multiple dog households

Starting Over: Introducing Meridiana

Better late than never as they say. This blog post is way overdue, and I apologize profusely for that. Despite it being only a month away from the one-year mark of losing Kenzo and several months past that for losing Mela, I am still processing the intense cumulative grief. Meridiana will have been here for a year in late July, and she deserves a proper introduction for those who are not my Facebook friends or don’t follow my business Facebook pages.

Meridiana started her life as Lady. She is a now 2-1/2 year old red Chow Chow. She grew up on 6 acres in Ohio and was purchased from a breeder who let her go too young. Her original owners loved her very much and took very good care of her. But she began resource guarding her beloved human mom from the other large dog in the home. They were afraid she would get hurt. So, they rehomed her to someone who they thought had recently had his senior Chow cross the rainbow bridge. That someone turned out to be a dog flipper. His story to me was that he was moving out of state and would be working long hours. I drove an hour and a half to pick her up. She was much smaller than her pictures indicated, and she was terrified and matted and considerably underweight. I knew right away that he was not being truthful with me but there was simply no way that I was leaving her there.

So, into the Armada she went. I got her home almost without a hitch. She started having a meltdown when we were about 15 minutes from home, clawing at the back window and barking and pacing frantically. It turned out that she had to poop and poop she did. Fortunately, since she went on the pad that holds the water bowl, it was easier to clean up. Still, it was clear that she was very well housetrained and to have such an accident traumatized her.

Once inside of my house, I showed her the yard with me still holding her leash. The literal second that we got out there, some jerk set off an M-80 or M-100 right outside of my fence. She panicked and inside we went. I kept a drag leash on her inside. She chose to immediately install herself in my sunroom. The dog equivalent of sitting with your back against the wall. An excellent defensive position, if I do say so myself. I placed a water and food bowl nearby. She refused the food but had some water periodically water. She also refused contact and showed only suspicion towards me. I slept on the couch that night. I tried to offer her a potty trip several times but she shied away from me even taking the leash. It was clear that reaching for it would not be a good idea. I was not comfortable allowing her in the yard without holding the leash. I had no idea if I would be able to get her back inside or not. Potty accidents can be cleaned so that is where we were.

I woke up in the morning to her surreptitiously sniffing me. When I got up, she ran back to the sunroom but when I opened the door into the yard, she approached and allowed me to take her leash and potty her outside successfully. Once back inside, I let go of the leash but let it drag. She accompanied me into the kitchen, and I was able to feed her. Subsequent trips to the yard showed that she was starting to appreciate her new environment.

In the meantime, the dog flipper, who I still didn’t know was a flipper, sent me her vaccination records via email. They were in someone else’s name. I texted him and asked who that was and he never answered me. I spent a couple of hours that day searching various names that the flipper was using online after seeing another version of him posting an apricot Doodle for rehoming the day after I picked up Meridiana from him. I was very torn about contacting the woman named in the vet records, as I did not want to give Meri back if she had been stolen because I had fallen for her. But I could not in all good conscience stay silent. A friend found a Craig’s list as from a few weeks earlier for a dog that matched her description in Ohio. So I emailed the name on the vet records was incredibly relieved after she immediately answered my email asking me to call her. That is where I got the truth about her rehoming Lady. She had been blocked from contacting the flipper almost as soon as he got her to his place, after he texted her to complain that she was aggressive to his friend. She isn’t aggressive. He was mistreating her. Lady/Meri’s former owner had been frantic for about 3 weeks, wondering where she was now and unable to communicate with the man who she had thought was looking for a companion. We became Facebook friends and I now have some puppy pictures of her. It ended well thankfully. But that could have easily not been the case.

Incredibly, dog flipping is not illegal in my state. Dog abuse and neglect is so I reported him for that to my county’s state dog warden, who I am well acquainted with. So is fraud so I hope that he was charged with that. With the help of an Instagram friend, I was able to gather his true name, which wasn’t much different from the names that he used online. I also got his address and wonder of wonders; he used his real phone number. No one is accusing him of brilliance, that is for sure. I don’t know how the abuse/neglect/fraud investigation went. Truth be told, I was afraid to find out that nothing could be done to stop him from doing what he was doing. I could only hope that those dogs he ‘flipped’, ended up in good home. In any case, Meridiana is obviously here to stay.

Now, ten months later, Meridiana is the reason that I get up every morning. I would not have been able to cope with such staggering losses without her.

Aside from the four months that Kenzo and I spent missing Mela before I lost him too, this is the first time since 1999 that I have lived with only one dog. I never expected to be in a position to not have a ‘transitional’ dog. I have always had dogs who kept me going mentally (and vice versa) when we suffered the loss of one of our canine family members. Now I am starting over and it’s a position that I never expected to find myself in. At some point, I hope to provide Meri with a Caucasian Ovcharka brother But we definitely have some behaviors to sort out with her in the meantime. She is afraid of a lot of things/people, etc. I classically condition that daily on our walks. Amazingly, she has done superbly at my wonderful vet’s office with their sincere understanding of how to be as low stress as possible. Meri has also shown great success with impulse control around deer most of the time. Running deer, not so much. And let’s not even discuss squirrels yet, they get her brain spinning out of control. We are working on that. It’s a journey, not a destination. One that I am and will enjoy. Wish us luck and joy.

Tags: adopted dog, Chow Chow, cumulative grief, dog flipper, fearful dog, multiple dog households, pet loss, rescue dog

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Too Bad! Why I Use Time Outs

Photo courtesy of Denise O’Moore

There are a few topics in the dog training world that can rouse people’s cortisol levels to an extraordinary level. Time outs are one of those topics. There was a video making the rounds a while back about time outs for kids being “bad”, being widely shared by some trainers as “proof” that we should not implement these for dogs either “because they can damage the psyche”. The problem with that train of thought is that the video wasn’t talking about appropriately implemented time outs (for either species!). I don’t have children so I will not be offering any opinions on the child care part of this equation. But I will happily explain how time outs can assist quite nicely with dog behavior modification efforts with zero fall out with *appropriate* use. But before I do so, I would also like to briefly mention a lovely article about the top 10 behaviors of expert animal trainers. One mention was minimizing the use of a time out. I quite agree with that but I also want to note that this lovely article was written primarily about *wild* animal trainers. The relationship between the wild animal and the trainer is very different from your relationship with the dog that you live with. So while minimizing the use of time outs should certainly be the goal, equating the use of a Time Out with a dog in certain situations with the use of such with wild animals is not an equal comparison. Now that I have hopefully prevented this article being tossed at me as proof of how horrible I am, let’s move on.

Let’s define appropriate usage. With my own clients, there are many situations that may warrant time out usage. But each implementation is individual to the situation. There is no one size fits all and sometimes with each situation, judgment calls need made by the human part of the equation to determine what is best each time. My definition of a time out is a withdrawal of attention and/or privileges. The privilege that is lost may be the ability to move around freely (and wreak havoc!) or it may be just not engaging with a favorite human for a brief (30 seconds to 2 minutes!) moment in time. A time out is NEVER suggested for a dog that would feel traumatized by either of these things. Such a dog wouldn’t need a time out so it’s a moot point at best. The dogs that need a time out are typically adolescents testing boundaries or adult dogs who were never taught impulse control as a puppy. Or even canine bullies (the action, not the breed) in a multiple dog household.

One of my frequent usages is with puppies who are quite literally, running amok. They are lacking in impulse control and their inappropriate choices have been inadvertently reinforced by negative attention (no, stop, don’t do that, push away, etc.). What happens when you reinforce a behavior, even with negative attention? The behavior is maintained or even increased. Yep, you created a monster. The puppy has discovered the battleground game and is having a great time with this. The owners, not so much. They are exhausted and need a way to teach consequences for the puppy’s actions without hurting or scaring the puppy.

This also applies to older dogs that were never taught these consequences to their choices as puppies. The puppy/dog wears a lightweight leash and there are also lightweight leashes placed around various pieces of sturdy furniture so that the owner needn’t walk more than 5 or 6’ to implement a time out. Taking too long to provide a consequence means that you lose the message. The time frame between the verbal marking of the moment of the poor choice with the time out word or phrase to the actual time out, should be mere seconds.

Of course, time outs are not limited to tethering. Some issues are better addressed by walking away or walking into the nearest room that has a door, such as a powder room or even behind a gate (typically you, not the dog, except puppies!) But again, timing is everything. The time out word marks the moment, just as a yes or a clicker or even a good boy/girl marks the moment of an appropriate choice. And we know that the reward must immediately follow the marker in order to be effective, right? Same theory applies here. The consequence must immediately follow the marker. My time out marker is said in a sing song voice (Too Bad!) for all the world sounding like “you screwed up”. There should never be anger in a time out marker.

If attention is the intent, withdrawing said attention is a need. Even turning your back to a dog who is inappropriately attempting attention seeking is a time out. Would you call a dog traumatized because you turned your back briefly? Exactly. Often turning away isn’t enough of a withdrawal of attention for many dogs. Hence, we have the option to exit the room/situation.

Now I know that many trainers will say to teach the puppy/dog in question what to do instead of what they are doing that causes annoyance. Of course, that is also happening. Or it certainly should be. But that is simply not enough in many cases, especially where the poor choices have resulted in so much attention that it’s pretty much game on every day. If a dog is rewarded for doing the right thing after ALWAYS starting that sequence of behavior with a poor choice, you do see the problem here, right? Behavior chains can be lovely things but they can also be nightmares to behold. Modifying behavior successfully is always a matter of a bit of detective work in finding what works for THAT dog in THAT situation, without causing emotional or physical trauma on both sides of the equation. Properly done, time outs along *with* capturing appropriate choices, provide all of the relevant information to the dog so that forward movement can be obtained with minimum stress. Win/win.