Working Hard for the Kibble

\\Working on fear aggression is not, of course, a sprint. Like most worthwhile work, it takes time. I haven’t posted on the blog for a little while because we are basically keeping to the described program, and I’m not sure how many people yearn to read “gave meds 9:00; worked 15 min. on leash exercise….” And so on.

And, yet, it is those small entries on the calendar that will, I pray, make the difference in my cherished dog—or rather, the actions those entries represent.

Whisper’s favorite activities involve his beloved ball. Exercise is essential for all of us, of course—dogs and people—and everyone with a border collie knows that if they don’t get enough exercise, don’t have somewhere to work off that endless energy, someone, as in the owner or the owner’s possessions, will pay. (One of my favorite stories along those lines is the man who got a border collie puppy and, not wanting to cruelly lock the puppy in a cage (crate) for too long, instead shut him in the bathroom, wisely wanting to keep him safe and contained, which, we note, is one purpose of a crate. When the man arrived home later, the puppy had managed to peel the wallpaper off the wall as high as he could reach, all the way around the wall).

Though I cannot walk the dogs for a few weeks due to what must seem to everyone like the perennial foot surgery recovery, I can throw a ball, and I roll out to the deck with my knee roller, throw the ball, which Whisper tears after, Jenni tears after him, and on and on. The game can’t last very long now; the Carolinas in the summer define humidity and heat. But, the dogs love to go at it for a few minutes, Henry the cat swatting at them off and on, and then everyone comes in and collapses on top of the closest air conditioning vent. And, exercise is a big part of Whisper’s (and my) anti-anxiety program.

We periodically work on the application where I put his special blue leash on him, ignore any unwanted behavior, and give as reinforcement only the quiet phrase “Good boy.”  Whisper checks to make sure that Jenni and Mike aren’t doing anything fun, then looks at me like, “Really? Again?” and gives a big sigh before collapsing on his bed beside the couch for a snooze. The point, of course, is to transfer that behavior outside the house; we keep practicing to make that behavior second nature. Most difficult is ignoring a white face with a coal-black snout stuck in my face sniffing, “Can you REALLY ignore me?” and then making sure the reinforcement phrase is quiet enough not to send him into spasms of joy at the very fact that I paid attention to  him. “She spoke to me! She talked to me! YOU TALKED TO ME!! ME! ME! ME!” If I did not know better myself, I would think no one ever talked to the dog—all day long. Ever. 

What he hates is being locked in the bedroom away from us as practice for when company comes and the best behavior alternative is an absence of dog. Jenni is put in the room with him—he is not alone. But, 18 months old is not an adult dog, and he really wants to be where I am. He has a bone filled with cheese to chew, he has a toy, there is that big bed to lie on….but no humans appears to be cruel and unusual punishment.  However, he has never destroyed anything, and, though we have not worked on this as much as we should have done, practice makes perfect. Jenni, of course, chews the bones and waits patiently.

Finally, I have to comment on the medicine. No dog person I know wants to drug their dog; I don’t want to drug my dog. But, before we lost her, my Millie spent a couple of years taking various medicines for one or another malady:  her thyroid got off kilter, causing her hair to fall out in chunks; she became a little incontinent;  her hips hurt, and that lovely freedom with which she used to sail around the yard slipped away. For each of these conditions, I could give her a medicine that helped. She never completely regained that glorious chestnut coat of her youth, but she no longer looked like she the victim of a rogue weed whacker; it took a couple of times to find a medicine for her incontinence, but, eventually the vets found one for her, and she could again lie on blankets and not make puddles; and though her agile movements were gone, she could get up and down and enjoy playing and walking with us.

I was grateful for those drugs.

Whisper is anxious…..and with that border collie intensity, his brain focuses in on the object of his anxiety with such passion and force, that I cannot even help him learn an appropriate behavior because he cannot break that focus.  He wants more than anything to please me. If this drug he is taking can help me help him learn the right thing to do, and help him be calmer and more at ease while he is doing that right thing, then, I will not only give it to him (under a vet's supervision, of course), I will be grateful for it.  If the drug making a physical change in his brain that makes a positive change in his behavior—and makes him feel less anxious and happier, I say, “Bring it on!”

It has been several weeks now that he has been taking his medicine, and my husband and I have both noticed that he seems just a little calmer. He is still our little (?) clown boy—goofy, gallumping, though very dexterous and agile, puppy. He is himself. But, he seems….more at ease. He does not sleep more or in any way seem off. We are fortunate, I believe, in that the changes we see so far are positive.

We haven’t had him out and about yet, just because that is not yet part of the training, and because I am not out and about yet. But, I feel better, not as fearful FOR him as I did a couple of months ago.

And we’ll keep practicing, and I’ll keep making notes on our calendar…..

And letting you know. J

BAD Behavior NOT Reactive

Close to 14 years ago now, my Pluto died. He had come to live with us in August of 1987. I know that date because it is the year we moved into our little house, and that little black and white puppy, six weeks  old, became ours because the other person who wanted him did not have a fence.  That fact changed our lives; Pluto’s mother was a cocker; his father was a border collie. Pluto adored me more than I deserved. Ten years later, Mac was born down the road—the dog of a lifetime, and he looked like a mini-me when walking beside a lumbering Pluto. In March of 2001, Pluto died, over 13 years old, and I learned what it means to lose your heart. A few weeks later, Millie came.

Her first owners named her Millennium Noelle—they got her for the children, Christmas in 1999—Millie for short. Though she came with ABCA (American Border Collie Association—the working border collie group) papers, they had never sent them in, and though I kept the Millie, I just didn’t think she seemed like a Millennium Noelle kind of girl. Eventually she was registered as Pluto’s Millie, starting a tradition of putting the previous dog’s name in front of the new dog’s name in registering them. Whisper, the object of this blog, is Millie’s Whisper.  Sometimes their similar behavior makes it eerie.

This family was a really nice family with a beautiful home. Both adults worked. By the time we met them, the children were two and four years old, the mother was pregnant again, and Millie, very, very sweet, had run a path around the fairly small, fenced back yard. I worked with border collie rescue at the time, and I was checking to see if we could foster her for awhile.  She was 16-months old, with all the energy a big ole gallumping border collie puppy has, she was big for a border collie, had a rather unusual, though not unheard of, chestnut-tri coat, and greeted us, um, enthusiastically. We had brought Mac with us. Mac, who had been with us since he was eight weeks old and had lived since that day to please us, was, to say the least, horrified at her behavior. She ran around the path she had worn in the yard. She jumped on us. She jumped on Mac. She jumped on her family. She ran some more.  All the while, she smiled…..

We agreed to give it a try, which her original family took to mean we would take her and they would never see her again. I truly believe they loved her, but they really had no idea what to do with her. As the mother emailed me later, “I think we got the wrong breed.”

Christmas puppies are very often a bad idea; border collies for pets are often a bad idea. Put two bad ideas together, and you get, 14 months later, well, Millie.

They gave us her dish, a crate, a tie out stake (which I threw away), a tennis ball, some food….that was it, all she had. On the way home in our little Carolla I sat in the back seat with her. She LUNGED (imagine a big dog lunging from one side of a small car to another) at the passing cars, barking. Mac scrambled to the front seat and got under the dash, mortified at her behavior. He looked up, worry wrinkling his beautiful face. “She’s not STAYING is she?”

But, we made it home, and she settled down in the house. Of course, she later jumped on the neighbor’s dog as fast as she could. I had asked her previous owner “Is she okay with cats?” since we had one. “Oh, yeah, she’s fine with cats.” They really were tired of this big puppy’s antics. And, so, my cat lived behind the dresser in the bedroom for three months. At night, I would crate Millie. As soon as the crate door closed, Snoopy, the cat (my five-year-old son named all our pets back then) would slink from behind the dresser and slither in front of the crate, flipping his tail back and forth, tormenting Millie as she barked from inside her crate, unable to chase him back behind the shelter where he stayed during the day.

She thought, “Millie, come!!” meant turn and run away as fast as you can. I did not want her crated all day and all night, so I left her out with Mac during the day. She tore the drapes off the sliding glass door—twice. She pulled food off the counters. NO ONE liked her.

And, yet….she was this sweet, sweet dog, if you could get past her behavior.  She had these amazing amber eyes—my husband called them “Betty Davis eyes.”  And, unlike my current reactive dog, it was obvious that her behavior was not beyond control; no one had ever taught her how to behave.

And, so, I set about teaching her what proper behavior was. As my husband said one time, “That is a lot of dog.” She had a strong will, and she was not afraid to use it. But, little by little, using treats and repetition, she learned. After a few months we took a class to get a CGC. To my amazement, Millie was the star of the class. I don’t mean I was pleasantly surprised, I mean I was drop-jawed gob-smacked.  At the end of the class, she did get a CGC (Canine Good Citizen) certificate. Later, she got another CGC, as in those early years she could forget she was a good citizen.

We went to work sheep, which sent her joy-o-meter way out the top. Listening to commands was not an option. Finally, I just let her go where she wanted, and when she had a poor sheep penned in one corner of the field, she looked back at me, tongue to the ground, happy, and for all the world looked like, “Now, what do I do?” After that, the herding instructor always did work with her on sheep; she was too much dog for me there, but she did compete and did succeed there.  We sent her for one week of sheep camp with the instructor who she knew and liked, and that week of steady sheep work made a big difference for her.

With all the work and classes and instruction, she calmed down and became consistently the sweet girl we knew she was. During these years, I had the first of many surgeries on my feet….and we enrolled in therapy dog class. Millie rocked there.  She developed an ability to sense when someone was ill or weaker in some way. She was great when we went to Alzheimer’s patients because she was a big, sturdy dog, and they could pound her head as she smiled at them. She was magic with children.

I could give example after example of Millie giving comfort to those who needed it. But one stands out. I worked with a man who got a diagnosis of a rare, frequently terminal cancer. He and I both came to work on a Saturday, and I brought Millie with me, not knowing he was there. When he saw her, he got on the floor with her, and she was so gentle with him, letting him pet her, and she comforted him.

On December 7, 2012, we lost Millie, one of the hardest days of my life. She had a tumor, and we had to make that decision all those who love their dogs dread. I held her as the doctor gave her the shot, and I felt her heart stop.  I miss her every day still.  Though I invested a lot of time and money into making her a “good” dog, she gave back much, much more than I ever gave her. She was the gift, the best kind, the gift I never saw coming.  I am so grateful her family decided, wisely, that they were not the best fit for her; I am so grateful that my husband kept saying, when potential adopters would apply for her, “they aren’t good enough for her,” and we finally adopted her. 

After each of Millie's accomplishments, each certificate she got, each title or step she took, I sent copies to her first family as long as I was able to keep contact with them. Eventually, after they moved or changed jobs, or both, I lost contact. But I wanted them to know that this dog they had spent a not inconsiderable amount of money for, and that they had done their best for, had a good life. The wife said to me once, "You were an answer to prayer." They sought a group they believed would do best for their dog. They realized this dog was not right for their family at this time in their life. And, certainly, I will forever be grateful that we are the ones who benefited from that choice.

Until Whisper, no dog I had ever had, as special as they were, as much as I loved them, had needed me as much as Millie did. Now, he does, maybe more. Millie showed me how much a dog can change. Whisper and I will work together, as Millie and I did, to get past his problems. His issues are very different--I don't know that I will ever be able to trust him in every situation as I could eventually trust Millie, and I don’t think he will be a therapy dog; but he doesn’t have to. That was her job, her joy. We will find his own place. And, because of Millie—and Pluto and Mac and Trey and Jenni, I believe we will be okay. We won’t be the same, but, eventually, okay.

Just not sure what okay is yet.

Ignoring Behavior

My last question when we left the Behavior Clinic was, “Do we work outside or stay in?” The vet was emphatic:  “You want to set up situations where you can control the outcome. Do not go to new places or try new things till we give the drugs time to start to work.”

Okay. So….. other than taking drugs in the right dose and on schedule, there have been a  few basic exercises she gave us to do, and we started a major one that day. Because it was so obvious that he controlled me by timing his response to commands—and then his un-response to same—to manipulate me to give him the treat rewarding him for “obeying” the command when he sat after I told him to sit (again) after he popped back up then I would say “sit” and reward him (again) and he would pop up, and so on, she, um, encouraged me to modify that conduct.

The exercise she gave us was to completely ignore any unwanted behavior (including the popping up and sitting) except a quiet lying down, or a quiet sit that was not an obvious manipulation, and then reward only with a quiet “Good boy.” When working on that exercise at home, we have a special, light leash, used only for that purpose. Whisper knows when I clip his blue leash, narrower than all others, to his collar that we are working on his “Good Boy!” exercise. He probably wonders WHY we are working on it, but he always enjoys one-on-one time, so he gives it his full attention.

That “ignoring unwanted behavior” part can be harder than it sounds. For instance, in writing this post, the “ignoring” part resulted in five rows of “3’s” on the page as that beautiful head rested on the keyboard, and then, as he shifted, a couple of rows of “t’s” flew by.  The unwanted characters were, of course, easy simple enough to delete. But it’s not the easiest thing to sit here seeing numbers run across the page, wanting to rip the computer from under the dog’s chin, gritting your teeth, waiting.

Eventually, though, he gave up and just put his head on the floor, under the stool which is right now by the couch, originally the platform for charging various kindles and controls for heating pads.  Some of them got moved to the floor. (Remain calm....."Good boy." Calm. Unclench jaw.) A light dog bed placed by the couch indicates his “place,” though only half his body rests there, the rest covering the kindle fire that somehow got under his head.  When calm takes over the room, he dozes; when the manchild gets home, or someone walks into the room, well, there really is only so much you can ask of a puppy. 

But, he knows now the bed and the leash mean “I lie here and am calm and don’t get treats to behave this way, but get praise for reward.” The hope is—the point of the exercise—is that this behavior will translate to places away from home, that we can take the bed or a pad with us and get the same calm behavior. This would be assuming Whisper and I continue to work.

And, smart boy, he learned the exercise in roughly 37 seconds—needs perfecting, of course. But, he gives me hope that if I can get my part right, we can get him able to go out in public. I don’t expect the type of behavior my Millie had—she believed all humans were put on earth to pet her. But if he can learn to behave appropriately, I will be happy.

After half hour, or so, I unclip the leash, Whisper, did I mention smart boy?, knows we are through, and he gets up, gives a shake, and finds a tennis ball (they're everywhere) and offers it to me, which I refuse, for the umpteenth time today. (Before you feel badly for the puppy, I have thrown tennis balls many, many times more than I have refused them!) He takes his ball back and lies on the couch. 

Medicine time.

Step-by-step. And, one step is learning to selectively ignore.