Quila's AKC runs Bouvier trial

This weekend, Quila and I were entered in the Bouvier de Flanders AKC trial at the Canine Sports Recreation Center in Dexter, MI. I decided to try to put into effect some of the specific techniques we learned the last couple of weeks in Kristine's class highlighting Linda Mecklenberg's handling system. Specifically, we went over and practiced all the different Recalls To Heel exercises in addition to forward and lateral sends. I'm learning how to blend my forward and lateral cues and finding that Quila needs more forward motion before I can fade laterally, otherwise she pulls off the jumps. We're still not as speedy as I'd like, but I'm hoping that her confidence will build as my handling system becomes more clear and she becomes familiar with it.

This first jumpers run, I decided to try the double rear cross because we had just tried it in Deb's seminar last Sunday. Not something that encourages speed in Quila, but it was one of the best options in this case, so, what the hell. I figured I'd give it a try. Almost chickened out, but once I hadn't done the Front cross, I was stuck with it. We did it, but it wasn't the prettiest move.





On Saturday, we got to put two 270 recall-to-heel exercises into practice on the same standard course. They both worked out splendidly. I was quite happy with our performance.



Sunday, we had two tricky contact performances. The dogwalk exit was a flick away to the tunnel, or a rear cross on the flat. We were successful with that move, however, not so much on the A-frame. You can't see the A-frame contact because it's on the other side of the camera. There was a curved tunnel after the frame and, of course, they were to take the far side, to the right. So I wanted to fade laterally, so I stayed close to the frame until I "thought" she had it, then I faded laterally to the right. And she followed me spectacularly, didn't even glance at the wrong tunnel entrance. Unfortunately, she pulled off of the frame and completely missed her contact. But that's a proofing issue, as I haven't worked turns at all off our running contacts. So, I was just happy that she read my handling cues. It's all I could ask for until I train it. As it is, we're lucky to get the contacts we do, as she still doesn't have a clear understanding of what I want. She certainly tries though.

Videos of Sam-I-Am

Here are a couple of links to the videos we made of Sam.

The first one is a compilation of the tricks he learned while he was here. Unfortunately he didn't get me giving the cues, but you get the idea. He's a real quick learner and figured out the clicker game really fast.



This second video is of some play time in the snow with Sam and Quila, our golden. The game I'm eventually playing with Sam is "Ready, Set, Break!" I wanted to see what kind of impulse control he had. He did great and caught on to the game really fast. He's learning that he can release on the "break" word, which is always preceded by "set". And he's a fantastic frisbee catcher. Unfortunately, I'm still learning how to time my release of the disk properly to teach him how to catch it in midair. He can grab it from my hand at this point. Bet he'll learn to catch it in no time flat. Plus, the good disk got buried under 6" of snow the night before this video, so I only had a torn up floppy disk to play with.

Sam-I-Am Day 5

Well, I just can't get over what a fast learner this little guy is. Tonight with his dinner I taught him "cover" where he puts his paw over his nose. Very cute, I should get a photo. He learned it with about 1/3 of his meal. Then we practiced "back-up" and when I went back to cover, he did it right away. He's a damn smart little dog.

He's doing really well with socialization. Because Quila did so well with him yesterday, despite the altercation, I thought I'd try it again tonight. They played for a good 30 minutes with me in the snow throwing toys. Although he'd chase Quila during her chase of the ball, there were no incidents because Quila just backed off until he became disinterested. Basically, once something stops moving, it's no longer interesting to him. I need to film their behavior because it's such an interesting study of learning dog communication. Seems like Quila's really teaching him something. Maybe Saturday before he leaves back home, we'll do a little. It's just too dark when I get home now.

Anyway, he's come a long way. Maybe I'll even let Gromit out with him, but she might not want to interact after their first incident. She tends to remember and stays fearful of dogs after they've scared her. Same thing happened in Phoenix at the dog park with this big mastiff that scared the crap out of her on our first visit.

This is quite good for him to interact with these guys. Maybe Deb will let me share him and do some agility training once he's more under control! I'm still not confident about him ever being under control in an environment with many unknown dogs. But if anyone can do it, Deb can.

Sam-I-Am

Well, some of you might be wondering how it's going with Sam. He is an absolutely wonderful dog, very smart and drivey. Unfortunately, he wants to have my dogs for lunch. I have no doubt that with enough time, he will be able to successfully integrate into a home with dogs. And even, get his reactivity under control enough to be around dogs in public. I might even be able to do it. But I'm just not sure if I'm willing to take on that liability. He's done okay here. He still sometimes goes off on my guys when they travel by his x-pen to go outside. They ignore him for the most part.

Poor Gromit got it good the other night though. They were getting along without any stress signs until Gromit got too close to his crate. I should have known better than to allow them near his crate, but hindsight's 20/20. Lesson learned. He let her know that was not acceptable. Now she won't go anywhere near him. Tonight I introduced him to my golden Quila outside in relatively neutral territory. They did well and played chase in the snow for a while. Quila initiated play with a tug toy and they played chase. Unfortunately, once he got it, he didn't understand the whole sharing concept. Quila did an excellent job of blocking his "advances" and remained unscarred after the incident. He got a time out in his crate.

I'm sure Quila, Gromit, and Sam would work it out. But Kimba is my main concern. She doesn't give him the time of day right now, totally ignores his existence. But if he were to ever attempt to challenge her, she won't be as diplomatic as Quila. It's only going to take once and he's going to end up seriously wounded or worse. That would be wrong for me to put either of them in that position. I can't watch them every second and it can happen in the blink of an eye.

It's too bad because he's a fantastic dog who learns amazingly fast. I've been asking him to work for his food (NILF). He's learned high 5 with either paw, bow, and tonight we did weave through my legs, and spin both directions, and started "head down". He's picking things up really fast. He's amazing at frisbee and will wait for a break word and launch over my leg to catch the disk. I know he'd be fantastic at agility and diskdog, probably a lot of other events too: certainly lure coursing and flyball. As long as someone can control his aggressiveness with other dogs.

So, the wonderful rescue person that took him in originally is totally in love with him, so she will keep him. She's a flyball person and he's already shown a propensity for it. So, although I'll miss him, my other dogs won't be sorry to see him leave. Rick and I will miss him just because he's such a sweety with us. He adores Rick, so that's nice to see that he likes men. He'll do great back with Deb and her pack. So we'll keep him until Saturday. We're doing more work and will continue to train and socialize until then. This is a good learning experience for me. I'm actually having fun learning how to redirect his behavior. The trick training really helps.

Oh well, guess we'll have to go with the back up plan of looking for a BC or pyr shep puppy! That's not going to make it any easier on Saturday. We just had a wrestling match on the bed and he's just a cuddling fool. I'll miss him.

Dogwalk contact trainer

Here's a picture of my new contact trainer that Rick built for me. It's just an 8 foot aluminum plank topped with wood. He put a hinge on the end of it and we attached it to the existing doghouse. Now I can reward the up contact easily with a "yes" and they can get their treat right away as I can just throw it on top of the flat roof. Also, this makes it easy for Quila and Gromit to turn around and go back down right away. I was finding it was difficult to reward my golden for "ups" on the normal 12 foot DW, as she would have to continue all the way across the entire length before she could just stop and try again. I just LOVE this!

What is a Reactive Dog?

We often refer to dogs as “reactive” but what does this really mean? Is reactivity the same as aggression? These terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably, which is unfortunate. All animals, people included, react to their environment and we all have different responses to environmental stimuli. A sudden loud noise, for example, can trigger reactions in people such as a startle response, which can be as minor as looking in the direction of the source of the noise, to jumping out of one’s skin and letting out a scream, to hitting the floor. These people all react, but the extent of the reaction is variable. Reactivity is not a bad thing, if we didn’t react to our environment, we would all be zombies.

There are two main processes at play in any situation. Primarily, there is the reaction to the environment, which is the behavior we typically observe. And secondly, there is the ability to control that reaction. These two processes occur by different mechanisms in the brain, referred to as bottom-up (reaction to the environment) and top-down (the decision regarding whether or not to react to that environmental stimulus). These two processes are controlled by different neural processes, each which involves a different neurotransmitter, dopamine or serotonin. I’m not going to focus on details of neurobiology here, however, the concept that these processes occur via different mechanisms is important.

First we’ll look at response to the environment. Like us, our dogs react to environmental stimuli in different ways. The extent of their reactions is often environmentally determined, based on past experiences and learned behaviors. However, genetics also plays a large role in how the reaction is externalized. We have selected dogs for their specific responses to the environment in order to be able to best utilize their innate abilities to our advantage. All dogs are reactive, but they differ in the degree to which they react and in the behavior that is externalized as that reaction. For example, if a threat of danger is sensed in my house, several reactions occur. The golden retriever runs to the door to find out if the visitor might want to throw a ball, the beagle barks threateningly from a distance, and the kuvasz faces the threat with the intent to kill if necessary.

However, the factor that we often neglect to take into consideration is the dog’s top down control. As with people, dogs differ in their ability to control their reaction to their environment. Some dogs think through a situation before responding to it, while others respond instinctively and immediately. Again, selective breeding has produced extremes of these behaviors in different breeds. Dogs that are commonly used for police work, for instance, have been selected to react to a situation, almost without question. I think this is the “shoot first, ask questions later” type of response that is necessary in situations such as many of those faced by law enforcement. I’m not saying that police dogs don’t think, just that they respond to a situation when it arises, no questions asked. As a policeman, you want a partner that will respond to a situation, not one that takes in the entire surroundings and takes a few minutes to determine whether or not he should take action. Those dogs are trained to respond in a certain manner, usually with controlled aggression, but that response is under the control of the handler. On the other hand, dogs acting as guardians of flocks or herds of animals that are expected to work on their own, without a human for direction, have a very different control over their reactivity. Dogs such as the kuvasz, although considered extremely aggressive, might exhibit better response inhibition. My thoughts are that these dogs are working independently to protect their herd. Selection of dogs to perform this job has developed dogs with an ability to assess the threat, weigh the pros and cons of their actions, and then respond appropriately. This is great for an independent guardian, but not for a partner in law enforcement. Then there are those dogs that have great response inhibition and also very low reactivity to the environment. The world could collapse around these dogs and, well, they just wouldn’t get off the couch. That’s OK too, just another behavior we’ve selected in our best friend.

In my opinion, the word “reactivity” refers to a combination of both top-down and bottom-up mechanisms. Often the more important behavior in reactivity is not the actual reaction (i.e. bottom-up), but the top-down mechanism: the ability to decide how to deal with that stimulus. Research in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has shown that there is a deficit in some people in their ability to suppress a response to a predicted stimulus, called response inhibition. I’m sure we’ve all known kids or adults, (hmmm, like myself) that fit this profile. We do things like interrupting conversations, blurting out inappropriate statements, and fidgeting. Basically, we lack the filter that other people have; the one that helps you to hold your tongue when you really want to speak your mind.

Both extremes exist in my household. On one extreme, our kuvasz exhibits extremely aggressive behavior in response to any perceived threat. However, she exhibits an amazing amount of self-control, or top-down functioning. She has complete awareness and control over any situation. If she didn’t, I’m quite sure we would have had at least one tragedy by now. The poor man applying siding to our house was lucky to have simply been firmly escorted backwards into his truck, as opposed to eviscerated where he stood. Although Kimba exhibits a high degree of aggression when she feels threatened, I do not consider her highly reactive, because she usually controls her reactions. On the other extreme, there’s my Golden Retriever, Quila. Like most Goldens, she’s the happiest dog that has ever lived. Her reaction to her environment is usually submission (to a threat) or extreme exuberance (to someone she knows). However, she has absolutely no top-down control! There appears to be not an ounce of her being that is able to control her responses to her environment. I admit that there could be training issues at either extreme, i.e. environmental factors at play. However, these behaviors are deep in the nature of their being. For instance, I worked extremely hard to be sure that Kimba’s aggressive tendencies were under control because they were threatening. I have not worked as hard on Quila’s top-down control because her behavior, although annoying sometimes, does not usually threaten others. That is unless, of course, she approaches another dog, like Kimba, with this same exuberance!

Another thing that we need to consider when looking at reactivity is the threshold level. This is a factor in top-down control. Some dogs might not react to the environment in a quiet subdued situation. However, if the surroundings change and the dog feels threatened or is excited by the presence of other dogs, it might react to a stimulus that it normally wouldn’t if under non-stressful conditions. Every dog has a threshold level and its response to being over that threshold differs in each individual. Some may just shut down and get stressed out, while others might go over the top and show behaviors we interpret as aggression, i.e. biting, snapping, and barking.

As dog trainers we need to recognize that these two behaviors, top-down and bottom-up, are separate and need to be considered differently. We need to be able to read the subtle cues that predict that a dog is going to react. Although, occasionally, this happens too fast in those dogs that react without any warning at all. Usually when we look back on a situation, we can think of subtle cues that we might have missed. Often we don’t even consider the reactivity level in a dog that exhibits a non-threatening reaction. We typically are only concerned about the behavior of dogs that exhibit aggression as their reaction. Dogs like my golden are rarely considered reactive, although, I suppose it’s all in the definition.

Aggressive dogs are another problem. What is aggression? We usually consider the act of biting, snapping, and basically, wanting to kill, as aggression. Aggressive behavior stems from two natural behaviors exhibited by our dogs’ wolf ancestor: killing prey (food) and defense of self and territory (self-preservation). We have recognized these two responses and selected these behaviors by breeding for our own advantage. For instance, terriers have been selected to exhibit the prey response: find and kill. Alternatively, defensive behaviors have been selected in breeds that have been used to guard our flocks and homes. These behaviors are responses to completely different stimuli. Consequently, different breeds can exhibit an aggressive response to different stimuli. Terriers will rarely exhibit aggression in response to fear, in fact they are rarely afraid of anything. A shepherd often exhibits fear aggression, they seem to be defensive. Yes, they do have a prey response also. They have probably been selected for both behaviors. It’s hard to find an example of a breed that exhibits just one or the other, most breeds probably have a little of both. However, I think we can see the prevalence of one or the other in most of our dogs.

So back to my initial question: What is a reactive dog? In my opinion, reactive dogs are dogs that lack self-control. A dangerous reactive dog, however, is one which lacks top-down control AND exhibits aggression in response to environmental stimuli. Even more dangerous, is when that dog has a low threshold, so almost any situation can set them off. I do believe that it is possible to have a healthy, happy reactive dog. This needs to be tackled from the standpoint of controlling the environment, i.e. recognizing the threshold level of the dog and always keeping it sub-threshold. You cannot learn new behaviors or self-control if you are over threshold. Think about any situation you’ve been in when you’ve finally had it, you broke the last straw! Are you in any mood to learn something? Probably not. When a dog is over-threshold like this, it is not the time to attempt to train him. I’ll try to post again on this subject later. But this is turning into a dissertation, so I’ll try to focus on my first subject. Sorry, another symptom of my ADHD: tangents. That’s a post for another day. I think I’ve taken up the limit of all blogdom.

So I think I’ll wrap it up with this thought: Reactive dogs exhibit low top-down control, regardless of whether or not they exhibit aggressiveness as their bottom-up response. Maybe we should treat all dogs with top-down issues the same. However, dogs that exhibit aggressive tendencies need to be kept sub-threshold and usually in separate classes with other dogs and handlers that all understand the rules and etiquette of dealing with dogs that exhibit aggression. I think the main point to take away is that if we fail to isolate these dogs in controlled environments and we, instead, allow them to enter into stressful situations, it is our responsibility as handlers when a situation ensues and someone gets hurt. Let’s work to keep all of our dogs sub-threshold and in a happy, healthy learning environment.

First note:

There is a wonderful discussion about how to deal with reactive dogs in agility on the Clean Run Yahoo! groups list today and yesterday (began Feb 17). If you’re not on the Yahoo! list, just sign up for a Yahoo! account, join the group, then you can access the discussion. Great ideas about how to keep your dog sub-threshold and much talk of separate classes for dogs with issues like these.

Final note:

Actually as I write this I’m watching a show on Africanized bees. Scientists in Mexico are actually selecting bees for decreased reactivity levels. They are taking colonies of Africanized honeybees and testing them for both honey production AND low reactivity. Larvae are selected from colonies with low reactivity and high honey production and then introduced into existing colonies to produce bees with great productivity and low aggressiveness. Very cool: a lesson in reactivity from honeybees.

Our Christmas Day 2007

Quila is patiently awaiting Santa's arrival. "Wonder if I've been good enough? Maybe my recent MX, MXJ titles will win me a visit by the bigman, himself!?"













What a tough day. Opening toys, playing with doggie peeps, time for Kimba to take a nap in Kona's new bed.













After a trip to play chuck-it and frisbee at the dog park, it's time for another nap before dinner.













And now, gotta get some of that prime rib from Gramma, she's a total pushover.













Gromit says "G'night" Hope you all had a great holiday!