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Positively Winning!

By
Stephanie Colman
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The team glides across the obedience ring with the precision of Olympic synchronized swimmers. As the handler strides into the 180-degree about turn, the dog remains in perfect heel position. There’s an obedience title at stake, and so far, the team is on-course to qualify. And then it happens: the dog misses an exercise. The team has just been disqualified. There are two extreme alternate endings to this scenario.

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In the first – and sadly, more common scenario – the frustrated handler barks out a second command, determined not to let her dog “get away with” failing to perform correctly in the ring. The dog yawns (a sign of stress) while slowly executing the behavior. When their turn is over, the handler hurriedly exits the ring, immediately strategizing with ringside friends and her trainer about how best to set the dog up for a future training correction in an effort to make sure that mistake doesn’t happen again.

In a happier ending, the handler accepts the disqualification with a rueful laugh; it’s disappointing, but not the end of the world. She jogs with her dog toward the out-gate, gives the dog one more cue for a simple behavior, and when he performs it promptly, quickly and brightly rewards him with some sincerely affectionate petting and praise as she looks for a good place to watch the rest of the class.

While it’s distressing to witness the former scene, it’s not only an absolute pleasure to witness the latter, but also an example of what competitive obedience is supposed to look like.

According to the American Kennel Club, the origin of competition obedience traces back to 1933 when Helen Whitehouse Walker, who bred Standard Poodles, wanted a tangible way to show others that her dogs were more than a pretty face in a fancy haircut. Borrowing ideas from England’s Associated Sheep, Police and Army Dog Society, she gathered the support of area dog clubs and fellow breeders and devised a “test” comprised of on- and off-leash heeling, stays, drop-on-recall and retrieving.

Eight dogs entered the first obedience trial, but enthusiasm grew quickly, prompting Walker to contact the American Kennel Club. She emphasized the importance of owners developing a deeper relationship with their dogs, and stressed that while accuracy and precision should be sought after, a dog’s performance should demonstrate “enjoyment and willingness to work.” These details remain in today’s regulations.

According to the AKC, obedience is open to “anyone who is interested in developing a meaningful relationship with their dog based on communication and fun,” and the organization explains that obedience trial participants will “take pleasure in [their] new hobby for many years to come.”

But often it’s tough to consistently find exhibitors who train in ways that appear to fully embody that sentiment, largely due to the continued prevalence of compulsion-based techniques with ties to early military dog training. Stand outside an obedience ring at a trial, and you’re likely to spot a number of dog and handler teams whose lackluster or even robotic performances seem to lack the element of true enjoyment. Some handlers look so sullen, an observer may wonder if they even like their dogs. This does not speak to the intended purpose of competition obedience.

Over the years, competition obedience has become a lot “kinder” to the dogs (using less compulsion), but do exhibitors truly emphasize the development of “meaningful relationships” that are based on “communication and fun?” And does “kinder” training mean “better” training? The use of food in training – either as a lure to induce behavior or as a reward following a successful behavior – is largely what many define as being “positive,” yet it’s not uncommon to find a trainer working a dog with both leash and collar (choke, pinch, or e-collar) corrections and food rewards.

fortheloveofdogphoto.com

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Today, with an increase in the number of trainers who utilize positive reinforcement training methods, more handlers are putting a greater emphasis on the relationship aspect of training.

CHALLENGES UNIQUE TO OBEDIENCE
In order to succeed in the obedience ring, a dog has to perform a series of behaviors with precision, in response to a single cue and/or signal from his handler – but he also has to perform the required behaviors in a natural, smooth manner.

The “Purpose” section of the AKC’s obedience regulations states that it’s “essential that the dog demonstrate willingness and enjoyment while he is working, and that a smooth and natural handler be given precedence over a handler moving with military precision and using harsh commands.” The “standard of perfection” for the sport is described as combining “the utmost in willingness, enjoyment, and precision on the part of the dog with naturalness, gentleness, and smoothness on the part of the handler.” A lack of willingness and enjoyment on the part of the dog is supposed to be penalized, as should a lack of precision in the dog’s performance, roughness in handling, military precision, or harsh commands by the handler. Handlers who carry or offer food in the ring or discipline or abuse their dogs in the ring receive a non-qualifying score.

The use of food, toys, and praise is essential to building new behaviors – and maintaining those behaviors over time. But in order to get a dog ring-ready for obedience, you have to reduce and then completely fade the use of food treats and other rewards, without any loss of the dog’s enthusiasm or compliance. How?

The short answer is by making the act of working with you so enjoyable that it becomes a reward in itself. But this is the exact point at which many owners (and trainers!) struggle: when they try to make the leap from using a lot of treats to using none, without finding and cultivating ways to keep the work itself engaging and rewarding for the dog. Failure at this phase often drives owners and trainers back to punishment-based techniques.

PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCE
People who use only reward-based methods to train their obedience competitors say that making the commitment to forego the use of force- or fear-based tactics is an important part of the training process. “I think the important question to ask is, ‘At the end of the day, does the dog have a choice?’” says Denise Fenzi, a trainer and successful exhibitor from Woodside, California. “That’s huge! Because, philosophically, if at the end of the day the dog has a choice, you have no choice but to find ways to make the work interesting for the dog.”

It’s an important point. No matter how you train, when you step into the ring and can’t use training corrections – or rewards – the dog is free to make a variety of performance choices without immediate consequences (good or bad) from the handler. However, many people are still reluctant to let go of the idea that the dog “has to do it.” This mindset stands as a major cultural roadblock toward achieving Fenzi’s idea of positive training.

Fenzi is quick to acknowledge that, thankfully, when it comes to methods that differ from hers, she doesn’t often see people using methods that inflict pain on their dogs. “It’s more like annoyance,” she says. “If I take you by your shirt and drag you around, I’m not hurting you, I’m irritating you; I’m making you not want to be with me, and I’m not doing anything for our relationship. Most of the obedience I see is a combination of really uninspired training. Giving a dog a cookie does not create inspiration. Dragging you to dessert doesn’t take away from the fact that I dragged you there.”

In contrast, she says, “If a person takes responsibility for making the work interesting and truly believes that the dog has a choice, that person would qualify in my mind as a positive trainer.”

Photo by Stephanie Colman

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BUILD A RELATIONSHIP
One of the biggest challenges for would-be positive obedience competitors is to create and maintain a dog who loves to work. One way to do this is by making sure you thoroughly invest in the relationship with your dog. Many reward-based trainers rely so heavily on dispensing treats and toys that it becomes difficult to tell if the dog is working for the tangible reward or the interaction with the handler.

Rewarding a dog is an interactive process, not a sterile act of dispensing a treat or offering a toy. Are you fully present in the relationship with your dog? Consider setting up a video camera to watch how you interact with your dog when you reward him with treats and toys. Are your treats accompanied by genuine praise? How often do pet your dog before or during treat delivery? Does your dog enjoy your petting? Do you genuinely appear to be enjoying yourself as you reward your dog, or do you deliver a treat as a matter of routine?

Try leaving your treats and toys in your training bag and keep your dog engaged simply by using your sparkling personality. Does your personality sparkle? Are you being genuine? Are you having fun? The relationship you share with your dog is the one reward you can bring into the ring. Aspire to build a relationship that has value; make sure your dog has a relationship with you and not the treats and toys you carry in your pocket when you train.

SHAPING FOR A LOVE OF THE GAME
Many reward-based trainers rely on treats and toys to help build a dog’s attention on the handler, coupled with various methods of “babysitting” his attention by springing into action with an unexpected move (like a lighthearted verbal cue) to recapture or maintain a dog’s focus during training. While arguably “nicer” than issuing a leash correction, it can be just a challenging to fade the motivational cheerleading as it is to fade food and toy rewards. That’s where shaping offers a unique advantage.

Fenzi regularly teaches students how to shape their dogs’ attention. With the dog on a leash, Fenzi instructs the student to allow the dog to disengage, but not to allow the dog to travel toward any distractions. The dog is free to “see” only what he can explore at the radius of the leash, and the handler should be positioned so that the dog can’t actually reach anything too exciting.

Further, the handler quietly moves behind the dog so as not to stand alongside him in distracted solidarity. The handler says nothing and simply waits for the magic moment when the dog turns toward her, at which point the desired behavior (paying attention to/looking at his handler) is marked, rewarded, and the dog is released back to his limited sight-seeing opportunity.

Rather than correct the dog for lack of attention, this technique requires the handler to be adept at limiting the dog’s ability to self-reward (by using a leash and working around a level of distraction that’s realistic for the dog) and willing to be genuine and interesting in his reward.

Over time, the dog is asked to to look at the handler and engage in increasing amounts of work. Throughout the process, the underlying lesson to the dog is, “If you choose to work for me (a task I, the handler, take responsibility for making fun), then you can continue to work. Walking off and sniffing isn’t an option.” The choice becomes working for the handler or doing nothing. When working has been reinforced with something truly rewarding and enjoyable to the dog, losing the opportunity to work becomes a powerful consequence.

Through a mix of shaping, the judicious use of lure-based techniques, management, exposing the dog to training pressure in ways that continue to promote success versus failure, and constant attention to building and preserving a solid relationship, Fenzi’s goal is to create a dog who learns that working is far more enjoyable than the very limited opportunities for self-reinforcement elsewhere. Over time, and with deliberately slow increases in distractions, the dog becomes so conditioned to working that even new and unusual distractions at show sites fail to seem more interesting.

STILL, SOMETIMES MISTAKES HAPPEN
People often incorrectly believe that in “positive training,” mistakes are never acknowledged. Dogs can benefit from information that tells the m their behavior is incorrect, but the information doesn’t need to be de-motivating, painful, or scary. It can be as simple as a do-over.

“I don’t use any pain-based techniques. Nor do I use techniques that are emotionally painful and make the dog cower, etc. I try very hard not to take the dog out of an enthusiastic place for playing the game, so yelling or anything that causes the dog to have concerns about me is off-limits.”

In a recent blog post, Fenzi writes about “correcting” her youngest dog Lyra during a stay exercise; the word is in quotes because no “correction” is used to address the dog’s mistake. In the accompanying video, Lyra breaks her sit-stay while awaiting a formal recall. Fenzi doesn’t ignore the behavior; instead, she cheerfully runs the dog back to the intended starting point and tries again. “Close but no cigar!” she exclaims.

“Just help the dog; it’s no big deal. Really,” Fenzi writes. “She won’t take over the world. She won’t think she’s ‘getting away with’ ignoring me. She will stay engaged in the game – and that’s the hardest thing to get back if you manage to lose it.” She re-sets and leaves her dog, returns to reward her at half the distance of the original attempt, and Lyra proceeds to execute a correct recall with bright eyes and a happy attitude. (See http://tinyurl.com/WDJ-lyra.)

Accepting that the dog won’t take over the world if his mistakes aren’t met with stern or forceful corrections can be difficult, especially when people have historically been taught that they must “win” all encounters with their dogs. Abandoning this mindset is an important step in creating a training and trialing experience that is joyful for both the dog and the handler. (After all, if given an effective choice, we’d like to believe that people would rather not employ force- and fear-based tactics when training their four-legged friends.)

KEEPING PERSPECTIVE
At the end of the day, it’s not about radically changing your training technique. “What has to change is the underlying philosophy. If that doesn’t change, you’re adding Band-Aids,” explains Fenzi. “Your belief of why you’re doing this with your dog has to change. Positive training is about making it work for both the dog and the human. It’s saying, ‘I have some competitive goals I’d like to reach, but first and foremost, I value you as a dog because I like you.’ It’s not about what he can do for you – it’s about what you are with the dog.”

Stephanie Colman is a writer and dog trainer in Los Angeles. She shares her life with two dogs, and actively competes in obedience and agility. See page 24 for contact information.

An Old Infectious Disease Is New Again

By
Denise Flaim
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It’s baaaaack. News that infectious canine hepatitis surfaced in New England this summer is not exactly on par with the possessed television sets and otherworldly bedroom-closet portals in the 1980s horror flick “Poltergeist.” But the fact that the disease – formally known as canine adenovirus-1, or CAV-1 – has materialized in the United States is likely to induce goosebumps in those who have opted to not vaccinate against it, thinking it was essentially obliterated in the American dog population.

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And for a long while, it probably was. While commonplace in the early to mid-20th century, this virus – which attacks the liver and kidneys – had been rare for decades in the United States. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that most middle-aged veterinarians have ever encountered the disease, making its reappearance all the more problematic in terms of being correctly diagnosed.

Epidemiologists have long known that infectious canine hepatitis persists in the Mexican dog population, and about a decade ago, there were several confirmed cases in San Diego, California, believed to have originated from dogs brought across the border. The disease is also known to exist among wild canids in Canada, and the November 2012 issue of the Canadian Veterinary Journal cited a case of an 11-week-old Alaskan Husky who had been kept outdoors in the Yukon, where infectious canine hepatitis is considered endemic in the wildlife; on postmortem, the puppy tested positive for CAV-1. As for this summer’s New England outbreak, the prime suspect was a red fox, which presumably brought the disease from the north.

Catherine Ford of Omega Rhodesian Ridgebacks in Brookline, New Hampshire, believes her two 3½-month-old puppies contracted infectious canine hepatitis while attending a puppy party at a Massachusetts farm this August. Eight of Ford’s puppies from that litter attended the party; four had been vaccinated for canine hepatitis, and four had not. Two of the unvaccinated puppies – Ford’s pick of the litter, Zima, and her brother Dhahabu, who went to his new home soon after – became symptomatic three weeks after romping in the farm fields.

Symptoms of infectious canine hepatitis include fever, listlessness, and loss of appetite. When Zima started to refuse food, Ford’s vet thought it was a reaction to the antibiotics she had been given for a suspected urinary tract infection. When Zima worsened, the vet was concerned that she might have leptospirosis, and even suggested her illness might be a result of being raw-fed. By the time Ford took her to an emergency clinic at 1 a.m., Zima was beyond hope.

“It was very fast – 24 hours from ‘I don’t want to eat my breakfast’ to dead,” Ford says. “Before that, the puppies played, they ate, they were acting normally. That was what was so incredibly difficult to accept.”

Titers showed antibodies to CAV-1, and a necropsy confirmed the diagnosis. That left Ford – whose puppy vaccination protocol did not include canine adenovirus – to scramble.

“I’m in a precarious position with all my dogs,” she says. “When we got the diagnosis, we brought all our dogs in to get vaccinated.” A year-and-a-half-old dog who lives nearby and spent some time with Zima when she was incubating the virus is not symptomatic, but urinalysis showed he is shedding the virus. That means he was infected by canine hepatitis, but survived it, and his kidneys could continue to shed the virus for up to six months.

The Disease
Ronald Schultz, PhD, Diplomate ACVIM (American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine), is professor and chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. He’s also the person who confirmed Zima’s cause of death. Dr. Schultz thinks this canine hepatitis outbreak is a very valid concern.

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“This is the reason I’ve tried to really emphasize the importance of canine adenovirus being a core vaccine, because we have the disease in Mexico, and we know we have the disease in wildlife species in Canada,” he says. “If it’s in the wildlife in Massachusetts, then unfortunately it’s probably elsewhere.” Any wild canid (such as coyotes), or mink, skunk, raccoon, fox, or bear could transmit the disease. “We do have a lot of potential wildlife reservoirs – something we have to be concerned about.”

Dr. Schultz says it is difficult to determine how many cases have gone unrecognized.

“There are many vets who wouldn’t recognize a case,” he says, adding that when he lectures to veterinarians, he asks how many have seen a patient with infectious canine hepatitis, or think they could recognize one. “It would be the gray hairs like me – or no hairs at all – who raise their hands.”

Because the disease is so rare in the American domestic dog population, many vets simply don’t have it on their radar screens. “When you’re looking for something and you know what it is, you find it,” Dr. Schultz says. But with canine hepatitis, “we’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it couldn’t be that. That’s just human nature. I think there could have been some cases that have been missed, no question about it.”

Dr. Schultz describes infectious canine hepatitis as “just as virulent as parvovirus or canine distemper,” and notes that it causes some similar clinical signs. It is up to 50 percent fatal in puppies under five months of age, and will also infect and cause disease in older dogs who are susceptible. “This virus is very stable in the environment, but not as stable as parovirus,” he says. “When it infects, it has the ability to remain persistent and be shed in urine for months.”

Like parvovirus and distemper, canine hepatitis can be supported with intervention and palliative care like intravenous fluids for hydration. But unlike parvovirus, which affects the intestinal tract, canine hepatitis devastates the kidneys and liver, which, once damaged, severely curtail survivability.

Vaccination Picture
There are two strains of adenovirus that are a concern in dogs. Canine adenovirus type 1, or CAV-1, produces the infectious canine hepatitis described in this article. The other, CAV-2, affects the respiratory system and is a common cause of kennel cough. A vaccine for CAV-1 fell out of use in the 1970s because one out of 500 vaccinated dogs developed “blue eye,” an occular discoloration that resulted from a hypersensitivity to the vaccine. Today, the CAV-2 vaccine is used instead of CAV-1 because it is closely enough related to CAV-1 to cross-protect against it, and it does not produce this side effect.

In its 2011 revised canine vaccine guidelines, the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) classifies CAV-2 as a “core” vaccine, or one for which every dog should be vaccinated.

“Puppies should be vaccinated every 3 to 4 weeks between the ages of 6 and 16 weeks (e.g., at 6, 10, and 14 weeks, or 8, 12, and 16 weeks),” the guidelines say, although they go on to note that “one dose is considered protective and acceptable,” provided that there is no interfering maternal immunity.

To minimize this risk of maternal antibody interference with vaccination, the AAHA guidelines say the final dose of the initial series should be administered between 14 and 16 weeks of age.

AAHA recommends that a booster be given no later than one year after the completion of the initial puppy series.

Beyond that, AAHA recommends that dogs be revaccinated every three years, although it notes that “among healthy dogs, all commercially available MLV CAV-2 vaccines are expected to induce a sustained protective immune response lasting at least seven years.”

Dr. Schultz thinks dogs should be vaccinated according to the AAHA guidelines, which he helped draft. But other experts have reservations about giving the three-way parvovirus/distemper/adenovirus vaccine to young puppies.

Many holistic-minded dog owners follow the minimal vaccination protocol recommended by well-known veterinary hematology and vaccine expert W. Jean Dodds, DVM, which excludes the CAV-2 vaccine. In light of the disease’s reappearance, Dr. Dodds says she has been mulling over what the appropriate response should be. For the moment, she has not changed her protocol, other than to note that there has been a clinical outbreak of the disease in the Northeast, and that owners in that part of the country might factor the outbreak into their decision-making.

Dr. Dodds is reluctant to start reflexively recommending a three-way vaccine because when the CAV-2 vaccine is administered to puppies at the same time as the distemper vaccine, and both vaccine viruses replicate in the body simultaneously, immunosuppression can occur. This hiccup of the immune system starts about three days after vaccination and can continue for up to 10 days afterward. For that week-long span, the puppy is immunologically vulnerable, with a compromised immune system.

“This immunosuppressive effect does not occur when adult dogs are vaccinated with CAV-2,” Dr. Dodds says, because by then the dog likely has immunity to distemper, and both vaccine viruses must be replicating at the same time for the immunosuppression to occur. One option she is considering is giving CAV-2 at the one-year mark, in two doses three weeks apart.

This, however, does not protect puppies from canine hepatitis. For his part, Dr. Schultz thinks the risks of immunosuppression are minimal. “If those puppies are not in an [at-risk] environment like a shelter” – or they don’t already have a disease such as pyoderma or demodectic mange – the immunosuppression goes unnoticed, he says. “It is transient, and only occurs when an animal has no interfering antibodies to one or the other, so both viruses replicate together. It doesn’t lead to clinically significant events in the majority of dogs.”

Dr. Dodds counters that cases of immunosuppression from vaccination can go unreported and undiagnosed, just as many vaccine reactions do. “If you asked 100 vets if they’ve seen a vaccine reaction, maybe one would say yes, when we know it is much more,” she says, stressing that the same could be true of awareness of vaccine-induced immunosuppression. She adds that the immunosuppression risk occurs at a time when puppies are particularly vulnerable. “If you take tissue immunity and you suppress it for 10 days at a time when the animal is undergoing new stresses – new home, new food, new everything – it sets the animal up to be susceptible to other stressors,” she says. “This is a critical period, in my view.”

Other Options
For puppies, the best option, of course, would simply be to vaccinate with CAV-2 some time after a parvovirus-distemper vaccination is administered. The problem? A single CAV-2 vaccine is not commercially available, and likely won’t be.

Dr. Schultz notes that there are several ways to get around the immunosuppression problem created when the adenovirus and distemper vaccine viruses are replicating at the same time. None is perfect, and owners will have to consider their individual animals and their risk factors before arriving at a decision that is best for them.

Options include:

– Give a bivalent (two-way) vaccine containing parvo-virus and distemper, and then give the CAV-2 vaccine intranasally.

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Since CAV-2 is part of the kennel-cough complex, it is available as an intransal vaccine along with B bronchiseptica (Bb) and canine parainfluena (CPI). Because it triggers a different immune response, the intranasal vaccine does not cause immunosuppression, Dr. Schultz says, even if the distemper/parvovirus vaccine is injected at the same time.

Dr. Schultz says he has recommended this approach to those who have administered the distemper/parvovirus vaccine because he was always concerned about susceptibility to adenovirus. “I generally like to wait until after the last dose with distemper-parvovirus, which is 14 to 16 weeks.” He adds that CAV-2 can cause severe respiratory disease, and is worth vaccinating against in its own right.

Downside: Many vets dislike administering the intranasal vaccine, as many dogs don’t find having liquid shot up their noses to be particularly pleasurable. Also, because many vets routinely give three-way vaccines that contain CAV-2, the intranasal vaccine they stock more than likely does not contain it.

– Give an initial parvovirus-distemper vaccine, then administer a three-way vaccine containing CAV-2 once the dog has developed immunity to distemper.

The trick with this approach is determining when the dog has mounted immunity to distemper. Both Drs. Dodds and Schultz recommend waiting until 12 to 16 weeks, a time when distemper immunity has been achieved by the majority of puppies.

Dr. Schultz says once immunity to distemper has been demonstrated after vaccination by a simple titer, or blood test, then the dog could receive the three-way vaccine. “The dog isn’t going to get immunosuppression because he has already developed distemper immunity,” he explains.

Dr. Dodds sees two possibilities for adapting her vaccine protocol to encompass infectious canine hepatitis without risking immunosuppression: Give a two-way vaccine (parvovirus-distemper) at 9 and 14 weeks, then give the first three-way vaccine containing canine hepatitis at 17 weeks, with a final dose at 24 weeks. Or give the two-way at 9 weeks and 12 weeks, and then give the three-way at 15 and 18 weeks.

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Both scenarios not only try to avoid immunosuppression, but also seek to give parvovirus at or shortly after 14 weeks, as studies show that many puppies are not protected against parvovirus before that age, despite having been vaccinated for it.

Downside: Waiting until the third installment of the initial vaccine series leaves the puppy susceptible to infectious canine hepatitis in the interim.

– Administer a recombinant three-way vaccine, as opposed to a modified live-virus, or MLV, vaccine.

A recombinant vaccine is sort of a middle ground between a MLV vaccine, which replicates a milder form of the disease in the dog, and a killed vaccine, which doesn’t cause any disease in the dog but which contains preservatives called adjuvants, thought to trigger adverse reactions in some dogs. A recombinant vaccine does not cause immunosuppression when distemper and canine hepatitis are administered together.

“A recombinant vaccine is as efficacious as a MLV vaccine, and as safe as a killed vaccine,” Dr. Schultz says, noting that the Recombitek C3 vaccine contains parovirus, distemper, and adenovirus. In addition to not causing immunosuppression, Dr. Schultz says the vaccine’s distemper component “will immunize at an earlier age than any MLV distemper vaccines.”

That said, Dr. Schultz notes that the three-way recombinant vaccine does not immunize for parvovirus quite as early as some of the other  MLV vaccines, so it is not suitable for puppies that are at high risk for exposure to that disease. One option, he says, “is to do a recombinant vaccine at six or eight weeks or whenever you start, then follow up with a traditional MLV combination that contains adenovirus as well as parvovirus.” Because distemper immunity will likely be achieved, “that adenovirus is going to replicate alone, so you won’t get suppression, and that parvovirus will very likely induce immunity.”

Downside: The less effective parvo-virus response is a concern for those with dogs from high-risk parvovirus environment such as shelters. Also, many vets do not normally stock the recombinant vaccine.

In the end, there is no perfect solution. “People need to choose the devil that they prefer,” Dr. Dodds says. “One hundred times they might be fine – and then one time they might not.”

The Good News
If you have never vaccinated your adult dog for canine hepatitis, the first thing is not to panic. The good news is that many dogs, especially those who have been exposed to many other dogs, are probably already immune.

“Once a dog gets out with other dogs, it’s not uncommon for CAV-2 to naturally infect and immunize without causing disease,” explains Dr. Schultz, referring to the respiratory form of the virus. Because CAV-2 immunity also covers CAV-1, those dogs are naturally protected against both. “There is a great deal of natural immunization that has gone on.”

For example, show dogs who are not vaccinated for CAV-1 will very likely become naturally immunized against it when CAV-2 infects them, as respiratory viruses are common in that kind of environment. (Indeed, many consider a case of kennel cough contracted at a show or other doggie event to be the equivalent of the old-fashioned “chicken-pox party” – catch it on purpose and become immune.)

Similarly, if a stray dog comes in contact with canine hepatitis at a shelter, “many of those already came across CAV-2 and are already immune, where they might not be immune to, say, parvovirus,” Dr. Schultz explains.

The “best bet,” he says, if dogs have not been given a CAV-2 vaccine, is to have them titered to see if they have immunity to CAV-1, and to vaccinate if they do not.

Dr. Schultz points out that while renewed concern about canine hepatitis is important in light of these outbreaks, other diseases still pose an arguably greater threat. “I think I’d like my protection against parvovirus, considering how stable and resistant it is in the environment,” he says. “It is in every state in the United States. Some shelters all over the country have parvovirus cases constantly – and the same thing with distemper.”

In short, while the recent news about canine hepatitis should be cause for concern, there is no reason to panic. Even with the documented outbreak this summer, Dr. Schultz doesn’t think the disease will become prevalent, because of the one-two punch of natural and artificial immunity that is already working in the American dog population – and has been for many, many years.

“We’ve got a little bit of nature on our side, and a little bit of vaccine on our side,” he concludes. And, hopefully, that should keep this scary movie from turning into a multi-sequel blockbuster.

Denise Flaim of Revodana Ridgebacks in Long Island, New York, shares her home with a trio of Ridgebacks, three 8-year-olds, and a very patient husband.

Going Big

By
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA
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I have long coveted an Irish Wolfhound. Commanding in appearance, they are known for being easygoing and gentle by nature, with a rakish air, courtesy of the wiry coat and bewhiskered face, for which I am a total sucker. This breed is one of several known as “Giants” – for good reason. Weighing in at 100-plus pounds, standing nearly 36 inches at the shoulder, they are impressively large. Others in this class include the Great Dane, Great Pyrenees, Newfoundland, Leonberger, English Mastiff, Neapolitan Mastiff, and others that exceed 100 pounds.

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Many years ago, my love affair with large dogs (I once shared my life with a St. Bernard) fell victim to the realities of space and convenience. When adding a fifth dog to the group, we opted for a Pomeranian. While I still admire the dogs at the huge end of the size continuum, the largest dog in our current pack of five is our 45-pound Australian Shepherd, Missy. In fact, if you add all five of their weights together you would barely come up with enough poundage for one giant dog. Every time I find myself drawn to an extra-large canine, a small voice in the back of my head reminds me of all the challenges that accompany a dog who can look you squarely in the eye while he’s standing on all fours.

Size Matters
What are the challenges of big-dog ownership? For starters, everything about them is big, from their appetites (and by-products thereof) to the crates, collars, and other training equipment that they use, as well as the toys they play with. Pet supply companies offer giant-sized Kongs, tennis balls, tug toys, and just about every other canine accessory you can think of. They know there’s a “big” market out there.

Vet bills are bigger, too. Everything from topical flea and tick products to drugs to treat illnesses and modify behavior cost more – because big dogs need bigger doses. Surgeries are more expensive too; most are charged at least in part by the dog’s weight because larger dogs generally need higher doses of anesthesia drugs.

Even finding a place to live can be more of a challenge for big-dog humans. Many landlords and hotels, if they allow dogs at all, accept pets who are 25 pounds or less. The next socially acceptable size-increment seems to be around 70 to 75 pounds. Much bigger than that, and non-dog people tend to think you really are some kind of serious dog-nut, to share your life and home with a dog who outweighs many of the family members. Additionally, much to the distress of big-dog humans, many of the giant breeds are listed on insurance company “do not insure” lists, making it difficult at best, impossible at worst, to find homeowner’s or renter’s insurance.

Finally, sadly, many of the giant breeds tend to have short life spans. A 10-year-old Great Dane is pretty ancient, and many owners prepare their farewells to 7- and 8-year-old Danes. Meanwhile, lots of 10-year-old small dogs are still in the prime of life and their humans look forward to 5 to 10 more years of canine companionship.

The daunting size of these dogs can, without a doubt, present their owners with a host of training and management challenges not encountered by those who share their lives with more moderately sized dogs. It requires a lot of thought and effort for a Beagle to be successful at counter-surfing. A Great Dane merely needs to walk past a food-laden dining room table and temptation is right under his nose. My Dodge Caravan can easily accommodate crates for all five of our dogs, ranging in size from 10 to 45 pounds. It would take a small motor home to accommodate crates for five St. Bernards!

Everything you’ve heard about training and management is massively magnified for your big dog. Don’t even think about putting off training class until your wee one is six months old and is dragging you down the sidewalk. Good manners training is mandatory for these giant canines starting at the age of eight weeks. Their forbidding size demands an early course in juvenile good manners; the sooner they are reinforced for appropriate behaviors, the less likely they are to engage in inappropriate ones.

Early socialization is equally vital. These are dogs who, if not well-socialized, have the ability to cause significant injury, even death, to another dog – or human. If they don’t learn to enjoy the company and attentions of others during that critical socialization window, which quickly closes after the young age of 14 weeks, they run a high risk of getting into big trouble. Add the genetically programmed guarding behavior of many of the giant breeds into the mix, and you have a recipe for disaster if your baby big dog doesn’t learn, early on, that the world is a wonderful place.

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A poorly socialized, poorly trained large dog is a significant risk to the safety of the community. A well-socialized, well-trained dog will be able to turn on his protective behaviors if needed, but no matter his size, will be safe to have around your friends and family. A poorly socialized small dog makes the same sad statement about pet-owner irresponsibility as an unsocialized large dog, but is less of a risk to the community; a kamikaze Yorkie can do far less damage on his worst day than a scud missile Neapolitan Mastiff on a minor bender.

A Tall Training Challenge
There are a number of good manners behaviors that are particularly important to teach your large dog while she is still small. Pay special attention to these if you have a big dog.

Polite Greeting: Jumping on humans is rude behavior for any canine, and especially intolerable for a large dog. Avoid the temptation to pick her up and cuddle your giant pup. Cuddling teaches her that “up” is a very wonderful place to be, and reinforces her for behavior that you will regret when she reaches her adult size. Instead, designate a spot on the floor as “cuddle space,” and get down on her level to do snuggle time.

Reinforce her “Sit” as a greeting/default behavior so consistently and frequently that it’s the first thing that pops into her brain, even when she’s happy and excited to see you or your visitors. Insist that family members, visitors, and people on the street greet her only when she is sitting, and turn their backs or step away if she jumps up or bashes into them with her head or body.

Additionally, you can practice polite greeting with your pup secured on a tether and/or behind a barrier such as a baby gate or exercise pen, so you can step away from her if she tries to jump up or bulldoze into you. This will prevent her from getting reinforcement by having physical contact with you unless she earns that reward through her self-control.

Polite Leash Walking: If you do nothing else, you must teach your big dog to walk politely on leash. Without a doubt, she will be big and strong enough at maturity to drag even a large adult human off his feet. If you can’t take her out and about on leash under control, you probably won’t take her out. If you do, the two of you are likely to get into trouble. The keys to teaching good leash walking are: a high rate of reinforcement for being in position next to you (lots of clicks and treats); and very high-value treats, so that it’s more rewarding for your dog to pay attention to you than her surroundings.

Start by simply clicking and treating your dog for sitting by your side. When she will sit next to you for several seconds at a time, take one step, have her sit when you stop; click and treat. Repeat this until she automatically sits when you stop, then increase to two steps and stop. Gradually increase the number of steps you take, always having her sit by your side when you stop. When you are up to a dozen steps or so, start clicking and treating while you are still in motion. (Remember to always feed the treat to her when she is in position at your side. If you feed in front of you, you will teach her to block your path.)

If you’ve already missed out on teaching polite leash walking while your pup is small, consider using a front-clip control harness to maintain gentle control of your big dog while you retrain her leash behavior. (See “In Pursuit of a Loose Leash: Proper Use of No-Pull Harnesses,” WDJ October 2012.)

Say Please: A “say please” program teaches your dog that good things in life come to dogs who sit. This prevents her from learning that she can push people around by virtue of her sheer weight and size. You can initially train and ask for the sit behavior, but your ultimate goal is for your dog to offer sits without being asked.

If she is allowed on the furniture, she sits and waits to be invited, rather than just helping herself to the empty space on the sofa next to your visitor. Want to go outside? “Sit” makes the door open. Ready for dinner? “Sit” makes the dinner bowl descend to the floor. While you needn’t go so far as to require her to sit for everything good in her world, “sit” really is a delightful default good manners behavior that keeps your dog out of trouble.

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Settle: A big-dog lover myself, I don’t understand why some people don’t fully appreciate the joy of having a Newfoundland drool in their laps, but some just don’t! A big dog is still plenty accessible for the occasional pat on the head if she is lying at your visitor’s feet instead of panting in his face.

Teach your dog that “settle” (lying at the feet of humans) is a highly rewarded behavior. Give her attention and treats on a variable schedule (sometimes close together, sometimes with longer pauses in between) when she lies down quietly. Give your guests a container full of treats and instruct them to reward your dog on a random schedule, too. Be sure to ignore any demand behavior, such as whining or barking, so she learns that the only behavior that gets rewarded is a calm “settle.”

Leave It: It’s a fact. Giant breeds have easier access to food-bearing surfaces such as tables and kitchen counters. One chance encounter with a roast beef sandwich can turn a dog into a dedicated counter-surfer in an instant. In addition to managing your big dog so she never has the opportunity to learn to counter-surf, a well-installed “leave it” cue, which tells her to back away from whatever she is looking at, can avert disaster when she has that “Mine!” gleam in her eye and is closer to the holiday turkey than you are.

To teach “leave it,” show her a sturdy, non-crushable treat such as a cube of freeze-dried liver, say “Leave it!” and place it under your foot. Simply ignore her as she tries to chew or dig it out from under your foot. The instant she removes her attention from the hidden goodie, click and feed her a high-value treat from your hand. As long as she isn’t trying to get the cube, click and treat several times in a row.

When she starts to understand the zen of “get a treat by ignoring the treat,” expose the goodie on the floor by moving your foot slightly to the side. If she dives for it, just cover it back up with your foot and wait for her to ignore it again. Click and treat. Repeat until she makes no effort to obtain the exposed treat on the ground. Eventually your “leave it” cue will cause her to turn her attention away from a coveted object in anticipation of a high value treat from you.

Sharing With Others: Like so many other things, resource-guarding by a large dog can be infinitely more disastrous than the same behavior presented by her smaller counterparts. When your pup is small, teach her that having humans approach her when she is eating or otherwise occupied with a high-value possession makes even more great stuff happen. When she is eating from her food bowl, occasionally approach and drop a few exquisite goodies into it. Before long she will want people to be around when she is eating.

Do not succumb to the temptation to grab her food away from her, just because you can. Forcing her to give up her food can create food-bowl stress. You want to reassure her that your presence at her food bowl is not a threat, but rather an opportunity for more good stuff.
Caution: If you already have a serious resource guarding challenge with your dog, big or small, find a qualified positive reinforcement-based trainer/behavior specialist to help you modify this potentially dangerous behavior.

Go to Your Place: This behavior is especially helpful if you have guests who don’t appreciate super-sized canines. You can use luring, targeting, or shaping your dog to teach her “go to your spot” (a comfy bed placed a reasonable distance away, but where she can still be part of the social scene). If you use a portable bed or rug to mark her “spot,” you can take it with you – to the dining room during meals, the den for videos, even to the beach for a picnic and your friends’ houses when you and your big dog go visiting.

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Trade: The last thing you want to do is get into an argument with a big dog over something she has in her mouth. Teach your dog to “Trade” by offering treats when she has a toy.

Most people make the mistake of only taking “forbidden objects” away from their dogs, which can teach the dog to resist, since she learns that she’ll never get it back. If you practice “Trade” as a regular training exercise with a “legal” toy or chew object, you can repeatedly return the object in question after your dog gives it up for a high-value treat. She learns that she gets two rewards – the first for giving up the valuable object, the second when she gets the valuable object back again. Then, if she occasionally has to give up an “illegal” object that you can’t return to her, it won’t outweigh the positive impact of all the two-reward trades you have done with her.

Remember not to take your dog’s willingness to trade for granted. My dogs will usually give up coveted objects on cue. In order to keep the positive association strong, I still reward them with a treat when I ask them to trade, even when they easily and voluntarily drop the object in question.

Bite Inhibition: Dogs bite. It’s a natural canine behavior. Chances are that at some time in your dog’s life, she may feel compelled to bite. If and when that happens, good bite inhibition could make the difference between a dent in the skin and plastic surgery. It could also determine whether your dog lives or dies, since dogs who bite and cause serious injury tend to not live long – especially big dogs who bite.

You can instill good bite inhibition in a pup by gradually diminishing the force of her bite rather than punishing all bites. A puppy naturally learns to control the force of her teeth through playing with her siblings. If she bites softly, without causing undue pain, the other puppies will keep playing with her. If she bites too hard, the pup she’s biting may yelp and run away, refusing to re-engage in play for a time.

You can do the same thing. If your giant puppy bites softly, continue playing with her. If she bites hard enough to cause pain, calmly say “Ouch!” or “Oops!” and walk away from her. (Don’t bother trying to imitate a puppy yelp. We usually fail miserably when we attempt to imitate canine vocal communication, and a yelp often arouses an excited puppy even more.) After a short time, begin playing with her again. She will learn to control her bite so that the fun can continue without interruption.

Be Positive
If you think it’s a good idea to force confrontations with your big dog, think again.

First, it’s not necessary, and second, the bigger the dog gets, the more likely you are to lose. In old-fashioned force-based training, owners were advised to dominate their dogs, and if the dogs fought back, to increase the level of human aggression until the dogs submitted. Dogs who refused to submit were labeled “vicious” and “incorrigible” and euthanized.

It takes two to fight. If you train with positive methods, you never set the dog up for conflict. Rather you set your dog up to succeed, and teach her to willingly and happily respond to your behavior requests because good things happen when she does.

Remember, dogs naturally growl to communicate that they are stressed by, uncomfortable with, or otherwise feel threatened by the presence of an aversive stimulus. Unfortunately, growling makes some humans feel so threatened that they feel compelled to punish and “dominate” the dog in some sort of misguided “show them who’s boss” display. If you respond to a fearful dog’s growling with sudden violence or even just a scary display of yelling, the dog learns that when she is frightened, humans become unpredictable and threatening, and her discomfort with people will likely escalate.

If your dog growls or seems uneasy, try to identify the source of her discomfort, and increase the distance between her and the aversive stimulus. Then, plan to embark on a formal and thorough counter-conditioning program, to help her form a new and happy association with whatever frightened her. (See “Fear Itself: Reducing Your Dog’s Anxieties,” WDJ April 2007, “Socializing a Shy Dog” August 2008; and “Eliminating Your Puppy’s Fear-Related Behaviors” June 2012.)

Of course, if your dog actually bites you or someone else, or if you are not confident in your ability to work with her growling behavior, immediately seek assistance from a qualified positive dog behavior consultant who is experienced with fearful and aggressive dogs.

Big Bother?
If big dogs are such a challenge, why even bother with them? Some people like the look and feel of a big, solid dog by their sides. Many of these folks don’t consider a canine to be a real dog unless they are at least 75 pounds. There is something very comforting about the bulk of an impressively large canine, especially if you are alone in a remote location, traveling through an unsavory part of town, or taking your dog for a late night walk in Central Park.

There is also much to be said for the big-dog personality. As a general rule, they are calmer than many of their smaller brethren – it’s a lot of work to haul around that much bulk! Besides, a St. Bernard-sized dog with a Jack Russell Terrier’s energy level probably wouldn’t be around long; who could live with that?

So, is there an Irish Wolfhound or some other giant dog in my future, or yours? It’s hard to say where life will take us, but if nothing else, I’ve learned over the years to “Never say never.” Who knows? If the right dog comes along, we might be clearing off the coffee table in our living room, and investing in a whole new supply of “economy size” canine paraphernalia. Care to join me?

Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC, is WDJ’s Training Editor. She lives in Fairplay, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center, where she offers dog training classes and courses for trainers. Pat is also author of many books on positive training, including her newest, Do Over Dogs: Give Your Dog a Second Chance at a First-Class Life.

Dog Care When You’re Down

By
Nannette Morgan
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dog and person with walker
With advance preparation, you should be able to manage your dogs – and your own physical rehabilitation – with ease. This owner is having knee surgery in a few weeks, so she's habituating her dog to a walker and a "grabbing" tool, by pairing the dog's meals with her use of these assistive devices.

No one likes to think about having major surgery. The thought of being temporarily disabled is scary enough, but when you factor in caring for your dog or dogs by yourself afterward, the fears multiply. Don’t worry! The following tips will help you navigate your recovery with ease while taking care of your canine companions. (The tips can easily be applied to caring for other pets as well.)

All of my suggestions are grounded in real-world experience. I was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease in both hips about three years ago. I was on a daily protocol of palliative measures until it became too much to bear the pain and restricted range of movement caused by this disease. At least I had (and needed) time to research a place for me and my two Siberian Huskies to stay before and after my surgery.

Fortunately, I have good friends who also have Siberians; they hosted my dogs for the two days I was in the hospital and then all three of us for a few more days, while I recuperated before transitioning to home. Having these details worked out way in advance allowed me to concentrate on the next vital challenge: preparing my house for our return in such a way that would take into consideration my post-surgery restrictions.

Walk On
I was lucky; I saved some equipment that my mother used following surgery she had a few years ago. I initially kept the tools because I wanted to use them with clients who were training their dogs to do hospital and nursing home visits. Little did I dream that years down the road I would be using these tools.

The first tool was a walker, which I would need (as my mom did) to move around the house after my surgery. My older dog Binks was used to seeing the walker because “Grandma” would come over with it when she baby-sat her “grand-dog.” My young girl Cricket was not used to it; she’s almost always a little wary around novel items. The saving grace is that she’s also curious.

I got the walker out and used it around the house a few times during the week before my surgery. It didn’t take that much time for her to get used to it, though if your dog is very wary or frightened of new things, I would suggest renting or buying a walker at least a couple of weeks before it is needed so that you can desensitize and counter-condition your dog to it.

Start acclimating your dog to the walker by positioning it in a highly trafficked location in your house, and placing super yummy treats near it. The next step is to touch it or lean on it while feeding high value treats to your furry friend. Allow it to creak or rattle in a natural manner, but don’t try to purposely frighten your dog with it! As long as your dog seems to accept it, increase your interaction with it until you are actually using the walker to move around the house, dropping tasty treats on the floor behind you while you walk with it. I recommend dropping them behind rather than in front of you; the last thing you need to have happen is for your dog to block your forward access and cause you to trip and fall. This is especially important if you have very small dogs.

After a few games of Hansel and Gretel (and the trail of breadcrumbs), your dog should associate the funny two-wheeled and tennis ball-covered appendage with good things. Using the walker prior to surgery will also give you the opportunity to see if any dog items such as beds and crates are in the path of your walker and will need to be moved to another location during your recuperation.

Note: If you have a ball-crazy dog, and your walker’s legs are covered with tennis balls, you may want to remove them or replace those rear walker legs with some other tip-protectors. Most drugstores sell handicap assistance accessories or you can go online to find them. Physical therapy practices can also give you a list of local medical supply stores where alternatives can be purchased.

Whatever Grabs You

A grabbing tool that helps someone pick up items from the ground
If you are having back surgery – or just have a sore back! – it can help to use a grabbing tool to pick up your dog’s bowl or leash (and other items) from the floor.

Grabbing tools may appear to our dogs as an alien arm with a weird opposable thumb or a threatening weapon. But they are very useful for picking up tissues, clothes, and other personal items from floors or lightweight cooking items and supplies from shelves. I found one to be super helpful for picking up metal dog bowls from the floor, filling them with food, and then replacing them on the floor in my dogs’ eating places – especially after I strained my back and could not bend over without spasms overtaking me.

It’s very important to get used to using one of these tools a few weeks before your surgery, not only to get your furry friends used to it but also so you can develop the habit of using it. It’s so easy to forget your bending restrictions and suddenly lunge over to pick up that food bowl from the floor. If your body gets used to using this tool over a couple of weeks, it will be second nature to you by the time you have to depend on its daily use.

Poker anyone?
I’m actually talking about the wrought iron fire poker – not the card game! While the grabber is a great tool for picking up many things, it doesn’t do a great job of lifting anything heavy. I have a two-quart flat-backed water bucket outside for my dogs’ additional drinking needs. The grabber can’t lift or maneuver anything that heavy. That is when I spied the little hook extension on my fireplace poker. Voila! It worked perfectly to pick up the bucket so I could re-fill it and put it back down outside. If you don’t have a fireplace poker, an umbrella with a j-style handle will work well, as will the handle of a cane.

Yes I “Can”

Plastic watering can
If you have trouble bending over, it’s helpful to use a watering can to fill your dog’s water bowl.

The food bowl scenario was pretty easy to resolve. Picking up my dogs’ water bowls to clean and then fill presented another challenge. Their usual water bowl was a four-quart stainless steel bowl with sloped sides. There was no way the grabber was going to pick that up so that I could clean it and refill it. One thing that could help was to substitute their other smaller straight-sided stainless steel kennel bowl for their regular one, which solved the problem.

Now, how to fill it? Enter the garden-variety (literally) watering can with narrow spout. The narrow spout is very important. This allows you to stand up fairly straight and just tip your wrist slightly so that the stream of water goes directly down into the water bowl from a height of about 3 feet. This is by far my favorite use of an ordinary household item to solve my daily dog care challenges.

Believe in the Easter Bunny

An empty basket with a tall, hooped handle
If you need to use a walker, cane, wheelchair, or crutches, it can help to use a basket like this to carry small items from room to room.

I found that Easter baskets are the perfect shape and size for carrying dog food bowls, grooming items, or supplements from one area of the house to the other. Long, narrow basket handles are perfect for holding onto while you hold onto your walker arms. Plus, you can carry multiple items at once reducing the need to make many trips from one area of the house to the other end.

Those are the major things I found to be useful when I had my first hip replacement surgery. Before I have my next one, I plan to teach Cricket how to take off compression stockings; none of the dressing tools are really helpful with that!

Other preparations
In addition to gaining experience with the tools described above, it’s invaluable to prepare your home in other ways for your brief (we hope) disability.

For example, make sure you have an adequate supply of your dogs’ kibble or canned food, and place it in a location that makes it as easy as possible to retrieve and put in their bowls. If you feed a home-made diet, make sure to prepare (and freeze) enough for several weeks, as you may be tired and not up to extensive food preparation – yours or your dogs’! I feed mostly a dry food so I made sure that the week before my surgery I stocked up with a large enough bag to last a few weeks post-surgery. I also stocked up on treats, as well as my food and sundry items.

You may also want to have your dogs groomed before your big event; you will be in no position to do this for some time afterward.

I have medium-sized dogs so I don’t need to pick them up for any reason, but if you have tiny dogs, training them to jump up on a chair or sofa so that you can reach them without bending over can be very helpful.

Woman with two Siberian Huskies
Author and trainer Nannette Morgan is shown pre-surgery with her two Siberian Huskies, 6-year-old Cricket (left) and 14-year-old Binks. All three have made it through Nannette’s first hip replacement surgery with flying colors.

Another thing to consider before your surgery is your dog’s response to common cues and his behavior in general. If he is rusty in responding to your cues to sit, leave it, or down, practice now so that he is up to speed well before your disability; this will pay off in spades for your recovery and his ease to acclimating to the temporary disruption of your normal life. If you don’t have the time for this or it’s beyond your capabilities, enlist the help of a good positive reinforcement-based trainer to help you polish your dog’s rough behavioral edges.

Getting help
If you have very small, senior, or couch-potato dogs, they may be perfectly happy to keep you company in your newly less-active life. But if your dogs are young and/or highly active, they may be unable to adjust to a suddenly sedentary schedule. Do all of you a favor and find, interview, and get your dogs accustomed to going out with a professional dog walker or enlist the help of trusted dog-savvy friends to help out. Do this far enough in advance of your surgery so you have time to find another person if the first one doesn’t work out! And then schedule the person for as many walks as your dogs will need in order to reliably stay calm at home.

If you are unable to allow your dog to potty outside in your fenced yard, your new dog-walker or trusted friends may be able to help by taking your dog out to potty and then cleaning up after her.

Stress reduction
Doing all of the pre-op preparations above helped to de-stress me before my surgery. I’m very much an independent type of person, so having to rely on others was difficult for me.

The only thing that I needed to have help with was someone to walk my dogs. As soon as I was able, I started picking up after my dogs in the yard, using the long-handled pooper scooper set I started using after my back strain. And soon enough, because I hadn’t hurt myself by overdoing household and dog-care tasks, I recovered – and improved on! – my previous mobility. It was a relief to be self-sufficient again.

Download The Full January 2013 Issue PDF

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Sardines: Not Hot.

By
Nancy Kerns
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Nights with typical winter temperatures are finally arriving here in Northern California. (Sorry! I know that many of you have been experiencing freezing temps at night for weeks – months? – already.) And with the cold comes Tito’s reluctance to go outside and potty on any schedule other than his own.

Tito is a Chihuahua – well, probably a Chihuahua-mix. (Our niece, who left him with us “temporarily” two years ago bought him as a puppy, goodness knows where; he’s likely a puppy mill product.) He’s far larger than the breed standard and he has a thick coat, like a Labrador! But he has the typical Chihuahua’s aversion to being cold without a darn good reason. Suddenly he won’t come to me when I want him to go outside and pee before I go to bed. “Naw,” he seems to say from the comfort of his bed in the living room. “I’m fine! I don’t have to go! Y’all go without me!”

Otto always goes out; you never know when you might see a raccoon or stray cat out in the yard. Yahoo! Bonus! But after his pee, he wants to come right back in. In his rash youth, he wanted to sleep outside all night every night. (His large crate has an insulated cover on it, like this: gundogsupply.com/mudriver-large.html. And it’s stuffed with several layers of plush pads. And it’s right outside the back door, on the covered porch. There is no door on the crate, just the insulated cover’s front hanging down, like a tent flap, so he can enter and exit at will but still stay snug.) Every once in a while, probably on high-cat-activity nights, he’ll go into his crate instead of coming into the house after his pee, making his choice for that night. But most nights now, starting in mid-October or so, he takes the indoor option. He’s an adult now!

Tito always sleeps inside. When it was warmer, he’d always take the “last chance to pee tonight” option, but not now. NOW THAT IT’S FREEZING AT NIGHT, he skips the pre-bedtime pee – in favor of the 4 or 5 am, whining at my bedside option. Gah! Well, it’s better than just peeing in the house. So I always respond, and jump out of bed and let him out. He’s fast and businesslike – but the damage is done. Once my feet are frozen (even with socks) I have a hard time getting back to sleep.

So I’ve been working on reinforcing the last-chance pee. And as the temperature drops, it’s taking higher-and higher value rewards to get him to come to me and go outside before bedtime. Kibble stopped working at 50 degrees; cheese and even meat failed at about 40. Now we are down into the sardine temperatures. And I can’t tell you just how sexy it is to smell like sardines in bed! Ha!

(Walking Your Dog #4) Walking an Excited Dog by Pat Miller

By
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA
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You contemplate taking your dog for a walk with mixed emotions. You love the idea of going for a companionable stroll through the neighborhood together, but when you pick up his leash he becomes the Tasmanian Devil. 

Here are suggestions for turning this potential disaster into the enjoyable outing you dream of.

Exercise first. Spend 15-20 minutes tossing a ball for your dog in the backyard, or providing intense mental exercise with a heavy duty shaping session. You’ll take the edge off his excitement, reduce his energy level, and make leashing-up and walking more relaxed and enjoyable for both of you.

Pick up his leash throughout the day. He gets amped up when you touch his leash because it always means the two of you are going for a walk. If you pick up his leash numerous times throughout the day, sometimes draping it over your neck and wearing it for a while, sometimes carrying it from room to room, sometimes picking it up and putting it back down, the leash will no longer be a reliable predictor of walks, and he won’t have any reason to get all excited about it.

Use negative punishment. Not a bonk on the head. It means setting up the situation so that doing the behavior you don’t want causes a good thing to go away. If, when you pick up the leash, he goes bonkers (the behavior you don’t want), say “Oops!” in a cheerful tone of voice (what’s known as a “no reward marker,” it simply tells him no reward is forthcoming), set the leash down, and walk away. When he settles down, pick the leash up again. You’re teaching him that getting excited makes the opportunity for a walk go away; staying calm makes walks happen.

For more information on how to reform a puller into a more pleasant walking companion purchase Whole Dog Journal’s Walking Your Dog ebook.

(The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care #4) Do Dogs Require a “Balanced Diet”?

By
CJ Puotinen
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The notion that every meal an animal eats should be completely balanced is a recent invention resulting from the use of packaged foods. If you were restricted to the same food in the same amount every day for the rest of your life, each identical meal would have to be nutritionally balanced because you would have no other source of nutrients. But you don’t eat this way, you don’t feed your children that way and animals in the wild don’t eat that way. It’s completely unnatural. What matters is not whether tonight’s dinner contains 100 percent of every nutrient your body requires but whether all of the combined foods you eat today or this week provide them.

From long-time Whole Dog Journal contributor CJ Puotinen’s  incredible resource, The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care,  this  500+ page volume is everything you need to know to ensure good health and long life for your dog. You can purchase it right now from Whole Dog Journal.

Practice, Practice, and Benefit

By
Tricia Breen
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I used to live next door to a woman who played the Bassoon. She was in the local community orchestra, in quartets and quintets in the community. She had been playing the instrument for many years, now semi-retired and getting much satisfaction from her involvement with the local groups.

It was very common for me to hear her practicing, doing scales, playing bits of movements from the next Sibelius Concerto or whatever that they were going to be performing. This is a person who played for years, is quite accomplished, yet she continues to go back to basics, refresh and remind the fingers, the mouth, the mind, of the early things learned. (Of course, as a double reed instrument, one does need to maintain practice just to be successful at making it sing.)

When you or I took guitar or violin or piano lessons as children, we were reminded that we needed to practice each day between lessons in order to retain competence. Those of us that didn’t embrace this advice tended to give up the lessons for other pursuits. The flute or clarinet was returned to the rental store, the guitar went back to the closet to gather dust.

But again and again I hear from people who took their dog to a puppy class or to a beginning obedience class and then expected the dog to know how to behave from then on. When I explain that reminders and practice and new skills are good for all dogs, I often hear resistance. Shouldn’t that one 6-, 8-, or 10-week class have taken care of the rest of the dog’s life? Shouldn’t he then know to come when called, keep off the furniture, refrain from jumping on people, stay when asked?

We lead busy lives. It takes time and effort to communicate formally or even with concentrated focus with our dogs. It also brings huge rewards that make every minute of doing so worth the time. It builds our relationship, it allows for more freedom to the dog to join us in more activities, it becomes something that our dog very much looks forward to each day, the joy of interacting with us, and using his brain. In my book, it’s all upside — the only downside being carving the time out of our day. It allows us to learn and understand more and more about our dog.

It doesn’t need to be much time. Even a couple of 10-minute or a few 5-minute focused attention slots in our day will be a huge advantage to both dog and person. When we put the guitar away in the closet or close up the piano, there is not much cost. But if we do this with our dog, there is a big cost. They pick up habits that displease us, they lose beneficial privileges because of unruly behavior or a lack of self-control. We may even begin to resent them a bit. Some investment in teaching them, communicating with them would bring the exact opposite result. We grow to love them and appreciate them so much more when we actually put time and focus on tutoring them in desirable behavior, teaching them fun tricks, or finding that they have amazing aptitude, well beyond what we could have imagined.

And yes, we need to continue to practice our scales throughout their lives. They may become very proficient at many things, but refreshing and renewing the basics will always come in handy. The more we engage with our dogs, become active participants in their lives and in communicating with them, the more we appreciate them and they us. We can’t just take them through one beginner-level class and call them done. And the more we ask of each other, the more amazing our partnership becomes.

They can’t be put in the closet. And we don’t want to give up on what could be a profound and wonderful relationship, just because we neglected feeding it or nurturing it. If we start out right, prevent the things that aren’t so cute when they are adults or not so newly adopted, but more established in our homes, watch their joy as they learn new things, it can only result in a beautiful thing. The investment pays off exponentially. And they don’t have much risk of being surrendered to a shelter or rescue, their lives upended.

 

Tricia Breen has been involved with horses and dogs for most of her life. She studied biology and animal behavior in college, and spent years training her dogs and helping others to teach their dogs while moving around the country. Once settled back in her native California, she participated in and taught classes at her local dog training club, then taught classes and conducted behavior consults at the Marin Humane Society. For the last five years, Tricia was the Director of Animal Care and Adoptions at Marin Humane Society, always keeping an eye toward helping dogs and volunteers with shelter life. She has recently left this role and gone back to assisting people with their dogs to build relationships, consulting with behavior and training issues. She can be reached via  www.canine-behavior-associates.com as a new partner in this endeavor. 

 

Calm Yourself!

By
Nancy Kerns
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Last week, I was approached by someone who works with people I know. She wanted to know if I could help her with a dog that she was considering adopting. She told me:

The dog was adopted as a 12-week-old pup by someone else. That person has a full-time job, two young kids, and is suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed but painful back problem.  The dog failed to get housetrained and after three months, she is declared to be “too much” for the house and the kids.

Her prospective owner took her home and though she likes the dog’s looks (she’s a chunky “blue” pit-mix) and thinks she’s a sweet dog, she agrees that the dog may be “too much” for her home, too. She is not housetrained, she chews everything, she jumps on people, and she’s got too much energy. Her 10-year-old son loves the dog and really wants to keep her, but the woman is thinking about surrendering the dog to a shelter.

So, I agree to take this “too much” dog for a few days and do some training, and give her my opinion about whether she is a good candidate to live in a family with a young kid.

We meet the next morning. She says she is feeling quite negative about keeping the dog this morning, as the dog “chewed up a couch” last night. I asked whether she has or would use a crate. She responds, “I put her in the crate last night but I must not have latched it right!”

She brings the dog out and she’s a typical wiggly, waggy, thumpy, untrained, adolescent pit-mix. No self-control, no manners, dragging her handler around, and immediately jumping on me and her handler. But, significantly, when she jumps on her prospective owner, the woman puts both her hands on the dog and pats and rubs and baby-talks to her. “You’re a good girl, you just need some training, don’t you?” she says to the dog.

I won’t go into too much detail here. Suffice to say, I think the dog is whip-smart and highly trainable. In five days at my house, she showed no signs of aggression toward people, other dogs, cats, or chickens. She learned “sit” in minutes, and “off” and “look at me” in a day. She would pee ON CUE after one day’s worth of practice, and after three days, would go poop on cue, too. I took her for a long off-leash walk out in our local wildlife area every day, and she came back and happily took a long snooze in a crate afterward. She didn’t try to pick up or chew a single non-dog-toy, but played with the toys my dogs had laying around quite nicely. And best of all (from my perspective),  she showed me in our very first training session that she was supremely capable of self-control; I just had to reinforce it – and make sure that no one she met reinforced its opposite.

I suspect that all the members of both families who have had this dog in their homes have thumped and hugged and rolled around with this exuberant, physical pup. On the first day, I saw that she leans – hard — into any physical contact, whether it’s a leash, petting, or someone trying to guide her into a crate. She LOVES physical contact with people, just absolutely eats up being petted and stroked. I used calm petting – no thumps or pats! – as a reward for her calm behavior. If she started to get riled up, I removed my hands and looked away, and only put my hands on her again when she sat calmly.

The question here is not whether the dog is a dud – it’s whether the dog’s prospective family is capable of managing their own behavior around her! I hope that when the woman sees how well-behaved the dog is capable of being, she’ll be interested and motivated enough to learn how to maintain that behavior, with regular exercise and trips outside to potty, a sturdy crate, appropriate dog toys and supervision, and most of all, support for the dog’s calm, quiet interaction. Exuberance and goofiness are fine – outside and upon request. But failing to teach a big, strong dog to be calm and polite (and maintain that behavior with calm petting, treats, and praise) and then sending her to a shelter to try to find another home would be a tragedy.

Work to improve your dog, but accept his preferences and limitations, too

By
Tricia Breen
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We have to find balance in our relationships. We need to work to help our dogs live comfortably with us and our chaotic human world. This takes time, practice, patience, observational skill, a willingness to work at it. If our dogs are uncomfortable with other dogs, get worked up when on-leash, or are fearful of new people or new environments, we help them to work through these things. We want them to be comfortable, reduce the stress and anxiety that they might feel. We want them to be comfortable so that we can take them more places with us, enjoy their company in more venues.

We also need to know when to accept who they are, to be willing to change our expectations of them. If they don’t want to meet lots of other dogs, we need to accept that. If they don’t want to hang out at the coffee shop while we sit at the table visiting and drinking our caffeine, we need to accept that. If we have a dog that really gets no enjoyment out of agility, we need to question why we might be insisting.

As with people, there are introverts and extroverts in dogs. There are shy dogs, driven dogs, dogs who love to meet everyone and anyone, and dogs who prefer a small circle of friends only. So we work on making things better as much as possible for them, minimize the stress, maximize the comfort, then we adjust the environment to fit with who they are.

When someone calls me to say that they don’t want to have to make any changes in their own lives to meet their dogs’ needs, one of my tasks might be to reset their expectations. If one’s daughter decides that med school or law school is not for her, a good parent supports that decision and understands that the love of another avenue is a perfectly fine thing for their child.

I have one such dog that has limitations. He likely had distemper as a pup and is a bit limited in his ability to do things that the other dogs can do. He can’t go to as many places as the other dogs, but we have made concessions, made his life work for him and for us. We have learned to appreciate who he is, have not pushed him beyond his ability.

We have to compromise in our human relationships, too. If you are not fond of endless holiday cocktail parties with people you don’t really know, your partner — who might love such gatherings, understands that it might too much to ask to expect that you attend one after another. Your partner could come up with a plan so that you could attend just a few of them, and they could attend a greater number independently or skip some of them. This is how relationships work and thrive.

Wouldn’t it be great if we made our relationships with our dogs worked that way too? Wouldn’t it be to great to help them to be comfortable in our world while not pushing them beyond their innate abilities, understand that they might have preferences or limitations. Just imagine if your parents insisted that you go to medical school even though your dream was to become an artist. Our dogs are just as individual as we are.

Tricia Breen has been involved with horses and dogs for most of her life. She studied biology and animal behavior in college, and spent years training her dogs and helping others to teach their dogs while moving around the country. Once settled back in her native California, she participated in and taught classes at her local dog training club, then taught classes and conducted behavior consults at the Marin Humane Society. For the last five years, Tricia was the Director of Animal Care and Adoptions at Marin Humane Society, always keeping an eye toward helping dogs and volunteers with shelter life. She has recently left this role and gone back to assisting people with their dogs to build relationships, consulting with behavior and training issues. She can be reached via  www.canine-behavior-associates.com as a new partner in this endeavor. 

Smallville

By
Nancy Kerns
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The first small dog I ever owned came to me as a hand-me-down. My sister’s husband brought home a long-haired Chihuahua puppy on a whim, but after the initial “new dog” thrill wore off, no one in the family took the time or had any interest in training the tiny dog. Mokie grew up eliminating in the house, chewing anything that interested him, and barking shrilly at everyone who came to the door. If they took him outside, he had to be on a leash, because he would gaily run down (and into) the street any chance he got, and no amount of calling would bring him back until he was exhausted. When I first met him, he was almost a year old and knew nothing. He responded to his name – sometimes – but didn’t know how to perform a single behavior on cue. When I asked what behaviors he knew, my sister responded with a tone that indicated I was being ridiculous for asking. “Oh right,” she said. “Like you can even train a dog that small.”

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Well, gosh, of course you can! If you can train chickens to play the piano and goldfish to dunk tiny basketballs through tiny underwater basketball hoops – and you can, just do a search on YouTube and you’ll see proof – of course you can train a Chihuahua to sit and come to you on cue!

I spent my three-day visit with my sister training Mokie to sit, lie down, and come to me on cue, and showing everyone in the family how to support that trainingo. He was whip-smart and learned fast. But he needed time with and attention from people, and no one stepped up. It wasn’t long before my sister asked me if I could help her re-home Mokie.

Within a month of arriving at my house, he was reliably trained to do almost everything any dog should know to do: come, sit, down, off, get in your crate. (Achieving a reliable “Shush!” has been a lifelong project, however.) He was so cute and fun that we kept delaying the search for a new family for him. (Years later, after dog-sitting him for a week while I moved, my other sister fell in love with him and begged to keep him. He bonded so well to her and her husband and their two other small dogs, that I let him stay there. Mokie is now a portly 12-year-old and the best-trained dog she has (though still a bit barky!)

I’m a huge fan of force-free training for all dogs, and even though it’s grammatically incorrect to say so, positive techniques are even more perfect for training small and tiny dogs. They are every bit as smart (some would say smarter) than bigger dogs, and often very motivated to “work for food.” In my experience, the only thing about training little dogs that is more difficult than training larger ones is the speed – they often move so fast that it can be difficult at first to mark and reward their good behavior quickly enough that they understand which behavior has earned the reward.

In the article on the facing page, Training Editor Pat Miller has a lot of tips for training the tiny dog. I hope you’ll give them a try.

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