Foundation Matters and new Beginnings

It was a gorgeous fall day on Friday so the dogs and I busied ourselves with numerous outside activities. As I hauled in wood and pulled out tomato plants, I found myself musing on how much I have grown as a trainer and as a person over this past incredible couple of years. My good dogs spent the day with me, hanging out, playing - free to roam but choosing stay in close proximity. They are such excellent companions.

On Saturday, I taught two Foundation Classes and watched more good dogs enjoying their people. Watching people become empowered with the essential tools to motivate their dogs to want to learn is highly rewarding for me! I can honestly say - without any hesitation - that these are by far the best results I have had with training people and their dogs. I could not be happier with the progress all the dogs and their people are making.
What's different? This is a foundation class built on what I learned from months of observing, loving and raising three litters of puppies AND from years of taking classes, reading, attending seminars, showing dogs ..... the puppies seem to have somehow solidified years of working hard to learn "stuff" about dogs as fast as I possibly could! They stripped everything down and showed me what was possible with more clarity than I have ever had before.
After class on Saturday afternoon, I found myself thinking long and hard about one of the "puppies" (now two) who lives with a dear friend of mine. My friend is taking my class and also a class with another trainer. She has commented more than once on the trainer's admiration for how quickly her dog learns new things - this makes me so very happy.
As we move towards winter, the frigid season of reflection and darkness, it is exceedingly pleasing to know that I am heading in the right direction

The Power of a Great Foundation: creating a core language for learning PART ONE

I rolled out a new class format this fall. I have competed one round and embarked on a second set of classes yesterday. I am delighted with how dogs and their people are responding to the class content and format. The focus of these classes is on building strong skills for people and dogs in a relatively short period of time: six hours of instruction. Classes are small, I close registration at six dogs. I want people leaving this class feeling empowered with a dog who has better skills than when they started and who they understand better.

As I drove home yesterday from a satisfying morning of teaching dogs and their people, I found myself once again chewing over the common ground between teaching Mathematics to young children and training people and their pets. We elementary school teachers often struggle to empower children in the area of Mathematics. More than any other subject area, it truly requires a strong foundation before children can move on to higher levels of difficulty. A big part of the challenges we face lies in the misconceptions and holes in understanding that emerge when children do not fully grasp the language of Mathematics. It is often difficult to get mathematical terms to "stick" and become part of a child's vocabulary of learning. I think this is also often the case when we attempt to teach people how to train their dogs. It is very easy to make assumptions and to speak to clients using language which we think is common or understood, when it is not.

I have so many ideas on this subject that I can hardly contain myself :) I am going to start by listing my thoughts and hope that I can then expand my thinking in a meaningful fashion.

1) What's my motivation? We lose dogs, pet owners and young students of mathematics when we emphasis the rules over making concrete connections to things that matter to them. An understanding of motivators and how to use them must be explicitly taught to the beings on both ends of the leash and to everyone in our classrooms - and trust me, this is a TALL order!

It is an exciting moment for me as a dog owner when I see my young puppies fully grasp what I have to offer them, every single one of them has needed a different set of motivators. Sometimes the difference are nuanced and sometimes they are hugely different. It is a tremendous thing as a trainer to watch a client fully embrace the power of building, maintaining and expanding meaningful connections. In the classroom, that moment when a math phobic kid decides that you might not be some luny bird teacher telling tales and that this "math stuff" might be okay after all, is GOLDEN.

2) Skill development MATTERS - children must learn basic facts to progress. Pet dog owners DO need a base level of mechanical skills and a basic understanding of how dogs learn to be able to have the well mannered pet they so desire. We teach young children how to add, subtract, divide and multiple and how to do these operations with a high level of speed and fluency. To accomplish this we need a balance of learning tasks. We need to make mathematics meaningful and tie it to the "real world" and we also need to drill the students on math facts. When teaching dogs all the basics: the stationary positions, loose leash walking and a strong recall, we need to provide powerful and meaningful motivators and make compliance with our requests as enjoyable as possible. Some drill in all of these areas of learning is often necessary to build up stamina.

3) Teach ONLY when the learner is paying attention: This is fairly self explanatory in the context of the classroom BUT I had a lightbulb moment on this front yesterday in my Foundation Class. I asked a client to ask their dog to sit. The client, (being a good student), immediately barked out the command "sit" to their unsuspecting dog who was sniffing the wind :) I thought to myself ... well, that was silly Catherine! ... chunk it DOWN! I stopped the client and issued a new set of directions: Say your dog's name (my homework includes explicitly training the dog's name) reward your dog for responding to their name - NOW ask your dog to sit. The results were dramatically different! The language of instruction MATTERS.

4) Building a Tool box for problem solving: We all fail when we don't know what to do and how to seek a solution. Dogs training and teaching young children Mathematics continue to two huge sources in my life for expanding my abilities to problem solve and think on my feet. It is a FANTASTIC rush to crack a problem! As a teacher, the moment of clarity in a student's eyes (canine or human) is a cherished gift for me. Many students, in both areas of my teaching life benefit when I verbally walk through HOW I solved a problem or better yet, how I initially failed and then proceeded to solve a problem using a new set of tools. Teaching students to articulate how they responded to a problem is an  excellent way to strengthen problem solving skills, to uncover misconceptions and to celebrate new realizations.

I have more to say on this subject but I am going to be disciplined and post this. I have challenged myself to post on this blog every week. Instead of getting caught up musing on ideas which then become too huge to write about, I am going to try to take my own advice and keep things short and manageable.

"It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing)" - Duke Ellington

I love music but will be the first to admit that it is a neglected area of my life. I tend to forget about it until someone comes along and reminds me of how magical it is .. or as in the case of this post, I accidentally discover a piece of music and it resonates! So you may very well ask, what does this wonderful old Ellington tune have to do with dogs and dog training?

Lately, more humour, creativity and levity has been steadily making its way into my interactions with all the animals and people I work with. It is wonderful to have a grasp the pure power of invitational PLAY! Real play and playfulness requires letting go of stale notions about what an animal and people MUST do. It necessitates dropping timelines and dictums about which play items are appropriate ...  and to some extent rules must be set aside, at least temporarily. It requires watching, listening, learning and inviting dogs to join you in a game OR asking them if you can join in with theirs. And it is OH SO true that without "that swing"  (a lightness of being) PLAY "don't mean a thing"!

I started to understand play on a more profound level two summers ago when I raised two litters of puppies. Watching the puppies develop and learn to play with each other and the adult dogs in their lives has changed me forever in the best of all possible ways.

I've had a couple of tremendous breakthroughs lately in coaching this concept to clients. I am starting to be able to help people see the power of play and to model playful interactions. It is quite addictive so I am sure that with more practice I will simply get better at teaching the dog/human interactions required in the art of play.

Yesterday, I worked with a lovely six month old sheltie puppy. It was clear to see that his owners adore him but there was a significant breakdown in communication! They were very frustrated because they were unable to "get him to sit" OR to stop biting at their ankles. First time dog owners, these warm hearted people simple did not have sufficient knowledge about how dogs learn to know that pressing down on their young dog's bottom to MAKE him sit was a tremendous invasion of his sheltie sensibilities. What a delight it was to have the skill to easily show them how brilliant their puppy is! Within minutes he was eagerly offering sits and downs for his owners and laughing at all my jokes. Levity, lightness and know how very quickly eradicated the frustrations his people had been feeling. I very much doubt they will label him "stubborn" in the future.

When you go out to train today don't forget "It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing". And remember to learn from the masters ...

Folding Paper and Dog Training
When I was 19, I had a part time job at an excellent daycare, working with four year olds. One memorable  rainy day, I brought a paper airplane book to work. I folded airplanes all afternoon long and the children quietly watched, held spell bound. Later that year, I went to Toronto to visit a friend, bought a book on origami, and spent much of March Break in the Toronto Public Library teaching myself how to fold very complex models of animals. I became hooked on origami. At different points in my teaching career, over the past 26 years, origami has come out of my teaching tool box - to the delight of four year olds to twenty somethings! 

I've done a lot of folding at school over the past few weeks. I used folding the classic paper crane as a vehicle for getting a little group of nine year olds interested in writing. We folded and wrote about folding. Then we took our show on the road and taught Grade two and Grade six how to fold paper cranes. As the children grew in their understanding of the folds and in their ability to write the procedural steps involved with creating the model, they expanded their oral language abilities along with their writing skills. 

Last Friday, I watched my little nine year olds teach the big six graders how to fold the crane. There were a few spots where I needed to jump in and help them teach and I found myself musing on what makes great instruction. 

At this point, I think that as long as someone has; just below to average or above processing abilities, their sight, fingers and is over the age of four, I could teach them how to fold a crane. I can back off and give minimal instruction to students who do not need much instruction. If support is needed, I can say with confidence that I know every pitfall a person could potentially fall into with this model. I have little tricks to make the tricky parts easier, I am alert to where confidence can be lost; I know when the paper will act up! I have smoothed out my instructions over years and years of being asked to repeat my instructions, or worse yet, students giving up. 

Paper is flat, it is yielding, it is one dimensional. Dogs and the people who seek help to understand them, are none of these things. But, as time goes by, to some extent, patterns are emerging.  I find myself able to explain, to smooth out rough patches and to predict where relationships will derail. I am starting to have a large enough inventory of canine and human behaviour lodged in my mind's library that I can make many connections pretty quickly and efficiently at this point. See the dog, see the human, instruct through the lens of experience and always from the heart and it is possible, on the whole, be able to remodel relationships one instruction at a time.

Temperament Vs Training

Thyme the magnificent

This is a recent shot of my wonderful Thyme. Thyme is my partner in crime at school. She spends pretty much every work  day with me, hanging out in my office, and playing frisbee with me and assorted children at recess. Just today, I was on duty and took her out with me. A line up of twelve kids or so formed to throw the frisbee for Thyme. Later on in the day, she helped me to settle down a very angry student. Her judgement with children is impeccable. At this point,she is moving into that rare and fantastical place of assistant in the work she does with me at school. I don't have any idea how, but she just knows how to respond to people.  

She is getting ready to do her first agility trial in a couple of weeks and I am sure she will be great! She just turned two on May 6th. I truly can't imagine being more pleased with a dog or enjoying her more. Routinely, people comment on how well trained she is. It is true that I have invested a lot of (pleasurable) time training my lovely young dog. I am proud of the skills she has. Thyme has been so delightful to train that if she had been my first dog, I would have been in danger of getting a pretty big head! As it is, she is my seventh dog and thankfully, I have had many excellent lessons from animals on just how far my influence on their overall behaviour extends or doesn't :)                                                                             
                                                                     
Thyme's litter and their mother came to live with me when the puppies were one day short of six weeks old. Two years ago, I raised two wonderful litters for breeder friends of mine. I was given my pick of sixteen puppies. What a daunting prospect! I reared the puppies using my friend and mentor, Suzanne Clothier's, enriched rearing method and picked Thyme using my rudimentary understanding of Suzanne's assessment tool CARAT. This was the first time that I had purposely chosen a puppy for myself. I had a tall order to fill! I wanted great physical structure and athleticism. I wanted a dog with a desire to work. I wanted an animal who would enjoy both training in agility and working with children at school. I wanted a social, confident, kind, fun loving dog. I narrowed down my choice to three puppies; two females and a male. I took the litter of eight puppies to many different locations. I worked with them individually. I invited many people into my home and I watched and watched and watched. 

I loved Thyme's self composure and joyful leaping from the day she arrived. I ruled out her sister because she was not overly interested in playing games with me and because she was quite independent. I ruled out her brother mostly because he was a boy but also because he was a loud mouth and had higher arousal then I was looking for for school. He is actually hands down the funniest dog I have ever met and giving him up was very difficult! I also felt that he would be hard to integrate into my existing pack of three dogs. I loved each and every one of those puppies but there was only one Thyme for me.   
                                                                                                                                     
It  is very satisfying when people praise Thyme's nice manners, though I am pleased with her training, I know full well that it is only part of the picture. Train well a dog who has any combination of traits that are not in line with what you want a dog to be able to do and you will improve the animals ability to function in a man made world. You will improve an animal's ability to cope, but no matter what your do ... you will not be able to "make" an unbalanced dog balanced through training. Please do not misunderstand me, a good trainer can do remarkable things even with a worried fearful animal but ... puppies do not come to us as clean slates. 

As I see it, training is layered on temperament. Biddable animals with balanced temperaments who are not afraid are very straight forward to train. They will make their trainer look golden without much effort. Trained well, these animals will easily perform under a wide variety of conditions. Training can only mask weak or unbalanced temperaments  under certain controlled conditions.                                                                                                            

A Tale Of Two Siblings
I did a wonderful in home training on Thursday after school with a new client. His dog was dropped off several months ago at the fabulous local shelter that I work with. We figured out months ago that this dog is a full litter mate to another dog whose owner I had been coaching. The outcomes of Coaching these two siblings ... could not possibly be more different!

The dogs in question are American Bulldog crosses and are currently ten months old. Their temperaments are really quite similar, one is male, and one is female. The male had the advantage of being purchased directly from the "breeder" (very bad backyard breeding situation from what I have been told) while the female puppy was the pup who was abandoned at about five months old and thankfully found her way to the shelter.

Let's call owner number one Suzy and the dog Jack and owner number two Bill and the dog Ellen. Both people are absolutely lovely and so are the dogs.

These are the traits these litter mates share: very persistent, quick to go into high arousal, high predatory chase, love mouthing/biting/tugging, very visual, biddable, capable of self modulating WHEN the rules are clear, sociable - Ellen needs more time than Jack to get to know a new person but quickly becomes very interactive, both dogs go into higher arousal with touch.

When I worked with Suzy, I told her repeatedly how brilliant Jack is and she could see that! No question she loved him. She was having a lot of trouble with Jack mouthing and biting her. I made a number of recommendations, nothing I suggested seemed to work. I really felt sorry for Suzy. I tried giving her a variety of training tools. The more I spoke to her and the more I saw her with Jack the more certain I became that Jack needed to be in a new home. Suzy was afraid of Jack. Jack was mouthing Suzy. When this behaviour started Suzy was simply not capable of telling Jack to knock it off! It was evident, even to Suzy, that he thought the biting was a huge game. I wanted to teach Jack how to tug and retrieve as an outlet for his high arousal and a way to teaching him self control, I also wanted Suzy to be able to tell Jack in no uncertain terms that this behaviour was unacceptable. When I worked Jack, he responded brilliantly to the training and he understood that mouthing me was not on the menu. When Suzy tried .. no luck. Her body language screamed of fear, "just don't bite me!" She was saying in every fibre of her being. I racked my brain for a training solution but in the end, with reluctance, I recommended that she let me and my extra-ordinary friend at the shelter help her to find Jack a new home. Suzy was pretty determined to keep Jack. She had had dogs all her life and did not want to give up on Jack. In the end, she did find Jack a new more suitable home. Jack and Suzy are both wonderful beings but they were not a wonderful combination.  

Now on to Bill and Ellen. Bill is a very young man, quiet with a calm assertive body language. Ellen does mouth occasionally, but not the way Jack was. Ellen is a wild banshee like her brother. Much like her brother, she responded splendidly to training using a tug toy and a retrieve. Trainers like me who enjoy dog sports and training adore temperaments like this, dogs who just won't quit but there is no question that they are often a disaster in the average person's home. Bill has gaols for Ellen, he'd like to certify  her as a search and rescue dog. Bill has the skills on the human side of the leash to do this work. Based on what I've seen of Ellen, I'd say there is a  pretty good chance that in Ellen, he has a dog who can do the work. Bill took to the training techniques I showed him like a duck to water! I am really looking forward to seeing them again.

Bill is new to dog ownership and dog training but there is no question in my mind that has the temperament to not only do a great job with Ellen but to have a lifetime on learning from dogs.

Photo lessons

They say a picture says a thousand words. About three years ago, I bought myself a Nikon D90 and started learning how to use it. I had one central goal. In an effort to better understand how they move and interact, I wanted to view dogs through the lens of a fast camera. What a powerful tool my Nikon is proving to be!

Several weeks ago, on a beautiful walk with my friend Susan and our dogs, I got lucky and captured this exchange between Thyme and our friend’s Brittany Spaniel, Henry.

 

If you saw this shot in isolation, you may very well come to the conclusion that my gorgeous, utterly socially appropriate dog is aggressive towards other dogs. This single snap shot shows a great deal of effective communication between two animals who have known each other for well over a year. Thyme is telling Henry to get lost! What would you need to see to know whether or not Thyme was a reactive dog or not?

Take a look at these pictures snapped on the walk before this picture was taken. Look at what Henry is up to!

If Henry were a person, he would probably wear loud Hawaiian shirts,  speak very quickly, be a little too loud and stand a little too close to people. He would run, not walk wherever he was going. People would love his happy, high jinxs but he would push tolerant people with personalities like Thyme’s until they had had enough! Eventually they would tell him to BACK OFF! He would take this information only semi-seriously. He would try really hard to change a little bit ... but he would struggle and be back to his brash ways in no time :)

My Friend Sarah's cool shot of me and Rock

Welcome to my blog. I plan on using this space to explore some of my great loves in life: dogs, photography, gardens and teaching school. I live with four gorgeous dogs in a  spectacular spot with woods all around and a lake close by. It can get a little lonely in the winter but it is pretty much heaven from May to the end of November and sometimes beyond. I teach elementary school for a living, train my own magical dogs often, other peoples' intermittently, try to help out at the local shelter assessing dogs, tend my garden in a highly amateur fashion and take lots of pictures in an effort to learn how to be a half decent photographer. 

After a couple years off, I am rediscovering competitive agility. As I work through foundation training up not one but TWO young dogs, I find myself musing a lot on one of my friend Suzanne Clothier's elemental questions. Suzanne challenges students to ask dogs, (amongst other questions); "how is it for you?" This sure is a fun question to ask two year old Thyme and ten month old Rock! Their answer is almost always, "Excellent". They love to work and face the world unafraid, with curiosity and a desire to engage with novelty. What a wonderful way to go through life. 
My house is really split down the middle when it comes to responses to novelty. Nell (8yrs) and Figaro (4yrs) often find new things or even change in routine frightening. When I asked either one of them, "how is it for you?" - they often had answers I did not want to hear. Learning, over time to listen to Nell, Figaro and the dogs that went before them has taught me numerous brilliant lessons in really listening and responding quickly to what my dogs have to say. I truly cringe when thinking back on my poor listening skills of the past. 

The whole process of learning how to "listen" and honour this powerful question hit a critical turning point two years ago when I started to trial my young tervuren Figaro in agility. Figaro has an illustrious pedigree, his mother was on the Italian FCI world team and his father attained a shutzhund 3 title. I only have him because a wonderful friend of mine, who is a well respected breeder, approached me to import him with her on a co-own. Figaro is a truly lovely dog. He is beautiful, easy to live with and extremely affectionate towards his inner circle of dogs and people. He is also often worried and uneasy with new people and always unsure in new locations. You may very well ask the following questions: Did you socialize him when he was you? Did you take him to many new places? Did I ever! He came to school with me for his first year. He arrived on July 1 and accompanied me to the AAC Nationals in Ottawa and to New York for a dog trainers seminar. Were there early signs that he was an environmentally sensitive dog? Yes, now looking back, I can point to MANY small situations when Figaro said, "this is not working for me." But sometimes what he had to say was subtle! My listening skills needed honing. Training was slow initially. He was not toy crazy, he needed to "think". In hindsight, I know I inadvertently put pressure on him. He is a very socially sensitive dog and is deeply concerned about space. It took some thinking and some problem solving but we figured things out and by the time Figaro was eighteen months old training at home was going beautifully! Figaro had become a retrieving tugging fiend ... at home. He was also becoming an enthusiastic agility dog and a great little heeler. After doing some work in new locations, we started trialling. Figaro truly said loud and clear, "this is not good for me!" Compared to many other baby dogs trialling, nothing dramatic happened. He did not flee the ring or launch on barking lunging tirades, but he was not the happy dog I knew at home. Quite frankly, it was heart breaking for me to watch him worrying. I am quite confident that I could have persisted and had a well trained, competent agility partner. I am also became increasingly confident that he would never find the whole trialling process truly enjoyable so I made a decision that he would be a home town backyard champion. What a great lesson this dog has taught me. He set the bar for "listening" and defined for me the level of comfort I want my dogs to have in order to ask them to trial. 

Fabulous Figaro at home where he is most joyful!

Rock and Figaro at play