A while ago, I shared on my Patreon that I kept going the wrong way because there were SO many corridors in the apartment building I’m staying at, and all the corridors look exactly the same. By now, I’ve figured it out, and 95% of the time, I pick the right corridor right away.
Something new has crept up though! There’s an elevator here. As I got used to taking the elevator, I stopped paying attention to the elevator buttons. (When you first take elevators in new buildings, you stop and think before you push the button: what floor do you want to go? What button do you need to push? For a couple seconds, your full attention is on the buttons, and you pick the correct one because it’s a conscious task you put effort towards.)
By now, I’ve taken the elevator so many times that I don’t shift into attention-to-the-buttons mode anymore. I just continue daydreaming or thinking about whathever it was I was thinking before I got on the elevator. I expect my finger to unthinkingly push the right button. Riding the elevator has become a habit, and I seem to unconsciously expect that so has pushing the button. Only that second part? Not true! Ever since moving the button-task to the habit-part of my brain, I push the wrong button … pretty much every second time I go up. So far, I believe I’ve gotten it right every time going down; probably because the down button is the very first one, which makes it obvious. The up button I need is in between many other up buttons. I need to push 4, but I’ve pushed 3 a lot, and just now, I pushed 2. I usually recognize the errors of my ways when the button I pushed lights up. It snaps me out of daydreaming. My mind then actually focuses on the task, I push the right button and the “close the doors” button when we reach the floor I accidentally pushed.
When riding elevators, what makes us fluent in the “right” behavior is habit: we push the correct button consciously until we do it unconsciously. I’m pretty sure for a lot of people, the transition is seamless. For me, in this building anyways, it hasn’t been. The task has shifted to the unconscious bucket before it was ready, so I keep making the “mistake” of pushing the “wrong” button about 50% of the time when I go up. That’s a lot of “mistakes!” I put the word “mistakes” in quotes because … nothing bad happens. I lose 2 seconds of time or so, but that’s it. It’s not a “punishing” consequence; it’s a consequence I don’t mind. So the consequence of the doors opening on the wrong floor first isn’t likely to teach me anything.
I think if someone put a sticky note on “my” (the “right”) button for going upwards, or lit this button before I pushed it, my success rate would be close to 100%. Even without thinking about it. Because just like going down, it would be obvious. And if the button stayed obvious for another … I don’t know, 50 reps, which equals 16.666 days, they could then remove the sticky note or the light and I’d probably be able to unconsciously select the “right” button due to the habit having had more time to form without me making “mistakes.”
Do I care about getting it right the first time? No. It doesn’t matter to me. So I’m good; I don’t need anyone to help me out with sticky notes. I just find it interesting to think about. I suspect that even without the sticky notes, if I kept riding this elevator for a few more months, I would end up getting it right—unconsciously—every single time. I won’t be able to confirm this because I won’t stay here long enough, but I believe that learning is going to happen; it’ll just take more time because I’m free to make mistakes, and the only consequence is a lack of reward (getting to the right floor is a low-value reward most times; the doors opening on the wrong floor slows me down and I don’t care; it is simply the absence of a reward.) Habit will develop, but it will take longer than if the “correct” button stood out to me more.
This is of course a dog training metaphor. And I fully believe that other learners would not need a post-it note or a lit-up button to learn faster. Other learners may already have learned what I didn’t learn. Other learners yet may perceive the doors opening on the wrong floor more saliently than I do, and also learn faster. Different beings have different learning styles, and different experiences matter to different beings.
For a learner like me, what would be the fastest (which isn’t automatically the “best”; it depends on the task at hand what is best!) way of teaching/learnign to push the “right” button going up? Note that when it comes to me riding elevators, learning speed doesn’t matter at all, making this purely a thought experiment. I believe for the learner I am, if you wanted to maximize the learning speed in the elevator scenario, you’d have to implement a consequence I’d prefer to avoid every time I pushed the “wrong” up button. The consequence would have to be delivered either immediately, or someone needed to mark it.
Remember I need to push “4” to get it right. So if I pushed “3,” there should either be a beep (a “punishment marker”) and then, when I got to floor 3 and the doors opened, the consequence would be implemented (say, that floor was filled with several inches of water and it flooded the elevator the moment the doors opened, so my shoes and socks would get wet. Or floor #3 was on fire, so when the doors opened, I’d have to work to keep my dogs’ noses away from the open doors so they didn’t get singed, and I’d feel an uncomfortable heat wave pushing into the elevator. Or there’d have to be very loud, very terrible music playing on floor #3, causing me to cover my ears the moment the doors opened there.)
An immediate consequence (not requiring a marker) could be: all the wrong buttons could have sticky stuff on them, and if I touched them, my fingers would then also be sticky and stay that way until I reached a faucet. I’d dislike that quite a bit. It could be tooth paste, jam, peanut butter, paint that hasn’t yet dried … I’d dislike it the most if I didn’t know what the sticky stuff was and thought it might be vomit or snot, but I think something less disgusting, like toothpaste, would do the job just fine. Vomit or snot would be accessively intense, and (I suspect) not speed up my learning process.
Or anytime I pushed the button, there could be a kind of noise that sent shivers down my spine, for example the sound of chalk screeching on a blackboard.
Or anytime I pushed the button, the button itself could spray water in my face, or release the odor of cheap perfume, which is something I can’t stand.
This experience would probably be punishing, and I suspect what would happen to me is, I would move the riding-up-the-elevator task out of the bucket of “habit” and back into the bucket of “pay attention when you do this!” It would stay there longer, allowing me to actually create a functional habit, and by the time I moved it back to the habit container, I WOULD be able to unconsciously get it right even when I was daydreaming.
When it comes to the elevator, I’m happy learning just over time. I really don’t care. So there’s zero reason for an aversive consequence, however well implemented, that would speed up the learning process. The stakes aren’t just low, there are no stakes. I wouldn’t mind pushing the wrong button for another month. That’s why I said, whether learning speed matters depends on the task.
I can also imagine that some learners would not learn at all, not even in 2 months, if nothing happened when they pushed the wrong button. That’s why teaching style needs to take into account who your learner is. If the task has zero stakes and the learner doesn’t progress, does it matter? Maybe not! That’s up to you, the teacher.
For other tasks, like crossing a busy highway, learning speed absolutely matters. I wouldn’t want my mind to shift this task into the “don’t pay attention” bucket before I was sure I had installed a strong habit of checking whether I was about to get run over by a car or not. The faster I learned this, the safer I would be. So in this scenario, if I was a slow learner who shifts tasks to the “whatever” category too fast, it would arguably be in my best interest to implement an undesired consequence for stepping off the sidewalk without checking what’s going on first.
Why do I bore you with my elevator ruminations this morning? I’m stuck at home with a nasty cold. And I think it’s relevant for dog training. I’d love anyone’s thoughts! Do you agree with me? How we teach should be about who the learner is and what the task is? If not … what should it be about? I want to hear your perspective! Also, of course, it’s not either habit or consequence. Most things (like crossing streets and riding elevators) become habits eventually either way.
Before I let you go, let me give you a couple news since I haven’t shared a blog post in a while and A LOT has happened since the last one!
Patreon
If you liked this text and want to see more like it, as well as other thoughts and videos about balanced dog and human “training,” as well as thoughts about different cultures, adapting to them, and being downwardly mobile … join one of my paid Patreon tiers. The reason they exist is that I need your support … and by now, there’s a big backlog of (mostly) videos to go through!
Free-roaming dogs journey!
I’m planning a small trip to observe and discuss the free-roaming dogs of Colombia next year. I’ll take between 4 and 6 people, and since this is the very first time I’m going to organize something like this, I will keep it as budget-y as possible! Send me an e-mail if you’re interested, and I’ll invite you to our first video meeting where you get to chime in about content, planning and even when we go!
This week is the last week for most of my little rebeldes – except for Chispa, who will likely move out in week 9. A student just asked how I feel about the puppies leaving. I’ll have to think about it some more once I have … well, time to think! The FDSA term just ended yesterday and for the first time in weeks, I’ll be able to catch a breath … not today because I have plenty of stuff to catch up on, but hopefully tomorrow. Back to today:
7 weeks, 1 day (May 13)
Morning socializing
As planned, we headed to the town square and got there at 7:30 in the morning, giving us half an hour out. It was busier than on Sunday (it’s Monday today.) We saw plenty of school children. Several people stopped to pet the puppies, and the puppies followed a few folks and were enchanted with someone’s shoe laces. They ventured further and were significantly more confident than yesterday already. I suspect this is partly because they are recognizing the location as familiar by now. Mostly new folks, but the same place.
Everyone met 1.5 dogs (I’m counting 1.5 because everyone met the first one, but I don’t think every single puppy met the second one – for one, Chispa did not. I’ll make sure she gets an extra dog encounter when I get the chance.) Here’s the one everyone met:
The second one was an injured Pitbull who didn’t get up, but was gently sniff-greeted by those who wanted. We saw three more dogs, but they just passed in the distance.
The puppies played with each other in the gazebo and had a great time trying to latch on to my sandals and the belts of the carrier. Playful and confident! Everyone ate kibble and followed my pup-pup-pup recall.
Fierro really is currently the most barky when it comes to other dogs. He’s eager to approach, but he likes to bark as he does so. Game was like this as well: she very much liked hearing herself talk as a puppy. Bravo is currently THE most confident (almost always the first to approach novelty), and not barky along the way, followed by Oso and Fierro. Rebelde has shown a fair amount of curiosity as well these last 2 days. She’ll approach humans and dogs and venture pretty far. Right now, Chispa is the one who is least interested in approaching and most interested in watching from a distance – she and Rebelde have switched the roles they held last week!
Because of this, Chispa got pet less by strangers this morning, and she is the only one I know for sure didn’t sniff our second dog (and only sniffed the first one because I held her up to them, like last night’s Chihuahua.)
Chispa’s solo adventure
To boost her exposure, I took Chispa on an out-of-crate solo adventure once we had gotten home, and the lovely store person next door held here while I was rummaging through my pockets for money. Humans for Chispa this week: +1!
Who’s the most noise sensitive right now?
Right as I got home from this afternoon’s ice cream hunt, we heard a siren – and Rebelde ran off. At this moment, she still seems the most noise sensitive even if she’s overtaken Chispa’s and perhaps Fierro’s confidence in other aspects. All other dogs in the yard were completely chill and kept playing though, which, I hope, will have set an excellent example for Rebelde!
… at this moment may have been the key phrase in the paragraph above: when we went to Mercado Hidalgo, the town’s cra-zy Monday market I discovered today, folks were just packing up. Someone was taking down a metal structure and throwing the poles to the side, making very loud noises. Chispa ran off, but Rebelde didn’t!
Who’s the barkiest?
No doubt there: right now, the barkiest puppy is Fierro. He has been barking at dogs, and at Mercado Hidalgo, he barked at a teen who approached him. The dog-barking didn’t go along with insecure body language, but the teen-barking did. I venture he’s – right now, today – the kind of dog who likes expressing himself in words. Tomorrow, he may be a different puppy entirely – or not. We’ll see!
Every puppy got a frozen chicken foot to chew on today. I gave them a little time to get into it and then approached, announced “Let’s trade,” bent down, rudely took away the chicken foot, immediately fed a raw meatball and then gave back the chicken foot right away and left. Every puppy got two rounds of this while working on their chicken feet. Rebelde, by the way, was the only one who finished hers completely, in one go and FAST!
I videoed the first two puppies – Bravo and Fierro. Note how in this video, I make sure that the first indicator of me taking the food is the verbal “Let’s trade” announcement. Only then do I bend down. And only once I have bent down and taken the chew do I whip out the even better snack: a raw meatball. This order of events is what you’ll want to aim for if working on this protocol with your own puppy or puppies.
Also, the punching bag in the top right corner of the last clip? It comes with this place. I’ve never had a punching bag. I tried it the other day – feels surprisingly good to have a go at the thing!
Handling and husbandry
Everyone got the nails on their left front paws done and worked through the handling protocol along the way. I recorded the first puppy, who happened to be Rebelde. She also happened to be one of the two most relaxed ones (Rebelde and Chispa.) Everyone else struggled a little – not because of fear but because they had better things to do. It is SO obvious how different this is from a puppy who is afraid of a husbandry procedure. I love that we’ve got this foundation now. Based on it, folks can either build a “no choice” routine (“When I say we do these things, we will – that’s it”) OR cooperative care. Whichever way a puppy’s future human(s) go, they will NOT have to countercondition discomfort or fear before getting to work on the actual behavior (be it the dog opting in or the dog learning to hold still when told to do so.) That should give everyone a major shortcut in the husbandry department! Of course, a new person will have to first win the puppy’s trust, but I’d venture that it will go relatively fast, especially since the new humans will soon be with their puppies – and the puppies still young!
The one thing I forgot in the video above was the “needle” protocol. I got it in later! Note how I announce everything I do before doing it: “Collar off” – “nails” – “brush” – “paws” – “teeth” – “eyes” – “ears” – “collar on.” (The needle announcement is “needle,” and before picking up a dog, I say, “up.”) Announcements are not cues – they are what I use if I am about to do something and don’t want to surprise the dog. Over time, dogs learn what different announcements mean. If you leave a tiny pause between announcement and action, you will be able to see how your dog feels about what you’re about to do based on their body language.
Late afternoon/evening outing: Mercado Hidalgo
I took four instead of five puppies tonight: Bravo stayed home. He’s ahead on the human count and usually gets the most attention because he is outgoing. Leaving him home gave me a chance to focus on the others. Plus four puppies are significantly easier to keep track of (and carry) than five!
We were going to go to the town square again, but came across the tianguis Carla had mentioned happened on Mondays. We took the opportunity to wander through parts of it. It was WILDLY crazy – more so than any of the ones I’ve been to with Chai during her remedial socialization time.
On this particular outing, we experienced: the most crowded space yet (the subway has been similarly crowded, but the puppies stayed in the carrier there – now, they were out, following me on the ground and trying not to lose me – not an easy feast in the midst of the chaotic market!) Children running and crying, dogs, fruit, meat, fried stuff, random objects on sale, people carting, carrying, dragging and pushing all kinds of transport concoctions around, people taking down large tarps as well as metal scaffolding, someone carrying a ladder, someone using crutches, a kid carrying a doll, kid cars you activate by throwing in a coin and that make noise when you – a puppy – get close, various people talking to me (about the puppies), people reaching for them and petting them, hopping on and off the curb, trash on the ground (which the puppies had fun picking up, tasting and carrying), cigarette smoke, pup-pup-pup recalls and working hard to not lose me. It was a wild ride, and they did great.
Some of the many, many things we saw, smelled, heard and people and dogs we met. The highlights were finding a mango stone with delicious mango bits left on it and a greasy paper bag.
When we got home, I heard Bravo whine. I had left him with Chai in the bathroom, but he was clearly not happy. I am sorry, Bravo.
Crate training
Oso
did his 20 minutes in the carrier! Superpuppy!
Rebelde
complained again at first – but only for five minutes or so. MUCH improved from yesterday!
Fun things
… we have time for now that I’m on break: I tried getting a photo of everyone, including me, to have a memory. I’ll give this another try while we’re still all together – two more days – and hope that one of these days, I’ll end up with a picture I like.
Look at Fierro!
7 weeks, 2 days (May 14)
Morning adventure
We got up bright and early and headed to the town square. I left Oso with Game today. The puppies are SO big now that it’s nearly impossible to carry 5 at a time, but 4 still works.
Everyone who came along for our outing got 1/3 of a human again. Fierro gets an entire human because … well, let me get to this a little further down!
They all also got 1/3 of a dog because we saw about 6 or 7 of them, watched, approached a little but didn’t directly interact. Fierro gets an entire dog in addition because he walked up to the injured Pitbull and sniffed them from up close (not after barking at them for a bit, not eliciting a response.)
On the way home, I took a little detour and stopped at the corner where my free-roaming friends live (the ones I feed when I walk past with Game and Chai, and who by now are happy to see us.) I held Chispa and she got sniffed by 3 all at once. Because I held her (she didn’t look like she wanted to be placed down) and initially stiffened (but quickly relaxed), I’ll count 2 rather than 3 of the dogs for her. I also got out Bravo. He got placed on the ground and voluntarily sniffed one of the dogs. +2 dogs for Chispa and +1 for Oso before we headed home!
How Fierro earned himself +1 human this morning
Right as we were headed back to the car, someone grabbed Fierro (who was maybe a meter ahead of me) and started crossing the street, walking fast. I yelled at them; they stopped. I demanded they give back my dog. They handed him over and then said something about the puppy having been on the ground, alluding that dogs on the ground are up for grabs (this dog wears a collar with a dog tag and I was clearly right behind him. Seriously.)
I was curious, so I calmly asked if they had tried to make a joke by pretend-stealing my dog or if they had actually attempted to take the puppy. (They were acting righteously and laughed and postured at me, which made me consider the joke option.) They said they would have taken the puppy. I couldn’t tell if it was true or still part of a bad joke because they kept throwing the occasional laugh in there. I loaded everyone in the car and turned around to see that person staring at me, so I looked them straight in the eyes and told them to go fuck themselves before I drove off. Our species? It’s the strangest one I know.
Barkiness right now
On this morning’s outing, Fierro was the most barky. He barked at all new dogs we met. Not necessarily fearfully, but with tentativeness. What I – not a developmental psychologist, just an observer who has read a lot (most of which wasn’t about dogs because there’s a lack of studies – we tend to study rodents and humans instead) – suspect I am seeing is that Fierro’s ability to experience fear is currently increasing. He is a little more barky today than yesterday because he is able to physiologically experience fear a little more strongly than he was yesterday. And, being Game’s son, he expresses his feelings in words.
This doesn’t mean that Fierro is going to grow up to be fearful or fear-aggressive. It means Fierro is at a point where I would not “force” an interaction. He’s at the point where it’s important to take things at his pace. Because he’s had a lot of socialization experiences and has confident canine relatives, chances are that taking things at his pace will be all that is needed. There are no guarantees, of course, and if a few days of taking things at Fierro’s pace don’t make a difference, my solution would be to teach him CU games and help him cope with the world that way. Since he is THIS young, the CU games may only be needed temporarily.
What I would not do is either force interactions he isn’t comfortable with on him (he’s “too far along” for this in terms of fear development) or completely shelter him from the outside world (his ability to experience fear cannot – or so I assume – be fully developed yet.) We still want to cash in on these early opportunities where the fear response is weak. I’d expect it not to be fully developed for another week or so. But then again – not a biologist here. Just a layperson, so take what I say with a brimful salt shaker.
If I was to keep Fierro, I’d orchestrate lots of dog encounters like the ones we had this morning: where he gets to choose if and how far he wants to approach, and the dogs don’t care at all that there’s a tiny puppy barking at them. He’d learn two things: one, dogs aren’t threatening, and two, barking has no consequence.
This is our puppy/dog video from this morning. Note that Fierro chooses to walk up to the dog on the platform. I haven’t encouraged him to do so. He goes up, he barks, nothing happens. Only towards the very end (unfortunately, Fierro happens to be barking at that moment too) do the free roamers get up to leave because they’ve seen another dog friend they want to greet. It’s not ideal that this coincided with Fierro’s barking (I don’t want him to learn that barking makes dogs go away), but apart from this, these dogs made amazing helpers and I hope Fierro learned a valuable lesson: dogs are okay. Bark at them, don’t bark at them … they’re just doing their thing. (Free roaming dogs are the most dog savvy dogs I’ve met anywhere in the world.)
Morning crate training
Fierro
had a go at his 20 minutes in the morning. I was hesitant to do it in the morning because by the time we were back from our adventure, I had had coffees #2 and #3, jotted down notes from this morning and had a good play session with the big dogs, it was a little after 9AM and starting to get warm. I know from experience that hot puppies are not happy in carriers (understandably; the airflow in there has got to be less cooling than outside on the cold concete or cool dirt or grass, where they could otherwise choose to rest.) However, since Fierro seemed so sleepy (while everyone else was still active! Their rhythms are starting to diverge!), I gave it a go. And he DID it! About halfway in, he mumbled something to himself and changed positions in the carrier and then went back to sleep. Since this kind of mumbling also happens with sleepy animals changing positions outside of carriers, I don’t mind. He was in no rush to get out after his 20 minutes – I lifted him out and he went right back to sleep on the cool concrete.
This catches Fierro up to Oso! Both boys have succeeded at 20 minutes and will be doing 25 next! I’m hoping for tonight. If all goes well, this will allow us to complete half an hour – my goal – before going back to Mexico City Thursday morning!
Who’ll get to go on future 3-dog adventures (there are 3 more before we head back to the city?)
Chispa needs her outings the least: she is going to stay with me past 8 weeks and come to the city with Fierro and Oso, which will go hand in hand with plenty of human and dog interactions. Fierro and Oso will also come to the city and likely meet a bunch of dogs and people there. I’m confident I can bring their count up to 7 before one of the boys leaves on Saturday – especially as I’ll invite Carla (and whoever of her kids is home) over again tomorrow so they can say goodbye. If Axel is around, we’ll get two people per puppy; if not, at least one!
This leaves Bravo and Rebelde. I’m not particularly concerned about Bravo. He has been SO confident that I’m positive he is ready to take the world in stride (OR his fear response hasn’t set in yet, which will also further set him up for success.) He is also going to meet a “new” (well, not that new, but we’ll count him!) person – Alan – on Thursday, and also hang out with Alan’s Border Collie Kiba again.
Rebelde is going to meet a new person on Thursday as well: Irving’s sister. I don’t know if they have a dog or will introduce Rebelde to anyone else before Irving comes back from Chiapas on the 28th. So I’ll want to get as many experiences for Rebelde in as I can before then. She’s the priority, especially as far as dogs are concerned.
This means Rebelde gets to go on every 4-dog outing we’ll have before we leave Teotihuacán. I’ll also bring her if the tamales person is around today and ask them to hold her again, or if I’m going to a store. On tomorrow morning’s free-roamer stop, if I get around to it, it’s Rebelde who I’ll take out to meet my friends on the way home.
Fierro will also get to come on all outings, simply because the free-roamers we’ve got here are going to be non existent in his potential home in the US (in case that’s where he ends up going – it’s a tie between him and Oso), and they are perfect for him at his barky stage.
As for everyone else, I’ll probably rotate through.
A new toy, play, and trading the toy to prevent toy guarding!
We broke out our third fancy toy today: the duck. Everyone loved it; it seems to be made of a material that’s particularly fun to bite into. After letting them have fun with it by themselves, I did a solo play session with Rebelde, Fierro, Bravo and Chispa. After letting them win the duck, I let them have it for a little bit (the time it took to head inside and get meat from the fridge), then traded for a raw meatball and then gave back the toy. Oso will get his turn tomorrow!
Evening adventure
I went on a 3-dog adventure tonight. Taking 3 is SO much easier now that they are this big and active! Three are totally manageable! I took Fierro, Rebelde and Oso. They all did great. We met two dogs each. Fierro barked at both of them, and they ignored him – perfect! After a little barking, Fierro met them along with the others. He was confident and seemingly felt good. We hung out with one of the dogs for about 15 minutes and there was quite some interaction – this other dog was interested in the puppies too (and in my treats.) She also corrected the puppies appropriately with a growl-bark and fast head movement when they went for a piece of chicken she had (while being perfectly content to watch them eat kibble from my hand in turn with her.) It keeps fascinating me that many dogs seem to respect a concept similar to temporary ownership. I say temporary because when it comes to toys, they’ll often be up for grabs as long as they aren’t in use by anyone, but off the table for everyone else once one dog has them. Note that this is NOT the case for all dogs – some want all the resources to themselves while others let anyone steal their toys. Some respect others’ objects/food while others do not. I’ve seen this kind of respect and boundary-setting often enough though to know that it is very much a thing among dogs – just not among all of them. For lack of a better word, I’d call it a part of their culture!
Fierro, Rebelde and Oso: hanging out with dogs and being stroked to sleep by kids.
The puppies saw lots of different humans and got touched by a few, and saw me talk to several ones. We ended up spending about 20 minutes with four lovely kids. The youngest was three (as the oldest informed me.) The oldest may have been around 7 and the other two in between. They were very gentle and lovely with the puppies. The oldest made sure to give everyone equal amounts of pets. They stroked them to sleep and kept hanging out with us. Because there was so much touch and interaction, I’m counting tonight as +1 human, even in the absence of being picked up, for everyone who went on our adventure.
Evening crate training
Fierro
I waited till Fierro had fallen asleep and then aimed for 25 minutes. I expected him to be more tired and had him go first since he had been on our evening adventure while Oso hadn’t. Fierro settled into the carrier comfortably … for 20 minutes. Then he woke up and started complaining at a level 1, escalating to noise level 3 after 2.5 more minutes. The last minute was a level 4, pretty nonstop. He’ll take another stab at 25 minutes next time.
Something interesting has happened yesterday and today: if I was going to keep Fierro or he was the only puppy I crate-trained, I would have let him cry it out today, like Rebelde at the baby gate yesterday. I know he feels safe being close to all of us, the temperature is as okay as it gets these days, and I absolutely feel that now, unlike in the past, the possibility for operant learning is high (operant learning in the sense that the puppy develops the superstition that barking causes the carrier to open.)
Since I am crate training two puppies, I just don’t have the time to let both of them cry it out. I need to switch them after their respective time (in this case 25 minutes.) It’ll be interesting to see if this sets Fierro back on our next go.
Oso
started out great. After 15 minutes, he changed positions and made a peep of talking to himself, but then settled right in again. Sadly, about 5 minutes later, he started whining calmly. Not upset, but not super happy. After calming down a little, he escalated to noise level 2. With 5 minutes left, he went up to a 3. I was tempted to let him cry it out after having taken out Fierro before – but no. I’ll stick to my plan of sticking to a certain time period and see how that goes, and if the puppies do – or don’t – develop superstitious whining. Unlike Fierro, Oso periodically calmed down again between fits of whining, but then went out with brief level 5 screams.
Fierro again
I gave Fierro a second go at 25 minutes. I really thought I’d be able to work up to half an hour for each of them before Joan got here, so … this is me trying to still reach this goal even though I’m running out of time. He settled in comfortably right away, so even though he screamed when I let him out the last time, he has no negative associations with the carrier as such. A good start!
… it’s 25 minutes later and I just had to wake Fierro! He DID it! Go superpuppy!! Next and last goal: 30 minutes.
Oso
got another go as well because I’m feeling confident after Fierro’s turn. Even though I’m ready to fall asleep, I’ll stay up 25 more minutes in the hope that we’ll succeed!
… and just like that, it’s 25 minutes later and Oso was the one I just woke up! Woohoo!! They both did it!
7 weeks, 3 days (May 15)
3-puppy morning adventure
Find the puppies!
I took Fierro, Rebelde and Chispa. Everyone met 2 dogs and saw a bunch of humans – but not enough to count. So 0 new humans and 2 new dogs for the three rebeldes this quiet morning at the town square! I finally got the picture of everyone in front of the Teotihuacán letters I’d been meaning to get. They all ate, tried to tug on my pants and tugged on my bag. The person who’d tried taking Fierro yesterday wasn’t there. Rebelde and Chispa crossed a street for the first time!
Fierro continues in his current approach to new dogs: bark as he walks up to them. Once again, we met two dogs who did not care one bit. I’m so grateful for these calm free-roamers who’ll just let him do his thing! I tried interrupting his barking with a food scatter, and he was able to eat, too – so not a fear response (I venture.) Today was the first day Rebelde followed suit and tried two or three barks at the second dog after Fierro started. Then she lost interest in barking again.
A stop with a helpful free roamer, unimpressed by Fierro’s barking, before heading back to our temporaryhome.
Duck tug – resource guarding prevention for Oso
When we got back home, Oso got his round of tugging on the duck, taking the duck away, trading for a raw meatball and getting the duck back. He did great:
Morning crate training
Fierro
mastered 30 minutes of sleeping in the carrier! Go puppy! Achievement unlocked!
Oso
started complaining after about 10 minutes. In our long-standing tradition, I left him in the carrier for his 30 minutes anyways and then let him out. He never escalated to top level, but did go back and forth between 10-second stretches of quiet, 2 and 3. Oso and I will take another stab at 30 minutes tonight!
Food bowl resource guarding prevention for everyone
Visitors
Carla and little Emmerson came over in the afternoon to see all the puppies one last time before the first ones go to their new humans. Oso and Chispa slept under the car and didn’t feel like coming out in the heat. Fierro barked at Carla while greeting her, and Bravo quickly followed suit. Emmerson then ran around the yard and for the first time, Fierro chased after him: best! game! ever! Luckily, he didn’t catch up with Emmerson – I don’t want them to feel those playful sharky teeth! Bravo joined the chase a little later, but Carla and I quickly stopped it – i.e. we stopped Emmerson, which is easier than stopping a Mal puppy on a mission!
Rebelde, Fierro and Bravo all got held for a minute by Carla – plus one human for the three of them! I tried calling the other two out from under the car, but they were too sleepy. They woke for a moment though, so they were at least aware that we had visitors and, I hope, got to benefit from a distance. Relaxing in the presence of visitors is a good exercise too.
Carla and Oso … and the bracelets Carla made for me! Thank you, Carla!!They are awesome!
Evening adventure
For our last 3-puppy adventure in town, I took Rebelde, Fierro and Bravo. Bravo and Rebelde got touched by two different strangers, and everyone saw kids running and screaming, a bike and lots of different adults strolling and sitting on benches in the twilight. I’ll count 1/3 of a human for each puppy who got petted.
Everyone also met a dog who was very gentle with the puppies. She showed up so fast that Fierro didn’t have time to bark. Only after greeting her did he remember his new approach to dogs and started barking. She stayed and wagged until he had calmed down again. Thank you very much! Dogs +1 for Fierro, Rebelde and Bravo!
Evening crate training
After spending half an hour in sleep-deprived toddler mode, chasing each other through the house and getting in all kinds of trouble (pulling on electrical cords, tugging on sandals, finding a domino piece under the couch, toppling over a bucket and climbing in it, getting themselves tangled up in a medieval torture device metal contraption for garrafónes, trying to climb on all the furniture, climbing on a metal shelf, pulling on my underwear, redecorating the floor with a sweater and pants and dragging a remote control out into the yard, they all fell asleep. I woke …
Oso
… and transferred him into the carrier. Timer’s set to 30 minutes. Let’s see if we manage this time!
… he DID it! Go Oso!! Archievement unlocked for both the boys! YAY! Just in time!
7 weeks, 4 days (May 16)
Names (again again)
Someone laughed at Fierro’s name tonight. I know fierro is also a slang word for dick, but I’ve never heard it used that way and both Carla and Axel thought the name was cool (I ran it by them to make sure.) They thought the dick connotation was super regional and I shouldn’t worry about it; if at all, it was the good kind of funny. Anyways, because he got laughed at (and not in a way that I like), I decided to change his for-the-moment name before he goes to Eduardo. I love my puppies; no making fun of them! For the time being, I’ll go back to Red when interacting with Spanish speakers.
Morning road trip
Right after an early breakfast, Game, the 5 puppies and I hit the road. Chai stayed behind to be looked after by Carla and Axel for a few days. We had two stops along the way and wanted to get the drive done before it got too hot!
Rebelde
Our first stop was in Vallejo, CDMX: Rebelde’s stop! She is going to stay with Irving’s sister for a few days while he is competing in Chiapas. Rebelde was happy to get out of the car and meet Dalay! +1 new human for Rebelde – and we’ve gotten lovely updates since then! I’ll share them under today’s heading because this was her last day with me, but some of them are from Friday and Saturday. Rebelde also met Dalay’s and Irving’s cousin and has been settling in beautifully! She is being showered with love and her extended new family is already very much in love with her:
Rebelde’s human and dog count for the week: 6 humans and almost 8 dogs. I didn’t meet the human goal this week because I didn’t have her with me all week – but we got an extra dog in. And it’s possible that someone else met Rebelde before the week ended; I’m only counting the humans I know about. In any case – she’s doing great and will have another new adventure soon when Irving gets back and she moves to his place!
Rebelde’s going away presents, apart from a blanket that smells of Game and her siblings, were the dinosaur toy and the furminator I’ve gotten the puppies used to.
Bravo
Our second stop was at Alan’s place where Bravo won’t only meet his future family – Alan’s dad and brother – but also see Kiba again! Bravo, of course, was confident as always! I’m counting +3 humans and +1 dog. He’ll even go to another new location and meet another new human on the weekend as he heads to “his” rancho outside Toluca and meets Alan’s niece!
Bravo’s human and dog count for the week: almost 4 dogs (his goal was 6) and 6 humans (his goal was, like everyone else’s, 7.) In Bravo’s case, I don’t worry about not meeting the goal: he’s been SO confident lately. It is also possible that he met an additional dog (Alan’s mom’s old little mix) and additional human or two (Alan’s mom and sister in law). I’m not counting them because I don’t know for sure. In that case, he’d have exceeded his human goal for the week and be only one dog short.
Bravo’s going away gift apart from a blanket smelling of Game and his siblings: the giraffe toy. He gets the biggest toy because he will live with kids, and they will need something for him to bite when playing! (Alan’s youngest niece is, I believe, 13 – old enough for a Malinois household. As long as they’re armed with a good dangly-legs giraffe toy, that is!)
Game, Red, Chispa and Oso
The four of us headed on home to the apartment. I had time to shower, eat a bite, walk Game around the block and feed everyone lunch before a quick apartment cleaning, and then Joan got here! The exciting part of the day was about to begin because Joan wass going to decide between Red and Oso, based on the temperament I’ve observed over the last few days, what Joan will observe over the next two days they spend adventuring and playing with the puppies and me and a structural evaluation via video call with Joan’s dogs’ rehab and conditioning expert!
We watched an old Chris Zink webinar to figure out how to stack puppies (and had a few good laughs), I probably talked Joan’s ears off telling them everything I could think of about the puppies that wasn’t on the blog yet, and then the boys had their stacking session on a puzzle mat on my fridge. The canine sports expert thought Oso had better structure for a long and injury-free agility career. This coincides with my answer to what puppy I would place in a sports home “right now” (the answer differs all the time.) The structural evaluation rests on Oso’s front angulation, which is similar to Game’s (we had her looked at too.) The boys did their stacking with the help of eating their very first hotdog, and they loved it!
My behavioral answer is that Red is currently barky and Oso is not. Red’s barkiness may not be fear related – he’ll often go up to another dog confidently while barking – but it’s just easier to have a sports dog who’s less barky; it allows you to focus on other behaviors rather than on being quiet. And just in case nerviness is part of what inspires the barking – that’s not what we want in a sports dog either.
Pictures above by Joan. It was nice to outsource photo documentation! Game and Chai say thank you for the gift toys (one of which is in the top right picture by Red’s sleepy feet!)
I know the other boy will have a more predictable routine with familiar routes and familiar people in it, so working through any barkiness that might crop up will be easier than it will be for an athlete who may travel to compete and meet different judges, stewards, sports people and dogs for the rest of his life.
The sports and rehab expert said Red would not be a bad choice either, but they liked Oso’s structure a bit better. So before making a decision, we were going to have puppy adventures so Joan could see the puppies out and about as well!
Evening adventure
We took the two boys to Fresa Parque and then to dinner on a patio. The staff there recognized them because they had been part of the socialization team and were happy to dote on the puppies. I don’t think anyone else held them, so I’m counting 1/3 of a human and 1/3 of a dog for both puppies. They saw dogs in the park and sniffed from a small distance and also next to us on the patio, but didn’t have direct contact with any. They were lazy at the park, but woke up at the patio: it was cooler now and they were ready for action! They got to explore around a stripe of bushes between the patio and the sidewalk, and also on the floor inside the place (where a little kid offered Red their teddy bear and he bit into the teddy bear … and the poor kid started crying. The teddy bear was unharmed, but the puppy hadn’t known that this was a “look, don’t touch” kind of deal. Neither had we humans. I’m sorry, little kid and teddy bear!
Both puppies had a little bit of kibble at the patio too. It was so much fun to see how fast they came running anytime I pup-pup-pup called them if they ventured too far! I reinforced their puppy recalls with serrano ham from my plate, and then they were off again to explore some more. They even found the restaurant’s water bowl and dove in for a drink!
Back home, everyone was wild and crazy and bitey. Joan got to see Chispa and her brothers running around being their crazy playful selves, and Game occasionally correcting them for nursing in a way that was painful.
7 weeks, 5 days (May 17)
Names (again again again)
I’ve changed Red’s name: he’s Mr. President. I unthinkingly called him this today and … it fit! It’s a fun name, and not one people will laugh at. I know Eduardo will give him his own name – he has one prepared that he’ll use if it fits! – but for now, Red is going to be Mr. President to Spanish speakers, and I’ll introduce him as Mr. President to Eduardo and Drago.
Morning adventure
We took all three puppies to Parque de las Arboledas before it got hot. There was A LOT of dog and people traffic! The remaining three rebeldes got touched by lots of different people and met different dogs. Mr. President kept being a little barky – but less so than earlier this week! His barkiness is going down!
He and Oso were the first to approach new people and dogs, and Chispa usually followed suit right away. No barking from her and Oso. I’m counting (and I’m making this up because I didn’t keep count) +3 dogs and +1 person per puppy.
A rare occasion where parts of ME are in the pictures (because Joan took them). No other dogs or people because I took another day off videoing and taking pictures, and Joan’s pictures focus on the puppies – the action was all around us though!
We made a shrine of everything the puppies found and took into their mouth during this morning’s outing. All cigarettes are curtesy of Oso. He’s a smoker, and he’s starting young! Not sure what doG to dedicate this shrine to – it’s up for grabs, all you doGs out there! Assembled with lots of love by Joan, Caden, Oso, Mr. President and Chispa:
Making art with your friends is good for “the soul.”
Evening adventure
After both watching them rest and playing some more with all three puppies, Joan made their decision: Oso will be their puppy!
For his solo evening adventure, Oso – whose name, as can be revealed now, is going to be Judge! – went to the vet’s. He got his third vet exam and a clean health certificate. He was confident and did well, and fell asleep on the table! Now that is one relaxed dog at the vet’s:
Purple Bear says, “Vets? Easy!”
We met two friends for dinner after the vet visit. One of them held Judge again and he got pet by both. So on this evening adventure, we got +2 humans for Judge! Again, there was a dog at the next table over as well. Judge did great and didn’t care: he slept through most of dinner in his carrier and then explored a little on the sidewalk and found the dog water bowl in the restaurant entry.
My food and Joan with Judge at Utopia! No, I don’t usually take pictures of my food. I also don’t usually eat food that looks fancy, so when I do …spinach lasagna!
Tomorrow, Judge will fly! His journey home is going to be the most exciting one since he’ll be on two plances (there’s a layover), three airports, touch two US states and meet Joan’s partner, all in one afternoon/evening!
7 weeks, 6 days (May 18)
The puppies played in the apartment in the morning, giving Judge a chance to get out his energy! Chispa was the last one standing after her brothers passed out:
Then we headed to the airport. After checking in, we gave Judge a chance to pee outside the airport – and he did so pretty much right away! He also explored, found another cigarette butt (oh boy, you really are starting young!), watched cars go by and then decided he was ready to rest – right in time for Joan to get in line for security. I waited until the two of them had made it to the other side of security before heading home.
Seeing Judge off after check-in at the airport!
My first update when Joan and Judge had reached the gate: one Very Good Puppy waiting to board! (He’s in the carrier I trained them with, has – like every puppy – a little blanket that smells of Game and his siblings, and one of the fancy puppy toys I got for the rebels.)From the looks of it, Judge approves of his travel arrangements!
A thought on airports past and present
Judge is the third puppy to leave, and the most difficult for me. On the way to the airport and when assisting Joan in checking in and anything else we were able to do pre-security, I was sad. Not about the puppy. I’m excited about the home Judge is going to. He’ll have a most excellent life. Not only that – he’ll meet several of my colleagues and students in person (he’s going to an FDSA hotspot) and he may show up in my online classes!
Being Joan and Judge’s airport person reminded me of the time I was someone’s virtual airport person when they picked up a puppy and went through their own puppy airport odyssee. They’re no longer in my life. I’d have been perfectly happy having stayed someone who, from a great distance, virtually joined their occasional dog adventure and vice versa in between talking life. As Judge leaves, I get to be sad that did not happen.
Here is Judge’s first friend in Joan’s house: Didi! The video below is from Sunday (May 19), but I’ll add it to Judge’s chapter on his going-home day here – the day he took off on his big adventure!
Judge’s human and dog count for the week: a little over 9 humans and a little over 9 dogs. Weekly goal more than met!
And here’s another update from Monday! The giant Lab puppy is only 16 weeks old. He’s a service dog puppy Joan and Terri are fostering for another week or so. Lucky Judge has got his very own puppy play friend right at home!
Husbandry and handling
After getting home from the airport, I did a round of handling with Chispa and Mr. President. They were being amazing, and for the first time, I clipped the nails on all 4 paws in a single session each. None of them complained even a little bit! Mr. President completely relaxed in my arms on his back, belly up and let me work through all his nails in one go! Superpuppy!
8 weeks (May 19)
Game, Mr. President, Chispa and I got up at 6 and were on the road to Naucalpan half an hour later!
Mr. President
Today was Mr. President’s big day: he went to live with his dad Drago and their human! Both he and Chispa got to meet their dad (who was very excited about the puppies and a bit much for them (the joyful-excited kind of much.) Chispa got held and met her brother’s human as well, counting +1 human and +1 dog for her today. Mr. President, for his part, did not only meet Drago and Eduardo, but also Eduardo’s dad. Two humans, one dog for him at 8 weeks old! AND a new environment: Eduardo’s dad’s car repair shop with tires and tools and all the sounds!
The picture on the right is an update I got a few hours after dropping off Mr. President. He’s already snuggling with his new human and fitting right in!
Mr. President’s dog and human count for the week: a little over 10 humans and a little over 13 dogs. Weekly goal more than met!
Chispa, Game and I carried on back to Teotihuacán for a few more days. Chai was VERY excited to have me back, and Chispa was VERY excited to see Chai! Thank you again, Carla and Axel, for taking care of my girl while I was gone!
Chai looks particularly good now: I used the undercoat rake I had asked Joan to bring me from the US. She’s been shedding, and I brushed out her “pants” with the new rake today!
Chispa
On the drive, we stopped for gas and Chispa got to explore a little around the highway rest stop. She saw a huge truck leave the gas station, several people walking in and out of the little convenience store, smelled gas and tentatively approached a free-roamer sleeping under a bush. The dog very gently curled their lips – almost inperceptibly. Chispa read them well and did not approach further, but went back to sniffing in the other direction. Love a socially savvy puppy!
She was a bit less confident by herself than she has been with her siblings, and seemed a little taken aback by the fact that Mr. President, who had only just been in the crate with her, was no longer there. I’m not counting the gas station dog for Chispa since there was no direct interaction, but I am proud of her for reading the canine stranger so well!
The most interesting thing so far this morning was Chai’s response after greeting Chispa. She kept going back to the car and putting her front feet up on the doors. This isn’t something she usually does, and there was no food inside that might have prompted her to mistake it for a car-shaped food toy. I’m pretty sure she was looking for the other puppies!
Game, for her part, seems perfectly happy to only have one puppy left. She played with Chai when Chai asked her to, I played a little with the two big dogs (before the heat got too much!), and now the three of them are resting contently in the shade.
Chispa’s human and dog count for the week: 7 humans and a little over 10 dogs. Human goal met, dog goal more than met!
Mops on a mission: an update on Caden’s don’t-eat-me protocol
I couldn’t post an update while in the city because I’m using diluted bleach there – not great for puppy mouths. But here’s Chispa today, wildly awake, when we got back to Teotihuacán! I’m using Roma with the Teotihuacán mop. It’s the miracle everything-cleaning-powder almost everyone in Mexico uses because it’s dirt cheap and works for everything from dishes to sidewalks to cars to laundry to watering plants after you’ve used it for something else. Dogs lick sidewalks that have been cleaned that way when they are thirsty and the sidewalks are wet. Birds drink it from potholes. So I don’t worry about puppies having Roma-water-mop fleece in their mouths as the agua del día.
Look at THAT difference! Chispa was the first one to be extremely bitey, and Mr. President caught up to her. The two of them were least interested in the mop and most interested in eating my feet. Only one puppy left to demonstrate how far we have come (when the right mop is near), but YAY!
The first time I come outside in this video is to demonstrate the mop protocol in action: moving around a space I share with a little shark and going about my day, having her sink her mouth full of kitchen knives into the mop rather than my feet and legs. The second time I come outside, it’s to turn off the camera.
Time to start training and fun stuff!
8 weeks is when I like getting puppies myself. If a puppy has been well socialized with their first human, socialization stays important, but can now become a little less of a priority than it was in the last few weeks: we get to do fun stuff now, like learning marker cues, how to follow a lure and toy play! When Chispa was awake again, we practiced some of these skills – I’ll share them in a separate post.
And in case you were wondering: Chispa isn’t staying – but since she’s still with me at 8 weeks old, of course we’ll have fun while she’s here! She’ll move to Jilantzingo on Tuesday.
+ Chai went into heat on November 1st, at 9.5 months of age. Unlike Game, Chai keeps herself very clean – no need for diapers at all. She did very well only walking around on leash and not going to the park pre- and -post her meros días, since I’m still figuring those out for her. Several calm days in a row and she aced it!
Weekends were, of course, spent out and about in the middle of nowhere, hiking for hours, partly with dog friends. Fun fact: Chai and Kiba went into heat the same week. Gotta do everything together with your best puppy buddy I guess! I wonder if the two of them will outgrow each other or not. They don’t play as much as they used to because both of them have become less playful as they’ve matured, but they still seem like close friends when they’re together – just not two puppies anymore.
+ Ever since Chai’s heat, her interest in socializing with dogs who aren’t close friends has gone even further down. She’ll almost exclusively play with her friends and ignore other dogs. Little Border Collie, you have grown up so fast!
In other news …
+ Chai has now, through weekendly outings and strategic scatters (counterconditioning) learned that lone hikers are no more creepy than city crowds! No more barking when a person suddenly appears out of nowhere on a hike!
+ We have progressed from dragging a leash to being off leash on the sidewalks! Chai is being a superstar!
+ We’ve stuck to leaving the city for a day at least every second week … and are tempted to bump this up to weekly. It feels SO good to be in green spaces! Here’s Salazar (Mexico State) on a route Daniel and Dina showed us:
… and here’s goofing around with the phone camera:
Right as I am getting the hang of really using my phone’s camera … I‘m about to drown it in the ocean.
A road trip and Chai’s first time at the beach!
Chai went on her second-ever road trip, had her first hotel stay and saw the beach for the first time. Every one of these elements was a win:
+ No more throwing up in the car, even on long rides! No peeing or pooping in the car crate!
Lush, hot and humid: stops along the way, somewhere in Puebla state.
+ She generalized/I helped her generalize by strategically placing a pee pad the use-shower-as-toilet behavior to our hotel room! YAY!!!
+ Chai loves running along the ocean together with Game and took to it as if she’d done it all her life.
+ Chai off-leashed it in a mid-sized and a tiny Veracruz town and did VERY well seeing (but not chasing) cats, chickens and sheep and being neutral about every free-roaming dog we met. Superchai! There are not a lot of pictures because I drowned my phone in the Gulf of Mexico, but here’s two more:
Left: Nautla, Veracruz. Right: La Vigueta, Veracruz. We had A TON of fun at the beach in La Vigueta, but I drowned my phone the first time we went – sadly, no beach pictures or videos. We’ll just have to go back!
Day 53 – May 29, 2023: moving day and settling in!
We started with a morning walk & pee with Game at Las Islas. I then took care of moving stuff while Game and Chai stayed home alone at our old place in Coyoacán for about 2 hours.
We then made our way to our new and more central stomping grounds together. Most of my friends now live within walking distance, which is AWESOME!
The three of us explored the new neighborhood together.
Settling in
Left:Game found the couch!Right: I love that I don’t own a lot of shit. Moving is easy when everything you own fits in a suitcase and a backpack!Well, I guess technically now I have a mattress and a couch as well. Sigh.I am NOT a fan of owning things that size.
All is well now that we’ve unpacked and made our new space comfy: Game has settled in on the bed and Chai on the couch!
A new environment; it’s dark outside … and Chai is unfazed by strangers climbing through the window!
The Internet-install-service people showed up at night – and wow, Chai was totally unfazed when they climbed in through the window! I love it!
Strangers climbing through windows? Shrug.
After there finally was Internet, I only had time to quickly grab some pastries from a fresa bakery nearby. Yummy but overpriced – that fact aside, they have a GREAT comic on their wall. Read it from right to left:
Read from right to left. This is the artist’s Instagram with more of their work!
Game, Chai and I went on a night walk together to wrap up the day and do some more neighborhood exploring. First impression: very walkable! I like!
In everybody pees news
I want to teach Chai (who is not housetrained yet) to only go in the shower in the new place as well. So far, we had one pee in the living room which I interrupted by picking her up and putting her down in the shower. She finished there. Which brings us to our first shower training tally:
Living room: 0.5 Shower: 0.5
All other pees happened outside, prompted by Game. For now, Chai will sleep in the bathroom AKA her luxury kennel and I won’t be counting her overnight pees in my tally.
Day 54 – May 30, 2023: our first full day at the new place!
Chai went on a morning walk with Game and then on an adventure to one of the parks in the next neighborhood over (less fresa aka posh; more our vibe). Chai wanted to go into the dog park, so we did – but we left quickly because it was a bit overwhelming for little Border Collies. However, we had two excellent encounters with off leash dogs and Chai on a retractable leash1 right after!
Doing well meeting nice off-leash dogs in the street!
We also went to two corner stores to pick up the basics (such as toilet paper). Chai and Game waited outside both of them without complaining!
Good dogs waiting for me out of sight outside a convenience store!
Chai and Game stayed home alone in the afternoon, and later got to play with a visiting dog friend. Chai also did great staying in the bathroom while I had visitors: countering FOMO since 2023! I’m proud of her for not always needing to be part of the action.
In everybody pees news
Today’s everybody-pees tally for when I was home with the bathroom door open:
+ Shower pees: 2 + Living room: 0
(Is it possible that she is learning THIS fast?!)
(1) Why is Chai wearing a retractable leash? Because I’m experimenting with it (it’s been a while since I last used one) and Chris gave me his to play around with – thank you! So far, I’d say it works quite well and I like it a lot better than the old Flexi leashes that had a string that could cut you rather than a leash-leash like this one.
Chai had another good adventure today: we took the car to Mercado de Muebles Vasquo de Quiroga. There was no throwing up on the way there OR back!
Mercado Vasco de Quiroga is a big indoors/outdoors market composed entirely of tiny furniture stores.
Bit by bit, Chai is getting to know all the parts of Mexico City! Unlike the commercial stores in Coyoacán, pretty much every single one of the furniture stores invited me to come in WITH my dog. It was great! Chai got to explore narrow indoors spaces and we had the opportunity to use our greeting protocol (approach flat open hand voluntarily; get fed if choosing to approach) with two storekeepers.
Exploring inside and outside the mercado de muebles.
Chai also got to meet a free-roaming Pittie in the outdoors part of the market. After a bit of polite sniffing and walking together (see video), I dropped the long line and the two dogs enjoyed running and playing.
Sidenote: socializing with other dogs doesn’t necessarily mean playing. Just being at liberty (not training to heel or ignore the other dog) around each other and doing things together (sniffing, walking) counts just as much and some dogs – especially once they are not puppies anymore! – prefer this kind of relaxed social time over playing.
After getting back from the furniture market, I treated myself to some yummy street food – and Chai got to practice hanging out without begging.
Street food pro!
I also spent some time working on my platform game with both dogs … it’s going to be a lot of fun once we’re done videoing all its parts and are ready to share it!
This is the full description to go with this week’s free-ranging dog video! If you’ve already read the first part on my Youtube video description, continue reading at the heading “Barkiness, extinction and correction.”
If you are only just starting to read here, start from the beginning, below the video!
Lots and lots of things to observe in this week’s video!
A little escape artist
In the beginning of the clip, right before I started filming, the white puppy squeezed through the iron rods of the fence/gate I’m pointing out at 00:22. It’s a little hard to see, but the square openings between the iron rods of this gate are JUST big enough for this puppy to squeeze out with a bit of effort. They won’t be able to keep doing this for long – soon, their head and shoulders will be too big to fit through, and they’ll stay confined unless the gate is open.
I know this puppy because I used to see them in the center of town, and they used to participate in Veronica’s community dog feedings. (See https://youtu.be/WNF5DDNnkBE ). I’ve seen this puppy in the center less lately, and I’ve never seen them behind the gate on the outskirts that they just came out of. This leads me to suspect that the community puppy has become an owned village dog – the people who live behind that gate likely took this puppy out of the community dog population. However, since the puppy is familiar with the center, they are escaping when something tempting happens outside the fence – such as Game and I walking past!
The escaping will likely stop as soon as the puppy doesn’t fit through the gate anymore (unless this house tends to have its gate open; if so, the puppy may be roaming the center even though they get fed at their new home – or they may not, depending on how big of a homerange they end up choosing. They will get fed at home, so home range size will not be determined by food availability, but by their genetic propensity to roam). Some owned dogs are not confined by fences and won’t even leave their patio – they just don’t have the need for a larger home range. Others will wander quite far … just because they can, and they like to.
Behavioral changes likely caused by becoming an owned dog
The white puppy here is already displaying behaviors they didn’t use to display: they are being quite brave and behaving like a homed puppy: barking at Game (who they have met and ignored in the past), trying play-biting at me (for example at 03:11/12, when they grab a belt that’s dangling down from my treat bag). This puppy is behaving like a confident and playful Western household puppy when they meet a new person, not like a community puppy. Community puppies know to stay in their lane. Western household puppies know they can get away with a lot more towards the people in their lives! This puppy has (I suspect) been homed for a week or so, and had lots of interactions with people – interactions like the one they are trying on me right now. In the time they were still a community dog, they wouldn’t have had these interactions with people and therefore not displayed the behavior of jumping and grabbing at human clothes because these behaviors would have been punished. In a homed puppy, they are often reinforced: there may be toy play, or at the very least laughter and attention when the puppy tries something like this. Both of these are reinforcing.
Barkiness, extinction and correction
The barkiness is also new. The puppy barks to get Game’s attention – they want to play and interact. Game is not in the mood, and she is handling this really well: she basically pretends the puppy doesn’t exist. She doesn’t correct the puppy (she would correct an adult dog much sooner for barking her ear off).
There are two potential consequences:
If barking is a learned attention-getting behavior for this puppy (it may be; I’ve never seen this puppy bark when they were still a community dog), the absence of reinforcement (attention by Game) will lead to extinction: the barking at Game will disappear, either in the course of the current interaction, or in the course of the next one. It is entirely possible that the puppy has learned that barking gets attention from other dogs and/or humans in the week that they have been homed, simply by their barking being followed by attention.
If barking is intrinsically reinforcing to this puppy (that is to say barking itself releases feel-good hormones or neurotransmitters in the puppy’s brain, independent of external consequences), ignoring the barking will not make the barking go away because the barking is not maintained by external attention, but by internal states of feeling positive emotions. Shelties tend to be in this categorie: they’ll often LOVE to bark, and you can ignore them all you want – this is not going to change anything!
Only at the very end of the clip, at 10:22, does Game correct the puppy for barking at her. She’s patient with puppies, but her patience has limits. This is a very appropriate and soft correction – just right for this puppy who immediately understands her and backs off. Dogs who spent their sensitive socialization period as community dogs or owned free-roaming puppies tend to have excellent dog/dog social skills, and this is exactly what you see here: the puppy reads Game well. No need to escalate the reprimand.
Barrier frustration and the fascinating fence effect
Two interesting things happen (or, rather, one interesting thing happens, and another one interestingly doesn’t happen) earlier in the video. Between about 02:00 and 00:05:50, we are walking through a corridor of confined dogs: first two Mals, two Boxers and two Great Danes (only one of them seems to be outside today) on the left and a German Shepherd on the right, and then a small barky dog behind the hedge fence on the left.
All these dogs are barking and fence-running, but neither Game nor the puppy are giving them attention. Game doesn’t because I’ve taught her not to. The puppy doesn’t because they’ve grown up being a community dog, and community dogs generally learn fast to ignore the dogs who are yelling at them from behind fences: they learn that actual interaction is impossible, and they do not share the frustration of the respective dog behind the fence because they are free to do what they want.
The dogs behind the fences are not free to interact or do what they want. Fences (leashes can also have this effect) have a high potential of causing barrier frustration because they make it impossible for the dogs to interact like dogs normally would. Fence barking usually goes out of hand quickly because the dogs behind the fences are being reinforced for barking.
This is negative reinforcement: the dogs (or people) walking past outside the fence will eventually go away. The superstition a chronic fence-barker is likely to develop is that it is their barking that made them go away. If the initial barking was frustration-driven, the disappearance of the frustrating stimulus on the outside of the fence will be experienced as a relief. So they will continue barking. Even if the initial barking was attention seeking, attention seeking is highly likely to turn into frustration because they can’t go up to the other dog. If the initial barking is fear-driven (it is not in any of the dogs in the video), it will also be reinforced by having the fear-inducing stimulus on the outside of the fence eventually go away (simply because the stimulus outside the fence will move on with their life, and keep walking).
The puppy already knows that no real interaction is possible with fence barkers. So they don’t respond to the barky dogs, but keep pestering Game instead. Game is outside the fence. Interaction with Game is possible! Smart puppy!
Pet dogs (I am using “pet dog” to refer to a dog who is not free, and who is likely to be walked on leash) do not usually know this, and would join the fence-barking/fence-running if given an opportunity.
Game has learned that fence barkers are a cue for her to pay attention to me, because I will often pay for attention in these circumstances. You’ll hear me praise her (when I speak German, this is always praise for Game), and you’ll see me give her a treat at one point (02:49). Game also knows the meaning of fences. If a dog is yelling at her from behind a fence, she will ignore them. If these adult dogs were barking and coming at her without there being a fence, she would not ignore them. I’ve built this behavior by both preventing her from fence running with other dogs, being barked at from behind a fence being followed up with treat scatters, and marking and reinforcing attention when in the proximity of a fence barker/fence runner. At this point, Game would be able to walk past these dogs in a relaxed fashion even if I didn’t reinforce her. I still do though when I have treats on me (i.e. intermittently). Her off-leash relaxation in the face of fence-runners/barkers is important to me.
The adult black dog
At 08:46, an adult black dog comes into view on the little wall to the left of the sidewalk. You’ll see that this dog’s body is stiff – for example when you pause the video at 09:34. This dog and Game have run into each other several times, and the black one is always stiff. This wall is within the black dog’s home range and within Game’s core area. Game doesn’t care about the black dog, and the black dog … well, the black dog never really seems to trust or approve of Game. Maybe this will change if we stay for a few more months, or maybe the black one will always disapprove of Game. Some personalities simply don’t match, just like with people. As long as no one escalates a personality mismatch, there’s no issue: live and let live.
If you enjoy this type of post and want to learn more about free-roaming dogs, subscribe to my Youtube channel for a bi-weekly new video, and share the channel with one other person you think would enjoy it as well!
I am not making money from this – I just want to share the free-roamers I encounter with as many people as possible, and your liking, subscribing, sharing and commenting on Youtube will help my videos to be easier to encounter, because it will rank them higher in people’s search results/suggest them to more dog enthusiasts! Thank you!
What you are going to see is two dogs in a stand-off. They don’t know each other. This is Game’s home range, but we don’t go here often. I don’t know if the other dog is in their home range or core area. First, Game is ready to curve politely. The other dog approaches frontally instead. As a result, the meeting itself starts off tensely: the free-roamer is tense, and Game responds with tenseness herself. They are in a stand-off: both stiff. Neither one giving an inch. I know it’s going to erupt.
I happen to have someone who’s taking video for me (thank you, Rodrigo!), which is rare – that’s the reason I do not interfere or manage when I see the other dog is tense rather than loose-bodied. I want you to see what happens in a situation like this: not a whole lot.
Free-roaming dogs are usually excellent communicators. That is to say, they may have attitudes and opinions; they may even be snarky and barky, feisty and mean. But they do not harm each other. Fights are loud, and then everyone walks away, shakes off, and continues with their day. Think Lucha Libre or Capoeira (it’s ritualized like a dance; it may be about winning, but it’s not meant to harm the opponent), not Krav Maga (few or no rules, and the aim is to knock out, eliminate or even kill your opponent quickly and efficiently).
Let’s define “usually” …
Let’s define “usually excellent communicators”: I have lived in free-roaming worlds (Thailand, Guatemala, Mexico) with my dog(s) for the last five years. In these five years, we’ve met multiple ree-roaming dogs every single day. Let’s say on average, I will meet 5 a day (that is a conservative estaimate). Only twice have we met a free-roaming dog who did not have great communication skills – it happens so rarely that I remember. So “usually,” in the sense I’m using it here, means close to 100% of the free-roaming dogs Game and I meet.)
Game is an excellent communicator as well. She is usually friendly, but can be a jerk, like any living being. Even when she’s being a jerk, she will not draw blood. This is why I am not worried even though I know the situation is going to erupt in this situation.
What if I didn’t want the situation to erupt? I’d manage or interfere the moment I saw a stiff-bodied free-roamer.
What options do I have to manage/interfere?
1. Space permitting, I could curve my leashed dog around the other dog in a wide half-circle, giving that dog space. I can’t cross the street here because there’s a fence separating the two lanes; if I could, I would just cross the road
2. I could do a u-turn with my dog. (I don’t usually do this because Game is a very stable dog, so it’s not necessary. I would do it with a puppy, a dog-aggressive dog, or a fear-reactive dog.)
3. I could tell my dog to stay next to/behind me and throw treats at the other dog.
4. I could tell my dog to stay next to/behind me, and threaten the other dog (free-roamers mostly respect humans and keep their distance). Levels of threat I can use: I Facing them frontally. II Direct evil stare into their eyes. III Throwing invisible stones. IV Walking towards/into them while doing I and II. V Kicking the dog if none of the above do the trick, while still having my own dog stand back. (Game knows if I am taking charge of a situation or if I am letting her take charge.)
5. I could tell my dog to come into “middle” position (see this video), and, if necessary, keep the other dog at bay with any of the methods mentioned in points 3 and 4.
When do I know it’ll erupt?
The moment I am sure it is going to erupt is when their stand-off starts. At this point, I know that the situation can only be resolved by an eruption – but who will give in and who will go forward is not yet clear.
It’s like arm-wrestling: while they are both stiff and staring at each other, it’s like both wrestlers are equally strong; their arms are vertical. They are holding this position for several seconds, and then one of the wrestlers will start losing ground.
The same happens between two dogs in a stand-off like this. One of them will give in. In this case, it’s the other dog. In an arm-wrestling match, this will most of the time result in the winner smashing their opponent’s arm down.
Things were standing still or moving in slow motion until that moment. Because the other dog gives in by retreating a step, Game goes forward (smashes the other one’s arm onto the table).
Loose leash
Notice that I’ve made sure to keep my leash loose the entire time. I can’t tell my leashed dog that she gets to handle a situation, and then keep her from freely communicating by tightening the leash. It would not be fair Tight leashes are only an option if I am going to handle the situation myself, and my dog is not expected to do anything.
However, I’m not going to let her tie herself and the other dog up in the leash, so I just stay where I’m standing. Situation over; you won, Game. She’s already defeated the opponent; it’s over as soon as Game reaches the end of her leash and the other one gets out of dodge (out of Game’s leash radius). And we continue on. All is well.
What if there was no leash?
You may ask yourself what would have happened if Game was off leash. Would she have ended up in the same stand-off? Yes, if I hadn’t managed or interfered, she’d probably have ended up in the exact same stand-off.
What would have happened if I had chosen to not interfere? I would have continued walking because I am a magnet for my dog. I don’t want to increase her power by staying close, but pull her with me by keeping moving. I would have walked past them, and then watched from a distance. Game would have had to finish her stand-off before catching up with me (otherwise, she would have become the one taking a step back, and the other dog would win and smash her metaphorical arm on the table).
Things would likely have ended in the same way: the other one would have given in, and Game would have responded by going forwards (smashing their arm onto the table). Because in this situation, there is no leash stopping her, the “fight” (remember: Lucha Libre or Capoeira, not Krav Maga: sparring for show, not to do harm) would have lasted a little longer. Maybe 30 seconds. Then, everyone would have moved on with their day; no blood, no harm – except maybe for that other dog’s ego.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because people tend to be afraid that when dogs get into fights, blood is going to flow. This is really rare among dogs who grow up free-roaming. It is not so rare among pet or sports or working dogs. If you live in a world mostly populated by the latter, it makes perfect sense that dogs getting into fights is something you are worried about. Free-roaming dogs are different in that their social skills are on a different level.
Why is Game good at this stuff?
Game has been hurt (bitten to the point of blood being drawn) by my own previous dog (who was severely dog aggressive), and she has been hurt by a pet dog who was with their owner. She has never drawn blood herself, even though she has been a jerk on occasion. Why is that? Take a minute and think about your answer before you scroll down and keep reading!
.
.
.
.
.
.
No, it’s not because I’m the world’s greatest dog trainer and turned a blank-slate puppy into the best version of a Malinois. It’s because Game is genetically an extremely stable dog. I would not blame her if she had developed aggression after living with my previous dog. But Game did not develop aggression. She has two personality traits that keep her from it: high confidence, and high sociability. The combination of these two allows her to assume that other dogs she meets are not going to be psychopaths despite her own bad experiences. She acts like a dog who has never had a bad experience, and is simply confident (will not submit if challenged) and sociable (will usually be friendly). So do most free-roamers we meet. Not bad at all, this part of the world, is it?
I just got to have Marc Bekoff on my podcast! We talked about Jessica Pierce’s and Marc’s latest book: A Dog’s World – Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans.
I translated this book to German, and it recently got released by Kynos Publishing. Since I usually stay in touch with “my” authors in the translation process, I grabbed the opportunity to invite Marc on a Zoom chat.
In this episode, I acknowledge the relevance of A Dog’s World to pet dog owners today, and I challenge Marc on the conclusion drawn in the book: that the species dog would survive (or turn into a new species) if all humans disappeared. It’s the latter part that I want to talk about some more after further thinking about the book and our conversation.
Survival in a posthuman world
What I’m still grappling with is the idea that dogs would survive without us. My openion (and yes, this is VERY MUCH an opinion because we can’t test this scenario in a meaningful way) is that dogs would go extinct in a world without humans.
Jessica and Marc believe that many dogs would not only survive, but thrive in a world without us.
Suspension bridge on a trail in Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, Morelos
Where we come from
Only in the course of this conversation did I realize how different the points of origin of our respective arguments are, and how our respective conclusions followed, perhaps quite naturally, from exactly these anchor points we already had long before this conversation.
Marc’s longest field research project, I believe, was on the lives and behavior of coyotes in Yellowstone National Park. As an ethologist, Marc observes behavior and writes ethograms (a list of observable behaviors and their contexts) about different species in their natural environment. In Marc’s case, these species were primarily wild canids.
Marc is a dog lover who has also spent many days at dog parks, observing the interactions of Boulder’s dog park dogs through an ethological lens. Marc has researched, by reading everything that is available in terms of observational studies, the lives of free-roaming domestic dogs around the world, and observed feral dogs arund Boulder. On the podcast, Marc points out that the ethograms of domestic dogs and wild canids is nearly indistinguishable.
Marc has also lived with dogs: companion dogs who were off leash when Marc was out with them around Boulder, CO. Marc observed the behaviors these dogs would engage in in their off-leash lives. (They were only out and about off leash when Marc was with them – so probably living degrees of freedom similar to my own dog, who is not a free-roamer.)
Taking the similarity of the ethograms, the independence of Marc’s own dogs and a group of feral dogs who would make occasional trips to the dumpster but also hunt outside of Boulder, Marc and Jessica Pierce conclude that there would absolutely be individual dogs – enough to form new wild populations – surviving the demise of the human species.
Suspension bridge on a trail in Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, Morelos
The anchor point of myship train of thought is different. I am a dog trainer. The dogs in my life are usually sports or working dogs, or very active companion dogs of high-maintenance breeds, or not so active dogs living with highly sophisticated dog folks who are most definitely not average pet dog homes. I have never had a pure pet dog myself, and neither do most of the folks I work and interact with today. My personal interest and the areas into which I am trying to stretch are behavior analysis, psychology, neurology, and behavioral medicine. I have no degree in any of these fields, but I try and learn as much as I can about them. I also live in a part of the world where many (most?) dogs are homed free-roamers. I love observing them; I consider their life quality high, and I have dedicated a Youtube Channel to them.
When I think “domestic dog,” what comes to mind is not the general pet dog population: I think of dogs who live with geeky trainers on the one hand, and free-ranging dogs on the other hand. I sometimes forget that there are also pet dogs.
When Jessica and Marc think “of “domestic dogs,” I suspect they think of pet dogs on leashes and in dog parks on the one hand and wild canids on the other hand.
What I agree on with Jessica and Marc
I fully agree with Jessica’s and Marc’s conclusions about how the lives of pet and companion dogs could be improved, and how we can draw these conclusions by looking at the behavior of free-ranging dogs today.
The sociability and ability to form groups and packs is something I see a lot in free-roamers, so we’re on the same page there as well. I don’t doubt that dogs will be (variable degrees of) sociable and able to form packs. Free-roaming dogs already do.
Alloparenting also occurs in domestic dogs that are kept in groups when breeding as well as in free-roaming dogs. Again – I have no doubt posthuman dogs could alloparent (and some would do so if they survived).
I don’t doubt that they will hunt solitarily either – I know plenty of dogs who will do so when given the opportunity (these are not free-roamers, but sports and working dogs). What I wanted to be convinced of, however, was the cooperative hunting part – something I’ve never seen and find hard to imagine.
The food resource thing …
I have never – NEVER – seen free-roaming dogs who did not depend on anthropogenic food resources. Even the feral dogs around Boulder that Marc mentions visit the dumpster. That makes me suspicious of whether they could survive if they had to rely on hunting. When Marc’s student saw them hunt cooperatively – did these dogs actually take down prey, or were they just chasing, like many dogs would, without actually killing/consuming? I am not clear about this. Even if they killed, but did not consume – I don’t think we could call that cooperative hunting. For hunting to be hunting, doesn’t it need to end in eating the prey? (I don’t know; I’m sure there is a definition though.)
What even is a feral dog?
A feral dog is a domestic dog who isn’t tame. A dog like this will have a bigger flight distance than other free-roamers. I have seen very few feral dogs in my life, and they usually look as if they were starving because they are too scared to visit the dumpster on a regular basis.
How do feral dogs happen? I suspect a truly feral dog has missed out on any and all human contact during the sensitive socialization period, as a very young puppy. This can happen if a free-roaming dog has puppies away from their home – say in a forest where humans rarely go -, and the dog’s humans don’t look for or don’t find the puppies.
Why are there so few of them? Because most of them will die! Your chances of survival are much higher if you are not feral and can access human handouts and the waste we generate.
Wouldn’t there already be feral dogs everywhere today if it was easy to be one?
I also suspect that if dogs without humans were a realistical scenario, we’d already see successful secondarily wild dogs who have no contact with humans whatsoever, and who hunt cooperatively. As far as I know (and I may be totally wrong – please comment with resources if I am!) these dogs do not exist today. (It has been argued that Dingoes are not feral dogs, but true wild canids. That said, I have read that there are secondarily wild dogs on the Galapagos Islands. I haven’t had time to look into them yet. If these dogs were truly feral and descended from the domestic dog, and were not dependent on any anthropogenic food resources – this would be a convincing argument for me that under specific and rarely occurring circumstances, the species dog might be able to survive in certain locations in a post-human world.)
The posthuman dog future I imagine, based on my anchor point
From my current point of view, given the dogs I see, I think most pet dogs, if left loose in a world WITH humans, would make decent free-roamers and enjoy the trash we leave behind as well as our handouts. They’d have social relationships etc. Working dogs like mine would also enjoy killing all the livestock around town (which would result in them getting poisoned or shot).
If I imagine the fate of dogs in a world without humans, these same dogs would eat all the trash we left behind, and then feast on the livestock (easy prey) as well as urban rats and pigeons (also easy prey). And then, they’d die, mostly in the transition dog generation (the generation of dogs who still had human contact).
I have a hard time imagining dogs learning to hunt cooperatively in the little time they have after all the livestock and trash are gone. Most of them will die, and the few that survive … Will they be neutered? In that case, they’re in a genetic dead-end street. Will enough of them be both intact and able to hunt cooperatively? I really doubt it because the free-roaming dogs today – remember that’s about 80% of the world’s dog population! – have been selected (naturally, if you will, by humans killing dogs who kill livestock) to NOT hunt. I’m not sure if “average pet dogs” will be able to hunt. Working dogs certainly would (solitarily at least), but there are so few, and they are so far apart, that they may never meet each other. And if you’re a working dog (other than a terrier), you may be too big to sustain yourself on the kind of prey you may be able to catch by yourself once the livestock is gone. And the livestock will be gone because it will either die without us or be killed by transition dogs.
A thought experiment
I just googled, and according to a dubious source (but that’ll do for my thought experiment), a 100g jack rabbit contains 173 calories. Now let’s see how many calories an adult dog needs. Say Game’s RER is 650, and if she had to stustain herself by means of hunting, her caloric needs would be 650 x 2-5, which, if I’m calculating this correctly (and I may not), makes 1295 caloiries. That’s a lot more than a single rabbit. If Game had to sustain herself on jack rabbits she’d have to catch 1295 divided by 173 makes 7.5 jackrabbits every day. That is A LOT of rabbits. I cannot imagine a world in which my dog would successfully catch this many rabbits on a daily basis.
We’d also have to look at the energy spent on hunting a rabbit. Since this calculation is based on the caloric needs of an active working dog, let’s say if all of Game’s hunts were successful, she would meet her caloric needs every day with 7.5 rabbits. But she is unlikely to succeed every time. So how many calories would she loose with each rabbit that got away? How many calories does it cost to hunt one rabbit? (I do not know.)
In any case, if two rabbits, after a high-energy chase, got to safety, Game would be losing rather than gaining calories. Consequently, that very same day, 7.5 jack rabbits would not be enough anymore – she’d have to successfully hunt, kill and consume, say, 9 to make up for the energy spent on the ones who got away. This is even less likely because every hunt is tiring, and hunts #8 and #9 have a smaller chance of success because of it.
Dogs don’t need to eat every day. So Game could go a while without eating 7.5 rabbits a day and still do okay. She’d gain experience hunting with every attempt – but she’d also spend energy on every attempt, successful and unsuccessful. After several days of not eating, there may be peak performance due to peak motivation, but then that performance will go down unless Game was highly successful at peak motivation. So by the sheer amount of rabbit hunting required, I don’t think it is realistic for a dog of Game’s size to survive as a solitary hunter. Most solitary hunting canids are smaller than she is. (There are solitary coyotes or foxes, for example, and they get by hunting bunnies and rodents (and, given the contents of the scat I’ve seen around Guanajuato, lots of cactus fruit). Game is heavier than they are.)
So Game would likely have to go after larger prey, and large prey can often only be overwhelmed by means of cooperative hunting. Will dogs really figure that out in time? I have my doubts. The largest prey animal I know fairly well are (Austrian) deer, and they are fast and flighty. It’s certainly possible to hunt them cooperatively, but I imagine it would require a lot of practice. And transition dogs may not have that time. Especially because, being dogs, they would not gather to brainstorm for a future of hunting while there still were anthropogenic food resources. Instead, they would – evolutionarily myopically, if you will – focus only on these easily accessible resources until they ran out of them. (Just like we humans and our fossil fuels, really. We’ll only implement meaningful changes once we’re past that climate change tipping point, and at that point, our changes will make little or no difference for many folks around the world, because the places they live today will have become uninhabitable for our species. This is an opinion, not a fact, and I would love for it to be wrong.)
Suspension bridge on a trail in Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, Morelos
There may be dogs (smaller than Game) who can sustain themselves on bunnies and the like. But will they happen to be close enough to another transition dog to breed? Maybe in rare cases. Will their puppies survive? Few will, I assume, because the survival rate of wild canids and free-ranging dogs is very low.
The anthropogenic world as the dog’s niche
After thinking about all of this some more, my opinion still is that dogs won’t survive without us – even though during the conversation itself, I was trying to be open to the possibility that they would.
I would not say that the ecological niche of the domestic dog is the human household (80% of the world’s dog population is free-roaming), but I would say that their niche is the anthropogenic world. And this niche will disappear with us. I’m not optimistic they’d adapt to a new niche fast enough … even if they all happened to be free and outdoors when we humans disappeared from the planet. I think of their niche as the anthropogenic world in the same sense I think of this being the niche of urban rats and pidgeons. In my opinion, all three of the above would die after eating all the resources we left behind when disappearing. I suspect this will be the fate of everyone who is considered a Kulturfolger animal in German.
I also realize that this very much is an opinion based on my background, my work and my interests. I can absolutely see how a different background, like Marc and Jessica have it, will lead to completely different conclusions!
Why does everything have to be so annoyingly relative?
Coming at a topic from different angles can lead to misunderstandings or talking past each other – I think this, too, happened to us. And it just goes to show how difficult it is for folks from different fields, who have different jargons they take for granted, to understand each other! For example in my conversation with Marc, this happened when Marc used the word “engram.” This term also appears in A Dog’s World (once). I had never come across it before, and researched a little when translating the book. Conveniently, the German equivalent is “Engramm.” It’s basically the same word with the same Greek root. In the book, Marc writes:
“We’ve provided a range of ideas about what the evolutionary trajectories of posthuman dogs might look like. A recurring theme has been trying to understand and appreciate the ancient impulses and memory traces that still lurk in dogs’ brains—the indelible engrams that still influence what they do and how they feel and which will shape how they do without us.”
(Page 157 in my copy of the publisher’s PDF)
I looked up the meaning of the term when I was translating, but I can’t say I feel like I understood it. The way Marc uses the term, it seems to refer to a kind of collective memory of generations long past. Something that isn’t “active” – basically something that isn’t “online,” but could theoretically be brought online again by life circumstances. From digging into the topic a bit, it seems to still be controversal whether engrams actually exist.
On the podcast, Marc used the term engram again, and I asked whether this would work like a modal action pattern. (“Model action pattern” is in my active vocabulary; I know its definition: it is a behavior chain that is released by a certain stimulus and usually displayed through to the end (it is difficult to interrupt). It hardly varies from one occasion to the next or between individuals. Modal action patterns are more like a highly complex reflex you don’t consciously control than advanced and varied social communication. Modal action patterns are NOT offline, but very much online, and they are innate. An example is the hunting sequence of the wolf: search – eye-stalk – chase – grab-bite – kill-bite – consume. Another example is the herding behavior of the Border Collie, which is a modified hunting sequence: it goes from search to eye-stalk to chase, and ends there.
Anyways, so I asked Marc whether an engram was like a modal action pattern, only that it would be brought online by necessity rather than already being online and simply being displayed when a certain stimulus was present.
Marc ended up basically giving me the definition of a modal action pattern. But whatever an engram is, it can’t really be a modal action pattern – unless there is a field (psychology? ethology?) that uses “engram” in the way behavior analysts use “model action pattern,” and the terms actually mean the same.
But cooperative hunting – not hunting, but the cooperative part – can, by its very nature, not be a modal action pattern. Modal action patterns are rigid and hard to change, and cooperation is flexible and adaptive. So Marc didn’t answer my question, and I don’t think that was on purpose, but either because Marc isn’t familiar with the way “modal action pattern” is used by dog trainers or because I didn’t manage to formulate my question clearly! Argh! Or maybe I’m using an outdated definition of modal action pattern!
Cooperative hunting is by its very nature varied because different individuals have different roles. In a word: I still don’t understand what exactly an engram is. In both a German article and the English Wikipedia article, it seems to be about memories of something that happens in your lifetime, and (maybe) the physical location where these memories are stored in the brain. But this is not the way Marc uses the term, as far as I can tell: cooperative hunting can’t be an experience being remembered by an individual dog who has never had the experience of hunting cooperatively.
I don’t think it has been shown that it is possible to “remember” the social behavior of our very distant ancestors. Sure, we are influenced – both through social learning and genetics and in-utero/in-petri-dish experiences by biological relatives and the folks around us. But these are not distant ancestors! So I am still confused about the engram explanation of cooperative hunting, and this is frustrating to me. We were discussing a topic we were both passionate about (dogs), and we didn’t speak the same jargon. I’m used to talking to behavior folks and dog trainers, and we have a shared vocabulary! Marc is probably used to talking to ethologists or pet folks. With the former, there is a shared jargon (which I do not speak), and the latter probably don’t ask the kinds of questions I ask. Anyways, if someone reading this can explain the meaning of “engram” to me, please leave me a comment!
Communication is fucking hard!
In the end, this is probaly the take-away from the conversation I find most fascinating: it is difficult to understand each other if you don’t have a shared vocabulary! And it is really the anchor point of our experience our our field that informs our opinion! When you start with wild canids and compare their ethograms with domestic dogs, you’ll conclude that because they are very similar, they will also be able to hunt cooperatively. (At least if you are Jessica Pierce or Marc Bekoff.)
When you start with working dogs (and know little about wild canids) and observe free-roaming dogs who depend on anthropogenic food resources, you don’t think they will master cooperative hunting. (At least if you are me.)
Suspension bridge on a trail in Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl – and Game’s tail!
And really, this is a metaphor for so many things in life! Depending on where we’re coming from, we’ll find strong arguments to support our respective opinions. (Yay, confirmation bias! Yay, anchoring effect!) We may be fully convinced of them. And yet: some of them are opinions, not facts. It’s both hard and worth striving for to hold both these truths at the same time: on the one hand, our convictions themselves on the basis of which we are who we are in this world. And on the other hand, the fact that some of these convictions will always be opinions we can’t currently fact-check. And that’s fine. Complicated – but fine. Doesn’t make them less valid. But sure makes everything a whole lot more complex.
There are facts, of course. I am not a relativist. I see facts, and will fight for them, especially if they are facts I care about on a deep and personal level. But whether or not dogs would survive in a world without us? That’s not something we will ever be able to know.
This is the full version of the description that goes with today’s Youtube video on the Free Ranging Dogs channel. If you’ve read the first part of the description already, pick back up under the heading “Dog #4”! If you haven’t – here’s the video description from the beginning:
Game is happy to be allowed to run off leash again (nothing to worry about – the surgery I mention in the video was minor and all is well, but she’s only been out on leash for the last 2 weeks).
This video shows how, in just 3 minutes, Game meets 5 different owned free-roamers. Just like pet dogs differ, so do the personalities, looks and behaviors of these dogs.
All 5 free-roamers in this video are owned dogs. That is to say, they live in the respective yards they come out of. Their gates are always open. This street is part of Game’s home range and part of the other dogs’ core area. Only dog #4, the Doberman/Lab (this is not a Doberman; I’m just picking look-alike breeds for you to distinguish them) is not inside their own yard – the person working on the car is probably their human, and the dog is out here with them.
Dog #1: the Husky
Game sees the Husky before I do. At 00:29, she greets them with a friendly wag and moves on. What you see at 00:29 is a behavior that lets me know there is a dog to her right.
00:36 The Husky comes out – hackles up at first, but Game has already moved on, so the Husky doesn’t care. Instead, they show curiosity/interest in me, and their hackles come down all the way.
Dog #2: the big black-and-white pup
00:54 This one looks pretty young to me – but I can’t say for sure; he may just look that way because of a recent hair cut. He, too, comes out of his territory. Unlike the Husky, the pup is interested in Game: friendly, waggy and playful.
01:02 Game responds to the friendly interest the pup is showing. She may be in the mood to run together. That’s because she’s been deprived of exercise for the last 2 weeks, and I’ve also mostly kept her away from from other dogs. When that happens, she tends to act more playfully until she’s back to baseline in terms of exercise and intraspecific social interaction. It usually takes her a few days to get back to baseline.
01:16 Game would have pooped here, but because the pup is still there and being playful/friendly, she forgets about pooping and reciprocates the playfulness.
01:19 Btw, the ear position you see here in Game – ears up and turned back – is what she’ll usually show when we’re out and about. This is not a sign of insecurity, submission or fear. (Game can do a whole bunch of things with her ears; this is just one of her many expressions.) She’ll usually have her ears up and back like this when she’s ahead of me. She watches what’s up ahead, and keeps an ear on me at the same time.
Here, she’s running towards me, and her ears are up and back to keep an ear on the pup who she’s allowing to chase her. Ears up and back are a sign of split attention in Game: eyes in one direction, ears in the other one.
01:24 … and running back the other way, in exactly the kind of speed that is right for the pup (who seems to have a hurt paw/leg and is not super fast). Game enjoys both being the chaser and being the chasee.
01:25 And yes, I say in this video that she’s been on limited activity for a long time. For me (and for Game, but really, mostly for me), 2 weeks are a fucking long time! Walking is my thing. And without a dog, it isn’t fun.
Dog #3: the Chihuahua
01:42 The Chihuahua has just come out of their yard, and wants to see what’s going on out here! Since the 5 dogs (the free-roamers) are all neighbors, the Chihuahua isn’t interested in the pup, but in Game.
01:45-01:48 The Chihuahua displays their interest by sniffing. They are confident and curious, and the fact that Game ignores them (“Too small; whatever; also I’m done playing”) likely raises the Chihuahua’s confidence to the bouncy, chasey level you see here.
The Chihuahua and Game aren’t playing – the Chihuahua is sniffing while chasing Game, who ignores them because she’s already on her way.
Game is aware of size differences and is much more likely to ignore a small dog than a large dog. The Chihuahua isn’t unfriendly, but not exactly friendly either.
01:49 Game may just have left the little one’s core area, making her less interesting and me (I am still in the core area) more interesting. The Chihuahua folds the ears back and wags at me in a friendly-submissive greeting gesture.
Dog #4: the Doberman/Lab
01:52 To your right, where the cars are parked, you’re about to see the Doberman/Lab. This dog is insecure and barky. They are in their core area (this is one of the neighborhood dogs here), but not in their own yard. They are likely out here with their human.
You’ll see the insecurity in the retreat and the continued barking:
02:01 Retreat.
02:04 Now that Game has passed, the dog is coming forward again: when one dog turns their back on another one, the other one will feel safer. Game just passed and ignored the Doberman/Lab.
02:06 … which is why the Doberman/Lab can now come forwards again and bark – this time at me.
02:12 The response to me is barky, but not fearful. There was only a fear response when Game was walking towards and past the parking lot – so this dog’s insecurity is dog-specific.
02:14 It’s hard to say whether the Doberman/Lab is in their territory or in their core area. In any case, the person at the car is probably their person.
It is entirely possible that the dog’s response to Game and I would be different if there was no other human present. Being with their human generally gives dogs greater confidence/perceived strength.
Dog #5: the second fluffy big one
02:19 This dog was probably alerted to Game’s presence by the barking of the Doberman/Lab. Like the Chihuahua, he wants to see what’s going on! He is not interested in me and runs out of his territory (yard) and right past me to check out Game. The barking you keep hearing in the background is still the Doberman/Lab, not dog #5.
02:28 Game is done socializing for this outing, which is why she isn’t giving dog #5 any attention. Dog #5 is just curious about her – no strong feelings in any direction. Having caught up with her, he sniffs where she sniffed, and later, he’ll pee on the corner of the wall.
This dog is confident, has no ill intentions, and is an adult. Among confident adults with good social skills, if dog A ignores dog B, dog B will also politely leave dog A alone. (There are exceptions. Sometimes two adult dogs – just like humans – dislike each other at first sight. But that would be an exception for socially confident good communicaters. Politeness is the rule: live and let live.)
02:39 You can see dog #5 pee and look around (for example at me) with loose body language. He has gotten a good look at Game, had the chance to sniff where she sniffed and where she stood to collect information – that’s all he needs.
02:46 Dog #5 is done; ready to head back home. He has learned all he needed/wanted to learn about Game.
02:56 Even when Game is back outside the forest, dog #5 is still good: he has satisfied his curiosity and is ready to return to whatever he was doing. (Probably snoozing outside his house.)
There’s a litter of four puppies in a 1000-habitant village in the State of Mexico. The day I made this video, I met two of the four. Only over the last couple of days had they started coming out and exploring: they had reached an age where they dared venture further and further from their birthplace.
It’s interesting to observe how many of the experiences Western breeders and puppy owners recreate happen naturally for a puppy like this – and they happen on the right time scale since it is the puppies themselves who decide when they are ready to explore, and how far they are ready to go on any given day.
You can also see differences within a litter: the two black puppies are bolder than the blonde one who is not with them, but who I saw the day after I took this video1, still in the safe space of the restaurant. The second blonde puppy must have also been a bold one – maybe the boldest one, or just a bold one with bad luck – because the person I am talking to in this video tells me that puppy got hit by a car earlier that same day.
The fact that within this litter, there are both bold and shy individuals shows an interesting tendency in evolution: evolutionarily speaking, both bold and shy individuals get selected for. We see this in humans, too. If a trait gets selected for, it has to have an advantage – and indeed, it does! It may seem counterintuitive, but in fact, both extremes of the spectrum of boldness and shyness can be advantageous. This is, I’d venture, particularly true for species that live in a vast variety of different environments – such as humans, canines and felines! Since the environments vary greatly, what is an advantage in one environment can be a disadvantage in another one. Or what is an advantage in one part of the year can be a disadvanrage in another part of the year. Or depending on what circumstances you happen to be born under – depending on random factors! – it may be advantageous to be either bold or shy.
A thought experiment: the shy puppy in the litter – the blonde one who I haven’t seen out in the street – is the least likely to get run over. From this point of view, being shy is adaptive – it increases the chances of survival, because cars (as illustrated by the death of the fourth puppy) are a HUGE danger to puppies. On the other hand, the two black puppies in this video show a lot of exploratory behavior, and they find food – both in the street and in the entrance of the store they then get shooed out of. From this point of view, being bold (showing a lot of exploratory behavior) is adaptive – it increases the chances of survival because you find more food. Due to studies done on puppy mortality, we know that most of these puppies are not going to survive. If one of them does survive – will it be a bold or a shy puppy? It could be either, because it depends on many factors: are the puppies still getting fed within the safe space of the restaurant? If so, being shy may be more advantageous because there is no lack of food resources. Are they not getting fed anymore now that they are a little bigger? If so, being bold might be an advantage because you need to learn to find enough food to make up for the calories you spend growing and existing! Being bold likely also increases a puppy’s chances of becoming an owned village dog, and owned village dogs get fed. If you are bold while you are still young and cute, you’ve got a killer combination setting you up for success in this respect … unless, of course, you get run over by a car first.
So there is no straightforward answer, but one thing is clear: depending on when, where, to whom and under what circumstances a puppy is born, boldness, shyness, or both may be advantageous. The same goes for humans. If it were not the case – if you were most likely to succeed by being a middle-of-the-road animal – the extremes of the spectrum of boldness and shyness would already have disappeared (for canines as well as humans). We would have what is called stabilizing selection: selection around a stable phenotype around a mean (a certain degree of not-too-bold-and-not-too-shyness). What we actually see is disruptive selection: selection at both ends of the normal curve: on the one hand, we get very bold individuals, and on the other hand, very shy ones. We see it in puppies, even within litters. And we certainly see it in humans, too! Even in very young toddlers, the differences are striking. By the way, a shout out to Marc Bekoff: I’ve learned the terms stabilitzing selection, disruptive selection and directive selection (selection for more or less of a given phenotype, e.g. if over time, puppies would tend to get bolder and bolder) from his book A Dog’s World, which I’ve had the honor of translating into German.
After this little detour into different kinds of selection, let’s get back to the experiences that breeders and puppy owners recreate, but that happen quite naturally for free-roaming puppies:
1. Introduction of different surfaces:
in the space of the restaurant, the puppies would have encountered artificial turf and real grass. Venturing out, they get to move up and down the stairs to the restaurant entrance, and they will walk on concrete and asphalt. In this video, one of the black puppies walks over an iron grid covering a drain – something else a breeder or owner might carefully introduce to their puppies that happens naturally in this environment.
2. Introduction to different sounds:
Currently, the 9 days leading up to a catholic holiday are being celebrated in this village – and like most Mexican celebrations, they are celebrated quite loudly, with lots of cohetes (firecrackers). Similarly, there are cars going by – this is the busiest part of town – and the puppies will get used to the sounds of cars, busses, motorcycles and lots of different human voices: adults talking and yelling, children laughing and playing …
3. People:
I’ve seen kids interact with the puppies (hold them, pet them, pick them up), and the puppies will also see people of all ages once they start venturing out of the restaurant space. People are quite naturally being paired with food, so a positive classical association is made to them when a puppy is born in the town center. They will also interact with people in that they get a basic village dog education: being cute and begging politely is going to get reinforced with food, and being obnoxious or entering forbidden spaces is going to be punished (at 09:18, the owner of the store across the street shoos the puppies back outside).
4. Dogs:
In this video alone, you’ll see three adult dogs: the fluffy dark dog, the pitbull, and the black lab mix. Throughout the day, the puppies will interact with A LOT of village dogs: everyone who roams freely, whether they are community dogs or owned free-roamers, will meet these puppies and interact with them. Some will be big, some small, some male, some female, most intact and some spayed. It is unlikely that a puppy born to a breeder would meet this many dogs at this age.
5. Other animals:
Sometimes, horseback riders come through; sometimes, they’ll see a cat, and once they are bold enough to venture just a little further up the street the store is in, they’ll see sheep and chickens.
6. Objects:
The restaurant is closed, but there are still chairs and tables in there. And once the puppies venture out, they’ll see cars, busses, and everything sold at the little stores around the area: brooms and food and buckets … At some point in this video, you’ll see one of the puppies approach a broom that’s for sale.
Further remarks:
+ I met the third blonde puppy the day after recording this video – so there must have been 4 originally, but 1 got run over, leaving three.
+ At some point in this video, I say that my AirBnB “tenant” also owns the restaurant – I meant to say host. I do not own a building in this town.
+ It’s interesting that I get asked whether I want to take the two puppies (they are community puppies, so unlike the puppies of owned village dogs, they are up for grabs). I assume the reason the person I’m talking to suggests I take them is that I’ve shown an unusual level of interest in the puppies – I’m following them around, filming and talking about them.
(1) One of the puppies is still alive for sure 2 months after I took this video, as I am writing this post – and it’s the blonde puppy (the shy one). I don’t know about the two black ones. They must either have died, or been taken in and have become owned village dogs. Statistically speaking (given the percentage of puppies that survive), they are more likely to not be around anymore – but we don’t know if this is the case for this particular litter. It’s a littler born under relatively advantageous circumstances, and in a good spot. (No highway; plenty of people; close to a food source.)
