SWIMMING IN THE DEEP END OF THE POOL

The year I was seven was the year I really learned to swim.  I LOVE to swim.  Up until that year, I had puddle ducked around the shallow end of the pool in the company of my mother, where I could touch the bottom, but the year I was seven, I learned to swim.  Swimming was an important skill from my perspective.  I am not sure why, but I was especially attracted to the deep end of the pool, where the water was over my head.  Where I could not touch the bottom.  Where the big kids got to swim.  I wanted to be just like them, able to jump off the diving board, able to swim across the pool, all by my self.

I watch a lot of reactive dogs in my classes, and I have often though that being a reactive dog can be a little bit like being seven and wanting to be able to swim in the deep end of the pool.  Many of these dogs seem to be magnetized towards the targets they are afraid of.  They want to go say hi, but when they get close, they begin to worry and get overwhelmed.  And then they get to the point where they cannot cope.  And then they bark and lunge, or freeze and bolt, or sometimes they bite.  These dogs seem to be attracted the very things that frighten them the most.

When these dogs are at home, they are often calm and easy going.  When a stranger appears, or a dog, they go on alert.  And they often walk right up to the target looking calm and confident.  They are just like I was at seven in the swimming pool.  I desperately wanted to swim in the deep end and I would start out confidently swimming where the water was not over my head.  Then I would approach that magic rope that marked off where the water got suddenly deeper.  Then I would tire and put my foot down.  For a moment, there is hope that I could rest with my foot on the bottom of the pool, and then there is that sickening realization that I cannot touch and the water is over my head.  One time I panicked and the life guard had to jump in and get me.  And still, I wanted to swim in the deep end of the pool.

When a dog approaches the target of his fear, he is quite a bit like I was.  He wants to go say hello, but when he gets there, he is overwhelmed and panics.  Dogs who panic behave fairly predictably; they usually bark and lunge, or they may scoot away as though they touched something hot.  If the target of their fear is a person who reaches out to them, they may actually bite.  A portion of the dogs will freeze and stare with a deer in the headlights sort of look to him.  All of the dogs who get into the deep end need what I got so long ago.  They need swimming lessons.

In my case, panicking and being pulled from the water by a life guard was a turning point.  I was banned from the deep end for two weeks, and during those two weeks, I spent time learning skills that would help me to be a better swimmer.  I learned to fill my lungs and make myself into a floating balloon in the water.  I learned that people in the deep end of the pool could stand on a ledge around the deep end that was not as deep as the rest of the pool.  I learned to duck my head under the water and then push up against the water and to take a breath and go down again.  I practiced swimming almost all the way across the pool and finally after two weeks of practicing I could swim all the way across the pool.  And for two weeks, I wasn’t permitted to get overwhelmed by sneaking myself up to the rope that marked off the danger zone.

Working with a dog who is reactive is very much like teaching me to swim.  They need a vacation from being overwhelmed and a chance to learn different and new skills.  They need to learn that the target of their fear is not as frightening as they thought.  They need to learn how to escape and swim to the ledge at the side of the pool.  They need confident people who can help them to succeed and who won’t just toss them in to sink or swim.  Slow careful exposure to the target helps the dog to practice the skills he is learning to be successful.   

Most of all, not drowning the dog over and over again is the foundation for success when working with reactive dogs.  For all the reactive dogs out there who are working on overcoming their fears, remembering to keep them from drowning is probably the most important part of what we do.  And to all the reactive dogs who have passed through the Good Dog program, congratulations!  You learned to swim in the deep end of the pool!

INTERPRETING THRESHOLDS

NOTE TO MY REGULAR READERS:

Those of you who follow my blogs will have noticed that there has been a long delay since the last blog I posted on March 2nd of this year.  On March 20th, I fell off my horse and sustained a concussion.  One of the things I have not been able to do very well has been to read and write, so I have not been blogging.  Here is my first writing effort since my fall; I hope you enjoy!  I don't promise to be back as often as I have been for a while, but I take it as a good sign that I was able to put this together today.  Thanks for reading.

INTERPRETING THRESHOLDS

A threshold is the limit at which a stimulus causes a response.  When a single mosquito flies past you, most people don’t take note or get concerned; they are below threshold for mosquitoes.  If the mosquito lands upon you and starts to sting you, most people become aware of the mosquito; you could then say that they are at threshold for mosquitoes.  If a swarm of mosquitoes were buzzing towards you, and some were already stinging you, and you were swatting them and trying to get away, then you could say that you were over threshold.  

When working with dogs with behaviour problems, we look at the things that concern the individual dog, and we ask “at what point do these things become a problem for the dog?”  It is tempting to look at the things that dogs are concerned about and classify them according to if you think they should be of concern to the dog or not, but this isn’t helpful.  Looking at each dog and determining what their individual threshold is for a variety of stimuli helps trainers to determine at what point they need to change their training plan.

Thresholds and arousal are closely linked.  Going back to the mosquito example, most people are pretty relaxed about a single mosquito flying around.  When a mosquito lands on us, we become a tiny amount more aware or aroused about that mosquito.  And if we are swarmed by mosquitoes, we become vigilant and aroused, ready to act quickly if needed.  By making the link between arousal and thresholds, we can easily determine at what point we can move the dog’s threshold. 

When a dog is below threshold, they can habituate or just become gradually accustomed to the stimulus.  This is useful information if you want your dog to learn to tolerate a stimulus that you can easily control and present below threshold, but often, we cannot control the target stimulus that readily.

When a dog is at threshold, we can use Classical Conditioning to pair the target stimulus with something that the dog likes a lot.  If for instance, the dog is concerned about men wearing hats and you can present a man with a hat at a distance, so that the dog is aware of the man in the hat but not upset by him, then you could give the dog treats so that he associates men in hats with treats.  You need to repeat this until the dog is well below threshold in order to be successful, and sometimes this takes a great number of sessions.

When a dog is over threshold, he cannot learn at all.  He is aroused and overwhelmed.  Being aroused and overwhelmed can come in two flavours-he may be extremely happy or he may be really frightened.  The dog who is presented with a Frisbee and who barks and lunges and bounces around is as aroused as the dog who is presented with the frightening man in the hat and who stands and shivers.  Either way, his arousal level needs to come down before he can even begin to think, much less learn new things. 

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.