Light Bulb

I refuse to use the O Magazine jargon and call it an aha! moment. More like a hahahahaha moment, anyway. 

I'd been watching Cesar Millan interviews and show excerpts. Mr. Millan has plenty of critics who say that he is cruel and his methods outdated. Others swear by him.

What does that all mean? I don't know. What I know is that when I went to take My Bad Dog for an evening walk, I remembered how in one interview, Cesar had mimicked how Americans--and especially American ladies--talk to their dogs, using pleading, almost whining voices, repeating commands with a pitch that gets higher and higher. I decided I would give a command once, and then show My Bad Dog by my impassivity that I was serious. I could wait her out. I have two teen-agers. I have practice in waiting. I am highly skilled in waiting. I hate waiting more than anything, but I'm good at it.

And wouldn't you know, that resolution changed everything. I stood at the door with the leash, told My Bad Dog to sit, and then I waited. Sometimes she sits immediately. Sometimes I remind her to sit by putting gentle pressure on her back. This time, I just looked at her.

She walked in a circle, looked away, looked back at me. I stayed exactly where I was and did nothing. She sat, and I put on the leash. Then I told her to wait while I opened the door.

Shenanigans ensued. She didn't jump or bolt, but she did rise and move toward the door. I held up my hand in the gesture she understands to mean wait or stay, and then I waited, and then she stayed.

Repeat the above for what happened while I locked the door.

And then on the walk, My Bad Dog behaved perfectly 90% of the time. During the remaining 10%, she did not behave badly, but she did step ahead of me--not pulling on the leash, not chasing cats nor mail carriers, not being aggressive in any way--and I just stopped walking, stood still, and waited. Every time she circled back, took her place by my side, and waited for me before she started walking again.

It was as if I somehow understood that the way to get My Bad Dog to do what I wanted was to believe that she would do what I wanted and to act in that belief. Not asking her, not coercing her or pleading with her or bullying her in any way. I don't even know how to explain it; I felt different, and I talked to her differently.

Or rather, I hardly spoke to her. Poor My Bad Dog. I really talk to her far more, I think, than interests her, but she is generally polite about it. After seeing Cesar mimic American Lady dogspeak, I got so bored with the sound of my voice. I'd taught My Bad Dog every command in voice and hand signal, so there was no reason to keep up with all the blah blah blah blah. Maybe she behaved well out of gratitude for the gorgeous silence.

When my daughters came home, My Bad Dog and I performed a demo. My daughters were impressed, or at least they said they were, and that's enough for me.

We'll keep working and we'll see how it goes.

On the Cesar front: This video I found disturbing. I can't imagine kicking My Bad Dog.

On the other hand, there are probably many who would tell me how cruel I was to use a pinch (prong, training) collar on My Bad Dog. What defense do I have? A dog trainer told me to use it. My Bad Dog was uncontrollable without it. But then it backfired--and I learned that indeed, it did hurt her. Besides, today when I was watching all these interviews, I thought that I would like to find a way to inspire My Bad Dog to want to do as I asked. I don't want her to walk well on the leash just because she is afraid I will yank on her collar or say no in a strict voice. I want her to walk well with me because she wants to.

In their anger against Cesar and his techniques, some of these anti-Cesar trainers insist that Mr. Millan's whole philosophy is nonsense, but I think they're wrong when they dismiss the importance of approaching a dog with what Mr. Millan calls calm-assertive energy. I know that my dog shows anxiety when I'm anxious. Besides, even if you can't measure or even satisfactorily define what he means by energy, we all know it's there.

Also on the other hand, not that I am defending the kicking, but unless someone has successfully rehabilitated a dog like My Bad Dog, a dog that has bitten at least three people (that I know of--one on my watch and two during the previous owner's, though I expect it's likely the bite count is higher), a dog that when she sees a mail carrier goes into a ferocious state that would frighten any normal person--well, that person doesn't get to offer me advice about how best to rehabilitate My Bad Dog.

Upward and Onward

A friend is a behavioral specialist with a school district. As you can imagine, her knowledge of behavior has been valuable through the years in settings domestic, professional, and social.

Long ago, after I had complained of some habit of my daughters that drove me round the bend and my friend had helped me devise some manner of encouraging a change in their behavior, my friend warned me of the extinction burst, or the temporary increase of undesired behavior that occurs after the commencement of efforts to extinguish the behavior. The temper tantrum is a good example; when you ignore a tantrum, it may increase in volume and intensity before (finally!) fading to mere sniffing and whimpering.

You can read a more thorough description here.

My Bad Dog and I went for a thirty-minutes-longer-than-usual walk yesterday morning. During daylight hours, because Sunday is, blissfully and thanks be to an all-merciful Divinity, a day of rest for mail carriers and FedEx drivers. At the park, I thought it would be fun to try to teach My Bad Dog to jump up and walk the length of the bleachers.

Say what you will of My Bad Dog, but in terms of tricks, she is what my grandmother would have called a quick study. She understood immediately what I wanted her to do, and she did it, over and over. We tried benches, the narrow brick raised border of a yard, and the low planks by the tennis courts, and My Bad Dog confidently trotted the length of each.

She was exhausted when we got home. My daughters and I noticed how little she barked the rest of the day, just a few times at our neighbor, who has the gall to enter and depart his home without asking My Bad Dog's permission, and once to reprimand the driver who parked in front of our house with what must have been criminal intent. Then again, it was Sunday. Not only were there no mail carriers, but the street was quieter than usual.

Today, we again took a longer than usual walk and again worked at plank-walking (in addition to gopher-hunting and squirrel-sighting). My Bad Dog was so tired that she slept through the arrival of the mail carrier, waking only after he'd dropped off the mail and was almost out of the yard. Even then, she didn't bark. Five minutes later, the mail carrier drove past our house and although My Bad Dog signaled her continued deep and abiding interest in his activities by intently looking out the window, she did not bark. Nor did she bark at the high school track team that ran by on their way up to the hills, nor at the garbage truck.

At this point, either her restraint gave way or she reached down deep for inner resources, and she registered her loud disapproval of the man across the street. What he did to annoy her, I don't know, maybe he committed the unforgivable offense of getting out of his car.

I'm not sure I have the pure-hearted faith to believe that what happened Saturday was an extinction burst. It seems more likely that Cesar Millan may be right (about the exercise thing, anyway, at least for My Bad Dog; I've never tried alpha rolling, which is a subject of vigorous debate, although My Bad Dog often does of her own volition roll over on her back, in which position she looks about as dangerous as a teacup Yorkie (not this teacup Yorkie).

In any case, the decrease in My Bad Dog's ferocity is powerful reinforcement to take longer walks each morning. I seem to be responding well to training.


Links
Daily Kos
Dog Whisperer
National Geo Wild: Cesar's Way
Paws Across America
You Are Not So Smart: A Celebration of Self-Delusion

The View from Today

When you watch The Dog Whisperer, dogs like My Bad Dog are rehabilitated in 20 or 30 minutes.

That's not what's happening here. What can I say? Today we walked. She mostly walked well. When she pulled ahead, we stopped and she went into reverse and we proceeded.

In mail carrier news (we received three USPS packages today)--how shall I put this? If I were our mail carrier, I would not put away the pepper spray quite yet. Still, the situation seems to show a shade of improvement.

Eight months, you know. A lot can happen in eight months. A friend asked if I felt discouraged about the eight months, but I don't think that matters. What matters is that eight months are going to pass whether I work with My Bad Dog or not. I can spend eight months working with her and there may be a significant improvement to both her excitable temperament and our quality of life, or I can let the eight months pass without working with her and find myself eight months from now exactly in the same spot.

Progress, Not Perfection

I would like perfection. I don't always--there's a charm in the imperfections and flaws of hand-crafted work, and I do believe all of our little quirks and eccentricities are so endearing--but in the matter of My Bad Dog's rehabilitation, perfection would be nice.

It is as yet a dream to which we aspire. However. There is good progress:

1. We've been walking every day now and have not experienced a major incident.

2. My Bad Dog's mail carrier alert system seems to be dialed back. One day this week, the mail carrier arrived, deposited the mail, and departed, with My Bad Dog peacefully sleeping and none the wiser.

3. When she does become aware of the mail carrier's presence, My Bad Dog seems to have a reaction that is less impressive than her usual temporary insanity.

4. She is definitely barking much less.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that #1 may be a hollow boast; I only walk My Bad Dog during non-mail-carrier hours: before seven a.m. and after eight p.m. Even so, we did experience one minor incident, with a large delivery truck that looked nothing like a mail carrier's truck, so I don't know why My Bad Dog took umbrage, but the umbrage was mild (it's all relative; it might not have seemed mild to an onlooker) and soon abated.

My Bad Dog does seem more fatigued than usual. I was wondering whether our training regime is exhausting her. If so, good.

The Regime

1. At least an hour to an hour and a half of walking every day, with a long walk in the morning and a short walk at night.

2. During the walk, My Bad Dog is not allowed to step ahead of me. Not at all. This is per the trainer's instruction. If My Bad Dog steps ahead of me, I stop and tell her to go back. Sometimes she backs up immediately when she senses the tension in the leash; other times, she needs a gentle reminder or four. Most walks she is exceedingly cooperative. Rarely, but it happens, a walk is made unbearably tedious because we stop every few steps.

3. At home, My Bad Dog is not allowed to lean against me, nor to put her paw on me.

4. My Bad Dog must wait for the humans to pass through doorways before she is allowed to pass.

5. When My Bad Dog has a legitimate reason to bark, I look at the disturbance, thank her for telling me, and ask her to stop. If she doesn't stop, she comes with me into my room and lies down on her bed for a moment. When her crazy comes upon her, she comes with me into my room and, after some convincing, lies down on her bed.

Stacy (the trainer) did tell me it would take eight months. One week down, thirty-one to go. Although I expect our progress to accelerate after April, which is when we hope to begin working with Stacy in person, that being the month during which she will be studying a method of working with dogs like My Bad Dog.

This all sounds like a regime to train My Bad Dog, but I understand that I'm training myself to provide clear and consistent feedback and guidance to My Bad Dog in order to help her manage herself in the world in a way that will not cause harm to herself nor others.

The Troublesome 1%

Here she is, doing obedience work at the park, whence we went this morning. You see how relaxed My Bad Dog appears. This is how she is 99% of the time.

In this photo, My Bad Dog is wearing a simple leather collar, not a training (pinch, prong, mean metal chain collar, collar that is the only thing standing between My Bad Dog and the cold-blooded murder of a mail carrier), it being a day of rest for mail carrier. The collar was a mistake on my part.

At this point in the outing, my mistake had not yet been revealed to me. I had resolved to renew some practices that I had let slide over time, practices that Cesar Millan and many other dog trainers prescribe in order to ensure that one's dog doesn't perceive and attempt to fill a vacancy in the role of pack leader: requiring Sophie to sit quietly while I open the door, directing her to follow me out the door, and again requiring her to sit quietly while I closed and locked the door.

Whether one agrees with this philosophy in dog training or not, my experience is that it works: My Bad Dog was in a properly calm state of mind, which state of mind was demonstrated by her walking sedately by my side the mile and a half or so to the park. We intermittently stopped for obedience work, and she was agreeable all the while. Once at the park, we alternated free time with basic commands (sit, down, stay, heel). She performed admirably.

On the way home, however, as we waited at an intersection for the light, a man in a small blue pick-up truck happened to glance at us, which glance Sophie took amiss. She lost no time in letting him know that NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO LOOK AT US, EVER, NEVER, NOT EVER with a response so disproportionate to his offense that he stared (in disbelief?) as he drove away.

Although I had her under control (by which I mean she wasn't lunging and she stopped barking fairly soon), I did regret the choice of the minimally restrictive collar. A minute hence, I regretted it even more.

We'd crossed one street and were waiting to cross the other when a teen-ager of the male variety approached from the right. What was it about him? I saw him and I knew My Bad Dog was going to object to his presence in her world. Damn ubiquity of hoodies, for one thing, and the teen-ager's sullenly slouchy posture for another. Regardless, as little as My Bad Dog approved of the boy's appearance,the young man has a right to roam the sidewalks unmolested. God bless him, and I hope his sleep isn't interrupted by nightmares about My Bad Dog.

After much barking and lunging and gnashing of teeth, she snapped at me for restraining her. Without the training collar, all I could do was maintain tension on the leash so she couldn't twist backward and try to slip out of the collar. The snap didn't hurt me at all, for which I give thanks to folds of heavy cotton fleece, but the incident strengthened the resolution I'd formed last night to begin working with a trainer again.

My bedtime reading was pages and pages about chows and chow mixes and what a trainer called their unstable and faulty temperaments. I read enough to know exactly what this (rather cranky but seemingly quite knowledgeable) trainer would tell me if I described My Bad Dog to him: her behavior is caused primarily by faulty temperament, a genetic weakness typical of chow mixes, and is exacerbated by my failure to have solidly established myself as the pack leader. (I prefer "pack leader" to "alpha" because there seem to be some disagreeably egotistic chest-thumping attitudes about the latter. I don't care about being Queen of the World or Mistress of My Universe, but I do need to make sure that the children and dog for whom I'm responsible feel comfortable and safe knowing there's a calm grown-up in charge.)

Anyway, hence the obedience work, the insistence on good walking manners, and a plan to call the trainer tomorrow.

I would say that My Bad Dog has been quite an education, only not much of it seems to have done me much good yet, except that along with a disheartening awareness of my own limitations, I have a dog that brilliantly and happily performs a routine of basic obedience commands.

What I have learned more than anything is the truth of the proverb not to judge another until you've walked a mile in his shoes, which proves what Keats said: "Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is not a proverb till your life has illustrated it."

Not that I would ever wish a dog like My Bad Dog on anyone. As much as I dearly love her, she is a burden.

Beginning at the Beginning

I often wish My Bad Dog had come into my life as a puppy, rather than as a six-year-old two-time loser in the adoption game, and not just because she must have been the cutest puppy in the world, kind of a cross between this and this. Of course, if she had, I may not have been forced inspired to learn how to train a dog as I was by the arrival of My Bad Dog and her attendant antics, antics sometimes perceived inaccurately as hostility and aggression (an honest mistake, being as they do indeed appear to be of that variety).

In any case, now I know how to train a dog. Let us see if I can train My Bad Dog out of her crazy. I began today.

I began by reflecting on My Bad Dog. All I know of her early life is that she roamed the streets of Oxnard and was picked up as a stray when she was little more than a year old. She was adopted and then returned to the shelter. The owners said she was aggressive (and as discussed previously, a trainer labeled her as "incorrigible"). And so My Bad Dog's crazy is a mystery to me: I don't know why My Bad Dog turns into Demon Dog in the car (once she barked so viciously at the driver next to us at a stoplight that he swore and made an obscene gesture) or at the approach of mail carriers/UPS delivery folk/FedEx drivers/unidentified friends.

Not that it would help me to know why. Dogs aren't people; it's not as if I can discuss her early traumas with her and together find a way to let go of survival strategies that no longer serve her now that she lives in a safe home. Regardless, in reflecting on My Bad Dog, I begin from the premise that she is actually My Good Dog. She wants desperately to please me. She doesn't bark herself into a frenzy out of mischief or because she has a cranky temperament. There is some trigger, and then she finds herself out of control. In her right mind, she would never snap at me.

What she needs is help regulating her mind. I find meditation and yoga of use in regulating my own mind, but, again, she is a dog. I also find the imposition of routine helpful in that regard.

And so today, every time My Bad Dog's madness came upon her, I said no. I went to her and told her to follow me into my bedroom, then I pointed at her bed and told her to lie down. Every time she did as I asked. Once the desire to bark was too much for her, but instead of barking, she whimpered.

The day of mind regulating took a lot of effort from both of us. I don't like putting my work aside and getting up and going to the dog every time she barks wildly. My Bad Dog was tired. Even though she was tired, she also seemed relieved. Maybe? I don't know.

What I do know is that it is frightening to feel out of control. When a baby is crying uncontrollably, you can sense the baby spiralling into anxiety. If you know how to calm the baby, you have the experience of sensing the baby's relaxation when she realizes that someone is in charge and that everything is going to be okay.

NOTE: I wrote this a couple of days ago but just got to posting it now.