My trainer friend Sarah Richardson, owner of The Canine Connection in Chico, California, recently attended a conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with a world-renowned pioneer in animal training. She came back home full of inspiration and excitement, with ideas about how she wants to add things and change things in her group training classes.

Sarah hosts a discussion group on Facebook for her training clients, and she posted this shortly after she got back:

“Bob Bailey is now in his 80s but was literally one of the first in the world to be training as we now do with operant conditioning, use of a marker, etc. Bob invited some of the key people he has influenced to serve as his fellow presenters and they came from Canada, Holland, Germany, Mexico, and the US to be with him.

“One of the presenters gave a talk about how ballet improved her dog training. As an adult in her 40s, she took up ballet and learned how hard it is to do the basic movements really well. In contrast, world-class ballerinas practice the basic movements – just the basics – up to 8 hours a day! It got me thinking: How much do we practice the basics – just the basics! – with our dogs so that they are competent with these core skills, and so we are competent with teaching and communicating with our dogs?

“So, I am returning home from my trip with a challenge for myself and my dogs. We are going to return to practicing our canine calisthenics – sit, down, stand – like crazy, in short, frequent training sessions this month. My goal is for my dogs to do these behaviors on a verbal cue as well as on a hand signal and in many different contexts (how they are positioned in relation to me, the setting we are in, etc.).”

Further, Sarah encouraged those in the group to practice and post video of their practice sessions with their dogs.

Time to Start Practicing

I thought I would take the challenge. Back to basics – easy peasy, yes? Both of my dogs know hand and verbal cues for sit, down, and stand, and can readily move from one position to the other. My senior dog Otto is super sharp at these, and eagerly demonstrates his acuity. I looked forward to taking some video of Otto confidently moving through these exercises to share with the discussion group.

I thought (correctly) that I would have to practice more with my younger dog, Woody, before I could commit to putting our efforts on video. Woody takes a more speculative approach to my cues. “Why are you asking?” he seems to say when I give him a cue. He “knows” the cues for sit, down, and stand. After taking a moment to determine whether I’m serious about wanting a response from him, he will methodically change from any one of those positions to any other position. But he tends to get stuck a few position changes into any session of more than three requests. He needs some convincing that the work is worth his while. He may go into a down, and then just stay there after I ask for “sit” or “stand.” His expression seems to say, “I’m just not sure there is a point to all this!”

Food treat rewards increase the motivation – and I don’t blame him one bit. I don’t like working for zero pay, either. And his speed definitely increases when the compensation value increases; he will work longer and faster for chicken or cheese than kibble. But he only gets enthusiastic and sharp-looking if the “pay” is his highest-value reward: a chance to go fetch his Planet Dog Squeak ball.

“What’s In It For Me?”

Woody’s deliberations make me miss my Border Collie, Rupert – the dog I owned when we launched Whole Dog Journal 22 years ago. Well-trained Border Collies make any trainer look good; they love to work and find it incredibly self-rewarding to respond to rapid-fire cues. Many will work without treats or any other tangible reward; the opportunity to work with their person is often enough of a high-value reinforcement in itself! In contrast, Woody, a pit-Lab-mix, has a healthy self-preservation instinct. He wants to know, “What’s in it for me?” before committing himself to a lot of training nonsense.

Otto is somewhere in between. He’s keen to earn my praise and attention, and he likes food treats. But he’s not going to do this all day. I have to keep our practice sessions short and fun, or he starts dramatically sighing and moaning on his “downs” – or looking off to the side when I first give him a cue, like, “Wait, one sec… Did you just hear the mail truck? I think maybe I should go check to see if your mail is here…”

Anyway, I’ve been practicing. I took video on Otto’s first session, and it wasn’t bad. As I predicted, he is really pretty sharp and willing – though the fact that I was holding a camera/phone between us was definitely off-putting to him. And after a dozen or so position changes he was like, “Um, Nance… What’s going on here?”

It took a couple days of practice before I even bothered to try to take some footage of Woody’s efforts. The fact that I recently brought home a nice new Squeak ball helped a lot.

I do tend to take these basic behaviors for granted from my own dogs, but practicing with the goal of taking video that I could share has been fun. It also gives me and my dogs something to “talk about” – an extra few interactions each day that are (I hope) mutually enjoyable. Try it yourself! We’ll put a post on the WDJ Facebook page where you can upload video of your own dogs doing these basic exercises.

The company that I work for is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. I have worked for Belvoir Media Group for the past 22 years on Whole Dog Journal, and before that, on The Whole Horse Journal! But given that I work from my home in northern California, and do little more than just produce the editorial content of the publication, it’s easy for me to be ignorant of the dozens of people on the other side of the country who are working to support WDJ’s circulation, marketing, website, promotions, etc.

I mean, I speak regularly to my boss, and I have weekly interaction with the person who needs my weekly blog post by a certain day at a certain time . . . and, in the day of modern publishing, I now also have regular meetings with the “kids” who do “search engine optimization” and let me know what sorts of articles you guys are looking for. They track the online access to our back issues and offer suggestions on what content needs to be updated and freshened up – which is helpful, because I tend to think “We just DID an in-depth article on pancreatitis!” when in fact that article is six or seven years old now.

But every once in a while the company asks me to come out to Connecticut and work with members of the team whose names I only really know from email – and am not even really sure what they do. And what a delight it is when it turns out that some of these people are ardent readers of WDJ, and are, in fact, super dedicated dog people who are doing absolutely everything right for their dogs! What fun!

My kind of dog person

For a couple of days, I am out here working with a number of people on producing a course for new dog owners – an online guide with video and slides and all sorts of valuable content plucked from the pages of WDJ. I’m spending a few hours in a role I do not enjoy, in front of a camera instead of behind one, taking pictures of dogs. But yesterday, we filmed at the home of one of the company’s circulation directors (Belvoir Media Group publishes a lot of magazines and newsletters, not just WDJ). And what a joy it was to pull up and see, on the back of Theresa’s car, a spare-tire cover featuring a lovely photo of her Bulldog, several Bulldog-themed bumper stickers, and inside her home, a plethora of not just Bulldog-themed art, but smart dog-owner stuff everywhere! Baby gates in both the kitchen doorways. Baskets of dog toys. A variety of collars and leashes hanging by the door. And two gorgeous but dog-friendly fenced yards, where we filmed.

I brought a present for Theresa’s six-year-old Bulldog, Macy: Woody’s favorite toy in the world, a brand-new Planet Dog Squeak ball. I was happy initially because not only was Macy a particularly fit Bulldog, she immediately loved and coveted the toy (and Theresa assured me that it wasn’t indiscriminate love; “She’s very picky about her toys,” she said seriously). But then I told Theresa that I had brought some of my favorite dog treats from home, some Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Meal Mixers. And right away she asked, “What’s in them? Because Macy can’t have chicken or she breaks out in hives.” Of course, the ones I brought were chicken, but I was thrilled to meet a dog owner who was aware of the cause of a problem and proactive about protecting her dog from the problem – and who was ready with some chicken-free treats of her own to give me, so I could help guide Macy through our shots in front of the camera together. And she showed me the cues that she uses to ask Macy for the good-manners behaviors and tricks she knows. What fun!

In my part of the world, I meet a lot of dog owners who don’t microchip, who have choke chains on their dogs as a matter of course, who don’t train their dogs – or even let them in the house! So it’s a pure delight to go and meet a total stranger who works on behalf of WDJ behind the scenes who is a total WDJ-type of person.

I’ll keep you apprised about the course; it’s going to be great!

I asked in a previous blog post what you guys would do in my position: go ahead with an experimental surgery and medication regime requiring a one-year commitment to the medication – and which, if it didn’t work, would still result in the loss of his eye – OR, just go ahead and have Odin’s eye removed now, putting an end to his 12 daily doses of various medications and discomfort. I really appreciated every single comment and suggestion! They made me cry more than once and I seriously considered each and every one.

Keep in mind that Odin is still, officially and legally, a foster dog who belongs to my local shelter, the Northwest SPCA. So while I have fostered him since he was about six weeks old, when I took he and his mange-covered, starving littermates out of the shelter to care for them, the management of the shelter had the final say. They have given me tremendous latitude with my foster puppies’ care, and probably wouldn’t flat-out override any decisions I made unless it was clear I had lost my mind (which, folks, can happen in the land of rescue and fostering! There is new evidence about this almost daily; see here and here and here, as just a few recent examples.) But of course I have discussed Odin’s situation with the shelter staff at every step along our journey so far.

The opinion of the shelter veterinarian and the manager? Let’s end the poor little guy’s discomfort and let him go on to live his life without daily medications and monthly trips to the veterinary hospital at UC Davis. And in the end, I agreed.

Enucleation surgery

So a week ago on Wednesday, I took Odin to the shelter and, tears in my eyes, put him in one of the cages in the recovery room, so he could await his turn for surgery (he was second on the list for the day, right after a spaniel who had a tumor on her abdomen and another on her tail that needed removal). About four hours later, the RVT called me to let me know that Odin was recovered enough to go home with me and that he’d need to spend the rest of the day being very quiet, come back in a week to 10 days to have stitches removed, and stay in a cone for about three weeks, to allow everything to heal without complications.

He was still groggy when I picked him up and carried him to my car, and I lifted him out of the car at home, too, although when I put him down, he walked out onto my lawn and peed like a good boy. Then I carried him into the house and put him on the couch, got a blanket and book, and told my husband that we’d be camped out there together for the rest of the day. He had been given pain meds (and I had more pain medication and antibiotics to give him for the next week) and whined under his breath on and off all afternoon. I felt horrible.

I also felt extremely guilty for not putting a cone on him before surgery to acclimate him to wearing one when he was not in pain. I hadn’t thought of it until I dropped him off for surgery and the RVT mentioned he would need to wear one afterward, to make sure he didn’t bump, rub, or scratch at the delicate area as it healed. Duh! I should have prepared him – because I think that learning to navigate with the cone was the worst part of his next 36 hours or so. On his first foray off the couch, the edge of the cone got caught on the edge of the coffee table, and he cried out and scrambled in a panic to escape the noise and bending of the cone. Then he froze, whining, and wouldn’t even try to walk or move again. So, for his first potty, I carried him out the door and past all the obstacles on my front porch, only putting him down on the open expanse of the lawn. Even so, he looked down and the edge of the cone caught on the grass and he just sat down, disconsolate.

An alternative to the dog cone

That’s when – again, late to the party – I thought of Rex Specs, a ski-goggles-type of eye protection. I got online and ordered some, paying for expedited shipping (although I was frustrated because there was no way to order some to be delivered within one or two days). I had seen Rex Specs at pet product trade shows, and they seemed like they would be perfect for protecting the surgery site without the bother of the cone, with a curved shape that fits dogs’ faces, soft padding all around the frames, an innovative venting system that keeps them from getting steamed up, and fairly secure straps that hold them on. Unlike a cone, they would also allow Odin to chew a rawhide or bone or food-stuffed Kong to help occupy his quiet time. (Dogs need their paws to chew things! They just can’t do this with a cone on!)

I did take a pair of sharp kitchen scissors and cut down the cone a bit – about an inch and a half all the way around – so that it still protected his whole face but didn’t require quite so much room for him to get around without bashing on furniture, door frames, and the legs of everyone else who lives in our house. Even so, Otto in particular took to scrambling away from Odin every time he looked like he might walk nearby.

Making the cone a tad smaller helped Odin navigate later, but for those first 36 hours, I had to take the cone off every time I thought he might have to potty. As soon as he was freed from it, he would trot right out and take care of business. I’d let him eat without it on, and put it back again. He was sad enough about it that it kept him quiet and laying on the couch or the giant dog bed in the living room.

I spent that day working outside at home – mowing the pasture, trimming shrubs, fixing sprinklers, and so on. I was also supervising the activity of Woody and a friend’s dog, Ricky. Ricky’s owner had knee surgery that day, and he’s a young and boisterous dog who requires a lot of exercise to behave, so I offered to bring him to my house to exercise daily for a few days. He and Woody ran and wrestled and dug for gophers and stayed active all day long.

Time to play

Friday, after pottying outside, breakfast, and medication administration, I put Odin’s cone back on, got him settled on the couch, and headed outside for another day of yardwork. Almost immediately I heard him scratching at the door and howling up a storm. Since my husband works at home, this wouldn’t do. I let him come outside, and put a leash on him, and convinced him to settle near me as I worked. This is when he finally started getting used to moving around with the cone, and not freaking out when it jabbed or caught on things.

On Saturday, I had Ricky back for the day (he had been tired enough after Thursday’s play to sleep for most of Friday). Between this distraction/excitement and Odin’s growing competence with the cut-down cone, all semblance of “keeping Odin quiet” went out the window. It was a frustrating day for Odin and for me. I split the day between supervising bouts of slightly restrained play between the three young dogs outside (with Odin’s cone on), and giving him food-stuffed frozen Kongs and giant rawhide chews to work on inside, with his cone off and me watching him like a hawk to keep him from getting up and walking around (perhaps bumping the surgery site) or taking a casual swipe at the itchy, healing area with a hind paw. It was nerve-wracking!

By the time the Rex Specs arrived on Monday, Odin was a total cone-pro – they weren’t really necessary anymore. But I thought they would be an improvement, nonetheless: He could finally stop bashing into all of our legs with the dang cone, and enjoy chewing things, while keeping the eye-site protected. But they haven’t been the panacea I was hoping for. Unless you make the straps really tight, he can still paw them out of place – and making the straps super tight puts more pressure on his face than can possibly be good for the healing area, and obviously makes him more conscious of the goggles than I’d like him to be. Still, if I can get him to wear them without pawing at them, secured with a normal amount of tightness, I think they would offer greater protection of the surgery site and less discomfort than the cone. So I am putting them on him for short sessions while he does supervised, enjoyable, distracting activities, like eating meals, working on food-stuffed Kongs, following Woody around our fenced two acres, and so on.

Healing from the surgery

As far as the surgery itself: The site is healing beautifully. I have to say that I think Odin is super happy to not have to submit to having eye medication administered 12 times a day. I also think that having the vision-impaired (but not completely blind) eye removed has actually helped him see better. Since his initial eye injury, he’s always had a strange, slightly upright posture and squinty expression when he tried to see things that are far away. I notice that his posture and expression is softer and more relaxed now when he’s looking at things that are more than 20 feet away; it’s just a guess, based on a careful study of his posture, but I think he can see things way better with his single good eye than he could with the same eye paired with the edema- and scar-tissue filled eye. He looks less like a meercat and more like a regular dog when he watches the world going by out my windows. I am thinking the surgery was the right thing to do.

He will get his stitches out in a couple of days, and wear the cone and/or goggles for a couple more weeks. When all his hair is grown back, we will start trying to find him a perfect home.

Thanks again for your interest in little Odin. He’s a fun, special little guy and I’ve learned so much from having him. ** About the eyeball itself: The veterinarian who did the surgery put it into formalin to preserve it. Next week, on my next trip through that area, I’m going to take it to Davis so the ophthalmologist at the university veterinary teaching hospital who has been helping Odin can dissect it. It will be interesting to hear her report when that happens.

As I explained in a couple blog posts (here), about two months ago my foster puppy Odin, who has been receiving treatment for a nonspecific condition in his left eye, was initially accepted into a study at the U.C. Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital – a study in which his eye would be treated with a promising new medication, already approved in Japan. The medication is intended to treat corneal endothelial cell dystrophy – something that, it appeared, Odin may well have.

To start the process, I brought Odin to an ophthalmology lab at the VMTH for some extensive tests, to get a baseline on the condition of Odin’s healthy eye as well as the problematic one. That’s when we discovered that an injury, not disease, was likely at the core (literally) of his eye troubles.

Using optical coherence tomography, the technicians were able to get images of the interior of Odin’s cornea. They observed that a tear or bubble has formed between the corneal endothelial layer and the next layer upward (outward), the Desemet’s membrane. The doctor who heads the study told me, “Well, the medicine we are testing absolutely won’t hurt, and might possibly help, although this is not what it’s designed to do… And we’ve come this far. It’s up to you, but I am happy to reexamine him if you want to try the medication.”

So, for the past two months, Odin has been receiving four doses a day of the medication under study, as well as two different steroid drops and four doses a day of hypertonic saline ointment. All of the latter medications are intended to reduce his corneal edema.

Sadly, we had our follow-up appointment, and if anything, the tear, or bubble in his eye, is a bit worse.

The doctor was as disappointed as I was, even though she said that we were hoping the medicine might possibly do something that it’s not actually expected to do. It has been shown to reduce intraocular pressure, to reduce corneal thickness, to promote corneal endothelial cell proliferation, and even to enhance corneal wound healing – but the ability to close a separation between the endothelial cell layer and the Desemet’s membrane is not something that has been previously demonstrated. Dang it.

We discussed Odin’s options. Realistically, they include only:

(1) Continuing to administer steroid drops and hypertonic saline daily, to control the corneal edema in an attempt to preserve what little vision he has in that eye (essentially, a fuzzy view whereby he can detect only basic light and dark), and staying vigilant about the condition of his eye, in case excessive edema requires that the eye be surgically removed for his comfort….

Or, (2), just going ahead and surgically removing the eye. This procedure is referred to as enucleation. In this case, this would mean no more pain and no more daily doses of medications many times a day, but obviously, the total loss of vision on one side.

I came home a little bummed out. I was hoping for some signs of progress, something that would encourage us to keep going with this medication. But after the news that the bubble in his eye was worse, not better, I started to feel like it would be best to just go ahead and schedule the enucleation surgery.

Odin gets a few treats after EVERY SINGLE DOSE of medication, so he steps up and takes it like a champ, but it’s obviously not at all enjoyable. The drops are not that bad, but the ointment, especially, is a pain. It is hard to administer without poking him with the tip of the tube once in a while (especially as he quite naturally squints his eye muscles as tightly as possible, while I fight to pull his eyelids apart to get the tube close enough to the eye, instead of all over his eyelashes). It is goopy, and makes the whole area around his eye sticky, and seems to irritate him and sting a bit. How much happier will he be without these many administrations of medication every day? Much, I would think! And he can’t really see out of the eye as it is, anyway! Let’s just get this over with, I thought. But I was sad.

 

A day later, my phone rang, and I recognized the number as originating from the VMTH (it’s been a long few months of interactions with the vets there!). The doctor who is doing the studies and who has examined Odin said, “Hey, I can’t stop thinking about Odin.”

I laughed. “Aww! Me, either!” I told her. “I’m really sad about his eye. I was really hoping we could do something for it.”

She said, “Well, I was thinking… There is one more thing we could try – but I have to warn you, it might not work, either.” She explained that there is a procedure where the Descemet’s membrane is surgically stripped away, and then the eye is treated with the same medication we were trying before, the one that is undergoing trials for approval in this country. So we’d be looking at a surgery, three weeks in a cone, and continuing the daily medications for up to a year. This approach has been fairly successful; I googled and easily found a human study that utilized the same approach that a 75 percent success rate.

But if it failed, he’d lose the eye, anyway.

So here I am, trying to decide. On one hand:

There are LOTS of perfectly happy, perfectly functional one-eyed dogs out there. We could surgically remove his eye next week and end his many months of daily administration of eye medications. Within three weeks he’d be ready to start finding his forever home. (Yes, I still want to find him a home somewhere else, so I can return to giving Otto more time and attention. But, believe me when I say it is going to have to be a PERFECT home, with someone who has lots of time and love and space for a special little dog.)

On the other hand:

Maybe this surgery and medication regime would work. It would address that bubble, that tear, whatever it is… and he just might recover his full eyesight. I would still be shopping for a home for him, but it would have to be someone within easy striking distance of the UCD VMTH, so he could continue to visit there regularly for follow-up studies. And if I can’t find that person, I could commit to continuing the daily damn drops (and commit my friends, too, who step up and take Odin and administer his medications when I have to travel and to whom I owe much!). But it might fail, and he’d still have to have the eye removed. The odds are good that I would end up keeping Odin after (potentially) many more months of living with him, which (perhaps) Odin would be happy about, but it would definitely come at the expense of more quality time with my old dog, Otto.

What would be “best” for Odin? I think he’d like to be done with eye pain, eye discomfort, and eye medication – and he can’t see much out of it right now, anyway. And there is no way to tell him that maybe, with more pain and time, he might recover his sight in that eye. And contribute to science! Pfft! Would he care about that? Would he be happier with (possibly) two eyes?

As of today, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s a tough decision. Tell me, what would you do?

I’ve always wondered the origin of the practice of pushing a puppy or dog’s bottom to the ground in order to “teach her to sit.” Who was the first person to do this, and why is the action so universally repeated by humans all over the world? And, given its ubiquity, why don’t people try this with kittens or chickens or any other species of animal? Why do people push dogs’ rear ends in an effort to force them to sit?

My guesses are these: People do it because it sometimes works; the dog or puppy learns that to avoid the discomfort of being forced to bend all the joints in their rear ends, they should just sit down. And that once someone has seen anyone else do this with apparent success, they think maybe they will try it, too!

But these are poor guesses, because I’ve shown hundreds of people how to get their puppies or dogs to sit without touching them – and without saying “Sit! Sit! SIT!” – and trainers I know have taught thousands and perhaps even tens of thousands of people, and yet the force-free way hasn’t seemed to have “gone viral” in the same way. Just last night, someone mentioned teaching a puppy to sit by pushing her bottom down to the ground and saying “Sit!”

Facts:

1. Dogs, and even very young puppies, already know how to sit.

2. What people seem to want to do is teach them to “sit on cue.”

3. Physically pushing and bending an uncomprehending friend into a different position while repeating a word they don’t know the meaning of is not the best way to accomplish #2.

As we have explained in many articles in WDJ, it’s incredibly easy to teach a dog or puppy to sit on cue and there are many ways to go about it. You can “capture” the sit (mark/reward every time the dog happens to sit), “lure” her into a sit and mark/reward, or “shape” the sit to look like the precise type of sit you want.

Using force – even just a gentle push on an adorable puppy’s back end – isn’t necessary to teach a dog to perform behaviors on cue. WDJ’s Training Editor, Pat Miller, wrote a nice piece some years ago about training mistakes – and, from my perspective, attempting to teach sit (or any other behavior) in this way is pure folly.

Puppies Sitting Nicely for Food

Here are a bunch of foster pups who learned to sit on cue just from our mealtime routines.