So Proud of Poppy...

My day, in fact my month or two was made today when one of my clients described her recent visit to the vet for her Dobermann female's check up as a positive experience with the veterinary staff praising her for her handling of her dog!  

Poppy is a young rescue Dobermann who is a highly strung and feels the need to bark at other dogs that come a little too close. There's no aggression there, just a bit of panic (in much the same I do with spiders that run towards me!) but we've found her some friends in our Walk Club and she's doing marvellously.

The only way this could ever have happened though is her owner learning how to be calm and confident in any situation, which has made the world of difference to Poppy.

When Poppy and her owner went to the vets last week, the staff were really understanding and allowed them to wait outside for their appointment instead of the behavioural boiling pot that that the small waiting room would have been for Poppy.  They then showed even more understanding when they blocked the view of another dog with a large towel as Poppy went through.

Even better, they praised Poppy's owner for her calm and confident handling skills!  I always praise owners for their improving skills but it's even more pleasing when other professionals notice and comment on it too.

So, a big congratulations to Poppy & Ruth, and an even bigger thank you to AlphaPets Veterinary Clinic in Maidstone (I think!) for displaying a terrific understanding of canine behaviour!

Resource Anxiety

I have a theory forming, based on suspicions I've had for a while (and probably blogged about before).

Cutting straight to the chase, I believe that making a Dog wait for their food creates frustration / tension and therefore they get to it in a state of heightened arousal...

It's something we all teach puppy owners to do, to use the food bowl as an opportunity for training, to teach that the owner provides and doesn't take away in order to reduce the likelihood of food guarding.

However, what if the very action of mucking about with a Dog's primary resource is creating the very tension that leads to anxiety that leads to guarding?

Should we simply be teaching people to leave a Dog in peace while they're eating?

The latest reason for my doubts...

I've recently started controlling my foster Dog's access to his bowl; making him wait for his food for a few seconds behind the indoor gate and then releasing him.

I started this simply as an opportunity for a training session. He'd never had a problem with me or our other dogs walking past him while eating before.

Since we've been implementing the sit-and-wait, his arousal levels have escalated at mealtimes and his resource anxiety has resulted in full-blown guarding with him leaving the food bowl to display Level 2 bites on three occasions, once to me walking around in the kitchen and twice to our other Dog walking past him. Neither of these incidents would normally have solicited this kind of behaviour.  I believe there is a strong element of barrier frustration going on here too, with him wanting to charge the gate the minute the food goes down.

Needless to say we have stopped the sit-and-wait and have gone back to just letting him go straight to his food and things have calmed down but he is still a little resource-anxious.

I was considering impending a food resource-guarding programme but have a strong feeling this will simply be perceived as mucking about with feeding time and we will simply be increasing the intensity of his anxiety.

I'll update so watch this space, but this has been another case for me that confirms my suspicions and is leading me to the affirmation "LEAVE YOUR DOG AND HIS DINNER ALONE".

A Different Form of Abuse?

I've been busy lately - REALLY busy!  So apologies for not blogging before now.


Before I start, I will state that I will NOT be naming the organisation concerned as I refuse to slander any organisation that actually does good work (which this one generally does).


I was at a pet show event doing charity work recently, working on just one of many charity stands doing a great job of promoting what they do and how they help people and animals.


On my travels around the show, I started to notice dogs showing signs of stress.  Now a big event open to the public is stressful for most dogs to some extent, but these dogs were supposed to be used to and enjoy human interaction, or they wouldn't have been there, right?  Well as the day wore on, these dogs were being surrounded by members of the public, getting smacked by children across the head and all over their bodies.  Now some of these dogs dealt with this okay and just accepted the attention (it must be noted that I didn't observe ANY dog positively enjoying the attention), however some of them started to show extreme avoidance behaviours and when these were ignored by their owners, started to behaviourally shut down.


An example was a large breed dog I was able to observe over a period of hours as I was situated close to where the dog was 'working'.


The owner was either oblivious to this dog's behavioural state or chose to ignore it; whatever the reason, this dog went through over 3 hours of misery.  The first sign that the dog wasn't coping was avoidance behaviours, whenever people came up to him he turned his head away, licking his lips, slow blinking of the eyes, lowering of the ears, tightening of the skin on his head and shutting his mouth tight.  Whenever he did this, his owner would hold his head in place for people to pat and stroke, many of them small children.


As his avoidance signals were obviously being ignored, he then started to actually turn his body around when he saw people approaching.  Again, his owner would merely turn him around and encourage people to come and say hello to him.


Then the dog started to hide behind his owner when people approached, showing real signs of distress by now to anybody that remotely understands dogs.  Again, his owner ignored this and merely dragged him back out for people to surround and begin their assault on his head.


Then this dog merely shut down.  He was in a severe state of distress, by now panting excessively, and didn't even attempt to move away.  The owner seemed to take this as a sign that the dog was now enjoying the attention.


This dog had to go through this for over 3 hours without any kind of break, with literally hundreds of people coming up to him and assaulting him (from his point of view) while being forced to endure the experience by an owner that really should have known better.


The crucial thing here is that this dog was probably trained only to accept the CONTROLLED attention of a few people at a time, not the continuous and uncontrolled onslaught of the general public and their children.  It is only due to this dog's incredibly tolerant nature that he didn't descend into displaying aggressive behaviours to try and control the stimuli (people) that were causing him distress.


What his owner should have done is identify her dog's stress the moment he started turning his head away from people and taken him to 'escape' into a wide open area or outside where he wasn't crowded.  Then if she returned, she should have controlled the amount of people coming up to him to a level that the dog had been previously trained to accept, just something simple like 'just one at at time please!!'.  If the dog was still displaying stress signals he should then have been removed from the public area and not return to the stand.


My point here is that this dog may well have been an excellent dog to bring to schools, hospitals or other similar environments, but he couldn't cope with the sheer onslaught of the general public at this kind of event.


This wasn't the most depressing thing I witnessed however (unbelievably).  


I couldn't bear to watch another dog go through this trauma so when the same stand had a different dog showing exactly the same behaviours I advised the show organiser and they arranged for the vet on call to examine the (toy breed) dog.  


I observed this vet smack the dog's head a few times, (affectionate patting?), smack it's rump a few times (more affectionate patting?) and merely ask the owner some questions. She didn't remain around to observe the dog during intense periods of public interest.  She then said the dog was 'fine' and left.


I was absolutely appalled as I had to watch this poor dog endure more stressful, forced interactions with the hundreds of people that came over to him.


It has to be said that there were also a few dogs that genuinely seemed to enjoy the human interaction, but these weren't subjected to the same kind of sheer numbers of people that the others were (specific, unusual breeds always draw a bigger crowd).


It dawned on me that this kind of abuse is not recognised at the moment.  We all recognise the distress a dog goes through in a car on a hot day, or being left alone for hours at a time, or being hit or kicked.  What about the BEHAVIOURAL stress that a dog goes through?  Just because a tolerant dog that would never turn to aggression to repel the stimulus that is causing him stress (human interaction), does that mean we should ignore the stress it's under?


There are patrols in dog show car parks to break into cars where dogs are suffering, there are legal processes to intervene if an animal is being subjected to being left for hours at a time or being hit or kicked; what about for the stress that demonstrator dogs may go through on stands at shows?  

Because a dog is incredibly tolerant and will not resort to aggression seems to currently mean it can be subjected to hours of intense human attention without consideration for its behavioural well-being.

Next time you're at a show where there are dogs on stands where the public are encouraged to interact with the dog, just stand and watch for a while.  Look for signs of avoidance, however small, and watch to see who the handler is being more attentive to; the humans - or their (supposedly) best friend...