population as a whole.

Friday is a Purebred, Purpose Bred dog with a commited family who will be there for her for her whole life.  Every dog deserves this!

Purpose bred dogs MIGHT be purebreds, but they are not necessarily purebreds; they are bred intentionally dogs who are healthy and who have homes to go to.  So purebreds can be purpose breds, but purpose bred dogs don’t have to be purebreds.  In order to address the issue of the effect of indiscriminate breeding, every litter needs to be purpose bred, regardless of if it is a litter of purebreds, of mixed breeds, or of unknown heritage bred dogs.  Every litter that is indiscriminately bred contributes to the problem, and every litter of purpose bred dogs addresses it.

So let’s just imagine a perfect world where every dog was the product of a careful, well thought out breeding program.  Each person breeding a litter would also have dedicated puppy parents who were waiting to get their carefully bred dog at an age that is appropriate; about 7 to 8 weeks of age.  Each puppy family would go to a good puppy class, and each family would have reasonable expectations for their pups.  In the event of some crisis the breeder would be willing to take the purpose bred dog back.  How many of these dogs would end up in a shelter?  Probably not very many. 

This is what we should be striving for when we consider how we are going to resolve the pet population situation in North America.  At the moment in North America we are faced with some interesting situations.  In some areas, such as the one I live in, there are very few stray and unwanted dogs.  There are former research dogs looking for homes.  There are some “free to a good home” ads.  But there aren’t stray dogs living in our streets.  For the most part, in Guelph, Ontario, we don’t have a pet overpopulation problem.  In fact, we import dogs from all over the world, especially from the Southern United States and from Northern Ontario to fill our needs for rescued dogs. 

On the other hand, I hear from colleagues in the mid west and western United States that they still have many unwanted dogs who live off the land and who breed and produce pups who grow up to live in the dumpsters, or on the fringes of towns or farms.  These dogs are unvaccinated so they are a sink for diseases and they are often a nuisance to those who live close by.  These dogs are often trapped, poisoned and shot in an effort to control the population.  Some of these dogs end up in shelters and then are either killed or shipped elsewhere to meet the growing demand for “rescued” dogs.  It is important to understand that these dogs are usually very healthy, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to survive.  It would not be hard to argue that some of these dogs should be permitted to live out their lives on the fringe against the day when purebred indiscriminately bred dogs need the genetic variation they could provide. 

There is a strong presence on the internet supporting rescuing dogs ahead of purchasing a purpose bred dog.  The problem is that these dogs have to come from somewhere.  Locally, it is more popular to rescue than to purchase a dog.  So we have a supply and demand problem.  In Guelph, I have met dogs who have been rescued off the beaches in the Caribbean, who have been rescued in Korea and Taiwan and Indonesia and who have been brought here to live.  Not all of these dogs do well.  In fact, many of them don’t do well at all.  And as long as rescuing is considered the better option, there needs to be a supply of these dogs. 

I would love to see rescues cease to need to exist.  I recognize that in various parts of North America there is a genuine pet overpopulation crisis.  This is not the case everywhere though.  In selected pockets, we are beating back the problem and now we have to come up with another solution.  The most common solution is to import, but that brings on its own problems too. 

We see a similar population problem when pesticides are used.  Consider a wheat field.  If you take all the grasshoppers out of the wheat field, after the toxins have washed away, you now have a wheat field that is ripe for an invasion of more plant eating insects.  In some cases, this results in a worse infestation than was originally there.  When we import dogs from other areas, we create a hole for another dog to fill, in the environment of origin.  Ultimately, this contributes to further population issues where the dog comes from because the solution doesn’t actually address the issue.

Similarly, we see local issues cropping up.  In a town half an hour north of Guelph there is a man who “rescues” two litter of puppies each year.  There is a bitch who lives in the ravine behind his house, and he feeds her and when she has a litter of puppies, he harvests the pups at about five weeks and sells them under the guise of rescuing them.  He sells the puppies to unsuspecting people, telling them that he has “rescued” the litter.  The fact that he is feeding the dam, but not providing any veterinary care is not discussed.  The fact that the pups didn’t get the early socialization that they should have had doesn’t get discussed either.  By providing food, and a whelping shelter that he has lured this dog into, he has set himself up as an empty wheat field.  When this dog eventually dies, it is quite likely that another will appear in her place, filling the niche.

Spaying and neutering isn’t addressing the issue adequately-we are still seeing dogs being indiscriminately bred.  Spay/neuter and release programs hold promise of keeping active niches full so that new dogs don’t enter them and produce even more unwanted puppies.  Limiting access to resources such as food and shelter is another effective method of population control that is not nearly often enough thought of; if food and shelter are limited, pups won’t be produced.  Coming back to my imaginary scenario, it is easy to see that if every pup was purposefully bred, was carefully placed and if every family getting a dog was realistic and dedicated, we wouldn’t have a pet overpopulation problem anywhere.  And it is time we started to peck away at that problem.

I am not JUST a Dog Trainer

      For the past dozen years or so I have made my living helping people to train their dogs.  Over the years I have probably been a thousand kitchens, sitting down with my clients and helping them to find a middle ground they can live with in the company of their difficult dogs.  I have carved out a niche meeting dogs with problems that range from serious aggression, to grieving for a lost family member, and most of my job surrounds figuring out what the dog needs and addressing that within the family he lives with.  Sometimes my job is a little different though.

About ten years ago I had a client who called me when the family dog began attacking her.  When I went into the home, I found a very bizarre situation.  The husband was emotionally abusing the wife, and had come up with a unique way to do so.  He taught the dog to attack the woman on cue and then blamed her for getting the dog angry.  It took me quite some time to figure out what was happening in that case.  One day I dropped by and the husband was not home.  I spoke to the woman alone for the first time, and made her aware of some of the community resources available to her.  Shortly after, the family discontinued seeing me.  This is not uncommon especially when there is domestic violence involved. 

About eight or nine months after our last appointment, I went to my mailbox and got a letter out.  In a small blue envelope on a simple sheet of stationary, I read the following:

Dear Sue,

Thank you for the time you spent working with me and Micah.  We have left Darius and moved away, and we are safe now.  I wouldn’t have been able to leave without the support you gave us.*

The letter was not signed, but I recognized the names of the dog and the husband.  I realized something at that moment.  I am not JUST a dog trainer.  I am a person in our community who helps people, sometimes in unexpected ways.  In this case, I was lucky enough to know what to do when I had the chance to talk to this lady alone.

This was the first time that I encountered something that I have since encountered many times in my career.  I am a lot more than JUST a dog trainer.  I am called in to do dog training, but one of the true joys of what I do is that I often get to be a whole lot more than JUST a dog trainer.  In fact, dog training can be the tip of the iceberg in terms of my day to day activities.  I have been the butler, answering the door in the course of my job.  It wasn’t intentional; we were working on teaching the dog to cope with the door bell ringing and one of my volunteers turned out to be a real guest.  I have signed for packages and answered the phone.  I have held the baby, and swept the floor.  I have called 911 and reported an emergency and I have closed the gate behind me when I am finished. 

As a professional, my business card says that I work with families to overcome behaviour problems in their dogs.  My training is in behaviour modification, in ethology and in consulting skills.  As a behaviour consultant, I need a whole set of skills that we don’t talk much about or train for.  We don’t talk for instance about needing to be able to recognize when domestic abuse is occurring and we often don’t talk about what to do about it if we do see it.  We don’t talk about how to talk to owners about euthanasia when their dog is too dangerous to live with, and yet, we are sometimes faced with the need to do so.  And when pets die, we sometimes have to speak to the children of the families about death even if we haven’t had the training to do so.  In the course of my day to day activities I have had to assess a dog and determine if he needs to go to the vet, teach my clients about basic husbandry and help them to learn about things like cutting nails and stripping a terrier.  I have visited people who are unable to leave their homes, sometimes as the only person they see in a given day when I come to walk or train their dog.

I am glad that I am more than JUST a dog trainer.  In the course of my day I get to work with interesting people and do interesting things.  Things I didn’t expect when I started this job.  If I have learned one thing it is “be willing to do the unexpected”.  Doing the mundane unexpected things I have done at work has kept it interesting, exciting and surprising each and every day.  Dog training is not actually an animal job; it is a people job.  What I get back is more than just the money I earn helping people with their dogs, but also respect and acceptance and participation in a wider social construct.  Dog training is the kind of job that allows me to be a part of my community in a way that is meaningful and wonderful.