10/21/09 - Barking at the Neighbors

Where to start….Lets start with the neighbors. Seems like a strange place to start a dog training story, but it all ties back together in the end.

So a couple years ago we move into this new house. Nice house, great neighborhood, great school that is exactly a five minute walk (and most of that is through the soccer field). We really felt like we had found where we wanted to be for the next 10-20 years.

Didn’t take long, though, until we met the neighbors. Dad seemed nice enough, mom kind of keeps to herself, and the daughter seems to be going through that teenage “everybody sucks” phase. We all grow out of that eventually, so you can’t really hold it against her.

But they had five dogs. Five. (the law in this town is 3, we looked it up). Normally a lot of dogs wouldn’t bother me, but these dogs barked. Constantly. We couldn’t be in the back yard without getting attacked - or more accurately, without the fence getting attacked because we were on the other side of it.

This went on for awhile until we couldn’t take it anymore. So we decided to try to be grownups, and my wife called them and got the machine. She left a very non-emotional message along the lines of “couldn’t help but notice that your dogs spend a lot of time outside during the day. Since I’m at home with the kids I’ve got some free time and would be happy to work out a schedule, maybe let them out and then back in at certain times during the day? It’s become very difficult for us to use our backyard due to the barking – but we know how busy things can get and we would be happy to help in any way we could”

Their response was deafening in its silence. Then we notice, a couple days later, that two of the dogs don’t seem to be there anymore. As chance would have it I bumped into “dad” one day and mentioned that the dogs seem to be much quieter. His response was that his wife responded poorly to our message and immediately took two of them to the pound. That was certainly an over reaction and not our intention, but you can’t control other people so we went on trying our best to keep our dog quiet, and rationalizing that their three smaller dogs, while still barkers, aren’t nearly as loud as the other two. Except when their other daughter is visiting and brings her massive dog with her. When she’s there they keep him locked in the house, and his bark rattles the windows whenever we’re outside at all, front yard or backyard.

Interesting side note: After three summers the only time we've ever the people in the back yard is when the dad is mowing. We notice this because we tend to be in our yard a lot, playing with our dogs, eating dinner on the deck, barbquing, playing on the swings, etc....

Time goes on and we learn a little more about the family. Turns out the daughter (she’s 16ish now, so this has been going since she was 14 or so that we know about) lives, in the house, with her boyfriend. Apparently she’s manic depressive, and he’s the only one that can calm her down.

We’ve experienced many of her dramas, typically culminating with her in the driveway screaming “F*** YOU” at him at the top of her lungs for 10 minutes or so, but he does seem to have her best interests at heart – I’ve never seen him act angry or violent towards her and she does eventually calm down.

Be that as it may, your 14 year old daughter should not have a live in boyfriend. Seriously.

But wait, there’s more: Last summer we received a frantic call from one of our other neighbors –our neighborhood has a high percentage of post-retirement age couples – and one of them was on the phone, terrified because she heard one of the fights going on in the driveway. She had already called the Police and was calling to ask us if we knew anything about the family. She confided that she was afraid of them, and that the loud profanity going on in the driveway made her feel very nervous and fearful.

Trying to be good neighbors, we called the family and asked if everything was alright, but they accused us of calling the cops. That led to the best comment of the summer, my wife was out late one night working in the yard and so was the dad from next door. She tried to make some light-hearted banter about yard work, and he said “yep, seems like we’re always gardening or snooping”. What do you say to that?

So there’s the background, lets talk about dog training. Fast forward to yesterday, my wife was working from home (Monday’s are big days for her, usually 5-6 hours in front of the computer) and shuttling the kids back and forth from school, doing the laundry, making dinner, cleaning the house (we also had a mouse this weekend, that’s always good for some drama).

And oh yeah, the daughter’s “condition” means that she is being home schooled. So all this time we thought they were all working so hard, she and mom were actually home, they just chose to not hear their dogs barking 6 or 7 hours per day.

My wife left the house for 45 minutes and, since it was a beautiful day, made the mistake of leaving the dogs in the yard.

When she got home she found an unsigned note on the front door complaining about how the dogs had been “barking all day”.

Trying one last time to be the grownups, she went over to the house with the note and the daughter admitted to leaving it. My wife, in front of “dad”, apologized for the barking but explained that it couldn’t have been “all day” and that in the future they should just call or knock on the door, we wouldn’t leave our dogs out on purpose.

The girl said she tried, but we were “in and out all day” and she could never find us at home (lie. The house was empty for a grand total of 45 minutes). Then she said “just shut the door on her dad” and “dad” said “thanks for coming over” and closed the door.

So needless to say we are done trying to be nice neighbors. From this point forward, every time we hear a fight, we call the cops. Every time they let the snow go more than 24 hours without shoveling he walk (the law in this county) we call code enforcement.

Which affects my training schedule. Sweet Emmy went to work with me for the whole day yesterday. She made lots of new friends, both dog and people, and was really very well behaved. By 4:30 she was very very bored, but I think I can find some more interesting treats to keep her interested with in the future. Frozen peanut butter kongs anyone?

She had no accidents, and walked very confidently around the office on a “loose leash”. She sat when told, waited patiently outside the kitchen and generally behaved herself very well.

So at least our dogs are not barking. Frannie is happy to have the house back to herself for most of the day, and at her age really just wants to sleep on the couch most of the time anyway.

Let’s hope for more of the same today.

10.18.09

Training Emmy 10/18/09

No Pictures today, Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload them. What do you expect for free?

Believe it or not the Emmy training continues – the amount of time and attention it takes from our already busy lives explains why I haven’t updated this blog in so long.

We’ve now completed two of the five, hour long training courses offered by the Humane Society. Its actually a six week program, but we missed the first one.

I’ve found them very helpful, as much because they offer me some positive reinforcement as for what Emmy has learned.

One big thing I’ve learned is to use more treats more often in training. I’ve always avoided treats, because I felt like I would end up with an overweight dog that won’t stop begging. That doesn’t seem to be the case though, and during yesterday’s class Emmy was doing an excellent job of walking on a loose leash (walking by my side without pulling on the leash) not a true “heel” but a comfortable way to walk.

Each day after work I take her to a large field nearby and throw the ball for her. She’s already very good at bringing it back to me and its great exercise for her.

I’ve noticed however that after four or five fetches the excitement of the field overwhelms her and she stops coming back. Luckily she’s still young enough to be afraid of being alone, so when that happens I just say “OK, I’m leaving you now” and I turn my back and start walking or running in the other direction. Within a couple of seconds I hear her running to catch up. At that point I take out a treat, say “Emmy, come” and then reward her for doing it. Hopefully in this way she’ll think it was her idea.

Potty training is also going well – she is now sleeping from 9:45 until 4:15, and I think I’ll increase it to 4:30 tonight. Within a couple weeks she’ll be sleeping until 5:00, which will make my life easier.

On the downside, she’s still a puppy. For most of the day she’s great to be around, but for some reason the hours of 2:00pm until 5:00pm are “crazy time”. It seems like no amount of walks, ball chasing or attention is enough – these hours are filled with barking, nipping, jumping---basically all the things that puppies do that we wish they wouldn’t.

So that’s about it for today. Training continues, not as fast as we would like but faster than we had any right to expect.

October 3, 2009 - Socialization

Last night Emmy and I attended our first Puppy Socialization class at the Boulder Valley Humane Society. Basically you pay $10 to sit in a room while somebody else monitors how your dog is playing with other dogs. As silly as that sounds, I think it was money well spent.

One mistake we made with Frannie was to not take things like this seriously enough. When she was this age she, like Emmy, was very smart and had an older dog to play with all day long. We took Frannie to one or two puppy training classes, but she was so small and timid she just hid under a chair and then threw up from the stress.

Besides, she learned how to sit on command after two or three tries, so we really didn't see the point. Eleven years later she's a 60+ lb dog who sits, comes when you call most of the time, and that's about it. She also has "issues" from time to time with other dogs, strange people and things like that.

So we're going to make sure we socialize Emmy. The current school of thought, at least the one we're following, is that you have to expose the puppy to as much as possible within the first three or four months of life.

So in the two weeks that Emmy has been with us she's been to my office twice (four hours each time) been to Petsmart twice, been to Lowes once, taken a walk during the elementary school after class running club and just about everything else we can think of.

She's already showing less "mouthing" behavior, which is great since she will always be around kids.

During the puppy class last night, only one other dog showed up - a sweet 10 week old mix named Berlin. Some sort of cattle dog possibly, but she also looks like she might have some sort of terrier in her. Berlin had been the previous week and had been overwhelmed by the number and size of the other puppies. Since this was my first time I was at first a bit disappointed that there was only one other dog, but in the end I think it did Emmy a lot of good.

Under guidance from the instructor we introduced the pups, and Emmy quickly established her dominance. In fact she was so dominant that I was feeling a bit embarrassed, but the instructor watched the proceedings closely and as soon as Berlin showed signs of needing a break, she broke up the play time by squeezing a very loud squeaky toy and squirting them with a water bottle.

In a very short amount of time Emmy learned that tackling Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and biting Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and barking wouldn't get her to play, but taking a toy and running away would.

Once that pattern was established the play was much more even and I'm sure Berlin had as much fun as Emmy.

These are lessons I'll try to incorporate into my own training, and I'm pretty sure we'll be back for at least one, if not two more puppy socialization classes. Next on the agenda is to sign up for the six week training class. While I'm confident that we have the resources to train her ourselves, external feedback is always helpful in a situation like this.

Potty Training update: Emmy is now sleeping successfully from 10:00 until 3:15, and has still not made a mess in her crate or, other than during the first night, in the laundry room, her expanded "safe" area.

Unfortunately she has peed in the living room with no warning each of the last two nights between the 8:00 and 10:00pm walks. I think this is partially because by the end of the day she is exhausted, and partially because she doesn't completely "get it" yet.

Last night I was able to interrupt her and continue the pee outside, so maybe we'll make some progress now.

September 30, 2009

Today we’ll talk about potty training, in my opinion a nicer term than “house breaking”.

But the difference in the two terms provides an excellent opportunity to discuss two prevalent, but different, schools of thought in dog training. Full Disclosure: I am in no way educated or qualified as a dog trainer. Just a regular guy trying to figure it all out on my own. Kind of like raising kids.

For years the “Dominance Theory” has been the prevailing school of thought in dog training. Dominance Theory, in a nutshell, says that dogs, being essentially wolves with better hair, want to behave like a wolf pack. There should be an Alpha, a Beta, etc…. and an Omega at the bottom.

On the surface this makes perfect sense, and in the past I’ve used the concept to come to understandings with my Siberian Husky (R.I.P.). Huskies are arguably the least removed from the wolf pack domestic dog there is – you don’t so much own a husky as the husky allows you to live in the same house most of the time. Not to say they aren’t fantastic dogs. I had mine for nearly fifteen years and we had a very close relationship, more like roommates than the traditional dog/owner dynamic. I still miss him dearly, but they are not Golden Retrievers.

During his younger years I read a couple books and solved a couple of disagreements with him by establishing “dominance” (biting him on the nose seemed to be effective). So I’m not saying that dominance theory won’t work, but I’m starting to think that there may be a better way.

We attended an excellent lecture at the Humane Society this week which was decidedly anti-dominance theory. The guy giving the lecture, I neglected to get his name, made a good point: Dominance theory has never actually been scientifically studied in domestic dogs. It is based on observations of wolves in captivity, and chickens. To say that a wolf in captivity is a dog is a huge leap in logic that is not supported by observation. Talk to anybody who’s every owned or lived with a wolf-hybrid (myself included). Wolves are not dogs. To say that dogs are chickens is just insulting. I’m not even going to go there.

So I’m coming to the conclusion, and it’s being supported by a lot that I’m reading and learning, that there’s a better way. Establishing your dominance through physical force and intimidation can get the dog to do what you want, but it’s an uneasy truce at best.

We’re going to try a more holistic, Bouldery method revolving around rewarding good behaviors and interrupting bad behaviors. So on to the potty training.

We’re potty training, not “house breaking”. We don’t want anything broken, we just want to train our new family member that there is an acceptable place to relieve herself, and more importantly that inside a house is not acceptable.

The first step is to try to create opportunities for success. Rather than wait for an accident and then hit the dog with a newspaper, set up lots of opportunities for the pup to go potty in the right place, and then reward her when she does. She wants your attention, and maybe a treat, so she’ll learn quickly that you are that weird. You do get happy when she poops on the grass, so she’ll poop on the grass. Whatever floats your boat.

The day we brought her home was a long one, as expected. Even though we tried our best to take her outside every hour, and give her several opportunities to go in the “right” place, she’s a baby who’s just had her life disrupted for the third time in very short existence. She doesn’t know what’s going on, and as far as she knows she’ll never see you again.

So she had several accidents on the family room carpet (we kind of want new carpet in there someday anyway, so a bummer to clean up but no great loss). During the night, despite being walked at 10:00, 12:00, 2:00am and 4:00am she had an “accident” in the laundry room.

A note about her bedtime set up: Since she took to the crate right away (see the last post, and the photo above) we’ve placed the crate in the laundry room. The laundry room has the advantage of being small, easy to block off and easy to clean. We do not want to lock her in the crate, as we don’t want to force her to have an accident in the one place we know she feels safe. Dogs are pretty clean by nature, and everything we know from what we’re reading and the dogs we’ve had in the past tells us that she’s not going to soil her bed unless she has to.

So we took the mess in the laundry room, but outside of the crate, as a victory of sorts. The next couple of days followed suit. During the days we made every effort to take her out for lots of walks and lots of “potty times” and started to establish a schedule. Schedule on Day one looked like this:

6:00am – walk in the backyard to go potty.

7:00am – eat breakfast. Moved to 6:30 as she seemed very hungry.

7:00am – take out for potty.

Between 7:00 and noon, lots of outside time and praise every time she “goes” anywhere outside.

Noon – lunch

Noon to 6:00 – lots of outside time and praise every time she “goes” anywhere outside.

6:00 – Dinner

6:00-8:00 – watching her inside, every time she does anything that looks like she’s going to go, pick her up and take her outside.

8:00pm – Long walk to “tire her out” before bedtime.

10:00pm – Short “potty walk”. On the leash, so she knows it’s not playtime, but just in the yard to the area we’ve designated as the potty. While we do this and other potty specific walks, we speak to her in our best baby voices, saying “Go potty Emmy” and praising her like crazy when she does. We have not used treats for this part of training, just happy voices and physical attention as the rewards.

12:00am – same potty walk

2:00am – same potty walk

4:00am – same potty walk

6:00am –same potty walk.

Yes, I’m tired at this point. You can sleep when you’re dead – the good point is that she made it through the second night with no accidents. And the third.

At the third night with no accidents, I removed the 4:00am walk. Ah, the magic of sleeping for four uninterrupted hours. Note that it’s not just me keeping these hours. Our house is a comedy of sleep deprivation induced errors (water from the tap on the frosted flakes, waiting ten minutes for coffee from a machine that’s not turned on, etc…)

There seems to be some disagreement about how long a puppy can go without a potty break. Understandably so since dogs come in so many varieties and sizes. We’ve heard it from reputable sources that the rule of thumb is either: two hours for every month of age, or two hours for every month of age + 1 hour.

In any case during the previous week we’ve been gradually stretching out the intervals. The current night time schedule is:

6:00pm dinner.

6:30-7:00 play in the yard with the other dog.

8:00pm – long bedtime walk.

10:00pm – short potty walk

3:00am – short potty walk

6:30am – long “big dog” walk with both dogs, no special potty walk first.

After only a week sleeping from 10:00 to 3:00 feels like a vacation and we’ve not had a single nighttime accident. In all honesty the daytime accidents since the second day have all been attributable to our inattention, so we are getting there very quickly. I’m not ready to say she’s potty trained, but I took her to the office for four hours on Monday afternoon with no accidents, and she’s made two trips to Petsmart and one trip to Lowes with no accidents. Those trips are great, socializing and potty training and errand running all at once, in environments where the penalty for failure is not all that high. Let’s face it, nobody at Lowes really cares that much if your dog pees on the floor and Petsmart is like a giant indoor dog pee storage area anyway.

At nine weeks the five hours between 10:00 and 3:00 is right at the limit. Last night I had to wake her up at 3:00, she had no interest in going outside, but as soon as her feet hit the grass she had to pee in the worst way. So we’re right where we want to be – one week of poor sleep, I’m looking at one or two more weeks of mediocre sleep, and then I’ll be sleeping as well as any middle aged father of two girls sleeps. Who am I kidding, I’m sleeping that well now.

We’ll talk about Socialization next time.

Training Emmy - Sept. 29 2009

At last, I have a topic for a blog. Training Emmy.

Emmy is going to take some training. She's an Australian Shepherd, rescued from the Boulder Valley Humane Society. http://www.boulderhumane.org/

Nine weeks old now, eight weeks when we got her. Here's what she's learned so far:

Her name

Sit

Go Potty

Believe it or not, that's a big week. More on that later.

So here's my story. I'm a 40 year old married father of two. I have a good job with an advertising firm, but it pays about 30% less than I'm used to, so I also teach skiing on weekends - and my wife has gone back to work part time. On top of that we've cut back quite a bit on our expenditures - so we are only losing about $200 per month. In other words, I'm just like a lot of people. The economic turmoil of 2008/2009 has certainly taken its toll, but we're soldiering on.

We also have an 11 year old Golden Retriever / Australian Shepherd mix. She has been a phenomenal dog - but is getting up there in years. We felt that she could use some company, and we got her when our previous dog was about this age. Having a puppy to play with seemed to add a couple of happy years to his life.

Plus, who doesn't like a puppy?

For the last several months my wife and I have been threatening each other with a new dog. One would email the other with pictures from the humane society, various rescue societies, etc...

Then, last week, something seemed to be in the air. I was cleaning the garage, and she came out and asked for my credit card. Seemed there was a cute puppy at the Humane Society. You can put them on hold for a few dollars, if you pass on the dog the money becomes a donation - so everybody wins. The Humane society gets a few dollars, and you get to experience some of the excitement of adding a new dog to the mix, without actually having to pick up the poop.

But this was on a Saturday morning. The "hold" lasts for 24 hours, so we really didn't have an excuse to not at least go see her in person.

Did you ever put two little girls in the same room with a puppy? There's no way you're going home without that dog.

But we did manage to sleep on it overnight. I mentioned to my better half that this dog was going to be "all hers" as I need my first job and my second job will be starting up in a few weeks - I just wouldn't have the time to deal with a puppy. But even as I said it I knew better - not for lack of effort on her part, but because I am a "dog person". There's no way I'm going to have a new puppy and not be totally involved.

Sunday morning, and there was only one mission for the family - get to the Humane Society and get our new dog as soon as possible. On the way there we refined our list of possible names, but it wasn't until the paperwork was done and we were on our way out the door that we settled on "Emmy Lou". Sure to strike fear into the hearts of ne'er do wells the world over.

Emmy is tiny, and she rides home with a nervous look on her face. In only eight weeks she's been born, abandoned, transported across state lines, held in doggy jail, poked and prodded by various potential owners and finally inserted into our lives. You can forgive her if she's unsure about what the future holds.

So onto the training. The first thing we agree on is that we will crate train this dog. We tried with Frannie, but she cried too much, we were too weak, and it just never worked out. But we still have the crate - after Frannie gave up on it, it housed my brother's Golden's, but they've both since passed and it is back in our possession.

First things first, I cleaned it the night before, knowing full well that "we'll sleep on it" meant "we'll be back in the morning". I've also re-bent the door well enough that it closes securely - but given our our lack of success with crate training the last time I'm not exactly full of hope.

As we slowly introduce Emmy into the home (she's already spent a good deal of time with the four humans and one other dog) she looks around with sleepy eyes and promptly marches herself into the crate to fall asleep.

Challenge #1 - introduce the dog to the crate. Mark this one complete.

Challenge #2 - Potty training. That's a topic for next time.

So follow our progress over the next few months. See if a 40 year old can sucessfully juggle two dogs, two kids, two jobs, two mortgages and maintain my sanity and my marriage. Could be fun!