Snow Dog

Last night it snowed and this morning we woke to a winter wonderland.  Beau has never seen snow, he was born in May of this year, and so instead of his usual morning run, we took him and Blue down to the elevated garden for a romp in the snow.

The elevated garden where we played

Living in an apartment complex, as we do, we don’t have the luxury of a back yard for the dogs to play in so we have to pick the times when we can use the open areas around the estate for the dogs to play off leash. At 7 am on a snowy Monday morning there was no-one else around and the elevated garden was the perfect place for the dogs to play.

We took down a ball and tossed it then watched as the two dogs chased and wrestled with each other for possession of the ball – what a way to exercise dogs in the morning.

For me though it was a perfect opportunity to watch how Beau reacted to the snow. As many pups his age, he is fearful of new things and the snow falling from a darkened sky was definitely new – it had changed something very familiar to him into an alien world. By introducing it through the element of play, I hoped we could make it just one more fun thing in his life.

Testing the snow on the balcony

Being a large puppy (he currently weighs 30kg to the poodle’s 7.5kg), he doesn’t know his own strength and any reactivity on his part when I walk him could result in us both slip sliding all over the place in the snow. I’ve been using the Gentle Leader head halter on him when I take him for walks. It makes it easier for me to maintain control should he ever become unstuck and I notice that just having it on seems to have a calming effect on him. 

We do upward of four training walks a day, each with a different purpose. There are several schools on the estate and I make a point of taking Beau out at least once a day when the children are at play. We watch from a safe distance and any indifference he shows rapidly earns him a CLICK’n’treat so that soon his attention is fully focused on me regardless of what the children are doing.

Today I was curious how Beau would react with the children whooping and carrying on in the snow. As it was the children were of little concern, Beau has been exposed to enough of them to regard them merely as a curiosity, even in the snow. No, it was snow drifts and snow ploughs that got to him this day.

Before taking him out for his first walk I let him have a play on the balcony. It runs the whole width of the building and gives the dogs an outdoor play pen. At first he seemed unsure, why was this white stuff filling up his run? Then that classic play bow and he rolled and pounced and shoveled the snow with his mouth. He was having fun, no signs of fear at all, so I rugged up and off we went.

Pedestrian pathways link all the buildings on the estate together and these get a lot of use during the day as the children take them to get to their playground, the postal service and other delivery services use them as well as the gardeners and maintenance crews. It was just my luck to take Beau out on his midday walk when the snow plough moved through, piling the snow up along the edges. I am not sure if it was the plough or the walls of snow but Beau went on alert. I stopped and clicked him for remaining calm, he took my treat but kept his eyes on the noisy machine moving past. More clicks, more treats and I could see the signs of alertness start to fade. His tail dropped, his face softened, and he looked at me – ‘what was that about?’ his expression seemed to say. The plough out of sight, I relaxed thinking what a nice job I’d done averting the situation and we proceeded with our walk.

Have you ever noticed the interesting shapes snow makes when it's all piled up? Some of them look positively menacing and it was this that triggered the hindbrain into action in my companion. We were approaching a corner in the path where the snow had been piled up hard against a fence alongside a building site. It was like some sort of grotesque angular snowman carved out of mud and ice. Beau did a double take, barked and lunged at the beast, then backed up for another go. CLICK’n’treat! He paused. CLICK’n’treat! A tentative step towards the ice sculpture, another CLICK’n’treat!

Before long he was nudging it with his nose and scratching at it with his paws. Nothing to be afraid of at all.

All Dogs Need a Den

Yesterday we bought our pup, Beau, a new den. He’s a seven month old Beauceron cross and he’s already grown out of his second one.

I set the new den up in the living room in the corner where the old one used to be and waited – clicker in hand, treats in pocket – while pretending to be focused on something else. It’s a portable crate, the sort that folds down for ease of transport and has built in windows and a door that zips up. The crate also has a top that rolls open allowing me easy access from wherever I am in the room. Sure enough curiosity got the better of the boy and he went over for a sniff. CLICK! And a treat flew from my hand in through the top of the crate.  Beau is a vacuum and without a moment’s hesitation in he went in search of the treat. CLICK! Another treat flew into the crate.

 As I sat and watched him explore his new den, generously rewarding his interest, I thought back to that day at the end of July when Beau was introduced to a crate for the first time. It was not the most elegant of affairs and certainly not a textbook clicker training experience.

Beau on the day we adopted him

We had just adopted him from the refuge in Cahors, France and we had a 5-hour trip ahead of us to our friends’ place in the South of France. We were on holiday and had stopped by the refuge on the off chance that one of a litter of five might be a good match for my husband. Off-chance be damned, it was more of a done deal. After that initial meeting off we went on a shopping spree to acquire a crate of sufficient size to accommodate our new family member. Our miniature poodle, Blue, then 13 months old, was horrified when he saw the size of the hard-shell crate we man-handled into the back of the car. Blue is crate phobic, a hang-over from his puppyhood, and I am sure for one moment he thought this big box was meant for him.

Getting to know each other

 We picked Beau up from the vet where he’d been receiving his final shots and popped him in this big box. I’d laid out a comfy wool blanket in the base but he was unimpressed – he howled up a storm. We had no time really to do this ‘the right way’ so my husband got in behind the wheel and I sat in the back seat with a bag of treats and my clicker in hand. I’d convinced myself, as we optimists do, that he’d have to take a breath sometime. Sure enough there was a break in transmission and I clicked and popped a treat in through the holes in the side of the crate – another pause, another CLICK! treat, and then another.

By the time we were out of the city limits, our new puppy had settled into the blanket and was looking expectantly at me for the next click and treat. I didn’t disappoint. I wanted my puppy to stay calm and I knew that a high rate of reinforcement would help him learn that lying quietly in his crate earned him lots of treats. And that’s what I had, lots of treats.

Beau spent much of that first week with us in that crate. He was fed in it, he slept in it, it was the place he went to when he needed some ‘alone’ time. He was always accompanied by something to chew, a toy to play with or a puzzle to solve. All the while he was learning that this crate was a safe place where good things happened and it was his safe place.

It soon became evident though that the hard shell was not the sort of crate that became a den. For one, the poodle was terrified of it, it was bulky and didn’t fit well with our furniture, but the real problem was lugging it up and down in the lift whenever we wanted to take the dogs out in the car.

Sleeping beauty

This is the life

Our poodle had his own den, a flexible portable bed that didn’t look anything like a crate. We took it with us when we went travelling, so he always had a place that was his. If his den was there, then so was his home. After the pup repeatedly invaded Blue’s den and tried on more than one occasion a hostile takeover, we decided to get a similar den for Beau.

The transition from the hard-shell crate to the portable den was as easy as setting it up in the corner. Beau took to it right away – he now had a den he could call his own and the raiding runs on Blue's den soon came to an end.

Beau taking a break in his den.

But that was early August, since then he’s grown from the size of the poodle to being tall enough for the poodle to stand underneath. He needed a den big enough to accommodate him now and in the future.

Last night he slept in his new den without any of the bumps and thumps that usually accompany his rolling over in his sleep. He has a new den, and he loves it. 

All dogs need a den of their own and Beau now has one he can grow into all over again.

That Crucial First Step

Dogs have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It's a wonder then that it took me so long to take that step from owner to dog trainer. Don’t get me wrong I have trained all the dogs in my life – to one degree or another – but I never really understood what it was I was doing, nor did I consider the consequences. I just trained my dogs like everyone else who attended the dog training classes – I did what I was told and expected my dog to do likewise.

As I got more experienced as a dog handler and worked with more and more rescue dogs, I became much more aware of the impact of my actions on the behavior of my dogs. I believed myself to be a positive dog handler and I thought my dogs were getting a good deal from me. I think I would have happily continued in my ignorance if it weren’t for a sequence of events that set a completely different set of wheels in motion.

The change came for me when I watched my newly adopted 7 month old, severely traumatized rescue puppy be subjected to traditional P+ (positive punishment) dog training techniques because he was, to quote the trainer, “just being difficult”.

I live in Switzerland and it is required by law for dog owners to become certified as having attended at least four dog training sessions and for the dog to meet their minimum behavior requirements. My miniature poodle, Blue, and I had already attended more than the required number of sessions, but he was not yet achieving the behavior standards set by the trainer (nor do I think he ever would have under those training conditions).Convinced it was not all the dog’s fault, or mine (I come from an education background and I know learning is more the teacher’s responsibility than the student's), I decided to get qualified and take the training of my dog into my own hands.

You know sometimes the universe just chucks things our way when we least expect it yet most of the time we let these potential opportunities slide and we miss out on something great. This time however, I must have been more receptive than usual because it was amazing how quickly all the pieces fell into place. 

Blue's foster mum had suggested during one of our early meetings that he might respond well to clicker training. Clicker training? This was not something I had come across before and I was intrigued enough to research it further. I downloaded Karen Pryor's 15 Rules, I even bought an eBook and tried to work through the sequences described therein, but I just wasn't getting it right.The book did a lot of telling me what I needed to do but not a lot of the how or the why. 

I needed more and who better to contact than Karen Pryor herself - well, her Academy at least. I wrote them an email, begging to be allowed to participate in their on-line dog training program even though I did not live in the US, and was rewarded with notification that they actually had an International program and a new one was just about to kick off, would I be interested? Would I what?

That was back in May of this year. In November I graduated as a KPA-CTP (Karen Pryor Academy - Certified Training Partner) and today a DHL parcel arrived with all the official documentation - the proof of all I've achieved.

Clicker training to me is more than a means to bring a dog under control, it's a philosophy for life that has helped me focus on what it is I want, on the things that are going right in my world, and to ignore all the rest. Since taking that crucial first step, my life has expanded in so many ways - my friends and family too (we adopted another rescue puppy in July,  more about him later) - and through this blog I hope to chronicle my continuing journey. You are welcome to come along with me.