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 1 – Poppy's Problem

The other day I got an email from my friend Jane, a dedicated volunteer with the Cahor animal refuge in France. She shared with me the story of Poppy, a young Pointer / Weimaraner cross who had recently given birth to eight beautiful puppies and, lucky for her puppies, had been fostered out to a very generous care-giver.

Poppy's pups (photo: dog::links)

Despite being a gentle, trusting and extremely affectionate dog who enjoys the company of people to the point where she readily allows them to handle her pups, Poppy came into care with little training and a pathological need - she likes to steal food. When she was found, the heavily pregnant Poppy was starving. It is likely she had been abandoned, probably due to her pregnancy, and was thus forced to fend for herself, something domesticated dogs are just not equipped to do. Perhaps Poppy had a fondness for helping herself before her ordeal, perhaps not, it is impossible to say. What would be fair to assume though, is that Poppy’s starvation and the subsequent fear of not having enough to eat have resulted in her becoming a notorious food thief.

Poppy (photo: dog::links)

Stealing food is a common behavior in many dogs, not just those who have been forced to fend for themselves; food after all is a basic requirement to survival and if it is not readily available most dogs will resort to stealing to meet their nutritional needs. In Poppy’s case it might be simply that she has a propensity to make the most of an opportunity, or there could be more to it than a basic need for food. The trauma of being abandoned, coping with the physiological changes that accompany pregnancy, and that perpetual state of being hungry may have triggered in Poppy a psychological need to steal food. This behavior can easily be further reinforced because of the attention that Poppy gets, albeit negative, should her humans shoo her away from the food, or punish her for stealing it.

If any combination of these factors is in play, then Poppy’s condition will not be addressed just by giving her plenty of food to eat. If you look at it from her point of view, Poppy has likely learned through her ordeal that the only way to guarantee she will get a meal is to take whatever she can find. Perhaps in the past she had been regularly fed and food just miraculously and reliably appeared as it does for most pet dogs or perhaps she only received meager rations from her previous owners. Regardless of her past life, when Poppy was left to her own devices any previous supply line was severed - food was no longer on offer - and Poppy would have needed to revert to whatever means possible to stay alive.

Just because food starts to appear out of nowhere once more, doesn’t mean it will last forever and Poppy’s natural instincts will tell her to take whatever she can find, whenever she can. If, when this happens, a great fuss breaks out and she is chased away from the food, this just reinforces her initial desire to steal, perhaps making the item to be stolen much higher in value than she previously thought because there is competition for obtaining it.

The table below shows one way of describing the existing behavior :

Describe existing behavior: steals food, runs away to eat it in seclusion
Opportunities	Dog loose, food readily available: laid out on the table, on the kitchen bench, in shopping bags on the floor, in the cat's bowl
Cues (triggers)	Sight or smell of food; attention of humans
Reinforcers	The physiological satisfaction that comes from eating the food, attention from humans, yelling, commotion, running, game of “get away”

Another way to look at the situation is as part of a behavior chain in which the stealing is continually being reinforced.

Behavior Chain format adapted from Karen Pryor Academy Dog Training Program

We see this happening frequently enough with humans that it should be no surprise when it also happens with dogs. People steal for the same reasons: the desire for what they don’t have is greater than any consequences that might occur for the action, and always worth the risk when faced with the option of doing without. In fact, many thieves steal for the attention it attracts to them, they like the notoriety that accompanies their actions.

So does this mean that rehabilitating a food thief is futile? Luckily for Poppy and other dogs like her, no.

Through a dedicated and consistently positive approach using operant conditioning with high levels of reinforcement, Poppy can be taught to respond to food in a different way and to look to her new owner as the source of all things good in her life. This is an ideal situation for using a clicker or a similar marker to indicate to the dog when she is displaying appropriate behavior and to reward her with a high value treat.

In my next blog on this topic, I will detail one way in which Poppy and other dogs who steal food can be conditioned to leave food alone and instead make the sight of such food a cue to do something else entirely.