Another day, another dog fight

Her Majesty and I were in the elevator yesterday, going out to pee. We go out to pee very frequently these days, on account of her new obsession with pissing on her bed.

Anyway. The elevator stops on an intermediate floor, and a guy gets in. Then, Thor gets in.

Thor is an SPCA dog, I'm not sure if he's still being fostered or if his foster human adopted him. In any case, the SPCA identified him as a "pitbull cross". Because the SPCA here knows a total of five breeds: pitbull, shepherd, lab, shitzu and bichon. In reality Thor looks absolutely nothing like any of the above. He looks exactly like a Brittany spaniel, though a little larger. Like maybe 60 lbs instead of 40. But then, many dogs grow way larger than their breed standards. In any case, Thor looks like a big burly Brittany spaniel. And he's quite a personable creature, but he must have got into a dog fight before because every time his human sees another dog, she freaks out and wrestles Thor away. I don't think that's the best way to socialise him, really, but nobody asked for my opinion.

In any case, Thor was loose in the hallway while his human did who knows what, and he ran into the elevator and straight to Her Majesty, and pinned her in the corner. I don't think he had any hostile intentions, but Tinky-Winky freaked out on him, of course, so immediately it sounds like a major dog fight is going on. And I don't care for dogs freaking out Her Majesty, so I immediately grabbed him by the scruff with both hands (good thing there was no room for him to maneuver in the elevator) and yanked him away. The guy who had just got in the elevator took over, and between the two of us, we got him out of the elevator just as fast as he got in.

The funny thing is, Her Majesty obviously didn't see that we humans manhandled Thor out the door, so she figured she had scared him away with her Mighty Jaws of Death, and she was thoroughly pleased with the whole adventure. I don't think he even touched her, really, much less did her any harm.

But the moral is, if you get a dog, you should learn to break up a dog fight. Once upon a time when I used to read other dog owners' blogs, before I got aggravated with the Carebear ignorance of it all, all the dog owners who read each other's blogs freaked out over some dog fight that got in the news, and tried to brainstorm what to do in case your dog is attacked. One of them had once scared a dog off by waving a clipboard, but the others had no idea whatsoever. So again, here is how you break up a dog fight: use your prehensile hands to grab one or both dogs, and separate them. Seriously. Don't stand there screaming. Don't pull on the losing dog's leash. Just grab the dogs and separate them. Typically the safest place to grab a fighting dog is the tail or a hind leg, away from the toothy end. But if one dog has locked his jaw on the other, then you grab the jaws and pry them open. Srsly. Never mind freaking out and waving your clipboard.

The dog who cried wolf

Her Majesty likes to lie right behind the front door. Which doesn't mean she's waiting faithfully for me to come home, because she also does it when I'm at home. Anyway. Yesterday she was a little slow in moving away when I opened the door, so the door hit her toes.

Tragedy!

Of course she first let out a blood-curdling scream, and then since I had my arms full of groceries and couldn't attend to her immediately, she followed me to the kitchen, hopping on three legs and crying piteously all the way. So I put the groceries down, pick up the dog and go sit on the couch. There was nothing wrong with her foot, so I kissed it better. Then she squirmed free and carried on with her day with no further evidence of having just survived a near-fatal injury.

Ok, I know I said that physical contact with loved ones releases oxytocin which is a very effective painkiller, but still. Kissing doesn't cure injuries on little kids, much less on hard-hearted little dogs. She just totally faked it to make me grovel.

And I totally fell for it. Sigh...

So long, old friend

You may remember Carter, Tinky-Winky's best friend. Carter was born 17 February 2003 and only ever had one human. In 2006, his human's then-boyfriend was working with my then-boyfriend, and sometimes the two of them would bring "their" respective dogs to work. That's how Tinky-Winky and Carter met. Back then, she was still psychotically aggressive, but she got used to Carter. I don't think they ever had a real fight, although Tinky-Winky snapped at him a fair number of times.

On the other hand, the guys didn't introduce myself and Carter's human. We only met years later, when we had each broken up with the then-boyfriend. And we recognised each other by our dogs. Then we became friends. Recently, Carter's human had to be out of town a lot, and one time she couldn't get her usual dog-sitter, so she asked me. So Tinky-Winky and I spent a couple of days at Carter's house. Then we ended up dog-sitting him every time his human was out of time, because we all got along so well.

Finally, after we had spent many days as a pack of three, something amazing happened: Tinky-Winky played with Carter. They were running loose in the off-leash area (we have official off-leash areas in town, though you can't really tell the difference with the rest of town), and Carter ran up to Tinky-Winky and balled her over. I thought she'd freak and try to rip his throat out, but she just rolled over, got back up and ran after him.

Whoa.

I never thought I'd see the day when my dog would let another dog approach her casually, let alone participate in any kind of playful behaviour. And after that, she'd actually let him sniff her butt and not snap at him. Another thing she absolutely doesn't allow. Her second-best friend, Otis, who is almost as big as Carter and fascinated by Tinky-Winky, loves to get her to snap at him so he can make a big show of leaping out of reach. Then he does it again. They both seem to find this game hilarious. But anyway, even Otis does not get to sniff Her Majesty's butt. He has to do a kind of drive-by sniffing and get out of reach before she can turn on him.

So, that was Carter.

Was.

Carter saw the vet for his annual check-up on Monday, June 4. They said he was well enough though obviously declining, which seemed normal for his age. Of late he had been unable to jump into the car, but what can you do. Dogs age. His labs were a little off, but nothing serious.

Tuesday, Carter was his usual self.

Wednesday morning, Carter couldn't get up. He had to be carried out to relieve himself, then helped back up the steps, and then he lay down and didn't move all day. His human called the vet, who by then had left town. (The vet lives three hours away and comes here a few days a month with his portable clinic.) The vet was alarmed. Plans began to be made to transport Carter to Edmonton the next day.

In the evening, Carter started shaking, and then he started to have seizures. I wasn't there, but I hear it was very traumatic. The decision was made to put him down. Unfortunately, when the vet isn't here, we have no mainstream way of euthanising dogs, so we have the choice of shooting them or trying to overdose them on whatever prescription drugs are at hand. Yes, yes, it's barbaric. What can you do. That's the price we pay for the freedom our dogs get. I've often said the best part of this town is the dog-walking. But anyway, the problem is, it's very difficult to obtain any prescription drug in a quantity that can kill a 100-lb dog. Most drugs aren't even strong enough to kill a rat. So Carter was given something, which didn't kill him, but mercifully stopped the seizures.

After a while, his human, who had been holding his hand the whole time, left the room for some reason. Immediately his breathing shallowed. The other people who were there called the human back, but before she could get back to him he was gone. I guess he was holding on to her all that time. It was Thursday morning, June 7. The vet thinks it may have been a toxin, or a tumour in the spine (boxers are prone to them), or perhaps one small thing that precipitated a cascade of failure due to his age and declining condition.

We buried Carter that evening in one of his favourite spots. He got a four-car motorcade and five pall bearers. There were eight people at his funeral, plus Tinky-Winky. At first Her Majesty wanted to participate in the grave-digging, but she got aggravated with the five-year-old girl who kept chasing her everywhere. As you know, little girls love Her Majesty, and the feeling is extremely not mutual. So after a while she absconded, then the kid lost interest, then Her Majesty came back and lay on the beach watching us work with her smug shiba grin. She was clearly having a grand old time. I wasn't watching her when we took Carter out of the car and put him in the grave, so I don't know if she ever clued in. Certainly she was completely indifferent to the fact that half the humans, myself included, were crying. She's never been the kind of dog that "knows exactly what you're feeling".

After the family had left and I had captured Her Majesty, I carried her to the grave to say goodbye. She still had no reaction. I still don't know if she's aware that her best friend for the least six years has died.

Carter leaves behind his very sad human, her two daughters, and her two step-daughters. And a hard-hearted little shiba. And me. He wasn't always what you'd call a "good dog." He was insanely strong in his prime and would take off after squirrels on a regular basis. He'd escape and roam the town all night. He ate the family garbage, and the baby-proofing locks that were installed to keep him out of the garbage. He also made an annual tradition of eating the littlest girl's gingerbread house. He got into an awful lot of dog fights. He was famous for his drooling. But he was extremely devoted to his family and a staunch protector, and a genuinely good person. He liked people and wanted to be liked. He was affectionate and funny and had infinite patience with the children. He was even good to cats. He wasn't even my dog and I miss him terribly.

Goodbye, old friend. You did good.

Pet your dog thin?

I was reading this book about addictions, and I learned some things. As you may or may not know, the brain, human or otherwise, secretes a variety of hormones to make us feel good or bad. I call the good ones "brain rewards". I knew this already. I didn't know that one of the brain rewards is oxytocin. One thing it does is induce labour, but also, it's a brain reward related to attachment activities, and an analgesic. And the important thing here is, attachment.

So that is to say, oxytocin is a brain reward that you get from interacting with other creatures.

What does that have to do with addictions? Addictions are a way to give ourselves brain rewards when we're not getting them through normal processes. Which is why people who say they eat to make themselves feel better aren't actually lying; they're just not creative about giving themselves brain rewards. So they eat, and get a brain reward related to eating. But that doesn't exactly replace the brain reward they're missing, so they keep eating.

Likewise with dogs.

Do I have a point? I do. Tinky-Winky and I are dog-sitting Carter again. Carter... Oh wait, I forgot to post my other post, so you don't know the back story. Anyway, Carter overeats. I explained that in the post I forgot to post. When he wants a brain reward, he eats. When he has no food, he asks his person for food, and she gives it to him.

Not me. When Carter whines, I pet him. Or I brush him. He loves being brushed. When I stop brushing him, he goes to sleep. Without having eaten.

Hmmmm...

My theory is, Carter cries because he needs a brain reward, not a food reward. If I pet him or brush him, he gets a brain reward, therefore he doesn't eat. Therefore he doesn't get fat.

On the other hand, it's also possible that he doesn't eat when I dogsit him because he misses his own humans. But I like my theory.

Doesn't matter anyway. Petting your dog lowers blood pressure for both you and the dog, and fills some time that you both would normally spend stuffing your faces.

You know what else? If you walk your dog, he gets exercise, therefore he's less stressed and difficult - and also less fat. Also you are less stressed and difficult, and also less fat.

Funny how doing the right thing for your dog also happens to be the right thing for you. Oh wait... Yes, that's easily explained by 12,000 years of living in packs together. Or maybe we formed packs together because we need the same things. Either way, spend more time petting, brushing and walking your dog. It's good for both of you. And besides, why would you get a dog if you're not gonna pet, brush and walk him?

Predacon: terrorize

Recently, Tinky-Winky has taken to sleeping on my bed of her own free will. In the past she would usually sleep under the bed, or only sleep on the bed when I put her there. The last few weeks, she waits for me to make the hide-a-bed, then she jumps up and sprawls out right in the middle. And of course, laterally across the bed rather than length-wise so we could both lie down comfortably.

Two nights ago, apparently, she was in a hurry, so she jumped up when I still had two blankets to add. Hmmmm... Oh well. I put the next blanket over her and waited for her to crawl out.

And waited.

Her Majesty sat up, still under the blanket, and turned her head this way and that, but didn't move her butt.

I waited a while longer.

She still didn't move her butt.

Fine.

I pulled the blanket off her head. Immediately she lay down again and went to sleep. Laterally across the bed, of course. She looked adorable.

Later, as I tried to fit my fat arse onto the tiny sliver of bed she left me, she put her little paws over her little nose and squeezed.

It looked even more adorable.

That's funny. She could crush all the bones in my hand with her teeth. She could rip out my trachea before I could even blink. And she looks completely adorable while preventing me from getting into my own bed.

We think we're so smart, but really dogs are playing us all for the fools we are.

Tinky-Winky's favourite food

Tinky-Winky's favourite food, bar none, is cheese. Cheese is like cocaine to her. She will do just about anything for it, such as obeying commands. This is convenient for two reasons. First, there is no naturally-occurring equivalent to cheese in the natural world, so she can only get it from me. Thus cheese is a huge motivator in getting her to recall. She's actually desisted and come back to me as she was approaching another dog to lay a beating on it, just because I had cheese. Calling "Tinky-Winky, come!" is successful fairly often. Calling "Tinky-Winky, cheese!" is 100% success.

The other reason is that the dog catcher does not carry cheese. He tries to bait dogs with store-bought extruded dog treats, which works on under-privileged dogs, but not on Her Majesty. She has way better food at home, and no way is she selling her freedom for extruded treats when she knows she can get cheese for it.

But other than cheese, Tinky-Winky's favourite food is whatever I'm eating. And that's funny, because she eats way better than I do. She has fresh meat and vegetables on her plate, and I'm eating mac and cheese, or wieners, or toast, and she wants my food. Some of the stuff she begs for rather boggles my mind. Lemon tarts, for example. What kind of dog eats lemon? She does. She loves lemon tarts.

Also, zucchini. When we were in Calgary in the fall, I made a zucchini casserole. I also bought supermarket sushi fairly often, because I can't get it at home. So one time I had this cheap sushi and the zucchini casserole. I offered the dog sushi, she turned her nose up at it and tried to get into the casserole. So I gave her the casserole instead. Not only she ate it, but she chased the roommate's cat away from it. There was no animal protein in it at all, just zucchini, olive oil and bread crumbs. She loved it.

Of course because she has expensive tastes, the more expensive my food is, the more she wants it. Cheesecake, for example, costs its weight in... scrap iron, at least, and she MUST have it. Are you serious? Do you know how often I can afford cheesecake? You're a dog. Go eat garbage. I'm not giving you my cheesecake.

Tinky-Winky even wants my food if she doesn't even want to eat it. For example, fruit. She doesn't like fruit, and generally speaking, neither do I, but sometimes I do buy some. Expensive stuff, usually, like raspberries. Naturally, Tinky-Winky wants some. The first time she asked, I gave her some. I was sitting on the couch eating grapes, and she wanted some. I gave her a grape. She lowered her head to where I couldn't see her, and then came up and asked for more. I gave her another one. I must have given her about ten grapes, and I was thinking "wow, I never heard of a dog eating grapes before." Then I got up to go to the kitchen and saw that all the grapes were on the floor. She was lowering her head to spit them out, and then she kept asking for more, secure in the knowledge that next time, surely, I was gonna give her something tasty to eat.

Likewise with strawberries. She doesn't eat them, but she'll lick every one of them if you let her.

The one thing I eat (reluctantly, I'll admit) and she won't is... peanut butter. Seriously. Most dogs love peanut butter; she won't even look at it.

What a strange little dog she is.

Your offering is not acceptable

I've been meaning to buy a dog crate for a while, in case we have to fly, but a lot more so that the dog can have a little den to hide in when she's scared. But in this town, you can't just go out and buy stuff. You buy what's at the store, or you don't; you don't get to choose. So I was waiting to go down south. On the other hand, we have a Facebook group for buying and selling second-hand stuff. Yesterday a post comes up for a dog crate that was quite a bit bigger than Tinky-Winky, but the price was right. So I bought it.


I guess not. Clearly, the concept of having a little den is in her mind as well, but she doesn't want the cage.

Oh well... She'll get used to it, I'm sure. Once it gets our smell on it instead of the other pack's smell. Speaking of which, the dog whose human was selling the cage is quite nice, and I've never seen either the dog or his human walking around with a female human. Of course that doesn't mean anything because they don't live anywhere near me, but being me, I just had to ask myself again whether we could combine our pack and their pack. And this kind of thinking is exactly why I'm single, I'm sure.

Passive-aggressive dog

No, I didn't get a new boyfriend. I'm talking about my actual canine dog. (Haha, a joke!)

Consider the following:


This is Tinky-Winky. Sitting. On the trail.

Why is Tinky-Winky sitting on the trail?

She just is.

See, Tinky-Winky doesn't like walking on the leash, so she's always finding all kinds of reasons not to cooperate. "I'm itchy. I gotta pee. My foot is caught in the leash. I gotta pee again. Grass is tasty. Something smells funny over there. I gotta pee! Wait, now I gotta poop. Ow, itchy. Oooh, something smells interesting. Mmm, tasty grass. My foot is caught in the leash. Let's go this way now. I gotta pee. ITCHY! Wait, I need to get those sticky tree things off my paw pads. I gotta pee."

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!

She doesn't even actually pee. I figured that out in the first year. I used to let her stop to pee, but not to sniff at things. Then I noticed, she'd squat to pee and nothing was coming out... she was just pretending so she could smell at things. What a snaky creature!

In the winter, the cold keeps her moving along at a certain pace, but now that it's warm, grannies with walkers get impatient when they're stuck behind us. It's really painfully slow. For a while I thought she was getting elderly and tired, but no, she's just resisting. If you take the leash off, she's off like a shot. She just doesn't want to cooperate with the leash.

This is a new one, though. Just sitting down and choosing not to walk. Just like that. The Gandhi of dogs.


And for good measure, she gave me the "poor poor little puppy" look. Oh, yeah, you snaky thing, you're so hard done by! As if!

Pff. Sometimes you're lucky I love you.

Poor sad little dog

We woke up this morning and it was raining. Pouring rain. Real ugly. So I ate breakfast and then instead of going for a walk, I just turned the dog loose. I do that when the weather is ugly, partly because I'm lazy, but also because that gives her control over how much time she wants to spend in the ugly weather. Right now, on nice days, I might have to wait for her an hour after I get home from our off-leash walk, because she's happy outside. This morning, I read three pages of my book before she wanted back in.

She came in and looked mournfully out the door. I held it open to see if she wanted to change her mind and go back out, but no, she wanted in. She cried as we walked to the elevator. We got into the apartment and she was still crying. She tried to lick her soup bone from yesterday, but it didn't comfort her. I tried to towel her dry, but we both know she hates being towelled, so she stayed wet. She was so sad I even gave her cheese, which is like cocaine to her, but she ate it sadly and kept crying. She went to the window and looked out on the world and cried. Then she went to her bed and lay down sadly. Poor little dog. She was absolutely inconsolable. Her whole world was ruined by having her morning walk rained out.

I tell you, dogs live for walking.

Nobody's perfect

Have I mentioned that my dog never does anything wrong?

Apparently she does.

Here is what happened. Tinky-Winky is scared of the wind. Not when we're outside, of course, but we live on the seventh floor of the only highrise structure for 500 km, on a wide open plain reaching from the Arctic Ocean to Mexico, so you can imagine that we get some windy days up here. And with windows open on all sides of the building, air shafts, things that don't close properly, what have you, there is quite a lot of whistling and rattling when the wind is anywhere from NNE to SSE. This freaks her out, and when she's freaked out, she wants to hide, or she wants me to comfort her.

Fine.

So it had been windy for two days, and as I was trying to sleep in the morning, Tinky-Winky kept climbing up on my pillow and digging at it. I reprimanded her several times for scratching the pillow, then I kicked her off the bed altogether. She went to sleep on the floor.

Later that day, obviously, I had to go out. I closed the picture window so it wouldn't be as loud inside, and I left. This was a mistake, because if I had left it open, Tinky-Winky would have gone out on the balcony and had a nap on her lawn. (She has a lawn on the balcony. Because I'm nice like that.) Being out in the wind doesn't bother her at all, like I said, it's the noises inside the house. But since I locked her in the house with the noise, she continued freaking out. So she dug everything that could be dug, kicked the pillows on the floor, tore the 300 thread-per-square-inch Egyptian cotton pillowcase, then tore the pillow open, then ripped the fiber out, then must have kicked it around for good measure, as it was torn-side down when I came home.

After that, I guess she must have felt better, because that's the only thing she tore. Or maybe she had just been in the process of tearing it when I came home, and that's what stopped her.

Well, oh well. I guess I brought it on myself. Knowing she was after the pillows, I should have put them in the closet. And I should have left the balcony open so she could get out of the noise. Maybe also, she'd feel safer if she had a nice pet carrier she could crawl into like a little den just for her. I've never needed to put her in a cage, but maybe she'd like it.

In any case, that's ok. A dog is allowed to screw up once in six years. That's like 42 human years. Who doesn't screw up once in 42 years?

Things I love about my shiba

She's the worst bedmate.

Usually she likes to sleep on her own bed, but sometimes I put her on mine. She'll make right for the middle, then dig and claw at the blankets and spin in circles until she's built herself a comfy little nest. Then she sprawls out and pins all the blankets, and becomes an immovable object for the next 12 hours. She hates getting up in the morning. And she always sleeps with her butt towards my head. From a pack point of view, it makes sense, this way we're guarding both ends; from a human point of view, not so much.

Yesterday I wanted to sleep on the floor because my back hurt, so I set up some blankets, and then I sat on the couch to read one more chapter before bed. Meanwhile, the dog colonized my blankets. She picked the middle with mathematical precision, rounded everything up, and fell asleep. And I like to let her sleep, so I had about a foot of blanket for the rest of the night.

You might think this isn't exactly a good thing, but I like it because it helps balance out the evils of being single. If I had a man, he'd make trouble about the dog's bed manners. And he'd probably be right, even. But since I'm single, I can enjoy the cuteness of it in peace. And unlike a man, she at least lets me sleep, even if I have to contort myself to fit in the space she gives me.

Things that go on in my dog’s head

I think a major reason why people fail to train their dogs is because they over-simplify what goes on in the dog’s head. Like “it’s all operant conditioning” or “I’m gonna train my dog only with positive reinforcement” or even “it’s all about being calm-submissive.” The reality of training a dog, or an employee, or a child, or a tropical fish, is that you need two things: first they need to understand what you want, and second they need to care (and this is where dominance comes in, but it still doesn’t constitute “training” unless the animal also understands what you want). And in order for you to understand this and exploit it, you need to understand how your dog thinks.

The key is this: dogs think. They’re not brainless little larvae that simply react to stimuli. (Ok, some are. And those ones are the least trainable of all.) They have trains of thoughts. They have plans and ideas and problem-solving. If you’re trying to train your dog through conditioning, the dog is vastly outsmarting you.

Also, it’s really cute watching the little wheels turn in their heads. So what this post is actually about, is some examples of Tinky-Winky’s trains of thoughts.

Example one. Tinky-Winky gets two kinds of food: free-choice kibbles, and a home-cooked dinner of rice, peas, carrots, eggs and beef after her evening walk. The home-cooked food isn’t made fresh daily, however; I make a big batch, keep three in the fridge, and put the rest in the freezer. So the first one is perfectly fresh, the next two are at least never frozen, and after that, it’s all previously frozen food. And apparently, this dog has a fine palate, and she much prefers fresh food to previously-frozen food. So the day that I cook a new batch, she gets super excited. First of all she knows I have the ingredients, because it’s pretty much the only time I ever bring meat into the house. So all day, she watches what I’m doing. It takes some time, because you have to boil the eggs, cook the rice, let everything cool for hours, then mix all the ingredients and pack them. Then we have to have our evening walk, then we can have the first dinner of the new batch.

So, Tinky-Winky keeps checking on the progress of her dinner. She can’t see the top of the counters, and her breeder trained her not to stand up to try and look, but she’ll walk into the kitchen and look up, or look at the fridge door, frequently during the day. Then, she’ll ask for her walk early. See, like most dogs, she can tell time. Supposedly, they do this just by responding to their internal body rhythms, i.e. “every day when I feel like X, Y happens; therefore when I start feeling like X, I know Y is about to happen.”

Hmmmm… I doubt it, really, but whatever. Tinky-Winky knows what time her walk is, and if I’m late, she reminds me that it’s walking time. But on days that there is a new batch of food, she reminds me of her walk more than an hour early. So clearly she’s not just responding to how she feels at that time of day: she’s able to predict that “soon” it’s walking time, and after walking time is eating time. So she has much more of a concept of time than she’s given credit for, and what’s more, she can predict things several hours in advance.

Then we go for our walk, and instead of walking energetically for 45 minutes to an hour and not wanting to come home, she’ll take three steps, pee, and then ask to go back in. And as soon as we’re inside, she sprints for her food dish. So, clearly, she’s able to recognize a situation that has implications several hours away, and take steps to modify the world to get to the outcome faster. She’s not just reacting to stimuli: she’s connecting events for several hours and understanding how they connect together, and how to manipulate them.


Another food-related example has to do with pigs’ ears. The first time I bought her pigs’ ears, she wouldn’t touch them, so I put the bag next to the garbage for later disposal. But then she was acting up through the day, and we were cross with each other, and in the evening, she decided to steal the bag of pigs’ ears from the garbage, tear it open, and eat some pigs’ ears. And she was acting very stealthy, even though I can see her plainly, and giving me these dirty looks like “well if that’s how it is, I’m eating your precious pigs’ ears that you’re storing carefully next to the garbage.” So now I always store the pigs’ ears next to the garbage, and whenever she’s feeling ornery and cross with me, she goes and steals some. But if I offer her one, she still doesn’t want it. She really seems to feel that stealing and eating pigs’ ears from the garbage is an awesome way to get back at me. Try explaining that one with conditioned reflexes.


Then, there is the matter of urinating on things. Some people who consider themselves real pundits on dog training are also convinced that human urine is of no interest to dogs, because “how would they even know what that is?” or something specious like that.

Please. Even we humans with our useless noses can tell the smell of urine. Urine is urine and we know it when we smell it, no matter what species it is. What’s more, we can even tell which species it is. I can most certainly tell cat urine, human urine and horse urine apart by smell, and what’s more, I can tell mare urine from horse urine, and whether the mare is in heat. So if I can, certainly dogs can too. Except because they have much finer noses, they can tell much more subtle differences; for example, they can tell two dogs apart by their urine. Which is why whenever my dog sees another dog on the trail, she likes to let it go past and then smell its tracks and have a look at it from a safe distance. She’s connecting the visual of the dog to the scent; I suppose it’s much like meeting someone in real life that you’ve only known online. You’re putting a face to the username. Likewise the dog is putting a face to a specific urine smell.

Do they care about the urine of other species? Absolutely. When Tinky-Winky and I first went to Yellowknife in 2009, she was fascinated by the smell of fox urine in the bushes where we took our walks. Until one day she saw some foxes on the trail. She stared at the foxes. The foxes stared at her. Everyone twitched their noses at each other. She had never seen a fox and was mesmerized, and the foxes were finally getting to see who made the new smell in their territory. Then the foxes advanced on us, and Tinky-Winky got a good scare; ever after, she avoided fox smell. (How do I know where there is fox smell? Because I can see the foxes with my eyes, so I know where they’re leaving their smell. And I can see how Tinky-Winky reacts to those places.)

Speaking of territory, by the way, I think we overstate the concept of territorial pissing. Yes, animals piss on things and this marks a territory, but I don’t think they’re thinking “this is mine, I mark it. This is mine, I mark it. This is mine, I mark it.” Well, cats do. I don’t think dogs do. Dogs piss on things because they’re there. It’s more like a graffiti. “I was here. And here. And here.” Then another dog comes along and sees “I was here” and has to overwrite it with “I was here too.” And everyone who’s been there leaves a mark to show they’ve been there. It’s not exactly a statement of ownership, just a sign that they were there. Now one creature might smell another one’s urine and think “So-and-So was here, I better stay the heck out of here.” That’s possible. But I don’t think the concept of “territory” is as prominent in an animal’s mind as we think.

Anyway, one thing I find amusing with Tinky-Winky and territorial markings is, she always tries to piss higher than the other dogs. This is challenging when you’re only a foot tall, so whenever she’s marking a tree, post or hydrant where height is relevant, she’ll do a handstand and piss as high up the tree as she can. My theory is that she’s trying to convince other dogs that she’s much bigger than they are. Because dogs do care about size. It’s been very noticeable in working on Tinky-Winky’s aggression problem, that it progressed according to the size of the other dog. At first she’d attack anything, until she met a malamute and thought twice about it. Then she started thinking twice about smaller and smaller dogs. Now she mostly attacks very small dogs, especially foofy little ones. That’s not an admirable quality, but it does show she understands how size relates to ass-kickings. Hence the need to make others think she’s a really big dog when she marks. It’s a form of dominance behaviour.

But that’s not really where I was going with all this. What’s more interesting is how they react to human urine. Some people, who call themselves smart, think that a dog would never interpret human urine as having any meaning, much less as having the same meanings as dog urine. I think they’re much less smart than they think, because you just have to watch dogs to see how they understand urine, and human behaviour in general.

One day, Tinky-Winky and I were walking in Nose Hill Park, and we found a little pile of stones that someone had made on the vast empty prairie at the crossing of two trails.

Tinky-Winky peed on it.

At first I was amazed that she would recognize a human marker as a marker at all, then I thought to myself, surely, the guy who built this must have pissed on it himself. Guys, like dogs, like to piss on everything. So I decided that her interest in this little marker stone must have to do with the kind of markers dogs use, and not with understanding what humans use for markers.

However, another day we were walking in the woods, and among the undergrowth, Tinky-Winky found a buried utility flag. So she pissed on it. Hmmmmmm… Surely the workers who put it there didn’t piss on it, yet clearly she recognized that this was a marker, and if someone marked there, so must she. A friend of mine translated her train of thought thusly: “this looks important, I better piss on it.” And this is interesting because clearly, she does have a certain understanding of how humans mark things as “I was here”, and she participates in the marking game right along with us. When you think about it, it’s not really surprising. Dogs have lived with humans for 10,000 years and more, and unlike us, they’ve learned from it. Humans still don’t have a clue how to cooperate with dogs, for the most part, but dogs are very adept at obtaining cooperation from humans. They know how to get food from us, how to be taken into our houses and kept warm, they certainly know how our urine smells, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t have noticed, some time in the last 10,000 years, how we mark things of importance.

I think the “smart” people who are so sure that dogs don’t understand human urine are missing the fact that animals don’t care about species. To a dog, all animals are equal, and if some are more equal than others, it’s mostly because they can kick more ass. All animals smell, all animals piss on things, and all animals kick more or less ass. That’s how the world works; it is not narrowly divided into species and such things.

In any case, it’s much easier to explain all these behaviours with “my dog is capable of thinking” than with conditioned reflexes. Dogs think. They look at the world, analyze the data, and come up with solutions. If you show them that you’d like something done, they think about it, and decide to do it or not. Smarter dog understand faster; dumbass inbred dogs never understand. That still leaves the problem of whether the dog cares about the things you want, which in shibas, tend to be “heck no.” But there’s certainly no point having a dog who wants to please if he doesn’t understand what you want. So if you’re having trouble training your dog, one of three things is happening: either your dog doesn’t care, or he’s too dumb, or you’re too dumb. You have to be capable of a certain degree of scientific thinking to figure out how to train your dog.

The strange incident of the barking dog

This morning at 6:55, Tinky-Winky barked once.

I immediately woke up from whatever stage of sleep I was, and leapt to her assistance. Cesar would have been horrified, but you see, Tinky-Winky doesn't bark. She used to bark at the door, but now she doesn't even do that. And there is only one situation when she uses that particular one-bark call: when she needs my help. So I leapt to her assistance... and couldn't figure out what she wanted.

When I responded, she was standing in the hallway, so I assumed she wanted out, except that's not how she asks to go out. First of all she never asks to go out, because she has a bladder like a Swiss bank vault. We've been together more than five years and she's never once asked to go pee. If she asks out it's because she has diarrhea, and then she doesn't bark, she cries, and you know you have to get her outside fast. I learned that the hard way. But she wasn't crying, and in fact she wasn't even looking at the door. Actually, she lay down as soon as she saw I was up. I asked her if she wanted out, no reaction. I don't know if she really understands that much English, but I certainly understand enough dog to know she didn't want out.

I went into the kitchen and checked her food and water. She had both. And she didn't follow me into the kitchen, so clearly that's not what she had been after. She might have wanted a chew, since we're out of pig's ears and she's been sad about that, but she knows where all her chews are and she wouldn't have woken me for that.

Since food, water and walks are the only things she ever really asks for, I ran out of ideas. So I petted her and went back to bed, and she didn't object. Whatever she had been after, clearly, I had met her needs.

Huh?

My best guess is that she dreamed that she was lost, and did one of those things where you wake up and you don't know where you are and whether the dream was real. So she barked because she thought she was lost, and as soon as I was there, her world was back in order.

There's a saying that "the more I know people, the more I love my dog." Conversely, the more I know my dog, the less I like people. They're so needy.

Greed, thy name is dog

As I was saying yesterday, the dog ate half of a huge steak for Christmas dinner, on top of her regular supper. So afterwards she lay passed out like a snake that has eaten a goat.

After a while I turned her out for a digestive stroll, and when she got back, the first thing she did was… go look for the meat wrapper in the garbage. Excuse me? I told her “leave it”, which is one command she respects pretty consistently. So then she looked expectantly at the microwave and the tops of the counters. She can’t see that high, of course, but she uses this looking-up trick to communicate to me that I’m about to give her something good.

Yeah: no. You had all your regular food plus half of a really expensive steak. And there are kids starving in Africa, by the way. So that’s more than enough for you today.

That’s the species’ entire evolutionary strategy: insatiable greed, complete absence of conscience, and the ability to mutate into shapes that make us think they’re adorable.

But it still beats the average boyfriend.

That wolf looks just like a shiba!

(The wolf is the top one.)

Dogs don't sin

A while back, against my better judgement, I let myself participate in a really stupid conversation about religion, on a dog blog. (Terrierman's, if you must know. Hence I don't read it anymore.)

Now normally I try not to dwell on things, because it's bad for me, but I keep being mesmerized by one particular moment. I said that dogs don't need communion because they don't sin, and Terrierman said "how would you know?" or something to that effect.

I'm mesmerized because it's self-evident that dogs don't sin. At least I should think so. I think it's much more self-evident than "all men are equal in rights", which we can plainly see is just utopia. Whereas dogs, obviously, don't sin. And yet, because it's so self-evident, it becomes somewhat challenging to explain why dogs don't sin.

Or, maybe not.

Dogs don't sin because sin is a human invention. Likewise dogs don't have money because money is a human invention, and they don't sing dodecaphonic music because dodecaphonic music is a human invention. But to take a more scripturally-based approach to the answer, it's like this: sin, the original sin, was that man ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I haven't pondered, or asked my pastor, exactly which is the sin: disobeying God (unknowingly), or acquiring the knowledge of Good and Evil. I think it's the latter.

In the Tao Te Ching it says, and it's obvious when you think about it, that we name "good" only by opposition to "bad", "short" by opposition to "long", and so on. I think the concept of the Tree of Good and Evil is a way of saying that good and bad are only as we make them so, by our perception. Before we ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, nothing seemed to us either good or evil, and also we had no sin. Sin, apparently, is what happens when we decide to call some things "evil" and others "good".

Dogs don't sin because, metaphorically, they didn't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and more literally, because they don't think in terms of good and evil. They seek out what feels good, and they feel good about the rest as they get it. Sunbeam: good. No sunbeam: also good. Rain: also good. Food: good. Home-cooked food: good. Rotting carcass on the ground: good. Other dog: good. Smelling other dog's butt: good. Dog fight: also good. They're not at all concerned with the notion of "evil" and knowing the difference between good and evil. They just maximize their comfort and minimize their discomfort. If you're religious, they're doing exactly as God intended, without knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore they have no sin. And if you're not religious, you don't believe in sin, therefore dogs have no sin.

So I'm still mesmerized that someone would ask "what makes you think dogs don't sin?" But as to how I know, well, now you know.

Anti-Cesar: fail again

I read somewhere that Cesar has "no formal training or qualifications" and therefore he's full of it.

Gasp! The horror!

Seriously... Get your head out of there, it can't be comfortable.

Of course Cesar has no formal training or qualifications. And you know what else? Major civilizations have been built by guys with no formal training or qualifications. Seriously. "Formal training" is another of those bourgeois North-Americans "we're too weak to do anything for ourselves" conceits. In just about any other time and place, you learn by watching and doing, and if you're good enough, then that's good enough. And when it comes to animal training especially, if you need "formal training", then you need to look for a different career. Like Lao Tse said, the Way that can be taught is not the real Way. If you have to be told how to train a dog, you just don't know how to train a dog, notwithstanding your little course-completion gold star. Personally I would never hire a dog trainer who had to go to school to learn to train dogs.

Come to think of it, you know who else doesn't have "formal training or qualifications"? Dogs. No, really. Maybe that's why they don't give a dog's ass whether Cesar has parchments all over the walls. Dogs don't care about credentials. Like any normal people, they only care about results.

So yeah. Cesar has no formal dog-training training. More power to him, I say.

Terrierman rules!

I like Terrierman. He's full of sense. Here is some Terrierman wisdom: Terrierman's Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Expense & Misery.

Summary:

1. Avoid giant breeds.


2. Avoid "tea cup" dogs.


3. Try to get a dog weighing less than 40 pounds.


4. Avoid dogs with misshaped bodies.


5. Avoid flat-faced dogs.


6. Avoid merle-coated dogs, dogs with pure white coats, spotted dogs, and dog with blue eyes.


7. Avoid dogs with exaggerated features.


8. Avoid any breed with a disease named after it.

A friend of mine has a basset and is looking to buy an English bulldog. Sigh... How much do you want to spend on vet bills when these two dogs reach 7 or 8 years old? People have no sense some time. Buy a dog that looks like a dog, eh?

And this is also part of why the "she looks just like a little fox!" comment is so aggravating. Tinky-Winky looks just like a little dog. A dog is supposed to look exactly like that: proportioned body, coat to match the climate, pointy ears, pointy nose. Yes, pointy nose too. I always go "no she doesn't" and people say "it's because of the pointy nose." Dogs are supposed to have pointy noses. Having a pointy nose makes her look like a little dog, not a little fox.

It's really sad that dogs have gotten so misshapen (thanks to our efforts) that most people don't even recognize the normal shape of a dog when they see one.

The real problem is you. Again.

A while back, the What Kind of Dog Hunts crazy woman triumphantly "proved" that Cesar is evil. Thusly.

On one episode, Cesar dealt with a dog who would lash out when you try to groom him. Insert video of Cesar restraining the dog while continuing his calm assertive conversation with someone off-camera. Cesar then proceeds to solve the problem without using candy. The horror!

Meanwhile, another TV trainer whose name hasn't registered on my higher consciousness dealt with a dog who would lash out when you try to groom him. This candy-based trainer restrained the dog repeatedly, then took it to a groomer who had the same problem and did the same thing: restrained the dog. Thus obviously, Cesar is evil. Then, the candy trainer solved the problem with candy, thus "proving" that candy works? Because apparently the concept of positive reinforcement needs proving?

More importantly, and I've said it before, positive reinforcement is one of four behaviour modifications techniques, thusly:

	I do something or give something	I stop doing something or remove something
to make you do something more often	Positive reinforcement	Negative reinforcement
to make you do something less often	Punishment	Extinction

Refer to this post if you need a clue. No one is claiming that positive reinforcement doesn't work, so you needn't waste your puny faculties proving it. But outside your little dream world of rainbow unicorns, there are still three equally effective mechanisms of behaviour modification, and you need all four of them. If you think you're using "only positive reinforcement", either you're not identifying the other three mechanisms, or you're not getting results.

Don't believe me? Let's look at the next time the candy trainer turned up on What Kind of Dog Hunts's blog. This time, the candy trainer had to deal with an aggressive dog. Candy didn't work, so she had the dog put down.

Er...

What?

So your favourite trainer has a dog put down that someone like, say, Cesar could have taken on, and you're still convinced that she's the bestest trainer ever and candy is the end-all and be-all of dog training? You're a fool. But we knew that already.

Meanwhile, on another blog, another anti-Cesar guy watched an episode where Cesar wore out an aggressive dog over the course of three hours. Three hours. Cesar triggered the dog, the dog attacked Cesar, Cesar controlled the dog. Then they did it again. And again and again and again. After three hours, the dog was too exhausted to fight anymore... and it was still alive. And no candy was harmed in the making of this episode.

So let's see. Cesar's way: live dog with a solution. Candy trainer's way: dead dog.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Yeah: shows how smart you are.

What you're not getting here, in your little Care Bear world, is that Cesar works with aggressive dogs. "Aggressive" doesn't mean cutting in line or backstabbing at the office or whatever will get your silly little feelings hurt. Aggressive means a creature who attacks. Man, dog or horse, it's all the same. They attack, and they keep attacking.

One time I had an abusive boyfriend who yelled at me for 35 hours straight. Threats, insults, whatever. That is aggressive. Why didn't he also assault me physically? Because he knew he wouldn't get away with it; I'd have put him in jail for sure. Aggressive people, or dogs, attack when they're sure to win, not when they're sure to lose. Then one day the police had to come get him out of the house during a domestic. He attacked them, one against two cops, and laid a beating on them. One cop was injured. My ex was injured. I have PTSD. The cop also ranks it one of his nastiest experiences yet in law enforcement. They charged him with resisting arrest, he pleaded, and the judge was so incensed over the violence of his behaviour, he got 30 days with no priors. Because everyone could see the obvious: he's aggressive, and he's dangerous.

The great thing about it though, is that after that I never even had to raise my voice with him again. If he got fighty, I could say "don't you even start", and he'd leave the house and take his temper somewhere else.

What does that have to do with dogs? Because an aggressive dog, like an aggressive man, needs putting in his place. He needs to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he starts a fight, he's gonna lose. Bullying is a self-rewarding behaviour, they do it because they enjoy it. Therefore they don't do it if they know it's gonna get non-enjoyable. That's what the cops taught my ex, and that's what Cesar teaches aggressive dogs.

Can you teach the same thing with candy? Absolutely not. Try being nice to an abusive boyfriend and see where that gets you. The more you give them, the more you make them happy, the more they're enjoying themselves. And the more they're going to bully you. The more candy you give them, the more they're gonna expect candy from you, but that doesn't do anything to remove the rewards of bullying. Now the dog has two ways to get happy: manipulate you to get candy, or bully you just for fun. Yay you!

Candy works. Candy works on dogs who don't like brushing or who don't sit-stay too good. And winning a fight works on aggressive dogs. What Cesar does takes a lot of work and a lot of skill to be able to win those fights with minimum injury to himself or the dog. Granted it doesn't soothe your little Care Bear psyche with candy and rainbows, but you're not actually important in this question, because you don't even understanding the word "aggressive."

Other people have pointed out that Cesar gets bitten and what he does is dangerous and therefore he's wrong. Again, that's only true if reality is irrelevant to you. Yes, Cesar gets bitten. Yes, what he does is dangerous. And either he does it, or you can get the candy trainer to come put your dog down. And you know what, cops do dangerous work and get injured, and that doesn't mean we'd be better off to get rid of cops and just give criminals a lot of candy.

One more thing. One blogger said that at his or her house, they don't do Cesar, because they "don't need alpha rolls" with their dogs. Really? Well you know what, I bet Cesar would totally agree that you don't need alpha rolls. First of all because he doesn't even do them himself, and second because your dogs aren't aggressive and they don't need an aggression abatement program. When your dogs turn aggressive, you'll know the difference. So no, you don't need Cesar's top skills. But as far as not doing Cesar's way, you're wrong. Because I read your blog and you're fairly calm and assertive, and that is what Cesar is trying to teach you. Cesar never told you to go mano a mano with an aggressive dog. What he said for you to do is be calm-assertive, and walk your dog.

So again to summarize: Cesar works with aggressive dogs. Aggressive dogs can't be fixed with candy. But what Cesar told you to do isn't to wrestle with your dog because it won't sit-stay; what Cesar said is for you to be calm-assertive and walk your dog. So the problem isn't with Cesar, it's with you having no clue what Cesar said. And therein is one of the cornerstones of cognitive therapy: people hear exactly what they want to hear, and then everything they say or do based on something they made up is warped.

Straighten out your cognitions, then you'll understand what Cesar is talking about.

Why you shouldn't dock tails

Once upon a time, docking tails was done for some utilitarian reason which eludes me. But if you have a dog with a docked tail, that's not why. Your dog got docked because it's a tradition in that breed and you didn't ask yourself why on earth you'd want to do that. But the thing is, pet dogs need to have tails. Here's why.

Today on our afternoon walk, some bulldog-like creature attacked Tinky-Winky. And for once we have right on our side, because we were on leash and minding our own business, and the creature came running at us out of nowhere, with its people trying desperately to recall it. I don't even know who struck the first blow, because I didn't have time to turn around and look, but this dog was clearly on the attack. No dog means any good by coming at another at speed with erect body language anyway; if you're one of those people who call that "my dog is friendly", you're wrong. At best your dog is rude, and that's your fault, but if your dog is just rude and clueless, it will scream and run as soon as Tinky-Winky gives a warning snap. This dog dig not turn and run. She attacked, she got the upper hand immediately, and she kept attacking.

The bulldog's person later alleged that the dog "has never done that before," and I don't believe a word of it, because this dog knew exactly what she was doing. Dogs who don't fight don't know how to fight; they get thrown down and lie on the ground screaming in fear while the other dog bites them. This dog had all the same tricks Tinky-Winky has, and she was attacking. You don't have to know anything about dog fights to see when a dog attacks: it lunges and bites, trying to grab at the other dog, instead of retreating and trying to protect itself.

Now where this has anything to do with docking tails is, a bulldog has no tail. It also has no coat. And that's a very big problem when it's attacking something else, because the way to break up a dog fight is by grabbing the attacking dog's tail. First of all, it's the only thing that sticks out of the melee, and second, it's the part least likely to get bitten, therefore the safest place to grab them.

On that note, let me point out that pulling the defending dog away is the dumbest thing you can do. Idiot people with poofy little dogs always do that: let the dog run to the end of its stupid flexi-leash and get into a fight, and then pull on it over and over to try and fix things. How dumb do you have to be? Every time you pull on the leash, the dog is choking and is being jerked off its feet, plus, you're turning the dog's head towards you, leaving the tooth-less, eye-less, vulnerable rear end to face the attacking dog. Your dog is sure to get bitten and it's all your fault. But even if you grab the dog and pull it away by something other than its leash, the attacking dog is going to keep coming, so you haven't achieved anything unless you're able to lift your dog out of harm's way, which never happens.

No, obviously, to break up a dog fight, you have to control the attacking dog. And the way to do this is to grab it by the tail. And a bulldog has no tail, and therefore it's very difficult to stop it from attacking. So this is why you shouldn't dock your pet dog's tail. You have no practical use for that dog anyway, so it's not gonna be in its way, and when your dog gets into a fight, you'll need that tail to pull him out.

Now since I'm on the topic of dog fights, I'll point out something else: blood happens. BFD. Some people go into hysterics if there is any blood on their dog, and that's ridiculous. Especially because the hysterics usually come from the same people who bleed profusely once a month to begin with (hence the word "hysterics", of course). You'd think they'd be used to blood. Not only that, but I've bled more from a paper cut than the total amount of dog blood I've ever seen in fights in all my life. If there's blood on the dog, then there's blood on the dog. It's really not a big deal. And most of all, it's probably not even that dog's blood. Most of the time it's the attacker's blood, because the thing most likely to bleed in a dog fight is the attacking dog's tongue. Tinky-Winky came out of today's fight with blood all over her; both sides, her head, her feet, she had blood everywhere. And not a nick on her skin. The other dog bit her own tongue and bled on my dog, that's all.

And even if your dog does get cut in a fight, put some Bactine or Polysporin on it like you'd do for your kid, and get over it. Your dog isn't injured because it has a little blood on it. When your dog is injured, you'll see the difference.

So that's my rant for today. Don't dock tails, learn to break up a dog fight, and get over the sight of blood.

As for closure on my anecdote, after many tries I was able to grab the bulldog's collar and push her away, and as soon as she was under control, everything was quiet. Which shows again that the bulldog was the attacker, not my dog. If Tinky-Winky had been on the attack, getting the other dog an arm's length away wouldn't have made any difference.

Then I still had to wait for a while, with a dog in each hand, for the bulldog's people to catch up to her. Polite conversation was had, the source of the blood was investigated, and then we each went our separate way. And the dogs were in no way upset. And that's another thing people in our limp-wristed society fail to realize about dog fights: dogs like dog fights. Not all dogs, and not usually if they get their clock cleaned, but a fairly even dog fight where both dogs are fighters is like a bar fight among humans. It happens, it lets a lot of the piss and vinegar out, and it's often the least boring thing you'll do all weekend.

Seriously.