Shipping Our Dogs to New Zealand – Part 2: The Ordeal

It is said that moving house is one of the most stressful events one is likely to encounter especially if it involves buying a new home. Compound this with moving to another country and separation from family and friends and you have a situation that we have experienced over eight times in the last twenty years. Given our history of successful moves, I thought this latest relocation would be one with which I'd be well able to cope. But nothing on this planet prepared me for the stress of relocating from Switzerland to our new home in New Zealand and taking our two dogs with me.

Switzerland is 18,376.87 km from New Zealand – as the crow flies. It’s not possible to do the trip all in one go so our dogs needed to stop over somewhere along the way. We tried to find a transporter who offered a service that accommodated the minimum amount of time possible for the trip, but flying from Switzerland it was impossible to do so. Switzerland has a paucity of transport companies able to ship dogs and we found only one that would deal with us personally – the rest doing so only through online bookings. While this may work for human flight reservations, we really needed to advocate for our dogs and that meant getting to know the people responsible for their transportation

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Transporting live animals is an intricate business and it is strongly recommended that a pet transport company is used for the purpose. Unfortunately there are precious few in Switzerland and none of them offered an ideal door to door service, but one ACE Pet Transport out of Zurich were the best of the bunch.

Even then all they could offer us was a trip in four legs: a 10-hour, 6,262 km flight from Zurich to Dubai, followed by a 10-hour stop over and then a further 16-hour, 14,194 km flight from Dubai to Auckland and finally the 493 km hop to Wellington – a trip spanning half the world and costing the equivalent of a first class ticket for each dog. This amounted to nearly two days travel and for the larger share of it the dogs would be confined to their crates.

I worked diligently during the month before the trip helping each dog feel that the crate they were to travel in was the best place in the world to be. Both dogs had been crate trained on coming to live with us, and regarded their 'dens’ as cool places to chill out. Though these travel crates were not nearly as comfortable or as familiar as their soft sided portable ones, they soon saw the advantage in venturing into this unknown territory. 

Whenever they voluntarily entered their crate, treats fell from above. Before long Beau was using the crate to train me in treat tossing and, so he didn’t miss out on the fun, Blue was soon tentatively entering his own crate and peering out with a look of expectation on his poodle pout.  Fun though these games were, nothing I did could possibly prepare them for the hours they would spend locked in the crate during transport, and though Beau would happily spend all evening in his crate, it was Blue who coped better with the whole experience in the end.

Blue’s early history was a bit sketchy but what we did know for sure was that he had been kept in a wire cage for long periods of time while being carted from place to place in the hope of a sale. His rescue had freed him from wired cages, and now I was locking him in a plastic and wire one for one last time. He’s a stoic wee fellow and while he hates being confined, willingly entered the crate at the depot in Zurich and sat staring at me with a look that pretty much said “this better be worth it.”

Beau on the other hand saw an opportunity for treats and rushed into the huge box that would be his confinement, spun around into a down, and eagerly took the treats showered on him. He had no idea what was happening and all the excitement of being in a new place had raised his level of arousal so that he was already on full alert. As the crates were wheeled away I wasn’t sure who I was most concerned for – the little poodle with the fixed expression and the penetrating eyes, or the excited Beauceron with the air of eager anticipation. There was no time to worry though; we had a 3-hour drive back to Geneva so I could catch my own flight leaving that evening.

One thing the philosophy of clicker training has taught me is to focus on the behaviours you want and ignore everything else. By extension I had learned to focus my thoughts on positive outcomes and leave off the worrying about things outside of my control. The dogs and I flew out of Switzerland on Tuesday 20 November – the dogs on Emirates, me on Qantas. I arrived in Wellington in the afternoon of Thursday 22 but the dogs were still on the tarmac in Auckland due to delays caused by recent eruptions from Mt Tongariro.  After several phone calls I learned that they would be landing in Wellington that evening and I could visit them at the quarantine centre in Levin the next day.

I couldn’t wait…

Shipping Our Dogs to New Zealand – Part 1: Meeting the Standard

I’ve not had much time to blog these last few months as we’ve been busy arranging our return to New Zealand and the establishment of our new home there. Shipping dogs overseas is a complicated process at the best of times but shipping to New Zealand is even more so.

New Zealand, being an island nation that relies heavily on its pristine beauty and quality primary produce both for tourism and for export, works very hard at keeping unwanted invasive plants, animals and microbes out of the country. This includes disease which could wipe out any one of the many industries on which the country is so dependent.

What this means for our dogs is a rather lengthy and stringent program of inoculations, blood tests and treatments to prepare them for the first stage of the process – acquiring the permit to import. If a dog is not familiar with regular visits to the vet, this can be a most traumatic time for them.

Both our dogs were rescued and as such had already seen more than their fair share of the inside of a vet clinic. In fact our poodle, Blue, spent almost a month in hospital before coming into our care. 

Since we adopted them we have worked hard at making visits to the vet a fun event. I would take them to visit often even if we were not going for treatment. I used the excuse of popping in weekly just to sit them on the scales and see how much weight they had put on. It was always an opportunity to say hi to the staff and perhaps score an extra treat or two.

When we knew for sure we were returning to NZ, we needed to first get the dogs cleared for rabies with a titre test. Because the poodle was born Italian and the Beauceron, French, they needed a European passport to bring them into Switzerland and that meant meeting the European microchipping and vaccination requirements which included a rabies vaccination. Both our dogs were vaccinated for the disease before we adopted them. However, the rabies immunity requirements to meet the standards for importation in New Zealand are far and beyond anything required for their European passport. It took us four months of blood tests and further rabies vaccinations (three each) to get test results that met the NZ standard.

Microchipped, vaccinated and rabies immune, they had only completed the first step in their preparation but it was enough, along with the booking to the quarantine facility in Levin, to acquire a permit to import. This permit provides a window of 10 days during which the dogs are allowed into NZ – three months from their rabies all clear date. So even though we started the process in late May, the earliest we could bring them into the country would be November 20th.

Stage 1 accomplished, we needed to devise a plan with the vet to address all the other tests and requirements necessary before importation. We are very lucky with our veterinarian service in Nyon: The clinic is located in the estate where we live and the resident vet there, who both our dogs love, was willing to work with me to devise a plan to meet all the necessary testing requirements. My intention was to meet the requirements with the least amount of stress possible for the dogs. We decided on three more visits – the first within 30 days, the second within 16 days and the final within 48 hours or their shipping date. The last was to be followed with a visit to a government vet who does the final examination and signs off on all the tests completed.

We now have less than one week to go before the dogs and I ship out and we have completed two of the three vet visits necessary with an all clear on every one of the blood tests. 

Our first visit entailed an initial treatment each for internal and external parasites, a blood draw for a Leptospirosis test and a blood draw for a Canine Heartworm antigen test. Because all the blood tests need to be conducted at Government laboratory or a laboratory approved by the Government Veterinary service of Switzerland, enough blood had to be drawn for sufficient serum to be extracted onto which the test would be conducted. This meant that the same amount of blood needed to be drawn from my 8kg poodle as from the 30kg Beauceron – and yet it was the big puppy that was the right sook.

This is where the clicker comes into play with remarkable effectiveness. I use it to mark appropriate behavior at every stage of the process:  Getting up onto the table, Click’n’treat! Sitting nicely in position close to the vet, Click’n’treat! Looking at me rather than at what the vet is doing, Click’n’treat! Staying still through the blood draw, Click’n’treat! Click’n’treat! Click’n’treat! And a lovely jackpot at the end of it with the added bonus of being allowed to jump down from the table and having a rump massage from one of the vet techs.

My little poodle doesn’t respond to treats when he is under stress. With him I use a combination of tongue clicks and a gentle neck and back massage while he stands quietly through what, for him,  is quite a long procedure.   

Despite the repeated blood-taking both dogs still get a kick out of going to the vet's. They have a bit of a reputation each and the vet techs fall over themselves to come and assist. 

On our second visit to take blood for two more tests: Brucella Canis and Babesia Gibsoni,  I showed one of the vet techs how to give Blue a calming massage around his lower back and rump while he waited for Beau to be seen to. When it was Blue's turn on the table the tech started doing the same thing to Beau. Beau promptly backed into her so she was pinned against the wall and kinda leaned in for more - his tail doing propeller turns and thumping the wall. It would have been laughable if I hadn't had Blue's wee head tucked in under my armpit while yet another vial of blood was drawn from his leg. Even though the vet used a smaller syringe and split the blood draw between his two front legs, he just didn’t have a high enough flow rate – it must hurt terribly having it sucked out of him. Under this sort of stress the reassuring massage is a huge help. He left the surgery with little bandages wrapped around his blood stained legs looking like a wounded soldier from WWI, but when he hopped down from the table, he earned a Click! And happily took one of his extra special treats that are kept especially for the end of stressful situations like this.

Beau and Blue relaxing after yet another vet visit

The vet has repeated said what a pleasure it is to work with my dogs and how lucky that they are so good-natured. But a lot more is responsible for that ‘good-nature’ than just luck. From the moment we step into the vet clinic, the structure kicks in and the game-playing begins. We play "Touch" and "Check it Out" with anything unfamiliar while we wait for the vet to get ready for us. Once in the surgery, we continue the game playing adding “Look at That” to the set for things like the examining table, and the different people that come and go while we are there. 

After the procedures, when we have the long wait to see if the vet has enough serum for the tests, I run through each dog’s repertoire of tricks. These are mini behavior chains that keep each dog’s focus on me, providing great opportunities to reinforce calmness and making the vet surgery a place where mostly good things happen.

We have only the final visit to go now which will be a breeze. There will be no more blood-taking only a 2nd treatment for internal and external parasites, a treatment for canine heart-worm prevention and a physical vet examination each. Then there is the final check by the Government vet in our region to complete the vet procedures and both dogs will be ready for the next part of the process - the drive to Zurich and the grueling 36 hour ordeal of flying to NZ.

Dog Sees Cat...Need TACT!

Our dog Beau is a Beauceron cross and like many of this breed, has a strong instinct to chase any fleeing animal – most particularly cats. He sees any darting streak of ginger as an invitation to switch into predator mode and hyper-reacts almost instantly in a way I’ve never seen a dog do before – lunging, high pitched squealing, eyes fixated, completely unresponsive to any cue and then the bolt! We live in a large apartment complex in Switzerland where residents’ cats roam freely. Dawn and dusk are dangerous times of the day for Beau as this is when the cats are most likely to be on the prowl. Whenever my husband travels, I often have to take Beau out on my own at these times if only for a toilet break. It is stressful time on us both as I am just not capable of holding back such an explosion.

Beau is only 13 months old but at 30 kg (66lb) he is one strong adolescent and a single collar and leash just will not hold him. Once when he was much younger, his response to his first sighting of a cat was so instantaneous and violent that he ripped the leash from my husband’s hands and took off after the blur that had invoked the reaction. If ever there was a dog in need of TACT this was it.

TACT – Touch-Associated Clicker Training – is a technique devised by Julie Robitaille and Emma Parsons (author of “Click to Calm”). It involves a systematic desensitization of the dog through a combination of familiar behaviors, touch and clicker training. One of the strategies Julie recommends at the outset is double leashing the dog for safety. In Beau’s case it is critical as the force with which he bolts rips the leash from my hands like a whip lash, and puts huge strain on the leash, and who knows what damage to his neck. With the double leash though, one attached to his collar, the other to an Infin8 head halter, Beau is remarkably calmer. It is like that contact of the nose strap, reminds him that someone is on the other end of the leash – me!

Chilled and ready to go

TACT for us is a process and requires detailed planning and monitoring on my part and practice for Beau in carefully controlled environments – something that is not easy to achieve when living in a small apartment on the fourth floor. I’ve had to tailor many of the protocols to suit our situation. The brilliance of TACT lies in the flexibility of the process it employs to custom-create the criteria and rituals to suit the needs of you and your dog.   As a result, TACT is not the only approach I am using to assist Beau with his reactivity.

Leslie McDevitt’s “Control Unleashed” has a whole section on how to connect to a dog, to establish a bond and to tune into each other. She recommends various strategies but one I do daily with Beau is massage, something I started with him before I applied TACT, but now is integrated into the rituals. On our training walks, during the heat of the day when all smart cats are sleeping, Beau and I go out on a single leash and do a lot of connecting. We play “check it” and “look at that” and I seek every opportunity to touch him, stroke him, give him a scratch in his favourite places. We’ve got used to screaming children this way, to plastic bags blowing in the wind, and to men with sunglasses and strange hats. He walks beautifully on a loose leash and I get lots of eye contact, making him the perfect walking companion. But these are specific training walks, in very familiar places and as much as possible they are under my control. Not every walk can be like that; he’s a big dog and needs to get out of doors at least five times a day and sometimes I have to take our miniature poodle along as well. So the double-leash has come to mean “we are going for a nice long exploratory walk to new and exciting places and mum’s got her pocket full of yummy treats”.

The treats start the moment the head halter goes on and whenever he connects with me, even if it is a sideways glance. I keep the collar leash as loose as possible and use the halter leash to steer if need be, but mostly he is engaged enough with me that it is not necessary for me to use it at all.

In this way we go to new places, take longer walks, go out first thing in the morning and last thing at night. These walks are a major test of my observation skills. While keeping one eye and as much of my attention as possible on the dog at my side, if I see a distraction I can make a decision on how I might handle it and then guide Beau into a situation where we can safely observe what is going on. If appropriate I cue him into a relaxed down to watch what is going on – something we practice daily in the apartment using Dr. Karen Overall’s Relaxation Protocol.  We did this recently when the pool man was caulking the fountains in the gardens. Beau dropped into a down on cue, and interspersed with treats for staying relaxed, he got a full body massage while beadily watching every move made by the dreadlock coiffured, sunglass-wearing workman. Hard to get reactive when you are so chilled out.

TACT, Control Unleashed and the Relaxation Protocol are all brilliant techniques to keep a dog beneath threshold and accepting of strange and unusual situations or sudden changes in an environment. Management also plays a part and for weeks now I have been carefully managing Beau’s exposure to things new and thereby ensuring we are working in a “safe” environment.

At some time though, we have to take what we have learned and hope it holds up in a real world environment. I got just such an opportunity the other day to test what I had been doing with Beau for real.

It was mid-morning and I’d taken him to drop off the recycle. We took the detour past a building site as always because it is a favoured elimination spot. This sheltered pathway winds past shrubbery on the roadside, and a grass verge on the building site side. On this occasion we walked past the water trough, into the lane and Beau froze stock still. On the other side of the fence separating the building site from the path – less than 2 feet away – was a black, white and grey tortoiseshell tabby. She just sat in the grass and growled. I knew Beau’s freeze was the calm before the storm and as I couldn’t have moved him no matter what I did, I decided my only option was to use all I have learned so far to keep him below threshold.

I started with long body strokes and soft words as he wasn’t taking treats at all, his eyes and his attention were firmly fixed on the feline before him. I knew the clicker was useless unless I had his attention, so I quietly worked his back, his ears, his muzzle and chatted complete garbage in as calm and relaxed tone as I could. The cat stopped growling and I had a wee brain fart – I clicked and tossed the cat a piece of dried liver. Beau shot me a look and he got a click and a treat too. So here I was standing with this dog paralysed from the neck down, hackles up, tail and legs stiff, every muscle in his body taut, watching me out of the corner of his eye as I clicked and treated, first the cat, then him. I had the leash loose, double looped around my arm so I could have free hands, and I stroked, clicked, treated, stroked, clicked treated. Little by little, bit by bit the thaw set in. I could feel it beneath my hands as I worked my way up and down his spine. The ears that had been glued back against his skull, relaxed a little and twitched forward in curiosity. The cat sat crouched ready to pounce or flee, her eyes locked still with Beau’s, but she too seemed to relax a little.

Was that a movement in Beau’s tail? There it was again, right from the base, not exactly a wag, but nor was it threatening. In fact it looked remarkably like the beginnings of the propeller tail with which Beau has wiped clear the contents of shelves, or cleared away glasses left erringly on the coffee table.

Time ticked on and still I massaged ’n’ clicked ’n’ treated.  The cat remained unmoved and Beau yawned, a stifled one but a yawn nonetheless. The spell was broken. He turned to look at me, his tail more mobile. He looked totally bored. Where was the fun in staring at a cat that just stared back? Or had he been out-stared? I recalled the Eye Contact Game I learned as part of Helix Fairweather’s Cyber Agility Teamwork Building Blocks course. I often play this with the dogs in the evening to help them focus and to bring down their energy level. Beau was used to being stared out, and it often resulted in him falling asleep at my feet. Had he just been out-stared by a cat?

I don’t know how long we stood there but it felt like an age. What went on in Beau’s mind during all this I don’t know but a couple of things have happened since that lead me to believe quite a lot of processing took place.

Firstly, I was able to lead Beau away from the area with a “Let’s go” cue, and no reactivity at all from him, just an over-the-shoulder glance at the cat still sitting there, watching him blinkingly.   We’ve been back to that spot several times since and Beau without fail goes looking for his feline friend and looks so disappointed to see she is not there. On several other occasions since we have inadvertently stumbled upon a sitting cat in different parts of the estate – one perched on top of a post at the entrance to an underground carpark, just watched as Beau and I approached.  There was no fence barrier between us this time and Beau paused for a moment to check the cat out, and then we continued our walk. Another, a large ginger tom, sat in amongst the rose bushes at the entrance to our apartment one evening when I had both dogs out at once. Beau froze and stared as the poodle, who was off leash at the time, did his hot-coals dance in front of the cat trying to entice a game or at least a reaction. I busied myself with long body strokes and talking more garbage and when I felt the tension release a little, both dogs came away at my cue and the cat, bless him, stayed where he was.

I don’t doubt that had any of those cats decided to flee, Beau would have been after them like a shot. But the training opportunity presented to us by their staying put, gave us the best lesson ever.

What was it I learned? That these techniques really do work and the secret lies in the connection you create with your dog. We have to trust them to trust us – if we put the time in and prepare our dogs well in advance for the strange and unusual, they will trust us when it really counts.

And what about Beau – what might he have learned? That perhaps cats are just as interesting as little dogs and might be worth “observing” some more. That experiencing the strange and unusual often results in a great massage, coupled with clicks and treats just for doing nothing.

And the cat? That a strange click sound is making the crazy lady on the other side of the fence chuck dried liver away for free!

TAGteach - A New Approach to Changing Behavior

Since the early 80’s my work has involved working with people – teaching them, tutoring them, training them. Most of that work has been with children with a large chunk in the middle involving adults in the business environment. A theme that ran through nearly all my work was changing behavior – helping children with special needs fit into a classroom environment, working with people new to English acquire another language and engage with a different culture, assisting employees of a large retail organization to improve their performance, helping a large corporate organization get back on track with failing projects…the list goes on.

After 30 years of working with humans I made the switch to working with dogs. My primary reason for doing this was the new addition to our family – a traumatized miniature poodle named Blue. It was during my study with the Karen Pryor Academy last year that I first learned about TAGteach and since that first introduction I have been curious as to just how well it would work with humans in all the circumstances in which I have worked.

In May of this year, I certified as a Primary Level TAGteacher after completing online the comprehensive TAGteach IntroductoryCourse and keeping a journal throughout of my progress – both with the course itself and with TAGteaching. At the time I only had a few students and it seemed the right time to immerse myself in this new philosophy of learning and to really come to terms with all of its uses.

In any sort of training environment there are always doubters – whether it be the teachers of the students I tutored or their parents, a disgruntled manager considering that the training was a waste of time, or the students themselves believing that they’ve never been able to do this before so what makes this approach any different. In the past I have been used to dealing with this sort of response but it was not until I came in contact with dog trainers and owners that I experienced for myself how easily it is to question what you know to be true and revert to the “way everyone else does it”.

I found my students were so conditioned at focusing on what their dog did wrong and trying to correct that, that it was difficult to convince them that their dog’s behavior would change if they just focused on what it was they wanted the dog to do. I needed a new set of tools to deal with these situations so that I could demonstrate what I meant through the way I responded to my student. My normal approach of positive praise was not powerful enough – it lacked timing, accuracy and specificity – what exactly was it that they had done well? I found it increasingly difficult to answer this question when I came to write up my session notes. It occurred to me that I needed to change my approach and TAGteach seemed the most obvious choice to do that.

The TAG of TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance and this approach is all about enhancing performance on any level in any situation by identifying what it is you want the subject to do, specifying it articulately and tagging (with an audible marker) every occurrence while ignoring everything else. It is clicker training for humans… and it works!

I tag everything now – my dogs, my husband, my clients and myself. I’m even starting to think in tag points and that has probably been the most beneficial aspect of this learning for me. What is it I want to achieve? Ah, yes…and the tag point is…

TAGteach has reaffirmed for me that there is always a way to get the behavior you want, you just need to be creative in your approach and engage the participants as much as possible. This is not just conditioning or behavior modification, though those are very much behind the science of this technique, rather it is more about clearly defining what it is that you are after in a behavior and expressing why.

The course required the completion of exercises at every stage and many of them required me to take a look at myself – at home, at work and at play. I was asked to look at things I wanted to change and to see them from a different perspective – how I want them to be. I learned to shift my focus from what was bugging me, to the much more positive – what would I like to see?

TAGteach in Action

Martin - my TAG partner

One of the many success stories I’ve had since completing the course was in the enhancing of domestic bliss. One of the issues I have in my home is that my kitchen is not large enough to accommodate me and my mode of cooking let alone play host to all the empties we seem to accumulate during the week. Ever since we’ve lived here I’ve nagged my husband to “Please put the empties in the recycle”, every morning there they are, neatly stacked on the corner of the bench and it is left to a rather disgruntled me to move them into the recycle box in the hallway.

One of the TAGteach mottos is “tag, don’t nag” and it is so true. Rather than continue to nag Martin about the bottle dump, I decided instead to engage him in the process. I explained my situation and my understanding of his. He told me that there was no malicious intent in his forgetting to recycle; he’d simply got into the habit of leaving the bottles there, a behavior that was hard to change when he was tired and focused on other things.

What an eye-opener that was to me. And since then I am seeing more and more how much of the behavior with which we are dissatisfied stems from patterns of repetition that are hard to break simply through being told. I invited him to engage in an experiment with me.

I’d learned all about the focus funnel in my course and while I could see how it would work in a teaching or coaching environment, I was curious as to how it would work in changing patterns of behavior between mutually agreeable participants.  The focus funnel literally draws together all the bits of information you want to get across and pulls them into a tightly constructed TAG point. I wanted to try this with our situation and Martin, the champ that he is, was willing to go along with it.

It became clear as we discussed options that there were several behaviors in need of modification: glass bottles, jars, and cans needed to be rinsed, plastic bottles needed to be crushed and recapped, and all needed to be put into the recycle.

TAGteach is all about focusing on one behavior at a time and as the ultimate behavior was to have a clear benchtop, I decided to back-chain the behaviors. Get the items into the recycle bin first, then work on the rinsing and the crushing at a later date. We came up with three tag points, one for each behavior.

Using the protocol for forming a tag point, we articulated them thus:

• The tag point is… empties in recycle.
• The tag point is… rinse non-plastics.
• The tag point is… crush’n’cap plastics.

My job was now simple, all I needed to do was state (or create a sign) that articulated the tag point for that day, tag whenever I was present and leave it to Martin to do the rest.

Promoting behavior change is all about reward and reinforcement, whether it be intrinsic – the satisfaction of achievement, or extrinsic – getting paid for a job well done.  TAGteach International know this well and have devised an ingenious means of tracking tags received and trading them in for something more tangible – the tagulator. I have dozens of them that I made for my clients (they earn them with tags) and I gave several of these to Martin.

Simply put, the role of a tagulator is to record a tag whenever it occurs – Martin’s hang in the hallway, opposite the recycle bin and a tagger (clicker) on the shelf. Bottle goes in bin “tag”, slide a bead on tagulator.  The process has been going since our meeting on June 2^nd, and in that time Martin has accumulated 67 tags. The top tagulator records every tag, and the second tracks the number of times he fills up the first tagulator – when the bottom tagulator is full, it’ll be time to cash in on any one of a number of “treats”.

Besides reflecting on the number of empties we go through in a month, it’s a very visual way of recognizing the effort that has gone into changing the behavior. I haven’t been involved much in the process since we set it up, other than to notice in passing the number of tags being accumulated. When I asked Martin why he still continues to do it he said, "it’s about presence of mind, committing to the whole process breaks the habitual behavior”. When pressed further he put it this way: “even though I’m the only one recognizing it, it gives me a nice feeling that I am being recognized for doing it.”

Is he convinced that TAGteach works? Absolutely, to the degree that we are now devising ways for Martin to incorporate TAGteach at his work.  

Am I pleased with the result? Totally - the evidence accumulates daily on the tagulator, but more importantly, I have a clear bench and there is no more nagging – now that’s a definition for domestic bliss. TAG!

“Be a Tree” – there’s more to it than preventing dog attacks

This week (20-26 May) is International Dog Bite Prevention Week. 

For most of this month I’ve been out and about trying to educate kids and their parents as to the best ways to keep themselves safe around dogs.

For all their laws and regulations regarding the correct care and training of dogs, the Swiss are more interested in banning dog breeds than educating humans about safety around dogs. I was amazed to learn recently that the canton of Geneva has banned 15 dog breeds and keeps dog owners and their canine pals on a tight leash while doing nothing to educate the greater public how to behave around dogs. In all respects they hold the dog owner responsible, without considering that dog bites are usually a last resort for the dog and the unwitting actions of humans (dog trainers included) can provoke an attack when we disregard the warning signals a dog tries to communicate to us.

One in two children will experience a dog bite at some time in their childhood, and while most of these, more than 80%, will require no medical attention, many could have been prevented as most bites are by a family dog or a dog that is known to the child.  The best way to keep a child safe is to be vigilant as parents and teach the child how to act around dogs.

All dogs bite – it is a key behavioral characteristic of the species – but most do so only if they consider they have no other choice.  A dog bite is nearly always the result of some form of provocation and occurs only after the dog has sent out a plethora of warning signs of which we humans are either unaware, or chose to ignore. 

In the late 80’s, as a young parent, I got to experience firsthand what can happen when our ignorance gets in the way of common sense. My son, Simon, then aged 4 years and our 3 month old Siberian husky, Zak, were playing together in the kitchen while I prepared the dog’s dinner.  I placed the bowl on the floor next to the puppy and turned back to tidy things away. With my attention elsewhere my son decided to try taking the dog’s bowl away, an action he had seen me do as part of the dog’s training (an action I now know is unnecessary and provocative). Zak growled defensively, enough to cause me to turn to see what was going on. I still have in my head the image of Simon’s hand holding the bowl, and the puppy, body tense, ears flat back, eyes wide, tossing warning signs out like sparks from a fire. Before I could react Zak struck with an open mouthed punch to Simon’s face. A razor sharp puppy tooth from his upper jaw punctured the skin just above Simon’s right eye and the lower jaw teeth penetrated to the left of Simon’s mouth.  It was a level 3 bite on Ian Dunbar’s Dog Bite Scale, but one that could have been much worse had the puppy held on or closed his mouth. 

The dog just wanted to be left alone to eat his dinner in peace, and he did what any puppy would do to a litter mate who got in the way. After consultations with the vet and the doctor, it was Simon who decided he wanted to keep his puppy and so began my education in appropriate training for puppies. But really the dog was doing what came naturally to him, it was we humans who needed the training.

As a result of this, and other incidents I have experienced with dogs over the years, I now take every opportunity I can to educate anyone who will listen on how to be doggone safe.

Doggonesafe is a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to dog bite prevention through education. They have a brilliant program called “Be a Tree” that goes well beyond dog bite prevention into interpreting dog body language and the appropriate ways to respond to what the dog is saying. The program begins by informing children that they have all the tools they need to keep themselves safe right inside their head, and goes on to illustrate how they can use those tools to read the signals a dog might be sending and to respond appropriately. Large poster sized photos of each tool and a number of dogs in various attitudes show the children the signs to look for. Ears, eyes, muzzle, body, tail – soon become a mantra reminding children that these are the parts of a dog they need to read to find out how a dog is feeling.

Be a Tree pose - how to respond to an unknown dog on the loose.

Learning how to behave around dogs is really about following a few simple guidelines:

• Always “Be a Tree” if an unfamiliar dog approaches you or a dog you are playing with becomes over excited
• If you are on the ground, or a dog knocks you down, roll up like a hedgehog, be a rock!
• Always stay calm and quiet when a dog comes near you – if you squeal he may think you’re his prey
• Always watch for signs of how a dog is feeling : ears, eyes, muzzle, body, tail
• Always ask your parent or caregiver first, before approaching a dog showing friendly body language
• Always ask the dog’s owner if you can pet the dog
• Always let a safe dog check you out first, let him sniff your fist
• Always walk away from a dog you think might be unsafe
• Always leave dogs alone who are sleeping, eating or who have puppies
• Always tell an adult if you see a dog behaving strangely
• Always remember, you might like hugs and kisses, but dogs don’t. They do like it though if you gently stroke their neck or chest.

The other day I met up with one of the first children I taught to “Be a Tree”, and I was delighted at the calm way in which he stood – tree-like – as I passed by with both dogs. My poodle knows this boy well and went up to greet him. Instead of crouching down and giving Blue a hug like he might have done some months ago, this 6-year-old quietly stroked Blue along the side of his neck and Blue nuzzled in for more.

Beau, who is still learning how to behave around children, sat quietly a short distance away and watched. The boy’s quiet calm even extended to him, as normally the exuberance of children with their flailing arms and high pitched squeals, as they go about playing their games, sets him on full alert - hunting mode, but not this time. This time I am sure he saw the child for what he was, a small human offering up affection dog-style.

For every child who learns how to behave appropriately around a dog, and practices reading  the signals that dogs are continually exhibiting for us, the closer we move towards keeping all children safe and I am sure the dogs will appreciate this as much as we will.

Going on Vacation? ...and can't take your dogs?

What to look for in a Boarding Kennel

Whenever possible our dogs come with us on vacation. In Europe it is easy to do because dogs are readily accepted in hotels and holiday accommodation, particularly in France. Every couple of years though, we head home to New Zealand for a month to catch up with family and to enjoy all the wonderful things about the country we love.

Blue on Day 3 of his holiday

In the past this has not been a problem for the early years of our time in Switzerland we were dog free. This year however, we have a new family and the dilemma before us was one many dog owners face – what to do with our dogs while we were away.

Our home leave is a well-orchestrated affair – it has to be. When you are travelling nearly 20,000 km to the other side of the world you really want everything to go as smoothly as possible or else where is the R & R element to the adventure? So I start planning our trip three or four months out and this year I had the added task of looking for appropriate accommodation for our two rascals.

Because I work a lot with dogs in kennel situations I had a very good idea of what I did not want for our two. My first task then was to define as clearly as possible what it was that I did want. This is an excellent training exercise for a clicker trainer – shifting the focus from what you don’t want, to what you do. Here is what I came up with:

From: I don’t want my dogs…		To: I want my dogs…
	…to be separated.		…to stay together.
	… to be caged or put behind bars.		…to be in a safe and secure indoor environment.
	…left on their own.		…to be in the company of humans.
	…exercised with dogs they don’t know.		…to be exercised with other dogs that play well.
	…to be isolated in any way.		…to always be in a social environment (unless they are sleeping).
	…left to their own devices.		…to be stimulated and challenged.
	…to be fed unknown food.		…to continue their raw food diet.
	…to develop bad habits.		…to continue to be reinforced for behaving well.
	…to be exposed to incessant barking.		…to be in a place that encourages quiet times.
	…punished for things they do wrong.		…to be rewarded for what they do right.

Okay, even I had to admit that my list was just a little fanciful but the truth was that these really were the things I wanted the boarding kennel to provide for my dogs. And so the search began.  I started with Switzerland, it seemed logical, that’s where we live. I followed up a score of different kennels, and I could find none that satisfied half of my criteria.

The first thing that struck me was how large many of these kennels were and how many dogs were housed there. I felt compelled to add more to my list.

I don’t want my dogs…		I want my dogs…
	…to be lost in the crowd.		…to get the same sort of attention they get at home.
	…to be fed with strange dogs present.		…to be fed on their own as they are at home.

The more I looked the more concerned I became. Statements like: “First shock upon arrival: the barking welcome! Your friend may be a little upset by such noisy activity! Don’t take too much notice. Soon he will be part of the fun and follow his pals!” Oh dear, here was a place that thought it was all right for dogs to be constantly barking!

And then there was this one: “Why may your dog lose weight while staying with us? above all for two reasons. First every change of environment is stressful; second when in kennels no dog will leave all the “works” to the others! As soon as one dog barks, all of them listen, get up and… join the fun!”

With new friends on Day 12 

Another suggested that we leave the dogs at the gate and not enter the compound (is it just me or does that sound like a prison sentence?), others insisted that we bring nothing the dog could associate with home (excuse me?) I felt more and more disheartened. All I could think of was my little poodle reverting back to his reserved former self and all the good work over the last year or so becoming completely undone.

I widened my search to include France. The more I looked, the more despair I felt – was there nothing out there? It was my husband that came to the rescue. I had sent him a link to the dog::links website to pass onto a friend who was looking to adopt a dog. He sent me back a link to a place in France that had been advertised on the site – why had I not seen it? Who knows, but I was so glad that he had.

Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens was the perfect place for what I was after. First of all it was a small concern situated in a tranquil rural community in the Deux Sevres region. I had no idea where that was, but I didn’t care. That word “tranquil” had captured my attention and I wanted to read more.

The site offered “a 4-star holiday experience in a warm and friendly environment”. I was more intrigued, this sounded so like the perfect place for my dogs. What really impressed me was that there were only 3 “kennels” but they were more like little apartments, with tiled floors and real doors. Ambient music was played in each room and dogs could have heating or television if required – these were the comforts of home my dogs were used to. It sounded idyllic, the sort of place I’d love to be if I were a dog. 

As I read the customer comments I got more excited and wasted no time in sending off an email to make enquiries.  Here was a place that seemed to tick all the boxes on my list – was it too good to be true?

Day 17 - Beau finds a quiet spot under the desk in the office

That was in February. We went on home leave in April and picked up our dogs two weeks ago. They couldn’t have been in better condition. It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had had a ball of a time – and Blue, my supposedly anorexic poodle, had put on weight!

Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens is an 8 hour drive from where we live in Switzerland, a fact that had little influence at all on our decision. The quality of care our dogs received was well worth the effort, one we would gladly do over again. Not only did Suzette Jeapes, the proprietor, keep us informed with weekly updates on how our boys were doing and the friendships they had formed with the other dogs in residence, she also took photos and video of them throughout their stay. Now we have this wonderful record of their holiday so we too can share in their experience.

Had I not come up with my list of criteria, and been determined to seek out the ideal place for my dogs to stay, I might never have found Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens and our holiday experience would have been all the less as a result. Focusing on what it is you do want – in all things – really is worth the effort and can be the difference between accepting the mediocre and going for gold every time!

Rehabilitating a Food Thief: Part 3 – Cueing a new Behavior

Our subject for this series is Poppy, a 2 year old Pointer cross foundling who recently gave birth to a litter of eight wee pups. Poppy has a propensity to steal food and will in fact steal anything that remotely looks or smells particularly interesting.

Her latest antics involve getting onto the work surfaces in the kitchen where she helps herself to bottles of cleaner or air freshener or whatever is in reach.  On one occasion Poppy stole a bottle of Airwick air freshener from the counter – the old sort with a wick you pull up – and took it down into a dog bed made up with a candlewick bedspread and a blanket – you can imagine the result… Poppy was found with an empty bottle and a well scented bed.

Poppy (photo: dog::links)  

Dogs like Poppy who have never had any clear guidance as to what is or is not appropriate behavior need to be taught self-control. The more traditional approach of scolding the dog, or punishing her in some way, does nothing to teach the dog how to behave appropriately, it just makes the dog fearful and more likely to perform the heinous act when no one is around to stop her.

A much better approach is to put the behaviors on cue. In this case the preferred behavior “leave it” and the current behavior “take it”. Teaching a dog opposite cues in pairs is an excellent way to control a specific behavior.  This pair will teach Poppy self-control in the presence of anything tempting with the added benefit that rather than help herself to things lying around, she will await the cue to take it.

Don’t believe it? Neither did I when I first learned of this technique during my training, but since then I have proved time and time again that teaching pairs of cues works brilliantly and seems to be more reinforcing for the dog than teaching a single cue on its own.

I first attempted this exercise with our Beauceron cross when he was about five months old. Beau was a food hog and ate everything in sight. I couldn’t put my lunch plate on the coffee table without him vacuuming up its contents, and if I left the dining table for a moment, he’d be paws up and at whatever it was I was enjoying at the time. It wasn’t really a problem at this stage, he was a puppy after all and it was his curiosity that got the better of him. Had I managed things better there would have been no temptation in his way. However rather than fix this as a problem later in the dog’s life – as we are doing with Poppy – I thought it prudent to preempt the problem and teach Beau some all-purpose self-control that would hold him in great stead for any situation in the future.

Like Poppy, Beau has a great love for bottles of anything – if I didn’t puppy-proof my soft-drink cupboard, he’d flog a bottle of tonic and proceed to mouth and roll it around the room until he managed to pierce the plastic. No prizes for guessing what would happen then. Better to keep the full ones under lock and key – the empties though are fair game, a great motivator for my emptying the recycle bin on a regular basis.

My shaping plan for Beau therefore needed to be comprehensive enough to incorporate all aspects of his fascination with human foods and their derivatives as well as those other items that were of great temptation to him as well – basically anything human related that was left in easy reach. I needed to teach him that the best way to get something was to leave it alone.

It’s a simple enough philosophy and one that applies to any number of circumstances: dog wants to go sniff bush – dog pulls on leash – trainer stops dead – dog slackens leash, looks at trainer – trainer clicks, runs towards bush, “go sniff”. The way to get what you want is not to even try.

Shaping “leave it” with Beau

The secret with any shaping exercise is to plan well, keep the increments small and the rewards high. My shaping staircase for Beau was huge. I literally broke the behavior I wanted down into the minutest detail. I needed this to work and was not prepared to leave any of it to chance. The first part of that shaping staircase was included in my last blog. The last part is too large to print here, but has to do with putting the behavior on cue and gradually increasing the criteria until I could leave a plate of food on my coffee table and not have him go anywhere near it.

 The first step then was to get the eye contact with duration. Once that was happening reliably I needed to construct a wide range of situations in which to reinforce Beau for leaving the food, while associating the act with the cue “leave it”. To do this I went back to the very basic step of holding a piece of low value food in my outstretched hand. When Beau looked at me – as he had been trained to do –I cued “leave it” and waited, counting 1-banana, 2-banana, 3-banana – “click”, then I offered him a new cue “take it” and handed him the item of food.

I then started to change the position of the food – first it was in my open hand, then placed on my knee while I was sitting, then on my foot. It was still a low value food item and it was still in close proximity to my body – I wanted to be sure there would be no reinforcement for a “snatch and run”. It didn’t take Beau long to realize that all he had to do to earn this treat was to look away from the food placed before him and to look at me for direction. If I cued “leave it” he would wait patiently, if I cued “take it” he would take it from my hand.

I practiced this for days, in different situations, inside and out. Gradually, I increased the value of the food, but I still kept it small in size and in close proximity to me. Beau continued to impress by reliably looking at me and on the cue “leave it” waiting politely until I cued him to take it, or clicked and treated him for leaving it alone.

The real test though was what would happen if I put the food on the floor. In the dog world anything left lying on the ground is fair game. How was I going to transition to that? Several ideas sprang to mind. I’d been using plastic ice-cream container lids for targeting with my other dog and I decided these made ideal “plates”. I also decided to utilize feeding times as a further reinforcer of the process.

Beau learning to "leave it"

For the first of these sessions I went back to low value treats and placed just one on the lid on the floor. When Beau went to give it a sniff, I quickly cued “leave it”, he raised his eyes questioningly to me, I clicked, and picked up the treat, cued “take it” and gave it to him. It took longer than I thought for him to make this transition, but eventually he started to show the same blasé to the food on the lid as he had to the food in my hand. 

For meal times I adapted it a little. Previously we had cued him to sit, while we placed the food down then I’d give him the release, “OK” to tuck in. Now I wanted to use that to help reinforce “leave it” even further. We would start the same, with the sit, I’d then place his food before him, and wait for him to look at me. I then cued “leave it” moved away and waited. Sure enough he had that questioning look but kept his eyes on me. “OK” the release, “take it” and he was free to have his dinner.

From the plastic lid to a sheet of paper, to the bare floor, from one piece of low value food to a small mountain of high-value treats, from my standing right beside the pile to my being on the other side of the room. We worked our way up little by little. If I said we didn’t have mishaps, I’d be lying. But nearly all of them were my fault and involved raising the criteria too quickly – too many of a particularly tasty treat in the pile at one time, a pup that was too hungry to be bothered with waiting, my not varying the duration flexibly enough and making him wait longer than he was able to, having the other dog too near forcing Beau to snatch his treats in case the interloper got them.

By all accounts Beau was a fast learner. He was young and eager and very forgiving of my mistakes. I took it into the kitchen – casually dropping a lump of cheese on the floor, or some other item that escaped my messy culinary skills – cue “leave it” and sure enough Beau would plonk himself into a down-stay and wait patiently for me to either pick up the item I had dropped (which earned him a click and treat) or to cue “take it” after which he would cautiously approach the tempting morsel.

I took the cue into the streets on our walks. There is always something lying around on the ground and I put my powers of observation to work seeking them out before Beau saw them. As we approached I’d cue “leave it”, his gaze would shoot up to me, I’d click and treat and we’d walk on by. Sometimes I wasn’t as quick off the mark as I hoped and he already had the item in his mouth before I’d opened mine. A third cue “off” or “drop” came in useful there, but that is another story.

Each new situation presented an opportunity to further reinforce the cue until we are now at the stage where I can leave my lunch on the coffee table when I leave the room for something and neither of my dogs will go near it. Ideally I should be able to leave a plate of food on the floor with the same result, that's what I'm aiming for - we've done it with cheese!

There have been other benefits as well. Beau is no longer a food hog. As much as he loves his food, he now takes to it with more control, savoring it rather than taking the vacuum cleaner approach – and this has surely helped his digestion, which in turn makes for a happier dog all round. Where once he would jump at the “take it” cue, he now gives me a look that seems to say “I’ll take it when I’m good and ready thank you.” I no longer use the cues as a pair, though that was how they were taught. I’ve paired “take it” up with “off” for our games of tug, and I’ve got plans for “leave it” in a whole new situation: Beau has a penchant for cats, he gets highly aroused whenever one crosses his path and his fight/flight mechanism kicks in rendering all previous self-control strategies useless. If I can harness the power of the “leave it” cue to work in this situation, then we really will be making progress.

It has taken many hours of setting up situations and reinforcing the behavior to get Beau to where he is now; in Poppy’s case it will invariably take longer. Her behavior is more engrained and quite likely has a psychological element to it as well. This just means that the planning has to be more carefully thought out and the criteria kept small and achievable so that Poppy gets lots and lots of success during each training session. A clear advantage for Poppy with this type of training is the huge amount of positive personal attention she would be getting for doing the right things and that is much more reinforcing for a traumatized dog than any punishment or scolding.

What Else Can Be Done to Help Poppy?

Teaching the behavior cues “leave it” and “take it” are just one approach to dealing with the Poppy’s situation, and even these can be handled in different ways. If I were working with Poppy I would build this type of training into Poppy’s routine so that she would come to expect “training” to happen thus increasing her anticipation for it. This would set the scene to teach her other things as well so that not all the training sessions dealt with this issue, though initially this might be the case. I would stringently ignore all her stealing, managing the situation to lessen any likelihood as much as possible, and focus instead on recognizing and rewarding all the moments of the day when she wasn’t stealing something (surely there were many more of them?). During the times she needed to be left alone, the times she is most likely to steal, I would leave her with a high value treat stuffed into a toy or a Kong stuffed with paté which had been frozen – these sorts of toys exercise her brain while keeping her focused on something other than stealing. I would pop out for a minute or two, and come back during the time that I knew she would still be occupied. I would “click” and reward her for being a good girl. Letting her know that the behavior she is engaged in is good behavior, and rewarding that, is much more powerful than giving her negative attention when she does something wrong.

The more I focused on what I wanted from Poppy, recognizing and rewarding any appropriate behavior at every opportunity, the greater the likelihood that Poppy would display more of this sort of behavior.  I would track my success in terms of time. How many clicks and treats can I give Poppy in a 30 second period for displaying appropriate behavior? I’d then set myself the task of recognizing her good behavior at least four times in a minute, then once a minute, I’d check in on her at five minute intervals and reward her for any positive behavior she was displaying. Rewards would vary too. I’d use food initially, but I’d also build in games and toys, or simply give her my attention. I’d then track how many hours in the day that Poppy was being good. I’d be sure to reward her for each of those hours.

Training of this type can be terribly time consuming and may be beyond the capacity of a refuge worker or a foster mum, but a new owner able to invest some time up front in Poppy’s rehabilitation, would certainly reap the benefits in the long term. Dogs like Poppy can become great family pets if they are just given the chance and a little investment of time and attention up front. If you think you might be able to offer a home to Poppy, one of her pups or any of the other dogs left in the refuges in France, get in contact with dog::links.