A thief or a wannabe service dog...???

Imagine a chilly evening late in September.
The weather just beginning to turn cool; leaves just beginning to fall.
You decide a hot bath will warm you nicely before bed.
You turn the water on as hot as you can, undress, settle into the tub with the curtain drawn around you.
After a relaxing soak, just before your skin achieves a state of pruniness, you decide to get out.
You carefully step out of the tub, bracing yourself to feel the cool air again.
You look around and realize someone had played a cruel trick.
Someone has stolen your clothes...skivies and all.

You pad down the hall toward the living room, leaving a trail of water drops behind you, where you ultimately find your clothes.
Pants on the couch, shirt in the doorway, undies on the floor.
Who would do such a thing?

Enter suspect: A slender, 50 lb dog with a brassiere hanging from her mouth.
Could this be your culprit?
But before you have the chance to fully form the question, she playfully tosses your unmentionables in the air and catches them.

Perhaps she is not a thief?
Perhaps she thought she was helping?
Perhaps she's an aspiring assistance dog?
But can it really be called "assistance" if its not helpful?

15 minutes of fame!

Mika's stats from the weekend's dock diving competition are in today's Examiner...

http://www.examiner.net/news/x1789521622/VIDEO-Blue-Springs-Fall-Fun-Festival-is-a-dog-gone-good-time

Check her out....

Thanks to the Examiner for catching this great shot of my girl!

Mika Malinois, Top Gun

On Saturday Mika competed in her first official DockDogs competition, held at the Blue Springs Fall Festival in Blue Springs, MO. There, she entered in the Extreme Vertical (EV) event.

In EV, a dog lines up no more than 20 feet from the edge of the dock. When cued by the handler, the dog runs to the edge of the dock, jumps up and out over a clear water pool to fetch a soft rubber dummy that is suspended 8 feet out and anywhere from 4.5 to 8 feet high, depending on the skill level of the dog.

Mika entered the competition with the rubber dummy suspended at 5'4" and continued to successfully dive at 5'6", 5'8", 5'10", 6', 6'2", 6'4", 6'6". Mika attempted 6'8" but missed and ended in 2nd place in the Top Gun level with 6'6" as her personal best. The 1st place jumper won the event at 6'8", beating Mika by only 2 inches.

While this is Mika's first event with DockDogs, last month she competed in a Splash Dogs event where she took 1st place in her first competition ever. In that event her top jump was 6'2".

Even though she didn't take the blue ribbon yesterday, I couldn't be more proud. She raised her personal best by 4", formed a fan base from the spectators (including a crowd of police officers), and as her handler I did a much better job keeping her muscles warmed up and loose.

Following the Splash Dogs event in August, I've been concerned about her ability participate in the sport because she was very stiff and favored her right leg for weeks. Yesterday with stretching and massage incorporated into her pre and post competition routine, I am happy to report she's showing no signs of stiffness or strain.

We are looking forward to building on what we've learned this year and coming back strong for next year's dock diving season.  I just hope it doesn't all go to her head...

Did Somebody Say Birthday?

You cannot sing "Happy Birthday" in my house if you don't have a treat to offer the the dogs. After years of spoiling the pups with a special meal and toy on their birthdays, the song is synonymous with "reward time!"

I remember the first time we sang "Happy Birthday" for my dad after we'd had Klaus for about a year, not realizing the dogs had such a strong association formed about the song. By the time we got the first bar sung the dogs began to frantically run around looking for the treat they just knew was sure to come. Even though it was dad's special day and not the pups', I didn't want to lessen their response by ignoring their desperate search for a treat, so I scrambled to indulge them.

Admittedly I was spoiling them, but so often in our communication with dogs we teach them cues only to turn around and poison the meaning of the cues (Ex. - Teaching a dog to potty outside but then ignoring him while he sits at the back door in an attempt to alert you he needs to "go out". Over time he will quit trying to cue you that he needs to go out and instead find another place to relieve himself).

For my dogs, I want to maintain the purity of the birthday song as a cue for great things to come. It's rare to have a truly pure cue. When you have one, as in the case of the birthday song, the intensity of the dog's response is so strong. Of course the dogs were expecting a treat; they've never heard the song without a yummy reward to follow!

Birthdays are not an everyday occurrence, so in my house we choose to maintain the meaning of the birthday song for the dogs by making sure we have treats for all the dogs before we sing, regardless of whose birthday. Or, in a pinch, we send the pups outside before we break into song.

Happy Birthday, Baby Boy!

Klaus is 8 today and just as precious as the day I found him running in 6 lanes of traffic with 2 broken legs nearly 7 years ago.

I have seen tons of stray dogs over the years, many I could not help, but with Klaus I never questioned if I could help this dog.  I just saw him and I felt compelled to act. 

Procuring Klaus from the streets was as easy a rescue mission as anyone could ask for.  I simply threw open the car door and called him to me.  I hadn't even unbuckled my seatbelt when he hopped into my car, onto my lap, and immediately rested his head on my bosom with a sigh.  It's been true love ever since.

It is Klaus that set in motion my passion for all things dog.  With him I took my first dog training class.  Because of him I began to read books about dogs; learn about legislative issues that impact dogs and dog owners; visit dog parks; take photos of dogs; dream about working with dogs.

Have a special day, Baby K!  I love you!

"...Completely and Innocently Selfish"

Mika is my 18-month old Belgian Malinois, and like most Malinois she is so full of drive it manifests itself in everything she does. She doesn't do anything mildly; every move she makes, whether pursuing a ball or licking my face, is filled with intensity of purpose.

From the moment she wakes, she unashamedly seeks to satisfy her own interests. The whole world is for her and it never occurs to her that my favorite pair of boots she's set her sites on is not for the sole purpose of her chewing delight. And even when she's gracious enough to let me pry the boots from her steal-trap jaw, it's only because she thinks she'll get some other reward in its place.

A human who lived life the same way my Mika does would be perceived as narcissistic, but dogs operate in an amoral mindset; they lack the social constructs that make selfishness wrong. Jean Donaldson put it best in her book, Culture Clash, when she said, "dogs are completely and innocently selfish." Unfortunately in an age where people have pets as substitute children, its difficult for people to recognize that dogs are selfish creatures, and that's okay. Instead we tend to assign human qualities to our pets and hold them to human standards.

Dogs don't think the way that humans do and our failure to recognize this in our day-to-day interactions with dogs is a huge failing on our part. If we see dogs as having human-like qualities, then when our dogs do something we don't like we tend to rationalize things in human terms and this usually leads us to feel like the dog knows better, that the offense was a personal affront, that the dog looks guilty. This line of thinking tends to elicit a desire to punish the dog. But the truth is the dog was neither vindictive in her actions nor did she feel guilty. Her brain isn't hardwired to feel those things and punishing her for acting on feelings she doesn't really posses is, well, confusing at best, if not an abuse of control.

The classic example of this is the dog who soils the carpet while his owner is at work. The owner comes home, finds the mess, and punishes the dog. The dog perceives a change in the owners demeanor, and fearing the punishment to come (since it's not the first time his owner's acted this way) will offer a "conciliatory" look in an attempt to quell the owners negative reaction. The owner perceives the dog's "look" as guilt and therefore believes the dog knows better, that the "accident" is not really an accident but instead a malicious act. "Why does she keep doing this? She knows better!"

The truth is, if there is a break-down between what you want the dog to do and how the dog is actually behaving, the break down is with you, the human. The dog is either:

1. Not completely trained to understand the behavior in the context in which you have asked her to preform it.
2. The dog is unmotivated and needs a more high-value reward to work for.
3. The environment is too distracting and your expectations are too high.

In the later case, distractions can be overcome with more work on 1 & 2 (practicing in a variety of environments building up to high distraction and working for more meaningful rewards).

I am the first person to admit to loving my dogs as though they are my babies, but I know at the end of the day I have nobody to blame for my dog's behavior--good or bad--but myself. Even when it's my favorite shirt she just ripped to shreds!!!