The Katzke Dog Diary

Yet another article on why you shouldn’t take your TV’s approach to dog training…

I’d get off the soapbox, but I can see so much from here.

As part of my ongoing education campaign against the drugs that veterinarians regularly give their patients in handfuls without telling them the risks they’re running (i.e., Previcox), I present this dolittler.com article about the risks of NSAIDs. Humans can eat NSAIDs like candy. Pets cannot!

Henry’s going under for an extraction next Wednesday after he broke his #204 canine (upper left) when attempting to bust out of his crate. For the near future, days when I might need to crate him are definitely ‘work from home’ days. We couldn’t do the extraction right away because his CBC showed a high white blood cell count — which a physical exam confirmed. His stomach was a bit distended, hot, and grumbly. It probably would’ve gone unnoticed otherwise, but anesthesia would have been a huge risk with the infection like that. This is why you always pay for the pre-surgery blood panel! Every time!

In the meantime, he’s not enjoying life that much. I’m soaking his food and trying to make life as pleasant as possible for him. He WANTS to chew on stuff, but his mouth hurts too bad for it most of the time.

After deciding he needed a ‘job’ … I’m hoping to start volunteering with a local volunteer search and rescue team. They provide resources for people who think they have dogs who would fit in; considering that he’s bred to track and hunt and he ‘tracks’ here in the neighborhood on walks (not to mention tracks where I go and tries to follow me through doors and walls…) I think he’d be well-suited seeing as he’s already mastering most aspects of off leash obedience. If not, the volunteering will still be worthy for me and I’ll gain a lot of training knowledge from people who have to work with and lead their dogs.

A link was posted on a behavior mailing list that I monitor to this PDF about “leadership vs. dominance in dog training”. After some intense discussions with some other dog owners who can’t seem to stop using “alpha dog” and “dominant” for the life of them… well, please forward the link on.

Edit: A few more resources:

• THE DOG WHISPERER CONTROVERSY: Dog Psychology, Flawed From It’s Foundation
• (pdf) The Effects of Combining Positive and Negative Reinforcement During Training, Nicole A. Murrey, MS Behavior Analysis UNT

Most of my internet time recently has been sucked up by my garden, but while researching a Roomba last night I couldn’t help but notice this chuckle-worthy picture:

Oops indeed...

That plant happens to be a cyclamen, which is poisonous to humans and dogs. If that cute little long-haired dachshund had munched on what he killed, he wouldn’t be a very happy camper.

Since spring’s here and the nurseries are packed, here’s a quick reminder to know what you’re buying and know if your plants are dog safe or not!

Lee Mannix presented a seminar today to the rescue group I volunteer with. The following are my own recollections, gleanings and impressions and definitely do not represent my foster, my training beliefs and methodologies, or those of any group that I’m affiliated with.

The seminar was mainly aimed at people who are involved with or leading a rescue or shelter. There were representatives from a number of area shelters, mostly Brazos Valley or Houston-area groups. As such, it focused mainly on places where the rescues can make a big behavioral difference: Intake, fostering, and placement. Lee usually presents seminars that are ten days in length — what we got today is a drop in the bucket compared to the usual full education and in-depth examples that he usually provides. I’m going to cover in broad terms the topics we discussed and a note or two about anything I liked or thought was poignant. There’s no way in how that I can cover everything that we talked about. I also had to leave briefly to help deal with one of the rescue’s puppies, who received a small snakebite to the lip that swelled up something fierce over the course of the day… With all those grains of salt presented…

Lee’s stock in trade is common sense. (I’m referring to him as Lee here, by the way, because as he put it, “Mr. Mannix is my daddy.”) It’s the things you don’t want to hear. It’s the things your dog really doesn’t want to hear, because he had a great deal going before Lee came along. It’s the things that only, frankly, a drunk irishman who likes to brawl would say to your face. If you liked the movie “Boondock Saints”, you would like Lee’s speaking and training style. lIf you’re curious, yes, Lee is apparently newly divorced. Word has it that his dog house has heat, cold Shiner Bock, and satellite TV.

On the political spectrum, he stands right smack dab in the middle between “Beat the dog till it’s dead, and then you’ll have a dog that is perfectly obedient.” … and “give your dog anything you want like it’s a child in the California school system.” He’s mainly concerned with results and doing no lasting harm in the process of getting there. In case you’re curious, he’s extremely critical of Caesar Milan and has specific reasons why he’s critical. (That’s an entirely different blog post.) All in all, I’m comfortable with his stance, which seems soundly placed in the middle of “common sense” and “last time I did that, I got bit.” He has the scars to prove the bites, too, which I think makes some people uncomfortable. Frankly, I have some of the same telltale V-shaped scars on my arms, and I only handle my two and whatever strays I’ve come across.

The first points that he made were that if a dog has a medical issue or a nutritional issue, you’re not going to get anywhere behaviorally. The dog’s life has to be sound in those two areas before you can even begin to diagnose or address or evaluate a behavioral issue. The take-away for shelters and owners in the audience is that when you’re faced with an issue, look in those two places before you spend a lot of resources on training.

Self-congratulatory note: I had arrived at the same conclusion, and Lee’s #1 and #2 on his list of foods — Innova and Wellness Simple Solutions — are what my kids get. We spent about twenty or thirty minutes talking food. Lee cited some recent studies that show soy products as one of the drivers of aggression in young human men, and some other studies that showed correlations between other ingredients and behavior issues. I had arrived at the medical issue point myself after working with Eo and Henry at different points in their treatment. Before we got Henry’s diet and digestive issues solved, he didn’t make any improvement. Eo currently is only dependably well-behaved when she’s on painkillers above and beyond her normal NSAID.

After we discussed those items, we started to touch on some of the ways to start examining and correcting behavior issues. One of the things that Lee said that I’m having a hard time with is the idea that an animal like a dog would more naturally want to be alone than as part of a pack, and that for this reason all siblings should be separated. I agree that siblings can develop in unhealthy ways, but I think that dogs naturally seek out companions that complement their strengths and weaknesses. The problem with going against Lee’s point of view is that he has an answer. His counterpoint is that of course humans and dogs form groups that balance their strengths and weaknesses… but aren’t the things we’re trying to train into or out of our dogs places where they’re weak? Argh. Now you know why I’m single and have dogs: It’s hard living with someone who’s always quickly and loudly right.

On Breedism, Lee pointed out that the most vicious dog in the state of Texas is the Chihuahua. Nationally, Golden Retrievers are the most often put down for serious bites. I’ll note my previous point about Jacques Chirac’s vicious Maltipoo. Lee predicted that he would begin to see an excessive number of Labradoodles within the next several years. He did acknowledge that some breeds or lineages of breeds had a predisposition to be aggressive in a fashion that accelerated quickly. Frankly, this is common sense. It’s worth repeating common sense to people who rescue in areas that have significant dog fighting populations, because you get, frankly, biased easily against the breeds that are most used and forget that some of the common household breeds can bite too.

One of the interesting parts of the day was the demos where he looked at four dogs with varying degrees of issues. He demonstrated a technique for making friends with a chihuaha that would guard aggressively. One of the things he was very sure to do was to make sure the dog was not hurt — it has several spinal injuries and bad hocks. This is internally consistent with Lee’s “do no harm” philosophy (and his critiques of the way Caesar Milan operates). Back on the other paw, Lee critiqued Caesar Milan for not showing a training progression all the way through (including the failures) to anyone during either seminars, training classes, or television programs. Lee got into things with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who would growl in an attempt to get it’s way in certain situations, and when his first attempts failed to create a change, he declined to press it further. Again — it made sense, but it was kind of a pot telling the kettle it was a touch warm in the room…

Overall, the only criticism that I can muster is that Lee seems to move too fast sometimes. By move too fast, I mean that he’s too quick to apply Occam’s Machete to the forest of information, and might be prone to throwing the puppy out with the poo, to butcher another cliche. I wonder how often he has to back up A LOT and try another approach. I suppose I’m prone to recognizing this because I’ve recently tried so hard to avoid this same behavior in myself. I can’t really condone or criticize it in someone else, especially someone else who seems to be about as well-adjusted as your average irishman can get…

All that being said, I’ll probably have more to report in the future. I plan to take some of Henry’s anxiety issues to him. For the record, Eo bit Henry again tonight but I’m 99% certain it was her medical problems. Yesterday, I felt her shoulders crunch as if they were beginning to degenerate too; more on that later this week after some X-rays. In the meantime, we’ll continue to manage it the way we have been, by not letting her and Henry share the same space.

Apologies for the short notice, but I thought it was pretty much full. If you’re in the area, this is well worth the drive and day spent.

Lee Mannix, a professional canine behaviorist from Austin, TX, is presenting a behavior seminar for people who are involved with canine rescue in College Station, TX entitled “Fostering Success: Overcoming the Challenges of Rescue Dogs” in the Research Park area.

More details are available from the Impact Animal Foundation website.

You can tell my dogs are from the south. They don’t respond to “get out!” or “get back!” — they only respond to “GIT!“

I’ve had a tough time finding dog beds I like. It seems that they’re all very cheaply made (and they cost $80), or they’re made with all kinds of danglies and edges and tags that I know Eo is going to chew off right away. On the other hand, Eo needs something to lay on because her hips cause her constant discomfort, especially in cold weather. This leaves me with a rough choice — pay over a hundred dollars for something I’m pretty sure she can destroy right away, or let her go without, or … make something myself!

Last year, I bought myself a Singer sewing machine (link goes to the 7467; I bought the 7464 but that one doesn’t seem to be available.) It’s one or two notches above very basic, and so far I haven’t hit anything that it can’t sew that easily. I bought a walking foot because one of my goals in buying the machine was to produce items for the dogs — and dogs, especially mine, LOVE soft, fragile surfaces… and really don’t care for surfaces (like, say, kevlar reinforced titanium) that will actually stand up to the abuse they dish out.

The entirety of the planning I did was to take one square yard of fake sheep fleece and one square yard of ripstop Nylon plus a few linear yards of fake suede (which is pretty tough stuff), and start sewing. I figured I’d quilt the top of the fleece and nylon to strengthen the fleece, and would make the sides and bottom out of the suede, which is pretty tear resistant by itself and is skid resistant on our wood floors. In my mind, I would end up with a dog bed that was a bit less than a yard on each side, which would be large enough for Eo to lay comfortably on in her crate, and hopefully tough enough to resist her chewing.

I started by trying to freehand feed the two layers through. This … didn’t work so well.

I ended up cutting the edges down and after two or three tries figured out that if I pin the ever-loving crud out of it, I can keep the two layers from stretching at rates that are too different. Sweet. I sewed around the edges of the remaining fabric in as close to a square as I could get given my limited experience, and then started to quilt the middle of it into squares at a 45 degree angle.

And done quilting! You can see how it looks on the front and back in this shot.

The next experiment was figuring out how to put the zipper on. I didn’t want it to become a chew toy — Eowyn can crush ANYTHING with her jaws, up to and including metal pipes. Taking a page from some of my old rainy-weather gear, which keeps the zippers covered in various ways to keep them from leaking, I created a pocket for the zipper head and bottom to fit into. Clever human fingers can easily get the zipper head, but claws and teeth SHOULD have a tougher time.

It took me maybe two days of working with it part time to attach the edges, and then another day to attach the bottom.

Given a few minutes with some scissors and some bed foam I got at Tar-jay (I can get bed or camping foam cheaper there than I can get upholstery foam from the sewing or craft store.), I quickly cut two squares and stuffed them in — but it needs three. The bed’s about three inches high on the sides. That, by the way, is the one dimension that actually came out as planned!

My original planned size was about 34 inches on each side, which would give Eo plenty of room to lay. Since it actually came out about ten inches shorter than that on each side, the bed became Henry’s. He wasn’t so sure of it at first…

But he warmed up quickly enough.

Since it became Henry’s bed, the next stop is going to be to waterproof it (or at least the foam inside…) so that I can put it in his crate with him and just shake it out when he pees on it!

Total cost: $25 in materials or so, and I can make two whole beds out of the materials that I got. That’s way cheaper than any other bed I could find or buy.

The dogs have an amazing ability to stick to a schedule. It’s like they both have little alarm clocks in their heads, and as soon as the clock ticks over to 7am — bounce! Up they go, ready for whatever the day may bring. As soon as the clock ticks past 10pm, Henry starts sawing logs at an obnoxious volume and Eo will sit and stare at me until I put her to bed.

To me, the natural rythms of the dogs’ needs are one of the best associated benefits of dog ownership. To fulfill their own needs, the mutts enforce a schedule on me. My natural tendency is to get up somewhere around noon and go to bed whenever my eyelids get too heavy to support conscious thought. This isn’t the best schedule for a number of reasons. It keeps me from going to work on time and going to bed in time to wake up rested.

As soon as the sun comes up, the dogs are ready for breakfast… which leads me to get up and eat too. As soon as the sun goes down, they’re whining and putting their heads in my lap for dinner… which leads me to notice that maybe I should feed myself. Bedtime isn’t an abstract concept, it’s bedtime, with all three of us curled up in various corners of the bedroom. It’s another reinforcement of the symbiotic nature of the relationship between dog and human.