September 4, 2024: a new day!

He’s a handsome young man!

Juvenile Mals are a lot of dog first thing in the morning! As of today, we’ve found a place for Doggie to put his early-morning arousal: as soon as his day starts, he gets his tried and true fleece tug pacifier to hold on to. I keep the other end of it in my hand so he can’t loose it.

Chai’s on a retractable leash first thing in the morning, and Doggie would like to chew her leash – but if there’s his fleece tug, he’ll choose that instead, no questions asked. It’s got to feel a lot more fun to bite down on! So this morning, our first loop consisted of Doggie tugging/holding on to the toy almost nonstop – it feels like holding a kid’s hand as we walk – while Chai does her own morning things on the retractable leash. Then I went back and switched adult dogs. Game is always off leash in the morning, and by the time we got to her loop, Doggie had down-regulated enough for me to leave the tug in the apartment without getting jumped on, humped or my feet chewed.

Doggie explored and sniffed alongside Game, sat for treats, checked in for praise a lot and did his morning peeing and pooping. Superstar! All of this off leash for him – only Chai is currently leashed in the morning (until we’ve got our cat chasing sufficiently under recall control – we’re almost there!)

Thoughts on Mals and Border Collies

It’s been a lot of fun to remember how intensely worky juvenile Mals are! Chai, the last dog I had at this age, has been super chill in comparison. Part of it may have been that she constantly had diarrhea at that time and may have felt physically weaker. A lot was still new for her at 5.5 months, so she may have had less muscle and satiated on stimulation more easily because of it – who knows! Hadley, the Border Collie I raised for an ex, was certainly higher maintenance at this age than Chai, but no comparison to any of my Mals or even to Phoebe.

The Malinois I’ve raised are different from the Border Collies I’ve raised (I haven’t raised a lot by any means, so these observations really only apply to my own dogs and a few puppies of friends I know well.)

When Game and Grit were puppies, I had a yard and a 2-person, 5-dog household (for Game’s first 6 months and Grit’s first 1.5 years.) Game took a colleague’s weekly puppy socialization class, we trained all the foundations at home, and anytime she wasn’t sleeping or working with me, she’d find herself a playmate in one of our other dogs.

When I went to Thailand after, we didn’t have a yard, but the dogs certainly got a lot of physical and mental stimulation: weekends running at the beach, and during the week, I slowly worked Game up to twice daily treadmill runs of 30 minutes each (Game did an hour in one go), we went on short neighborhood walks every morning and evening and occasionally Game worked at chilling under the table when I went to a corner food place for lunch. We also spent time at the Siam Crown training fields and yards most days where the dogs got to run free on a giant property and we trained a little. I worked on tricks around the agility equipment with Game and we did bitework foundations, and we played and trained (and the dogs swam) around/in Siam Crown’s saltwater dog pool. Sometimes in addition and sometimes instead of Siam Crown, we went to walk banana plantations and swim in irrigation canals, watch huge monitor lizards and look for Thailand’s beautiful snakes, or walked around some of the temples of Sam Phran and interacted with free-roaming dogs. Grit and Game played a lot with each other, and Game also had a Mal friend who was her age and a Boston Terrier friend.

At home, Game also worked on nosework almost every day.

Every single calory she didn’t earn in training came from a Kong, Squirrel Dude (basically a more difficult Kong) or was a frozen raw meat bone – chews to keep her busy.

When we moved to Guatemala, we had a yard again. Game’s physical activities included lots and lots of mountainbiking and uphill bikejoring, long daily hikes and running with my car because I lived on an almost traffic-free dirt road. The training activity of our choice at this point was sniffing out fake cadaver scent in huge outdoor areas. She also went almost everywhere with me, from visiting friends to getting my hair cut and eating out to being my demo dog when I worked with in-person clients.

Up until last year, whenever I didn’t have a yard, I spent around 3 hours outdoors with Game every day (in addition to a little bit of training or informal play) unless we did A LOT of intense brain training.

When Chai joined us, Game and I started doing a bit less – it was made up for by lots of play between the two, especially when Chai was a puppy and juvenile dog. Then Game was busy with her puppies who sure took lots of energy. I’ve built her stamina back up after. She continues not needing quite as much exercise anymore and being a chill and content dog in the house, but she also has a treadmill again for days I’m sick or can’t take her out as much as we’d like to for another reason.

None of the Border Collies were as physically strong and intense as the Mals when they didn’t get their cognitive and physical needs met. Hadley sure had issues as a puppy, but they expressed themselves in less destructive ways. Mals get “angry” or destructive. Border Collies get depressed or neurotic.

There sure are similarities (two working breeds who generally like cooperating with humans), but they are SO different too. It’s hard to put my finger on the key difference. Being serious, as a personality trait, seems stronger in Mals – including in goofy ones like Game. Game is un-serious for a Mal. There is still more of a “this is serious business and I am working on this” vibe to working with any Mal I’ve ever met, while my Border Collies and most other Borders I know well have had a more playful vibe. They too could train all day long, but they seemed more light-hearted.

Mick may be an exception; he was always serious, and his single interest in life was sheep. Or maybe Mick was the rule and Hadley and Chai are exceptions. Who knows! Maybe there is no rule. I like that thought best!

Urban adventuring with Doggie and Chai

For our training walk, I took Chai and Doggie to our usual park. Doggie needed 2 or 3 reminders at the curb – it’s still a new behavior, AND I just added Chai to the mix, and also ducking out of sight behind parkeded cars to reminding him to keep an eye on me – but he did SO well that I had him off leash for the entire walk today! He’s doing fantastic and learning fast!

Dog park adventure

I took Doggie and Chai into the dog park again. Doggie reciprocated dogs greeting him and showed interest in a 4 months old Border Collie puppy (who was so much smaller than him! It’s wild!) Either the fact that we came back to a familiar space, as opposed to it being new yesterday, or the fact that Chai was around as well (or both) helped him approach other dogs. There were more dogs here today than yesterday, and Doggie ventured further from me and even stole a ball, and showed real interest in the Border puppy.

There was, however, also a situation in the dog park that was a bit much for Doggie: people wanting to interact with him while there were also All The Dogs around (see the video below.) I let him find out that he was safe for himself.

Depending on the dog, I’d handle situations like this differently. For example, I would not have put the much more sensitive Chai into this kind of situation – to this day, I’m very adamant about her not having to deal with strangers reaching for her. Doggie’s confidence, even when he’s insecure, is far greater and he doesn’t spiral up in greeting scenarios – so I let him find out what it’s like to walk up to and be greeted by people and dogs for himself. You can see in his body language in the video below that these aren’t stress-free interactions, but ones he is perfectly able to handle nevertheless. He is also free to leave and does so (I didn’t catch the second time on video.)

In a different situation today, Doggie checked in with me on two occasions when a dog barked at him. This, I’d venture, is a tentativeness-based response. I reinforced the check-ins and will facilitate some more meet-the-dogs outings in the next few days. I can see how he’s coming out of his shell at the dog park. If he lived here with me permanently, I’d take him there every day for a month or so and expect him to then be back to his puppy self around dogs, simply by meeting lots of different ones off leash every day.

Everything we did not chase today

No bike chasing, kids chasing, trying to play with the broom of someone weeping the sidewalk or chasing of passing dogs or even Chai when she was crittering … I’m very proud! The only one who got briefly chased a bit exuberantly was the Border Collie puppy when we met them again outside the dog park, and Big Doggie was like, “Hey, I KNOW you!” and ran towards the puppie who took flight. I was able to call him off with his “pup-pup-pup” recall. Its strength keeps impressing me.

Doggie earned A LOT of food out and about AND found a large junk of chicken for dessert. A successful outing! Chai, for her part, only found bones. But then again, she came across an entire bolillo last night. It’s not as if the streets had been stingy with her either.

Arousal behaviors and calming down

Barking and drinking

Doggie likes to talk: barking is part of his attempts to get Chai to play, and before we established “sit to ask for stuff,” he vocalized while shoe-biting me too. Game also used to like to vocalize when she had opinions at his age.

Doggie is also an arousal drinker: when highly excited, he’ll drink a lot. Adolescent Chai used to be that way too. I am seeing Doggie’s arousal drinking go down already as he settles in with us more and more every day.

Clarity

I can’t ask him, but get the impression that clarity and structure also make a big difference in terms of Doggie’s arousal. (Part of this may be my confirmation bias, of course: I get the impression that worky dogs in general do best with clarity, which makes me likely to attribute positive behavior changes to increased clarity.)

Down-regulating

Doggie’s down-regulating after coming home from today’s outing to the park was fantastic too. He only followed me around the apartment for two or three minutes, curious what I was up to. Then he laid down to rest. Briefly after, he got a second wind and tried to get Chai to play – but before long, he peacefully passed out on the couch.

Closed doors

As of yesterday, Doggie is able to stay behind closed doors, for example when I go to the bathroom, without scratching them. Goodest boy!

Late afternoon outing: kids and adults, bikes and bread, running and yelling …

There was A LOT going on around the apartment towers tonight; from someone selling bread out of their car and announcing it loudly to someone selling random little snacks at pop-up tables to what felt like all the kids running around and yelling or riding bikes all at one, and all the adults taking strolls between the buildings. I don’t think I’ve seen things here THIS busy before (I’ve only lived in this neighborhood for a few months and am still learning about it.) We walked a little, then I picked Doggie up and carried him past the main commotion because I didn’t want to risk him running after a kid. I had forgotten the fleece tug, and I didn’t want him to practice chewing on his leash or pulling either. Conveniently, he’s still easy to pick up and carry, and just like we practiced when the puppies were tiny, he’ll go limp in my arms and relax.

We went to the part of our space that has all the wild, giant large-leaved plants and tall grass and bushes. Everything was still wet from the rain, and Doggie got the best kind of zoomies (while mom Game found THREE avocados that had fallen off a tree and ate them all. Lucky girl!) Doggie had a great time zooming, and in between bouncy, high-speed loops, he’d come back and sit to ask for a treat.

Two dogs in two different windows saw Doggie running laps and barked at him. His response to this was to come and check in with me. He’s a little tentative when dogs are yelling at him.

On the way back to my place, he gave one bark towards a suddenly appearing person who was moving away from us and took off towards them, full-on “I’m a big and powerful Mal, look at what I can do!”, tail high and confident and arousal-hackles up. I called him; he turned on a dime to come and eat his scatter.

This was interesting to observe! Either Doggie was wound up from his zoomies OR he is getting used to this environment and starting to regard it as “his,” so if someone we haven’t invited comes into our zoomie space, we tell them who’s boss. The bark-run towards the person looked like an adult Malinois response, not like a fear-based or conflicted behavior to me. From what I’ve seen (he’s a big, friendly boy,) if I let him run up to a person in this state of arousal, he’d probably end up jumping and asking for attention once he got there rather than continuing to bark – but I don’t know since, of course, I called him back instead of letting him scare the person.

As we were almost back home, four kids playing some game came running and yelling towards us from four directions at the same time. I put Game on Doggie’s leash and picked up Doggie. On the way out, a little kid on a bike fell right in front of us (we were being good and eating a scatter rather than going to investigate), but running kids at this age, this speed, this number and this noise level … not exactly a scenario I want to add two Malinois to! Doggie gave one soft bark as the kids kept coming super close and running right around us, yelling. I held on to Game’s collar and we waited until the craze had moved on. Both dogs continued their walk back home without giving the kids a second thought.

I wonder what it’s like to grow up here. I suspect it is fun: this apartment complex has to have 6000 or more inhabitants (which is more than the entire town I grew up in.) The reason I know it’s at least 6000 is that it is part of some city neighborhood-something initative, and only housing projects of 6000 or more people get to be a part of this initiative. The supposedly biggest housing project in the city has (numbers vary) between 8 and 9000 inhabitants, which is twice as many as the town I grew up in. It’s wild to think how many people fit into such a small area if you just make your buildings taller instead of urban-sprawling all over the place!

Turn taking

Doggie did great staying on his suitcase when I worked with Chai in the same room today. He’s really coming along nicely! I’m happy with his day.