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Wednesday, July 26, 2006 Hello, Animal Lovers! The seminar in I was thoroughly pampered by Andrea Bratt Frick, Bunny Trainer extraordinaire, and dog trainer, too. She toted me where I needed to go, took me to dinner, made sure I was comfortable. Andrea has clicker trained rabbits that have been featured on Pet Star and Karen Pryor’s website. They do weave poles and other tricks. I unfortunately didn’t get to see them in person, but Andrea filled me in on some fascinating rabbit facts. Did you know they only nurse their babies once a day, and that when they aren’t nursing, they leave them in their hole, which they cover up with dirt to hide them? The bunny babies spend the day buried in the hole while Mom goes about whistling and acting nonchalant to fool enemies. Andrea also knits using her rabbits’ fleece. She has quite a few talents in addition to that! And what a nice person! I decided to collect small animals to represent the cities I travel to, and rather than a dolphin or seal from Santa Barbara, I decided I’d get a Santa Barbara Bunny from an art shop owned by a friend of Andrea’s. A small raku rabbit standing on his back legs now graces a table in my home office. DOG ADOPTION WELFARE GROUP (DAWG) Andrea is the trainer at the Dog Adoption Welfare Group (DAWG) no-kill shelter, which sponsored the seminar. Lorna Hunt is the supervisor there and she is an incredible font of energy. She has a keen eye for canine behavior, and has put together a great team of employees and volunteers that make DAWG one of the best shelters I’ve been to. The dogs there receive training, they get regular walks, they get time in larger areas with special compatible buddies, and they have excellent veterinary care with weekly routine vet visits and extra trips to the vet as needed. Adopters get a trial period to make sure the animal will fit into their homes, and the dog can always be returned to DAWG if s/he’s not the right one, or if something happens down the line making it impossible to keep him/her. THE WOW OF STIMULUS CONTROL Lorna also has an incredible ability to disguise herself so that she is utterly unrecognizable. Well, that’s what one of our demo dogs thought! Mary is a pit bull mix who was aggressive toward folks with gardening equipment such as weed eaters. While testing for demo dogs, Lorna wore a pink hat and a sheet while running the weed eater, and the dog decided she was the spawn of the devil… but only while in disguise. And the effects lasted even after the weed eater was out of the picture. Lorna’s disguise included a distinctive stiff gait and head on stare at the dog… plus the pink hat. I did the aggression treatment with the dog so that she accepted treats from the stiff gaited woman in a hat. We all kept expecting the dog to recognize Lorna from her smell, but apparently smell wasn’t sufficient to overcome the weirdness of her disguise. After we did the treatment and Mary would accept treats and petting from Lorna in disguise we had her come back “as Lorna”. The dog went all wiggly and just about melted. To me it looked like she was thinking, “Where have you been? A woman who smells like you has been around here and she was just plain creepy!” Lorna suspected that the hat wasn’t the critical component and again entered the area with just the stiff gait, no hat. Mary accepted her safely but kept a wary eye on Lorna until she softened her body and began to act like Lorna again. There was a very decided difference in how she responded to Lorna with a stiff gait and Lorna with her normal soft gait. This is one of the most fascinating things about this work, how very specific stimulus conditions can be. This dog was extremely sensitive to Lorna’s posture, her gait, and position. The hat didn’t help, but the body language was clearly a bigger deal to Mary. To me this means that we should spend a great deal of time working with owners teaching them to relax their bodies and to use their body language to speak of calmness and peace to their animals. I am concerned about the current practice of treating dogs while owners tense the leash in an attempt to teach the dog not to aggress while his owner is tensed up. Mary responded with a visible difference to a tense Lorna and a relaxed Lorna. Yes, she learned to accept the tense Lorna peacefully, but when Lorna changed her body language, Mary turned into a different dog, so to speak. She went soft and cuddly when Lorna’s body was relaxed. We can help dogs learn to accept people when they are uptight but if we can help people present calm body language, it appears that we can take it a lot farther. Some of you may be thinking that Lorna was acting as the aversive stimulus in her disguise that included the stiff body, and was not the owner of the dog, so maybe that’s different. Keep in mind that Mary knows Lorna very well and adores her. All it took to make Mary attack Lorna at the beginning of the procedure was for Lorna to wear different clothes, use a weed eater, and more importantly, for Lorna to walk differently. We alternated presentations of Lorna as Uptight Stranger and Lorna as Wonderful Friend, and Mary clearly responded differently to each of Lorna’s incarnations. She was the most relaxed when Lorna was relaxed. If you’re teaching aggressive dog classes or working with owners and their aggressive dogs, the very first cue an owner should learn to give his or her dog is relaxed, confident body language. Spoken words are our bailiwick. Dogs are sensitive to body language. Helix Fairweather described some excellent practices she has in her classes in this regard on the Click-L list. Helix tags owners for calm behavior when working with their aggressive dogs in her aggressive dog class! What a fine idea! (The Click-L list may be moving to Yahoo Groups soon, by the way. For now it is on Google Groups.) Some owners tell me that they can’t relax when their dog is reacting. Maybe you don’t know how today, but you can learn. There is a way to be calm while still being very tuned in and aware and ready to act. That kind of calmness is far more useful when working with aggressive dogs than a knee-jerk emotional reaction. If you want a more successful treatment for your dog’s aggression, begin learning to calm yourself. It’s amazing how much it does for you as the owner to know how to access your peaceful place. This practice may also identify for you ways you can help your dog become calmer in the face of challenging situations. You can use relaxation skills in many situations. Accidents, challenges at work, spats with spouses, and many other situations call for a calm head when chaos would otherwise reign. Meditation classes can be quite useful in learning how to center oneself and remain peaceful and calm while enhancing awareness. One useful practice is a walking meditation, in which you walk as you remain present and aware in the moment. Nothing magical or “woo-woo” about it. It’s about being present rather than having your thoughts running off in all sorts of uncontrolled directions. Tagging your students for calm behavior is a great idea, too. You might consider using a chime rather than a clicker for tagging calmness. Just a thought! Drawing attention to the state of relaxation helps students produce more of that state of relaxation. In Tellington TTouch practitioner training we were taught that you get more of what you pay attention to. Do you want to pay attention to your own tension and train your dog to pay attention to it also by giving him treats when all cues from you are on red alert, or do you want to begin to focus on developing a state of inner calm that will provide you with the ability to make appropriate decisions even in challenging situations? MORNING DEMO Mary was our afternoon demo performed in a pet shop. That morning we worked with a dog in the shelter setting. Webster is a tan and white dog, likely a border collie mix with a face that had some other breed(s) happening. Webster is a dog that attacked the fence when visitors came to check him out with thoughts of adoption dancing through their heads. Not terribly confidence inspiring for potential adopters! We worked through the aggression treatment procedure. At first Webster attacked me as expected, through the fence. We proceeded through the treatment and by the time we were done, he safely accepted food from my hands. Then we had several people from the class approach his play area as if they were potential adopters, staring at him, leaning over him, talking in excited voices, or hushed voices. There were men and women. He was calm as they all came and went from different directions. This was new for Webster. Fortunately Webster already had an adoptive home lined up, and was never aggressive except at the play area fence, but hopefully this tool will be useful for the staff at DAWG in helping their dogs remain calm while weird strangers come and stare at them. We primates need to do that to make our selections. It’s helpful when the dogs aren’t upset by it, and this procedure teaches them that it won’t hurt them. I’m looking forward to seeing how this procedure is developed for the work in the DAWG shelter. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz and I hope that the procedure will be taken into the real worlds of dogs to make their lives happier and more peaceful. FUTURE SEMINARS If you’d like to attend one of our seminars, please contact me at
KSnider@animalbehavioranswers.com . The next one is August 19 & 20 in If you would like for one or both of us to come to your area to do a seminar, please contact me at KSnider@animalbehavioranswers.com for pricing and scheduling arrangements. I will not be arranging another seminar myself until next year due to a very busy fall semester ahead, but it is possible I could travel to your area. By the way, Jesús and I are writing a book on the procedure! Stay tuned! I hope it’s not too hot where you are! Have a lovely summer! Please scratch your dogs on the doggie
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