Deborah's Journal

Our sweet girl Tajji is spending a couple of days at the vet. Saturday she had an episode of severe ataxia (to the point of being unable to stand or walk), nystagmus, head tilt, and nausea. Either a stroke or idiopathic vestibular syndrome, which elderly dogs of large breeds are subject to. Treatment's pretty much the same, either way, and we didn't see any point in putting such an old dog through expensive imaging. So she's on IV fluids and meds to support her and keep her hydrated until the nystagmus resolves. Poor baby was utterly miserable. She might recover partly, fully, or not at all. We just have to see how it goes.

It’s been a few months since I’ve posted our adventures in rehabilitating our retired service dog. Tajji, a 10 ½ year old German Shepherd Dog, could no longer perform seeing eye work due to extreme reactivity to other dogs and sometimes strange people. We’ve had her a year now, and most of that time has been spent working on making her retirement calm and happy.

When Tajji came to live with us, she was not accustomed to cats, although we suspect she had been exposed to them in her pre-training foster home. Our two dog-savvy cats, black male Shakir and brown-tabby-and-white Gayatri, patiently taught her “cat manners.” She in turn taught them fun games. Shakir in particular will invite play with her and the two of them romp about the house. Tajji will gently place a paw on Shakir’s back and he must not mind terribly, because he never hisses or lays his ears back. We haven’t found them curled up together yet, but they often sleep within inches of each other. On the few occasions that Gayatri has escaped the house, Tajji has happily “herded” her back. (Since our neighborhood is also home to coyotes, bobcats, and the occasional mountain lion, we keep our cats indoors.)( Read more... )

One source of stress for Tajji was the entrance of human visitors into our yard. We put up a sign on the back gate, asking folks to ring the hanging bell or call us so that we could settle Tajji in her crate before letting them in. After some practice, Tajji became comfortable just being in the house. Recently, we have found her sitting inside the gate when a friend (or sometimes she’s never met) comes to call, politely waiting to be introduced. Her greeting skills have improved, too. Since she knows “touch,” we ask the visitor to hold one hand at their side, palm out. We tell Tajji, “Touch,” and the moment she does, we call her back for a treat. She now understands that it is not okay to jump on people, although if she gets excited, she will jump sideways in front of them.

By far, Tajji’s biggest challenge remains other dogs. After a break of about a month from her “reactive rover” practice sessions, we expected some backsliding when exposed to a strange dog in the class setting. Our teacher paired her with a fairly relaxed young female Golden Retriever, who had a short threshold for dog reactivity. She placed the Golden outside a round wire pen used for agility training, and Tajji outside on the opposite side. At first, they walked parallel to one another, then one would stay still while the other moved, since movement increases reactivity, and gradually the distance was lessened. Somewhat to our surprise, Tajji sailed through the session without a single bark. In fact, when it was her turn to remain still, she lay down with her back to the Golden, a sign of relaxation. Clearly, she has continued to process and integrate the training of other dogs = good things, no danger.

Tajji has had particular difficulty with small dogs. One day, while Dave was walking her, a small terrier mix got free from its yard and charged her, yapping away. Tajji went into bark/lunge arousal. Since we know she has excellent bite inhibition, he dropped the leash; dogs who are restrained — on a leash or, worse yet, tied up — are much more reactive than dogs who are free to take care of themselves. Tajji rushed up to the terrier who turned tail for home. When called, Tajji returned to Dave with a big happy doggie-grin and much less arousal. In fact, she has been less excited by small dogs ever since.

We have worked with Tajji on recall (coming when called) since we’ve had her. We did this using highest-value treats (like freeze dried liver or lamb lungs) and settings when there were no overwhelming distractions, until she was solid. By solid, I mean that within a second or two, she runs full speed back to us. Most of the time, she will come to a sit right in front of us. This training was put to a test a couple of weeks ago when we tried her out on deer. Deer are a perennial pest to all gardeners, of course, but the drought has driven them down from the hills in search of water. The mountain lions follow the deer (and one has been seen near the elementary school, so this is not a good thing). A small herd of deer hang out in the meadow adjacent to our property and they have gotten very bold. Noticing three of them, I waved my arms and yelled, “Shoo!” but they just stared at me. As an experiment, we let Tajji off leash. It took her a moment to focus on the deer as she does not have the high prey drive of most German Shepherd Dogs, high prey drive not being desirable in a guide dog. She lunged, the deer took off, and she got the idea. She chased them out of the meadow at a full-out run. Just as they were heading up the hill on the other side of the street, Dave called Tajji. She whirled around and raced back to him, tail wagging. The deer may be a good game, but making her people happy is even better.

It’s been a while since I posted our adventures rehabilitating our retired seeing eye dog, Tajji. We’ve had her about 8 months now and she has made progress on her reactivity to dogs (and sometimes people) that made it impossible for her to continue service work. Most of our focus has been on learning to read her signals of distress and teaching her ways of self-management as we keep her safe.

Our promise to her was that she would never have to work again. Guide dog work is not only stressful psychologically and physically, it amounts to sensory deprivation for the dog. A working guide dog cannot follow normal canine behavior or even respond to the richness of sensory input that a normal dog enjoys. Dogs, even “sight hounds” have keen olfactory senses, but a working dog is taught not to sniff. Imagine Tajji’s delight when we not only permitted but encouraged her to sniff while on walks! A working dog must be constantly alert (hypervigilant) for dangers to her handler, and must make rapid decisions. We let her take her time assessing a new situation, removing her as best we can when she shows signs of discomfort. (In our reactive dog class, we modify this by giving her simple, pleasurable tasks like nose targeting or eye contact to help her reduce her own anxiety level.)

Because we never ask Tajji to do seeing eye harness work (nor could we -- we do not own such a harness, and her front-clip harness of soft webbing is quite unlike the rigid one she used to work in), we do not encounter her trained behaviors very often, other than manners and basic obedience. One notable exception is that she has been taught not to move when she is lying or sitting and a person approaches. This makes sense in terms of letting the blind person know where she is (and will be in the next minute). Our other dogs have scrambled out of the way, especially at night. Tajji doesn’t budge.

One afternoon, while rushing about the house in my bare feet, I caught one of my little toes on the corner of a book case and dislocated it. (Pause of OUCHOUCHOUCH.) I realigned the toe and hopped over to grab some ice. Ice, wrapping the toe against the rest of the toes, elevation…you know the drill. I was dismayed at how painful it was to walk on. A few hours later, I encountered Tajji-on-the-floor. She stayed put, but I stumbled and jammed my toe, although against what, I’m not sure. Most likely, her body. (More OUCHOUCHOUCH.) But when I set my weight on my foot again, the pain was miraculously reduced. My guess is that the collision with Tajji had adjusted the joint back to its proper position. Now all I had to deal with was swelling and maintaining stability.

Our family joke is that Tajji deserves a chiropractic license now.

As Tajji, the retired seeing eye dog that we are rehabilitating for extreme reactivity to other dogs, progresses through her curriculum, one thing stands out over and over again: every dog is different. It’s one of those utterly banal, self-evident statements, and yet how many times do we, even knowledgeable dog owners, take a one-size-fits-all approach to their behavior?

Each of the four dogs in the class (Reactive Rover, taught by Sandi Pensinger of Living With Dogs) is reactive in some way. To other dogs, to strange people, to sudden noises. Yet even dogs who are triggered by the same type of stimulus express their distress in different ways. For example, both Tajji and George are reactive to other dogs. Tajji has greatest difficulties with small dogs, while George, a solidly-built chocolate Labrador owned by an elderly woman, reacts most strongly to other large dogs. We have no history on Tajji’s problems, except for her fractured tooth, whereas George’s problems stem from a specific constellation of events – the deaths of his male owner and his female canine companion plus an attack by another large dog. Tajji has extremely good eyesight and could easily spot a small dog on the other end of the field (275 feet) while George did not appear to notice the small dog until he had advanced quite a bit closer than that.

Today’s exercise, as you can tell, involved exposure to a “decoy” – last week it was a stuffed dog, this week a well-mannered small dog. The decoy would be led out from behind a blind (a waist-high portable screen) at the far end of the field. If the student dog did not notice, its handler would take a step at a time toward the decoy, waiting after each step.( Read more... )

Tajji, our newly-adopted retired seeing eye dog, came to us with strong reactivity to pedestrians and especially to other dogs. She would bark and lunge as soon as she saw any “triggering” stimulus, and her vision is excellent. Sometimes, she would be triggered when the other dog or person was 1/8 mile away. This distance is called the threshold of arousal, meaning that stimuli farther away don’t cause the dog to “go ballistic.” Tajji’s threshold was so long, she basically didn’t have one. If she could see the dog, she reacted.

We’ve been working on decreasing her reactivity and giving her alternative, highly rewarded behaviors. These have included teaching her eye contact (“Look!”), hand targeting (“Touch!”), sniffing (a self-calming activity), and puppy zen, a calming exercise. We have also been as careful as we can to remove her from any situation where she is overwhelmed.

After a time of regular practice, we noticed that when we turned and walked her briskly away from the other dog, she calmed down in a shorter period of time. We were able to turn her back around to face the other dog, rewarding her for calm behavior. One of the lessons was that we would protect her, that she could trust us to not force her into a situation she couldn’t manage. Then we started to see her attempt to calm herself, mostly by sniffing, but occasionally using the non-threatening gesture “Look Away.”

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Tajji’s reactivity to pedestrians was markedly reduced. Using the calming techniques that were now familiar to her, we helped her to tolerate increasingly short distances from the folks walking in our neighborhood. Eventually, she was able to do a “pass by” without becoming reactive.

But would she ever be able to do that with dogs?( Read more... )

In "the meadow"

“Rulers should always avoid giving commands…for commands, being direct and verbal, always bring to the subject’s mind the possibility of doing the opposite. But since rituals are non-verbal, they have no contraries. They can therefore be used to produce harmony of wills and actions without provoking recalcitrance; if a man finds himself playing his appointed part in li [ritual] and thus already — as it were de facto — in harmony with others, it no more occurs to him than it occurs to a dancer to move to a different rhythm than that being played by the orchestra.” 

Master Zhuang, 4^th century BCE Daoist philosopher
and proto-anarchist

 

That quotation was seminal in creating the anarcho-monarchical politics of the Panarchy, the interstellar polity that’s the setting of the space opera Exordium. The Panarchs and Kyriarchs all wielded theoretically unlimited power, but most of them died, or were killed, before they learn how to work the hyper-complex network of interlocking traditions, institutions, and governance that executes their will.

 

It’s also, I now find, a perfect encapsulation of the rather Daoist aspects of the positive dog training techniques that Deborah and I are using to rehabilitate Tajji, a process more like conversation than education, and certainly one in which learning flows both ways. Certainly, our work with Tajji is teaching me that much of dog training, if not all, is about the negotiation, establishment, and performance of rituals rather than the issuing of commands.

 

As Master Zhuang might have said, those who do not acknowledge the power of ritual will find themselves helpless against it, and it can be argued that this is a fundamental reason there are so many ill-trained dogs in the world: dogs that have established their rituals as the rule of life for a household.

 

( Read more... )

We used to joke that one of the jobs our old German Shepherd Dog, Oka, had taken upon himself, was to break up any disputes – real or imagined – between the cats. One of our cats tends to bully the others, pushing them out of their favorite sunbathing spots and persisting in playing “wrestle” when they very clearly are not interested. Both are usually accompanied by hisses and yowls and small furred bodies moving very quickly. Oka would immediately place his very considerable (90 lbs) bulk between them. We imagined him saying, “Break it up! Break it up! Move along now…”

Oka, like all dogs, had a very firm notion of what was good, orderly behavior and what was not to be allowed. Dogs are strongly oriented to routine, which is one of the things makes them so trainable. They make very specific associations (leash = walkies; vet’s office = horrible things happening to doggies; “Sit!” spoken in front of the refrigerator = sit in front of the refrigerator and no place else). We monkeys like to interpret this as our dogs having fixed ideas about the Way Things Should Be.

Oka’s Rules (as interpreted by his resident monkeys) included:

• Cats shall not hiss at one another. Cats have razor blades on their feet and must not be closely approached.


• Deborah must be accompanied to and from the laundry area in the garage.


• The sole redeeming value of company is that the Evil Laser Bug comes out to play (therefore, Oka hung out in the living room, patiently watching the carpet for the first sign of the red dot.)


• The blue horse ball must be herded and barked at (see photo).


• Bodies of water deeper than a couple of inches are evil.

( Read more... )

So often, we assume animals experience human emotions because their outward signs resemble those we humans use, but with different meanings. Here's a research-based discussion on "guilty" behavior in dogs.

While it’s tempting to think your dog acts like a human child would, dog behavior is better framed in an ethological context -- what it means for dogs in dog terms. ...

... Barnard College Associate Professor (and author of “Inside of a Dog”) Alexandra Horowitz, investigated the guilty look with the help of a clever experiment. Owners instructed their dog not to eat a treat, and then left the room. Dogs then either ate the treat or were prevented from doing so. When the owners returned, the researchers sometimes tricked them by telling them that the dog ate the treat when he had not.

The result? If owners scolded them, dogs looked guilty regardless of whether they ate the treat or not. The results were clear: the guilty look was not associated with what dogs did, but with what the owner did. ...

... And misattributing guilt to dogs could be damaging. Wrongly saying Moose’s “feeling guilty” could obscure a deeper truth: Moose doesn’t understand the rules you think you’ve put in place -- and by incorrectly believing you have a bad dog that's willfully disobedient, you’re not doing your relationship, or shoe collection, any favors. While domestication primes dogs for living with us, along with it doesn’t (unfortunately) come some genetic moral code that eating new shoes is wrong but that other good smelling thing you brought home -- a dog toy -- can be torn to pieces.

Another problem with attributing guilt is that it obscures real issues behind “bad” dog behavior. Why did your dog tear up all the toilet paper rolls? Why is that pillow now exposing its 700+ pieces of fluff? When you get angry or forgive your “guilty” dog for demolishing your house, you ignore deeper concerns that, if addressed, could reduce or eliminate those behavior problems. Was the dog bored? Scared? Anxious? Did something change in your routine that confused them? Sadly, scolding dogs after the fact most often doesn’t decrease future detrimental behavior. If anything, the “guilty look” could just become more exaggerated over time as your confused companion develops an anxious cycle of destruction and appeasement.

Maybe it is easier for people to see guilt than it is for them to come to grips with other motivators of behavior like boredom, fear, anxiety, or a dog who just doesn’t get it. The story of the guilty look might be a more comfortable narrative to tell ourselves, but often, our narratives are myths.



Think Your Dog Has A "Guilty" Look? Think Again

Here I am, practicing one of Chopin's Preludes, with Mr. Darcy -- 10 weeks old -- learning to love great music. Sometimes he flops over my right foot and we have a Discussion. Or he tries to chew on the pedal. Once or twice, he's tried to "sing," a sort of subdued howling. Mostly he plasters himself up against the piano. Lovely to have such an undemanding audience!

Deborah does her morning yoga (this is a backbend warmup over a pillow) under Casey's supervision.