Saying goodbye to a dog

Yesterday a car pulled up just as I was shutting things down to go home. I did not have anyone on the schedule. The car looked vaguely familiar.

Lani got out of the car. I had not seen her in a while. Back in 2009 she and her roommate Tammi, brought me two very interesting dogs. The first was Billy, a Dutch Sheppard; the second was Bosco, a Dachshund.

They were a challenging pair. Bosco was deaf. Billy was a retired military bomb detection dog. And to make it even more interesting, Tammy is vision impaired.

The challenge with Billy was his former occupation. Military and Police dogs are trained to think of their jobs as a game. The reward for doing well is a Kong. So these dogs are toy aggressive. In addition Billy was dog aggressive. He could not let a dog near the patrol as it might be carrying an IED.

Billy was arguably the most dangerous dog I have had to train. He was willing to kill. At the same time he was also a very easy dog to work with because he had learned to trust his handler. My job was to show him that Lani, Tammi, and I were to get the same respect as his military handler.

Billy also had some difficulty with his back legs, they had been severely injured in a bomb blast.

The training went well. Billy and Bosco moved on to group. Billy kept his eye on every dog in the room but had learned to live with others.

No one comes to Neighborhood Pack forever so eventually Lani’s pack slid into memory.

About a year later Lani came by with an article from the Fort Carson paper. Billy was now a therapy dog in their Wounded Warriors program. He related well to the combat veterans because he too was a wounded vet.

Lani had come by yesterday for Billy to say goodbye. He is 14 now and that is the life expectancy of his breed. He has kidney problems.

I could hear him out in the car. He knew where he was and he wanted to come in.

Lani had us pose for some pictures. Billy let me scratch his ears. Then he took a treat from me.

He has lost some weight, his back legs are a little less reliable, and he has some breathing problems. But he seemed to enjoy visiting his old haunt.

Billy, like me, had found something to do when he retired. Lani and Tammi gave him a wonderful life. The joy this dog brought far outweighs the loss soon to come. I'm grateful Lani and Tammi let me say goodbye.

And I am sure he will be waiting for us when our times come to cross the rainbow bridge.

Doug

Do it yourself dog training

Like a lot of the articles on this blog, this one was inspired by a phone call I received a couple of hours ago.

A couple of days ago I had a first session with a dog. It is a breed you rarely see. The dog is about 4 and is extremely fearful. In this case I believe that this dog was very fearful as a puppy. It happens.

On a one to ten difficulty scale this dog is about a 7. It will not be the hardest problem I have dealt with but it is up there. It will takes us a while but eventually we will fix the problem.

The first session went even better than I had hoped. I do not expect a dog to be perfect but I know you will go home with a better dog.

The Manners in Minutes system has you work with the dog at home. One of the things I need you to do is to get the dog out at least twice a week, for at least twenty minutes, somewhere where you can work on a twenty foot line.

My client took her dog out to work last night. And she ran into a neighbor with a new puppy.

Because getting a dog over being fearful is a process that takes a while, the client’s dog did react with fear to the person and the new dog.

The neighbor told my client that she had bought a book from one of the “famous” TV show trainers and was training her dog in the “right” system. And she promptly started to tell and show my client what she would be doing.

Then when the neighbor triggered a fear reaction in the client’s dog, the neighbor struck the dog with a stick.

This is just a minor setback. It will not undo what we did or stop the dog's progress. But it did traumatize the dog unnecessarily.



Not everyone has access to a good trainer. And not everyone, especially in this economic climate, can afford a trainer. So if you want to train a dog yourself, go ahead.

For the record, if you cannot come to me or to Pat Muller (the wonderful trainer who developed Manners in Minutes) then you can get Pat’s book or video from Quansa Kennels and train a dog in Manners in Minutes yourself. I have met some awesome dogs that people trained themselves.

And there are other books that are very good. But there are also methods that stink. This trainer the neighbor picked uses a “dominance” system. Sorry folks but in my opinion the trainer should call it bullying.

But no matter what book you pick do not think that one dog and one book gives you the right to interfere with anyone else’s training. You are entitled to express an opinion. But you are not entitled to use your method on my dog without my permission.

And by the way if you ever do that to someone else’s dog in my presence you can expect a couple of things.

You are going to lose your stick. I may be retired from law enforcement but I still have my speed from working with dogs.

And when the police show up, expect to be cited for animal cruelty.

Doug

Muggles crosses the rainbow bridge.

I get to make a lot of canine friends here at Pikes Peak Manners In Minutes. I like to tell people that your dog will never love me, but will respect me and become my buddy. After their first session they always greet me whenever they come in. I can usually tell who is coming to group by the joyful barks before they get in the door.

Last week I lost a friend. His name was Muggles.

My breeder friends often describe a dog’s passing as crossing over the rainbow bridge. If all dogs go to heaven, then you know when your time comes, they will be there to greet you.

Muggles was a pugle, a pug beagle mix. He was one of those dogs who give you marvelous stories to illustrate how wonderful a dog can be. And since I often teach by telling stories, Muggles contributes to the success of many other dogs.

Muggles was the source of two great teaching points. The first was how capable dogs are at solving problems.

In Manners in Minutes training one of our goals is to give a dog a job. The job we give them is to guard the home (which to them is your dog den), when you are gone. By putting a dog on a line while you are gone, along with something to lay on, water, and a bone or toy to chew on, the dog believes it is on guard duty while you are gone. Pretty soon you do not have to tie them, they just go to work when you leave. Their job is to remain calm and warn of danger.

Some dogs are resistant at first. Muggles was one of them. The first day Mom left him on point, but when she came home, he had chewed through his line and was at the door to greet her.

The cure for that is apple bitter. You can get it in most dog stores. About 90% of all dogs will not chew anything covered in it.

So Mom tied him the next day to a line covered in apple bitter and went to work. Again he greeted her at the door that night. Some dogs think of apple bitter is a condiment.

The next thing we try is Tabasco sauce. Again 90% of all dogs will not chew on something with Tabasco sauce. But some dogs think it is a condiment also.

Muggles was also at the door that night; the line had been chewed through. Muggles must have decided he liked it as much as apple bitter.

The next line of defense is to use a chain lead to secure the dog. And for a while that worked. Mom would come home and Muggles would be on his point.

Then one night she came home, and there he was at the door. He had figured out that if you twist the chain enough it will snap. He was very proud of himself.

Fortunately the local hardware store came up with a solution for her. They had her weave a piece of rope through the chain so Muggles could not get enough torsion on the line to snap it.

Muggles also proved how loyal a dog is and how it can have good values. Shortly after his first lesson he was out in a park with Mom. A man grabbed the purse of a nearby woman. Muggles, who wasn’t a big dog, had a big heart. He ran and grabbed the bandit’s leg tripping him. Then he held on growling until the police arrived.

I hope my friends are right about the rainbow bridge. So when my time comes I hope Muggles meets me there.

I’ll bet he will have figured how to get off his steady point line.

Doug

Training a deaf dog Part 3

Simba has now reached a plateau in his training. He has been coming in once a week for almost two months.

It is Simba who has decided that his training is staying on the plateau rather than advancing. He knows what we are doing and has figured out how things work. But like all dogs he has alpha drive that makes him resistant to giving up power unless he is convinced that he needs to respect his pack leader.

Simba is the first deaf dog I have worked with that did not start as a puppy or was pure herding breed or mix. And since he has terrier in his mix, he is counter training.

When training a deaf dog to just hand signals, we are dependent on the dog looking to see the hand sign to obey. We know that Simba has wider vision than a human. What we don’t know is exactly how wide it is.

When I start a dog as a puppy I have a blank sheet of paper to write on. So we establish looking at the owner for direction at the time in a dog’s life when pleasing its human is the most important value the dog has. So getting that puppy to constantly look at his human is easy.

In herding dogs, their genetic makeup includes a natural tendency to constantly look at the human for direction. This is one of the reasons that people often own a deaf herding dog that they do not know is deaf. The dog has learned to read the humans body language for direction.

So people have a dog that obeys when it is looking at them, but not when the dog cannot see them. They do not make the connection. They assume the dog is not obeying when in fact it just didn’t see them to “hear” what they were saying.

But with Simba only being part herding dog I have noticed that he does not look at his human as much a pure herding breed would do. And since he did not start as a puppy we could not imprint looking for directions at the start.

If we give a command by hand sign that he does not see, it would not be fair to correct him for ignoring the command. I suspect that Simba is taking unfair advantage of us.

If he does not think we are sure he saw the hand sign, he can ignore it knowing that he is not likely to be corrected. This allows him to be selective in obeying commands.

One of the reasons I suspect this is behavior that I saw in his last session. Simba was taken outside on a 20 foot line. He was given the command “come on.” That meant that he could be twenty feet in front of, behind or either side of her. But the line is always slack.

To make sure the dog is paying attention, we walk and turn randomly rather than in a straight line. If the dog is not paying attention when you get to the end of the line, the dog gets gently corrected.

Simba was perfect the whole time. Mom would turn and go the other direction. There were numerous times where it was clear that Simba did not see her turn. But every single time he would turn before the line came off the ground.

Then I noticed when he turned he would know exactly where she would be. He did not have to look for her, he knew.

He was tracking her by scent. He doesn’t have to look for her; he already knows where she is at. So he has figured out how not to take corrections for not paying attention. Therefore when he is in a position to ignore hand signals without a correction happening automatically, he takes advantage of her sense of fair play.

This is going to change soon. Simba does not know this, but he is getting a vibrating collar for Christmas. The first thing he will learn is to look for her immediately whenever he feels two short vibrations. Two taps will mean look at me for directions. And if he doesn’t look there won’t be any doubt he “heard” the look at me command so he will be fairly corrected.

I may be training Simba, but Simba is teaching me things too.

Doug

Sensory Deprivation and Puppy Mill Rescue Dogs

From time to time someone asks me what type of dog takes the longest to train. They expect the answer to be a specific breed. But the truth is that the most difficult dog to train is not a breed, but a group.

That group is breeding dogs that have been rescued from puppy mills.
Puppy mills are the equivalent of the sweat shops of the early industrial age.

Their goal is to turn out lots of puppies at the lowest possible cost. The way they do it is appalling.

Breeding dogs are selected and kept until they are about five years old. Then they are discarded and either destroyed or rescued by one of the rescue organizations.

A lot of people think that all these dogs need is love and occasionally it is just that simple. But most of the time it is not.

These dogs are normally kept in very small cages. They have had no meaningful contact with humans and minimal contact with other dogs. As a result they simply have no idea how to live or even survive outside of the crate or cage.

All dogs come in for an assessment before I train them. The primary reason is so that my client understands what I do and how I do it. But by looking at the dog before the owners decide to train with me, can figure out what the greatest needs are. We start by having you drop the dog’s leash as soon as you walk in the door.

What I want to see is a dog with enough confidence to leave your side, enough curiosity to explore the center, and a little bit of caution since the dog does not know who or what may be in here. With the puppy mill rescue what I usually see is a dog that just stands there with its head and back lowered.

The dog not only cannot make a decision, it literally does not know how to gather information to make decisions. It has had so little sensory input, that even an empty center with only its owners and I in the room, it does not know how to find out what it needs to know to do anything.

And so begins a very long period of working the dog to just get ready to train. I know that with time we can have a confident dog, but the problem is going to be the owner’s expectations. If they are going to train with me they will need to invest a lot of time and effort before they see much improvement.

The first thing we must do is give the dog time to learn to watch and figure out how this new world works. At the same time we cannot put any pressure on the dog. So I put the dog on a line attached to the wall. The line is a form of security and often dogs will lean against the wall to reassure themselves. Then I put a calming collar on the dog knowing that the collar puts pressure on the pressure points in its neck, calming and reassuring the dog. Finally since the dog has spent its whole life watching through a cage, I put an exercise pen in a large semi circle around the dog.

Then we just let the dog be there while I work with other dogs. Other than an occasional “you’re fine” told to the dog by its owners and myself, there is no inter action with the dog.

I ask the owner to come in with the dog whenever we have our Neighborhood Pack Sessions or on weekends when I have lots of trainings. I can never predict how long it will take to stimulate interest.

The first sign of interest in what is going on is when the puppy mill dog starts watching the other dogs and people. At first it is only an occasional glance, but gradually it begins to take an interest in what is going on. Maybe for the first time in its life, the dog is gathering information.

I know we are getting close when the dog sits and watches the entire time it is here. The dog is learning how to learn.

We wait for the magic moment when the dog barks. It is the first step into the world. Now the training can begin.

The dog is worked in short periods. All we are looking for is just a little progress. There are still weeks if not months to go, but the dog is now on its way to being normal.

Training a deaf dog Part 2

Having taught Simba the necessary commands to get him to “hear” us it was time to start training.

Simba is a powerful dog and he was dragging his owner all over the place. Even in a hearing dog this is common.

One of the reason a dog will drag someone on a line is that the dog thinks the line is a reason to play tug of war. Tug of war is more than just a game to a dog; it is actually a dominance test. If you ever watch two dogs tugging on a toy, the dog that gets the item the most often is the dominant dog.

So if you take your dog for a walk, and you let it drag you all over the place, then you are telling the dog it is higher in the pack than you. And a dog that is higher in the pack than you is not going to obey very well.

In Manners in Minutes training we use a training device called a Q bone. Invented by Pat Muller, this allows us to “nip” the dog without causing pain. And since nip is one of the three ways dogs correct each other, the dog is born knowing that a nip means NO.

In addition, a Q-bone on the dog’s collar acts as a stone in its shoe. The dog will tend not to let the device become a stone in their shoe and stops pulling on the line.

We placed a Q bone on Simba’s collar and started walking him on a twenty foot line.

We always start with a long line since to a dog, the farther away I am when I nip you, the more powerful a pack leader I am.

I gave Simba the sign for walking on a twenty foot line and off we went. As soon as he started walking with me, I gave him the “good” sign.

Simba walked ahead to check something to smell and in doing so, lost sight of me. Any dog, hearing or not, should always pay attention to you when hold the line, so I turned around and went another way. When I got to the end of the twenty foot line my momentum gave him a nip on his neck. He immediately turned to come with me and again I gave him the “good” sign.

Now it was time for Simba to learn that life has limits, so I started walking him towards his owner. Now since he likes her more than me he started going to her.

I stopped, and when Simba reached the end of the line, he nipped himself. He turned immediately and ran back to me. Again he was rewarded with praise via the “good” sign.

Pretty soon, no matter where I turned, Simba made sure the line was slack and was staying within twenty feet of me.

We then switched to a six foot line and again, Simba learned that when he was on a short line he could be six feet in front of me, beside me or behind me. But the line had to be slack at all times.

Now it was time for Simba to learn the rules also applied to Mom. And within a couple of minutes he was walking with her without pulling.

Simba was sent home for a week of practice. And his owner called me a day later to let me know that with each walk Simba was better on a line.

And I started planning his next set of commands.

To be continued….

Training a deaf dog Part 1

I get to train one or two deaf dogs a year here at Pikes Peak Manners In Minutes so I thought it might be interesting for my two or three regular readers to keep a record of one of those trainings.

Last week Simba came in for an assessment. Simba is a ten month old mix, according to his owner he is pit bull, boxer, Australian shepherd, and maybe something else. Simba was able to drag her in as he is a very powerful dog and he isn’t fully grown yet.

She decided to train with me so Monday we started his training.

The first thing I have to teach a deaf dog is how to “hear” their commands. This is not a problem with a hearing dog, because whatever I say the dog will hear wherever it is and wherever it is looking. But since deaf dogs get their commands by hand signals, the dog has to see me to “hear” me.

So the first thing we teach a deaf dog is “face.” I start with a piece of food and stand very close to the dog. I point to my nose, and then hold the food in front of the dog. I raise the food up to my nose as his eyes follow me. When he looks me in the eye then I give the hand signal for good (closed fist taping in the center of your chest) and then the signal for “face” (index finger on nose) and then give the dog the morsel of food.

If you have read my blog on jelly doughnut training then you know I am not a big fan of food training. It is too easy to over reward and end up with a dog that will not do anything unless you have a treat in your hand. So although I have a treat in my hand while I do this, the food reward is very random.

Once the dog is looking at my face on command up when I am close, I then teach them to look at my face by tugging lightly on their leash two times. I tug the line, then when the look in my direction I give the signal for “face.” When the dog looks me in the face I signal “good” and ‘face” because we are now relying on praise, rather than food, as the reward for compliance. This way I can call him whenever he is on a line or leash.

The last thing to teach the dog before we start on commands is their name. I like this hand signal to be something that reminds you of their name. The first thing I thought of was a mane. By holding our hands palm out and fingers straight up next to our ears we could imitate a lion’s mane. However we cannot use both hands for a sign and control a leash, so one hand next to the ear becomes the name Simba.

Once we had a way to tell the dog to look for a command, and a way to praise him, by name, we were ready to start training.

More to come.