Last week, I visited Doggie (red collar boy) and his folks. He’s turning into a beautiful dog – strong, full of energy and fearless. He recognized Game and me at once and immediately tried climbing in my lap. Doggie is the puppy who went to live with his father Drago in Naucalpan in Mexico State. Towards the end of week 8, he had been the barkiest of all puppies and the second bitiest one (first place in terms of land-sharkiness was my favorite girl Chispa).
I hadn’t seen Doggie since he moved out, and it was SO cool to meet him again!
Eduardo and their dad mentioned that they’ve been struggling to keep Doggie calm: his energy is boundless and they haven’t let him off leash because unlike their other dogs, Doggie hasn’t picked up the concept of staying on the sidewalk. They have no yard and he doesn’t have the other dogs’ freedom to run, roam, play and train in the public field next to their house because it borders a street. For the same reason, he doesn’t get to go on off leash errand around town.
When leashed, he’ll bite and tug on the leash a lot, and he has learned to get attention by biting shoes and pants. Eduardo’s dad showed me the “battle scars” on their arms: what is to be expected from a bitey little landshark interacting with someone whose skin isn’t young and flexible anymore.
They mentioned that Doggie’s needs for exercise and stimulation were among the highest of any Mal they’ve had (they’ve had quite a few.)
I can’t help but feel proud of the boy: he’s exactly what a Mal should be. But I could see they were struggling to meet his needs, which in turn caused Doggie to struggle to relax. They haven’t found an affordable trainer nearby to help them out. Since I’m not nearby enough either (it’s about an hour’s drive, depending on traffic), we agreed that he’d stay with me for a week, and then we’d do a handover day. If they needed more help, I’d be able to make time or take him for another week in September.
No one has mentioned their puppy getting car sick. I know for sure that at least 2 of them never have; with the other 3, I haven’t had a chance to ask. Our numerous early puppy car adventures may have paid off (or it maybe it’s entirely genetic.)
A week later, I picked up Señorito Doggie without Game and Chai. He was calmer than he had been on my last visit – they had made sure to take him out for a walk before I got there. We drove by my place and I added Game and Chai to the car. Then we headed to Bosque de Aragón. I put a tracker on Doggie (just in case I needed to unexpectedly collect him somewhere) and let them all loose in a big field.
Testing who Doggie has grown up to be at Bosque de Aragón!
He was amazing. He was more interested in staying close to me than anything else, even though he took the world in with interest. For the first 15 minutes or so, he was SO happy to try making physical contact at all times as we walked, tail high and proud, wagging nonstop, shiny eyes! It took some walking until he had convinced himself I wasn’t going anywhere, and started exploring with the others.
It was the weekend, so a little more than usual was going on at Aragón. We walked off leash past joggers, other dogs, ducks, children, a skate park, food stands, bikes, giant animal statues and four-wheeled pedal cars. Doggie was a superstar. He fearlessly followed me up a bunch of stairs (the kind Chai had struggled with in the beginning), fell off on the way down and just kept going like nothing had happened. He remembered his puppy recall (“Pup-pup-pup!”) and turned on a dime whenever I called. First impression: he’s growing up to be a little superstar!
Doggie has the kind of environmental confidence I’ve been hoping for with my extreme early socialization! With this particular puppy/juvenile dog, at this particular moment in time, it looks like I have accomplished this goal. Nothing fazed him – he was neither repelled by nor overly attracted to interesting people and dogs: he had seen it all.
I’m biased, but isn’t he beautiful?
I did, of course, get some shoe biting and jumping for attention – he had learned this skill well since we’d been apart and was generalizing to me lightening fast! For the time being, I picked him up anytime he bit my naked feet (because I wore sandals and it hurt) and set him down again a few steps later. It was management, not training, since he didn’t mind being picked up at all. As we had worked on in the last … I think two weeks with me, in a variation of Julie Daniels’ puppy protocol, he just relaxed and went floppy in my arms to be let down again. When he felt like it, he’d take another run at my feet right away.
This is an interesting observation to me because for many puppies, picking them up can be used as a harmless punisher for unwanted behavior (because they don’t like being picked up.) Not with a puppy – at least not with this puppy – who has been picked up a lot by a lot of people, and built all the positive associations to it!
Back home: a break
Hard to believe, but true: even 5.5 months old Mals fall asleep eventually!
#1 training priority: respect sidewalk boundaries by default
After Doggie resting and me working on non-Doggie stuff, he got his first formal training session for training goal #1, the first priority for his humans: the concept of staying on sidewalks. Before we could work on this out in the world and with actual sidewalks, we needed a few things in our toolkit:
A shared language
A food marker (¡Sí!)
The concept of shaping and/or luring
The concept that offered behaviors pay off (R+)
The concept that “keep doing what you’re doing” pays off
A release cue
The concept of boundaries having meaning
The above would be true for any dog I worked with. In Doggie’s case, I only have a week to teach him what I would otherwise take my time with – perhaps several months. This means I’ll add other elements to our communication to speed up his learning, even if I wouldn’t usually use them. For this particular project, I added
as part of the shared language:
The understanding that offering behaviors can turn off environmental stimuli (R-/escape conditioning in the sense of: if I plug in my seat belt, the car will stop beeping at me.)
The concept that avoiding certain behaviors keeps certain environmental stimuli turned off (P+/avoidance conditioning as in: as long as I don’t unplug my seatbelt, the car will remain silent.)
R- was going to be key in speeding up the learning process. I was confident I’d be able to teach the goal behavior in a week and generalize it to all sidewalks with its help. You’ll find out whether I was right in the posts to come!
I was also sure that I could use R- without emotional fallout for Doggie, in a way that would increase clarity much faster than if I didn’t use it. Maximizing clarity fast would get me results fast. Getting results fast would result in increased life quality for Doggie in the years to come – so my pragmatic math was simple: of course I was going to use whatever I needed to in order to help Doggie archieve the life quality and freedom I wanted him to have.
I taught all parts of our shared language over the course of 3 sessions in the absence of distractions with the help of a suitcase: the suitcase served to explain the basic concept that changes in surface height – such as steps and sidewalks or, in this case, suitcases! – can be meaningful.
Here’s our very first suitcase session. I first attempted to shape Doggie, but since he didn’t know how to chase treats, I quickly went to luring instead. I love teaching dogs to shape, but for our particular project, I knew I’d be faster if I just lured my target behavior and then rewarded.
After the session above, I introduced our release cue (¡Libre!), a cue for going on the suitcase (¡Maleta!) and the P- element (the “floor is lava” game, aka an equivalent to the seat belt beep in a car.)
#2 training goal: an alternative way of asking for attention
Doggie had already learned to get attention by biting shoes/feet and jumping on his humans. I was going to offer him an alternative: sit to ask for what you’d like! I marked and reinforced all his sitting with food and attention that first day.
Typically, this is all I’d do. I’d redirect to a chewable item and withdraw attention for biting and jumping until it just stopped happening. However, since we were on a time crunch – a week, and I wanted to see no more shoe biting at all! – I added …
another part to our shared language:
A punishment marker (¡Alto!)
Not only did jumping and biting my shoes no longer work to get attention – it now produced undesirable consequences. Not results Doggie hated (there’s no need for that); just something he was not looking for under these circumstances, similar to Sarah Stremming’s “milk, not water” analogy. This was simply something we worked on throughout the day, all day, starting on our first day together – as soon as we had gotten home from Aragón, where I had learned that picking up wasn’t undesirable enough.
Luckily, Doggie only bites his humans’ shoes, but not the shoes of strangers – that would have made things a lot harder!
By means of the undesired consequence followed by helping him into a sit if he fell back into his old habits, he started offering his first sits for attention that very evening. I was proud of my smart little snuggler! Apart from biting shoes and feet, he is actually a very snuggly puppy – as long as the attention he needs is provided!
Sound sensitivity?
We had a loud thunderstorm that first evening, and Doggie couldn’t have cared less. I’m SO glad that so far, as far as I know, none of the puppies show noise sensitivities. (Again, I know this for sure about two of them, but haven’t had a chance to ask about the remaining 3.)
That said, Game only became noise sensitive after having moved to Guatemala – so if she’s passed on some of those genes and my early noise-desensitization did not do the trick, it may still develop for the rebeldes later in life. So far so good though!
The first night
… was difficult night for Mr. Doggie. I wondered whether he had separation issues in general (his humans hadn’t mentioned it) or whether being back with me in a place he wasn’t familiar with (this isn’t the apartment or house he grew up in) was just too difficult to sleep through the night. He had a hard time not sharing the bedroom and woke me up a few times.
Game is currently the only dog with bed privileges, and she likes her peace at night. Chai voluntarily puts herself to bed in an open crate in a different room when she’s ready to sleep. I had Doggie sleep in Chai’s room, but he found it difficult to settle there. I was pretty sure Doggie would sleep peacefully in my bed, but just to be safe, I’d want Game elsewhere if he was there. That didn’t seem fair to her. I decided to give Doggie sleeping in Chai’s space another try our second night rather than giving in to his snuggle wishes just yet.
Update: I asked, and was told Doggie didn’t have separation issues at home. That’s great to know! I’m glad he doesn’t. This greatly increased the probability that he’d settle more and more peacefully in Chai’s room in the nights to come!
I’ll refer to the puppies by there (provisional) names from now on because it’s a lot of fun to name dogs! Here’s the run down again, matching names to collar colors. Also and perhaps most importantly, I’ve decided what Black’s name is going to be! Since she is the one puppy who has stood out to me in having more tentative days than the others (so far! It may change tomorrow!), and since she had a few days where she very much did her own thing rather than hanging out with the puppy pile, she’ll get to carry the litter theme forwards: she’s Rebelde (rebel.)
Blue is Chispa, Purple is Oso, Green is Bravo and Red is Fierro. Three puppies have ended up with the names I had on my list of rebelde-themed names. Oso and Rebelde weren’t on my list. Oso just works for Purple (right now anyways; he’s a big fluffy teddy!), and Rebelde fits better than anything else I had on my list. It’s also a strong, brave name, and I want Rebelde to be strong and brave! If she is the most sensitive – which may of course change – she will need it the most.
Back to today!
Before heading back to Teotihuacán, we went to Fresa Parque early in the morning and got in some more dog interactions:
Park time before our puppy road trip.
Once again, two strangers asked me to sell them a puppy. This is getting old!
By 8AM, we hit the road. The shade structure did a great job and we got to our temporary yard before it was unbearably hot.
Open roads (with good music) and cats symbolize freedom for me. To be untethered to places because you choose rather than need to feels sleeping-under-the-stars kind of good.
More de-parasiting
Everyone had their first round of Heartgard, on the same day it was Game’s and Chai’s monthly turn. Oso (Purple) had the easiest time eating his and did so right away without hesitation. The others took a little longer. Only Rebelde (Black) needed hers diluted in a little milk or she wouldn’t touch it.
6 weeks, 2 days (May 7)
Game and Chai enjoyed a round of morning fetch in the yard while the puppies (who were smart and got out of the way) watched with curiosity. When a ball became available, two of them went for it!
Solo adventures
Bravo
I took Bravo (Green) on a 20-minute solo trip in the carrier. Even though it was already very hot when we got out, he didn’t complain at all. We met a free-roamer I let him sniff to bring up his dog count, which is the lowest of them all right now. He walked up to the wagging dog lying in the shade and investigated the waggy tail. No pictures because I wanted to safe myself some editing time! We went to a butcher shop and got ground chicken: the better food I’ll start adding to most meals in order to teach the puppies that hands near food are great news rather than a cause for concern. I also got chicken feet to gnaw on for everyone. I took Bravo out while the store owner ground up our meat and he got to see the goings-on.
Fierro
At 2PM, it was Fierro (Red)’s turn to go on a solo adventure to El Chichimeca. It was hotter now and he hung out under the bench, panting. For the first time, I saw him startle at a motorcycle sound. He didn’t respond to the second motorcycle going past.
A thought on socialization periods
I wonder whether we really are in the most important socialization and environmental exposure period now, and whether my early socialization has made a difference. OR if the main socialization period is already over, contrary to common knowledge, now that startle responses have intensified and fear responses set in. I’d probably have to have at least another litter with the same sire and do things differently to find even a little bit of an answer.
… and Fierro again
Tonight, I took Fierro on an errand without the carrier. At first, he was a little stiff in my arms, then he relaxed and soon fell asleep. I had been hoping we’d run into a free-roamer to catch up on his dog count, but no luck today.
Preventing resource guarding
This is what the ground meat is for! Today was the first day I added something better to the puppies’ kibble: raw meat! The idea is to create the association that my hand near food means good things for dogs: I will either add something better to what the dogs are currently eating or trade something they are playing with or chewing on for something better; then give the first object back right away. The hope is that by learning this from the beginning, the thought of guarding food or toys won’t cross their minds in the future because human hands near food mean good things. If someone happens to visit while I feed the puppies, I’ll have them do it too to generalize a little.
My raw meat is in the tiny plastic container and I just sprinkle a few flakes of it over the kibble every time my hand approaches. It doesn’t have to be a lot – it just has to be yummy!
So social, so interactive, so mobile!
Everyone continues getting bitier, which is delightful. Tonight, Fierro and Rebelde tugged with each other on a rope for the first time, and Oso discovered that he could try and dig holes!
For the last three or four days or so, they’ve also shown a new play move: they will sneak-stalk up to each other Border-Collie style and then play-attack! It is VERY cute. Yesterday, Bravo had the first puppy zoomies in the yard. Today, the others followed suit!
6 weeks, 3 days (May 8)
There were morning firecrackers – I suspect the left-overs from the saint’s day last Friday. The puppies are most playful in the morning, and we played through all of the firecracker background noise for about half an hour. (These aren’t the next-door firecrackers anymore, but a little further out. Still – good practice for any dog who’ll live in Mexico State!)
A thought on noise sensitivity
We could, of course, wonder why most dogs I know in Mexico, including free-roaming ones, are not comfortable with firecrackers, given the fact that most of them grow up with firecrackers. I wonder if the population – pre-firecrackers – started out average: most of them not noise sensitive, but with the possibility to sensitize (like Game.) Once they had sensitized, they had litters and those litters socially learned from their dams to be afraid. OR they themselves sensitized later in life. OR it is something epigenetic. In any case, my favorite scenario would be the one where the puppies socially learned to be afraid: that is the only scenario in which my puppies won’t eventually be afraid of firecrackers because I’m removing my adult dogs when the firecrackers get too loud and pairing firecracker sounds with play. I have no idea how likely or unlikely the social-learning hypothesis actually it is. (If you read this and know – show me a study; I’d love to read it!)
Here’s a few excerpts from our morning play! The puppies now play with each other as well as with anything they find: figs from the tree in the yard, a rope, my socks, my pants, balls, toys, Chai, long grass roots, twigs from a shrub, sandals, my phone’s lanyard. Everyone and everything is a toy, and I love it!
Chispa (Blue) and Rebelde (Black) say, lanyards make great tug toys!
Here’s Bravo having fun with a sock I let either Fierro or Chispa win – both of them got one each. I’ve been slipping socks for particularly fervent pulls like we do with bite sleeves in bigger dogs.
So! much! play!
It strikes me just how much play there is. I knew there was going to be a lot – but not the true extent of that lot. The puppies must be using ALL their muscles this way! By now, they chase each other as well as wrestle, and they roll all over the place in all the ways pretty much nonstop. What a way to exercise and learn about their bodies and each other! I would absolutely love to have another litter for them to play with – I bet this would have HUGE advantages for them: the newness of dogs AND play. It would be an amazing opportunity! I’m hoping to find someone on Facebook who is willing to have a playdate with us.
Solo adventures
Purple
went on today’s Chichimeca trip. He left the carrier, lied down in the shadiest place he found under the bench and complained: the heat. I feel it too. It’s too much!
Frontlining
Everyone got Frontline-sprayed again while asleep. I want to minimize them having to deal with the terrible smell, so half-asleep puppies are perfect. Nobody complained! Now that the pups are bigger, I’m using the spray the way it’s supposed to be used (more of it and massaging it in.) This way, we’ll hopefully be able to go a little longer before the next round!
Crate training
Fierro
mastered his 9 minutes (slept through them like a stone) and
Oso
mastered his 8!
Once they are up to 10, I’ll increase duration in 5-minute increments rather than 1-minute ones. My goal is to get up to 30 before one of these two boys goes on their plane trip.
Husbandry
everyone got the nails of their right front paws clipped – for the first time today, with the “big dog” clippers! They all did well – Fierro, Oso and Chispa were rather awake during their turn though and struggled to get off, having more important things to do and places to be. It’s not a fear-based but clearly a “Hold on, I’d rather be on the ground and do that other thing” kind of struggle. Big difference! Rebelde and Bravo got their turn later at night, and were very chill and relaxed – it was sleepy times already. Nobody batted an eyelash at the big dog nail clippers.
6 weeks, 4 days (May 9)
Velociraptor morning greetings are getting more fun by the day! I’m still slipping socks and sandals when they pull strongly. I’m loving my mornings: it’s the good kind of pain. Like getting a tattoo.
When I took Game and Chai for their morning walk, EVERYONE flooded out the gate. So far, it has always only been one puppy, and they’d been more tentative about it (usually Fierro or Chispa.) Today, everyone wanted to come!
I wish I lived in a street where I could let them come on an abbreviated morning walk, but as is, this is not a puppy-walking street. There’s about 2-3 cars a minute, but they are fast and I have already seen them not stop for dogs. It’s not that kind of town – other towns – even with more traffic – absolutely are. It is fascinating to me how within the same state, the human/dog culture differs.
This particular street also has a lot of barky dogs behind fences. This, too, isn’t the case in all towns, even if the number of resident dogs is similarly high! In any case, to get to the place where walking is enjoyable (it’s still a cactus desert, but without cars), we need to walk through the street with barking left and right and cars who won’t stop for dogs. Walking two adult dogs who mostly stay on the sidewalk is just the right number to do so relatively relaxedly. I’m going to drive to the cactus wasteland with everyone and the puppies though … maybe tomorrow. That way, they can have a little walk with the big girls without getting run over. And we can stop to meet our free-roaming friends. When I’m not bringing the puppies, I’ll have to move the x-pen to the gate to create an airlock … this morning, the simple act of leaving took me a couple minutes because they were very determined. I don’t expect them to want to go to the same extent if the adults don’t head outside, but just seeing Game or Chai them step over the threshold is now enough to make them want to come along. It would be fun to live in a super quiet street where I could watch them naturally expand their home range without worrying about cars. This morning showed me that they’d venture off this fenced property by now. Bravo even ran a few meters after a pedestrian passing! Yay for being attracted to new folks!
Social life
Solo adventures
Chispa
went on a brief out-of-carrier solo adventure to the store, and the person attending the store briefly held her. One new human – check!
Rebelde
went to El Chichimeca in the carrier. She was fast to leave it, briefly explore and soon fell asleep under the bench in the shade. It is SO hot!
Fierro
went on my evening hunt for ice cream. I wasn’t going to take anyone, but he was latched on to my sandals when I tried to leave – so picking him up and bringing him along for an adventure was the easiest solution. The first two places were out of ice cream (have I mentioned it is hotter than in Mexico City?) So our adventure was longer than expected – and Fierro got to meet a friendly free-roamer and take turns eating pieces of kibble with him!
Heading home with Fierro after finally succeeding at our ice cream hunt. Marveling at the beauty of not only murals, sidewalks and fading paint, but also rooftop water tanks. Everything turns beautiful under the right kind of sky.
Visitors
Around noon, Carla, Emmerson and Axel visited for a bit. Every puppy got held by either Carla or Axel – we’ll count them as new people again! Fierro was the first puppy to show object play with a person other than me: he tugged with Axel! What a good boy!
All puppies played with each other while Emmerson (the 3-year old) ran around the yard. These little social visits are perfect: they usually stay for about half an hour because by then, Emmerson gets bored. Both for me and the puppies, that’s an excellent amount of time to socialize.
We’ve done these visits over my lunch break so far, which is also convenient: during the hottest hours of the day, none of the puppies have enough energy to eat visitors, making it a great time to have a kid over and running around. Earlier or later in the day, I’d worry, especially since Emmerson is a bit tentative around the puppies. They are fast now, and I can see Emmerson running and screaming while 5 Malinois puppies think this is the best game ever, catch up with Emmerson, latch on to them and … ahm … like the cute tiny dinosaurs in this Jurassic Park scene:
In the evening, when it cooled down, I decided to try 2-puppy adventures this week as a change from solo- or everyone.adventures. The first two puppies got to go today:
Oso and Fierro’s 2-dog adventure
I carried them a little in the carrier, then set it down and gave them a chance to come out (once we were off the car street my temporary house is on). Both did so pretty quickly – when there are two rather than one, their confidence doubles! I walked a few steps and called them. Sure enough they came running! A piece of kibble for everyone and the opportunity to go back into the carrier. Both ate the kibble and wanted to stay outside, so we walked some more along the sidewalk. We saw several people, got touched by someone and Fierro responded slightly suspiciously when someone shooed him away from their plastic cup of beer. With a little encouragement, he then ran past them when I called. Brave Fierro!
I walked ahead and called a few times, feeding a piece of kibble or two each or offering water. I LOVE that they are already eating kibble out and about, and it was great to see their confidence on the sidewalk, and how they approached rather than retreated from two strangers (who reatreated into a portón before the puppies caught up with them.)
They also met a free-roamer, upping both their weekly dog count by one! Go puppies!
Tomorrow, I’ll take the next two. I’ll spontaneously decide who gets to go!
Crate training
Fierro
was tired and did his 10 minutes without issues as I was getting ready for bed.
Oso
was still wide awake. Both he and Chispa were in sleep deprived toddler mode, which goes along with panting quite a bit. I waited until Oso had chilled out and then went for his 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t given him enough time to be able to modulate his energy down from crazy to asleep. He complained at a noise level 1 in the carrier, starting about a minute in. He stayed at a level 1 though and there were brief pauses. He was tired … until he saw Game head outside for her evening pee. At that point, he escalated to a level 3, and then back to 1 when she came inside again. Don Oso will do another 10-minute round next time!
Changes!
Purple used to be a very even-keeled and slightly lazy puppy until about Sunday. Now, he’s becoming more and more active and intense! They change SO much, all the time!
6 weeks, 5 days (May 10, 2024)
Adventures, field trips and socializing!
We went to our usual morning walk spot, but I drove the part that has cars and dogs barking behind fences so the puppies could come! I parked at the cactus wasteland and let everyone out right away. It is wild how much of a difference it makes in the puppies’ confidence when Game and Chai are around – especially Game! Since the big girls couldn’t wait to get out of the car and get to their running spot, the puppies followed suit. Chispa needed a bit of convincing – she was the only one who observed from under the car for half a minute before taking off into the open field. (Once again: notice how much they change: last week, the hesitant puppy would have been Rebelde while Chispa would have been one of the first ones to explore. Today, the tables are turned!)
What I was most fascinated by was that the puppies weren’t big on exploring this new environment. Instead, they did what they usually do in the morning: latch on to my pants and sandals to tug ferociously! Chispa, once she had decided she wanted to come, was all wiggly and happy when she finally got to me and then, of course, cashed in on her price of tugging away. Not a second look at the environment even though the big dogs were ahead and exploring! (Chispa is my current favorite because out of all the puppies, she seems the happiest to see me, and she has a facial expression that goes with an open mouth, ears back and fast wagging. She turns into the personification (canification?) of joy. None of the others can do that kind of expression. The random details we love about them are fascinating in and of themselves!)
My left leg and my right leg as I’m trying to walk further into the field!
I’ve only consciously reinforced tugging on my pants (it is something that typically only happens in the morning, when everyone is extra excited to see me and it’s still coolish) a few times – maybe between 3 and 5, for no more than 30 seconds each, and not with every puppy each time. And WOW, what a result! Going forwards, I’ll carry toys for them to latch on to instead. Unfortunately, I have no closed shoes, and my feet are pretty scratched up by now. It IS fun, but it’s also a lot to put on the puppies’ new homes! It would be nice to get them to target toys instead over the next few days, before they move out. Without having done any conscious drive building except for letting them tug on me a few times and slipping socks/shoes, I have unleashed the monsters! It is WILD to me how easy a genetic disposition to be mouthy can be turned up! (I continue being delighted, of course, but since they won’t stay with me, it’s time to tune things down in the eating-humans department.)
There is a very easy trick to get a puppy to let go, by the way: pick them up. The puppy, that is, not the thing you don’t want them to tug on.
After doing so a few times on our wasteland adventure, they shifted their focus to the environment (phew!) Here’s our first encounter with a cactus:
After meeting Mr. Cactus, we saw (well, at least Game did) cattle in the distance and I used the opportunity to whistle-recall the adults, knowing that the puppies would come running after them. Not only was there a scatter – the puppies also got reinforced with social attention (praise and pets) as well as an opportunity to reach Game’s teats for a drink (it is warm already and milk is liquid – the perfect reinforcer.) The scatter is mostly for the big dogs, but some of the little ones snatched up kibble as well. I believe social reinforcement is still pretty strong for them, but food is starting to increase in value.
In the video above, you may have seen that the person with the cattle has a dog as well. In the clip below, that dog has come closer and after eating a scatter (everyone except for Chispa, who observes the dog), we get to say hi. I call Game back twice to make sure she doesn’t get too intense with them. I haven’t let her meet dogs together with the puppies before. On the second up-close meet, before I have a chance to call them back, the dog feels outnumbered and heads off. This was a great opportunity for the puppies to meet a new dog, and see peaceful meetings modeled by their two big household dogs!
I’m only putting down one new dog for Bravo since he was the one who directly approached and sniffed the dog up close. I’m excited it was Bravo, since his dog count is currently the lowest (he had the least dogs “roll over” from last week.)
… and for the final adventure puzzle piece of this morning, we all climbed a wall (i.e. a wall that’s part of a ruin, making it climbable even for puppies:
This entire outing was around 10-15 minutes – there was just a lot that fit into a short time. If I walked at my normal speed, it would have been 3 minutes to do this small loop from the car and back to the car. The reason it was 10-15 is that we first spent a bit of time with me standing still and puppies hanging on to my pants, I stopped a few time to take pictures, I recalled them, we waited when they checked out the cactus …
Rebel & Bravo’s 2-dog adventure
Around lunch time, I craved quesadillas, so I walked to the quesadilla plaza with Rebel and Bravo. I first had them both in the carrier, then let both out and they followed me, then carried them both, let both of them walk a little again and, on the way back, took turns having one in my arms and one in the carrier.
We made it to the quesadilla plaza, and I let the puppies have a drink and run around. Rebel was out first. She had also been the first one out on our first stop in the street, and the first one to say hi to a person we met. Not a shy puppy this week at all!
Apart from seeing passers-by, we interacted with 3 people: two who pet them for a little bit (without lifting them up) and a 3-year-old (whose pink tulle dress looked like a great toy to rip up; I’m glad it was hot enough for the puppies to not sink their teeth into it!) who didn’t dare touch them, but danced and ran around them, came close and retreated again while we waited for my quesadillas. The puppies were, at this point, tired and watched with interest, but not in a hurry to get up or appraoch: they had just interacted with two of the four dogs on this plaza as well, staying on the ground, approaching voluntarily. Both dogs were friendly to them; it was great! By the time we met the kid, everyone was ready to pass out.
I’m counting two dogs and one human for both puppies. I’ve decided my human count will be 1 for every person who holds the puppies and, now that they are at an interactive age, 1 for every 3 people who interact with the puppies without picking them up.
When walking a bit along the sidewalk on the way to the plaza, I called the puppies successfully with Pup-pup-pup a few times, reinforced with pets and kibble and the opportunity to go into the carrier if they wanted, and occasionally a drink of water. They both took food (even though they had just had lunch before we left!) and were doing great. Bravo found his first scavenge-able little pieces of meat under the quesadilla stove. I had forgotten my phone, so no pictures or videos of this outing – but it was a most successful one! I just wish it wasn’t quite as warm. By the time I got home, I was ready to take a nap too!
Crate training
I usually crate train when everyone gets tired at night … but this morning, they were all wiped out from our field trip, so I used the opportunity to get some sleepy training in before it got too, too hot!
Oso
started talking to himself half-way into his repeat-9 minutes. He talked to himself on and off (lower than a level 1) until almost the end; I took him out when he happened to be quiet after 9 minutes. Since I’m aiming for total calmness, he’ll repeat the 9-minute stage again.
Fierro
took his first stab at 15 crate minutes. He started complaining softly 11 minutes in, talking to himself, escalated to noise level 1 around the 12 minute mark and to levels 2 and 3 another minute later. 15 again it is for Fierro! He started out really well though!
Oso – again
I gave Oso another go at 9 minutes after Fierro’s turn because everyone was still wiped out from this morning and it wasn’t yet UNBEARABLY hot. He aced it this time! On to 10 minutes for his next round!
Fierro – again
After Oso, Fierro took another stab at his 15 minutes – and he DID it! What a superstar! He woke up twice during his turn. Once because of a firecracker – he fell back asleep a few seconds later. And once at about minute 15, when the neighbors’ dog started barking. He was awake, head up, listening and looking for his last minute, but no complaints! Go Fierro! His next turn will be 20 minutes!
Oso aces his 10 minutes!
Tonight, Oso had another go at sleeping in the carrier for 10 minutes – and he DID it even though he woke up in the very end when the dog next door started barking! Go puppy! On to 15 minutes tomorrow!
Resource guarding prevention
Apart from Oso’s crate training win, we only did two things tonight: I used the mop as a “don’t eat my feet” toy (it works great for most puppies except Fierro!) and then added little pieces of raw to the puppies’ dinner kibble. I’ve been doing this for 1-3 of their 4 daily meals over the last couple days and am now starting to see cheerful anticipation when I approach!
6 weeks, 5 days (May 10)
Caden’s don’t-eat-me protocol
Below, day 1.5 of The Mop Mission for unteaching your litter of Malinois puppies to eat you. To successfully apply:
Have a baby gate between you and the puppies. Entice them with the mop before stepping over the baby gate for a better chance that they will target the mop (rather than you.) See 02:26 in the video below. The camera angle isn’t great, but at this point in the clip, I’m behind the baby gate in the front door to the house – and the puppies are outside. I’ve already moved the mop back and forth in circles and ∞ movements for about 20 seconds when the clip starts.
Move your mop AWAY from the puppies rather than towards them. Just like you would when teaching them to tug: toys try to escape like prey animals; they don’t try to jump into the preditor’s mouth.
Only if absolutely necessary use the mop as a barrier between you and a puppy. Note that this puppy, if there’s a reinforcement history for eating you, is learning to fight past the mop to get to you rather than to target the mop! My puppies have this reinforcement history.
If a puppy latches on to you, don’t pick up your leg or foot or shoe – this tends to cause Malinois puppies to latch on even more strongly! Instead, pick up the puppie. They are likely to let go (at this age anyways.) Place them behind the mop so they get another chance of chasing something they will be allowed to keep biting.
After daily practice, I’ll show you what this looks like next week!
Tugging with three puppies (the two sports prospects and my favorite)
Why? Because I have TIME for it. If I had gone to the city and done what I originally planned – socialize, socialize, socialize – I wouldn’t have. I’m using this time wisely to have a little fun!
Play with one puppy out at a time – but if you have several puppies, let the others watch from behind a barrier! They’ll want to go next!
Tug for 1-2 minutes (stop before the puppy gets tired!)
After some 50/50 strength struggle (thank you for that percentage suggestion, Shade Whitesel!), let the puppy win the toy when they give a good tugging effort: let go of it and let them have it.
Let the puppy keep the toy and do what they like with it for at least 20 seconds.
Announce a trade: show them something edible and delicious, take away the toy, give them the food, give back the toy.
Let them have the toy for about 20 seconds more and then distract them away from it if they are still interested. In Oso’s video, I start tossing figs since we happen to be under a fig tree. Pick up the toy when the puppy doesn’t notice.
Session over! Transition gently from interaction to puppy-amusing-themselves time, for example with snuggles or personal play.
Oso
Fierro
Fierro impressed me: he didn’t let go of the toy throughout his session! This is one tenacious puppy (today he is anyways – remember that at this age, you’ve got a different puppy every day!)
Chispa
When it was Chispa’s turn, she was too tired to play – or in any case, she didn’t feel like it. It was HOT! I first played in the usual spot by myself, but quickly gave up. These are Malinois puppies. If anyone is going to beg to play, it’s going to be them begging me!
I then briefly tried engaging her up closer – and she started chasing the toy! However, she soon stopped again and I ended the session. Take home message: don’t beg your dog to play. If it’s not the right moment for them, just try again later.
At night, after the rain, Chispa was big time into tugging with Chai on that same toy!
2-dog adventure
Chispa and Fierro went on their 2-dog adventure this morning. I hoped to find a person for Fierro and a dog for Chispa to meet. We found someone for Fierro: the tamales salesperson I bought my breakfast from was happy to hold him. No dogs for Chispa though. We saw one, but he was mistrustful so we left him alone.
The most interesting part was when we walked past a rubbish fence (made out of car parts, steel mats and corrugated metal) that had three (?) dogs behind it who started barking suddenly and all at once. Both puppies got scared (very clearly a fear response, not a startle response) but responded differently: Chispa booked it towards home and stopped maybe 15 meters from me on the sidewalk. The barky dog yard was between us. Fierro ran my direction and gladly jumped in the get-away carrier the door of which I held open. I tried pup-pup-pup calling Chispa, but she couldn’t come. Only once I had walked back towards her side of the barky dogs did she come (which didn’t require her to run past the barking, but still towards it rather than away from it – brave girl!)
Both puppies recovered within no more than 20 seconds. They voluntarily left the carrier again – Fierro before Chispa – and walked with me for the last part of the way home. Fierro even latched on to the belt of the carrier and tugged. And yes, that last bit was on the car street sidewalk, but the puppies were tired enough I trusted they’d stay with me.
The fascination of opposite responses and the onset of fear
I found two things fascinating today: one is that the two puppies showed opposite responses to the barky dogs: away from me and towards home (Chispa) and towards me (even though that was the opposite direction from home): Fierro.
It also was a clear sign that by now, at 6 weeks and 5 days, every single puppy (maybe except for Bravo? I’ll have to go back over my notes to see if I’ve seen a fear response in him yet) is physiologically capable of experiencing fear. The earliest I’ve gotten a puppy was at 7 weeks. That puppy was also a Mal. So really, there is very little chance that when you get a (Malinois) puppy, that puppy isn’t already past the sensitive socialization window (if we define that window as the time the puppy is socially receptive, yet entirely unable to feel fear.) The 7-or-8-week-old puppy’s fear response will still be smaller than the fear response of an older puppy – but like it or not, it’s going to be possible to show up while being entirely impossible at an earlier age.
The puppy you invite into your life
This is why I give young puppies ALL the opportunities to socialize that I can. As much as possible, even if it’s hard on them and they are very busy as a result of my socialization efforts.
I also advise new owners to do a lot in the very beginning (the no-fear opportunity is gone, but the fear response is still smaller than it will be in a week or two.) Once the fear response is noticeable when confronted with new experiences (depending on the breed and the individual, this may be at 7 weeks, at 12 weeks or anywhere in between), we slow way down and I suggest one or two calm days a week where the puppy learns that sometimes, nothing much happens and we still don’t tear the house to shreds.
Once the opportunity to reap the unique benefits of the time when curiosity is greater than fear has passed, we’re not in a hurry anymore and can focus on other important, but less time-sensitive things such as learning to be calm and not not always “be on,” crate training, marker cues, play and other life skills we may practice at home.
Up until then, we very much are in a hurry and quite busy socializing, going all the places and having all the visitors! But starting when the fear response is more than just a moment’s hesitation, I want the puppy to have the greatest possible agency over approaching or not, being touched or not, and the distance from whatever stimulus that feels right to them. This is when we may introduce CU games, desensitization and other more systematic (and hence less “organic”) protocols: while we didn’t need them for very young puppies, we do now!
Solo adventures without a carrier
Oso
came on an errand to buy milk. I had hoped to hand him to the convenience store person to hold while I scrambled through my wallet, but unfortunately, the store of our choice was closed and the person in the one we went to instead wasn’t quiete as dog-enthusiastic. Oso is still missing one human to complete this week’s count. This is the first time all puppies needed their rollover extra humans from last week because I didn’t go to the city today, where socializing puppies is easier!
We’ll go dog hunting tonight and tomorrow and find Oso a human to complete this week’s quests for everyone!
Rebelde
came on an ice cream mission in my arms a little later today. Almost everyone is out of ice cream! But we hunted some down!
Resource guarding prevention: toys
Everyone got a round of toy-guarding prevention: my hand approaching a toy means I’ll take it away, feed something delicious and give it right back. I worked with all of them, but didn’t take video of them all. It was fun to observe how some went right back to the toy while others were looking for more food!
While only 3 puppies got to play with me this morning, everyone got a round of playing by themselves with the resource guarding protocol!
Rebelde
Bravo
Fierro
Going forwards, I’ll only do toy play and trade after. Toy play is way too much fun to swap it for boring toy – food – toy exchanges!
The adventure that didn’t happen
When it cooled down a little, I put all the puppies in the big dog crate and drove them to the town center in the hope of human and dog socialization. However, just as we got there, it started pouring. I waited about 10 minutes, but the rain didn’t let out, so we drove back home – not having left the car. Silver lining: the puppies got another car ride in the big dog crate, and they heard rain on the roof of a car.
A note on play
It is fascinating to me that the puppies seem much more interested in playing with each other and with me than in playing with the adult dogs. Never before has it been THIS clear to me how important puppy/puppy play must be! Sadly, no news on my search for a litter of a similar age, even though I’ve now posted in two more local and semi-local dog Facebook groups.
Thought of the day
Grief comes in waves.
7 weeks (May 11)
Socialization adventure
Since we – that is I – had been too tired to go to the city this weekend, I took another stab at the town center this morning. No more rain and today, we were much luckier! Not a lot was going on yet on a Sunday at 7AM, but this made the stimuli there were the more salient. We met 5 dogs at varying levels of closeness. I’m counting 2 per puppy. This gets almost everyone to their weekly dog-interaction count (taking the rollover from last week!) There were also several people who touched some of them. I want one more round of this, and I’ll count one person for everyone too, which would also get everyone the required people count.
Everyone came and ate when I called, ran away and sprinkled breakfast kibble. Eating out, getting pets, practicing puppy recalls – check.
Curiosity, approach behavior … and scaring off two big dogs once they noticed HOW MANY little raptors were coming to say hi to them. Thank you for being kind to the first ones, you two!
Fierro also barked at another non-threatening free-roamer. This is the first time one of them has barked at a stimulus! Plus: we’re climbing stairs as if it was the most natural thing in the world! See for yourself:
We then met a fourth free-roamer and almost got run over by a trash cart. Almost! What’s most interesting in this clip to me is how Chispa approaches the dog with her tail tucked. She is clearly feeling tense. There is no reason for her to approach. I am at a distance from this dog, taking video – she could come to me or go any other way. And yet, she chooses to approach despite her tail saying that she isn’t entirely at ease! Curiosity wins – and nothing bad happens! Go Chispa!
Thank you for the person with the trash cart for stopping when I asked you to! We were getting in your way, after all!
After meeting the trash cart, the puppies found bread crumbs to enjoy and reconnected with the black free-roamer. They also ran after a bike for a few metters and after a pedestrian (I had to call them away from the pedestrian; they themselves stopped with the bike.) Bravo tried eating the pedal of a different bike. That’s not on video – but here’s Bravo and Rebelde learning to scavenge and our free-roaming friend! I usually don’t feed free-roamers, but I do these days because I want them to stick around me and the puppies. You’ll also see me having to call Rebelde away from a stranger in this clip. I lowered the camera when calling because the person looked like they’d like to be left alone, so you can’t see Rebelde’s nice response.
Folks were just starting to set up for the Sunday market when we got ready to leave (to avoid going home in the heat!) Everyone walked through the market corridor together – including our new found friend, of course! In the video below, you see me calling the puppies after the corridor. They are slower to respond – Rebelde seems to not be sure which direction my call is coming from, and everyone else is just tired by this point! Our new friend, funnily, is fast to respond to the recall she doesn’t know!
At this age, social reinforcement tends to be most valuable. I feed now and then anyways because I want the puppies to learn how to eat, and that food can be a consequence of behaviors. But not always: I want social reinforcement to stay strong and not turn every interaction into a transaction.
I would love to go to the city at least once this week before returning there on Thursday … but due to the heat, I think I’ll leave it at working here in town. I’ll just have to head out every morning and every evening (as long as we don’t get rained out, like yesterday.) Hopefully that way, we’ll come close to meeting our dog and people goals. We’ve still got tonight to break even for this week, and I hope to make it count!
This evening’s social trip
I looked for other plazas in and around town, but the only other one there is (as far as I can tell) – the quesadilla plaza – was pretty dead. So we headed back to the center again. And wow, was it fun! Much more alive than at 7AM! There were not as many dogs as there usually are at city parks, but plenty of people who wanted to interact with the puppies, including kids. Older kids running, couples lying on the low walls of the grassy parts, a balloon salesperson, a few arts stands (probably the same we saw setting up in the morning), people with strollers and lights in the trees. It wasn’t crazy crowded, but just right. Everyone met a tiny 8-months old Chihuahua who wanted to play (until my guys became too much when they found all their confidence) and another friendly free-roamer who was approached by Bravo (he’s the most confident, ventures the furthest and is the first to approach people and dogs these days), Rebelde, Fierro (who first barked and then had a good time) and Chispa (who I held up to both this dog and the Chi to sniff because she was being sleepy or tentative.) Oso got held by a new person, so he officially mets his people count for the day as well. Since everyone else got touched by all kinds of people, but not picked up, I’m giving them all an additional people mark too. Plus one Chihuahua for everyone and one free-roamer who wanted my pets, but not my food for 4 of the puppies. It’s going well! We’ll make this park a staple, twice a day for as long as the puppies are here and it doesn’t rain!
Crate training
Oso
Shortly after we got home from our evening adventure, there was a power outage. Nothing much we could do – but Oso got 15 minutes of crate time and rocked it! Both he and Fierro are looking at 20 minutes next.
While Oso slept in the carrier in the kitchen, everyone else was asleep outside the baby gate, outside the house … except for Rebelde. She vocally complained about wanting to be let in. I did something I haven’t done before. Since everyone was out there with her and peaceful, it was a familiar place and she wasn’t confined, I knew she wasn’t scared – she just wasn’t content and wanted inside, and she is someone who says what she wants. I waited her out, puttering around nearby but not letting her in. She calmed down after 20 minutes. About a minute later, I let everyone in for the night.
Did we meeet the new dogs and new humans goal (at least 7 a week for everyone?)
YES! I tallied up this week’s dogs and people, and thanks to today’s two outings and Carla, Emmerson and Axel’s visit this week, we made or overshot our dog and human goals this week as well! (Granted this is the first time we counted rollover dogs and humans from last week.) I have a good feeling that we’ll get things done in week 8 as well, now that we have a plan for mornings and nights!
We had a lazy day today. I made sure not to take too many pictures or videos so I wouldn’t have too much to write or edit either!
A sleepy Game sandwich.
Purple’s Solo Adventure
Purple went on a solo adventure to the lunch place next door. He did great in the carrier, and then I opened it to let him out – if he so chose – while waiting for my food. He came out onto the sidewalk, explored around the carrier and then whined, which was immediately remedied by picking him up. After watching the world go by from my arms – there wasn’t a lot going on, but we saw a cyclist, two small kids running and an adult walking by, a few cars and a motorcycle – he struggled, I put him back down and he explored some more before falling asleep on the cool tiles of the restaurant entry. No complaints on the walk back home either (it’s only a 2-minute walk.)
Purple watching the street on his solo adventure.
Green’s Solo Adventure
Green was the next puppy to go on a solo adventure when I walked to the copy shop to print out this week’s puppy trackers. He did great on the 5-minute walk there, and after getting my prints, I opened his carrier in a quiet side street to give him a chance to explore as well. He came out slowly – this is the first time he has this opportunity on his own, and he wasn’t as quick to explore as he’s been with his siblings around. I wonder if caution is a natural response when by oneself as a young puppy OR if this indicates his fear response has set on.
In any case, he did come out and explored around the carrier. There wasn’t much going on, but on the walk home, we walked parallel to someone with a wheelbarrow and also saw a few cars and a bike.
Crate training
Purple
did great and slept through his 6 minutes.
Red
complained and wanted out. Blue and Black were concerned and tried to get into the closed crate where their brother was screaming at volume level 4. I let him out after his 7 minutes, but not without wondering if I should let him cry it out. I know he’s frustrated because he wants out. I don’t believe he feels abandoned because everyone else is right next to him. I’ve never let a new puppy I crate trained cry it out, but these puppies were older – I built duration and alone time very slowly. With a puppy who’s been separated from everyone they know, it seems cruel to me to let them complain until they give up. On the other hand, imagining to let Red complain until he stops now feels different because I’m convinced he doesn’t feel abandoned. Hrm. We’ll see tomorrow.
In any case, the success of the puppies (for example the fact that Purple slept through his turn and Red didn’t) is, so far, based on the timing of when I started their turns. It’s not that Purple is more comfortable in the carrier than Red; it’s simply that when I put Purple in, everyone was still sound asleep, but soon after I put Red in, everyone started waking up and becoming active – including Red, who at that point didn’t want to stay in the carrier.
Deworming …
Every puppy got another spoon full of strawberry yoghurt laced with dewormer. Sadly, no strawberry yogurt for me today. I need to safe some for their third dose tomorrow!
Mobility, becoming social beings and the senses
The rebeldes are getting FAST when they run and, as of today, have REALLY turned into sharks. Their teeth have been around for a few days, but as of today, their jaws are strong enough to make teeth on skin hurt.
We’ve officially turned into little biting machines!
They’ve also started carrying tennis balls around and playing together with a tennis ball! Social and object play rolled into one!
AND we’ve heard the closest firecrackers we’ve heard so far. Game, Green and Red lifted their heads; everyone else didn’t even wake up. I don’t know what’s going on with Game – she hasn’t been THIS chill around firecrackers in a long time! I wonder what hormonal or other changes are causing this.
Also, here’s a lunch recall to a scatter in the grass! Sometimes, I recall to scatters, sometimes to different plates or containers – I want them to learn to eat out of any container and from any surface. This is a simple stimulus/stimulus pairing – classically conditioning my voice/pup-pup-pup-pup, followed by food. Easy, fast and effective.
5 weeks, 2 days (April 30, 2024)
Social life
This morning’s social play
Solo adventures
Both Blue and Black went on solo adventures today!
Black
joined me on my quest to figure out where to pay a parking fine (I outdid myself and got two in the course of 3 days, thank you very much.)
A note on urban planning (or the lack thereof) in Coyoacán
This town reminds me of the outskirts of Xela. It is urban-sprawly in a way that feels completely arbitrary. There are several streets that have this freeway-town atmosphere where there are businesses to their left and right – reststop-esque eateries and places to fix your flat tires, fruit and juice stands and a lot of surprisingly fast traffic.
Then there are little plazas in places you wouldn’t expect them, and NO plazas in places you would. There is an official center of town, but there are other places that could just as well be it. Government officies are randomly strewn across the city as if someone sprinkled them over the town for decoration.
There is paid parking where you think there wouldn’t be, and free parking where you’d expect it to be paid. The person I paid my fine to liked me and simply cut it in half because … why not.
People don’t seem particularly communicative – the goings on feel rushed. This is not a sleepy town. While in smaller towns, people may stop to let a dog cross the street, here, they will bump into them (at least one person I observed last week did. They saw the dog, slowed down and – gently – bumped into them with their car. The dog was fine.)
There is a lot of food everywhere, and places open and close at random hours. It is A LOT cheaper than Mexico City; I forgot how cheap good streetfood can be!
It’s a good place for puppy raising, especially because of the yard – but it’s too far from what I love about Mexico City, yet too loud, busy and urban for what I love about the middle of nowhere to be a place I’d want to stay more permanently. Most of all though, it’s a place with a very strange (lack of) layout.
Back to Black!
Black screamed at a new noise level – 5 – in the car for about 10 minutes and then calmed down for the rest of our adventure. I carried her around the main plaza with all its goings on and opened the carrier in the gazebo. Black came out after observing for a bit, made her way around the carrier and then got back in. I presented her (held her in my hands) to a helpful freeroamer who wagged and came over to sniff and be sniffed. New dog count for Black – one up!
The lovely fella on the left came over to be Black’s socialization helper.
Right: an unsuccessful attempt at adequatly capturing the center craze and all it’s goings on.
Blue
joined me on my hunt for food. The places I already knew weren’t there or closed, but we found another arbitrary plaza with random food stands and a bunch of children running around. I carried Blue around this plaza so she could see the world while waiting for my quesadillas. On the walk back, we met a friendly freeroamer who, like Black’s helper, kindly assisted in sniffing and being sniffed. Blue came out of her carrier right away when I put it down on the sidewalk and was curious to meet the new dog (who was hoping for a quesadilla.)
Top: Blue and I are waiting for my quesadillas. Bottom: Blue’s socialization helper.
Husbandry and handling
Everyone got the nails on their left back paws done and a round of my handling protocol. They were all completely relaxed – very nice! Their teeth are looking great! Being poked by my pretend needle (a pencil) doesn’t faze them. I wonder if the real needle of the vaccine is going to be very different.
More laced strawberry yoghurt
Everyone enjoyed their third and for now last spoon of yoghurt with dewormer. Only Black didn’t want to eat hers; I smeared it directly into her mouth. This was VERY easy; I assume because I’ve practiced looking at the puppies’ teeth a lot.
Sharky escape artists
This morning, Red and Blue were out in the living room. They had managed to escape the x-pen I set up because this very much doesn’t feel like “my” house. I suspect they managed to climb on Game’s chair and jump down from there – which is quite the jump. I changed the set-up for tonight to make it – hopefully – impossible to escape or break a bone for a few more days.
They all are ankle biters now and their needle sharp teeth are quite painful! I am delighted! The Mals are Malinoising!
Because the cuteness
5 weeks, 3 days (May 1, 2023)
In the middle of the night, the puppies woke me and complained – they usually wake me when they want their late-night/early-morning snack from Game. This time, I opened the door for them along with Game, who wanted to go outside. Every single puppy ran out to the grass and immediately peed out there! Go puppies!!!
The uncreepy duck
Yesterday, I set Creepy Duck into the doorway. Green was the only one who showed curiosity, but I wasn’t sure if the other ones just missed it. So today, I took another stab at having Creepy Duck show up in an unexpected place it hadn’t previously been. Nobody cared … not even Chai! She was the only one who ever found it creepy on the first encounter in my apartment. As Creepy Duck has no more use for us, Game did the sensible thing briefly after this video ended: she shredded it to pieces.
I’ll have to step up my game when it comes to creating The Uncanny!
Solo adventures
Red
Today was Red’s turn again, after he was the first one to go on a solo adventure last week! We walked to El Chichimeca. It was quiet out, probably because it was hot. Nevertheless, Red saw a few bicycles, two cars, a motorcycle and two pedestrians, one of whom was Carla who stopped to talk to us. He also heard the sizzling of something being fried on a gas stove and came out onto the sidewalk to play-tug on my fingers and gnaw on the carrier before falling asleep by my feet after getting his belly scratched. He was comfortable and at ease out and about, all by himself. I’m proud of him!
Gnawing on the world’s tiniest water dish, on the carrier and about to fall asleep upside down under the bench … after gnawing on it too.
Purple
went on his second solo adventure of the week! We just took a short walk. We had two sidewalk stops to drink water and a third one to briefly sniff a small dog while I held Purple. On the two stops I gave him time to leave the carrier voluntarily, he did so immediately and started exploring, venturing futher than any other puppy has so far (far being about 2 meters.) He found a piece of tissue on his stop that he was intrigued by, saw people, a bike and a motorcycle and met a second dog on the sidewalk. Such a brave boy! Since he didn’t want to go back into the hot crate, I “suggested” he walk with me, and he did – I only walked for about 5 or 6 meters along the sidewalk, but he happily followed along, tail held high! Then I put him back into the carrier. I’m pretty sure his occasional soft carrier complaints were heat related. Which made me think that every puppy should also have a carrier-free outing this week, just being carried by me! Time for more adventures!
Purple and I also heard a loudspeaker announcing a very eclectic selection of products for sale, passing by the truck things were being sold out of: differently flavored homemade aguas (lemonades), clothes, dirt for planting plants and fragrance oils.
Green
I carried Green down the street for no more than 3 minutes, just to check when the vet Carla had told me about was open – I want to use them for their next happy vet visit this week. Green watched the world from my arms and had no complaints.
I’ll want to do this with everyone, but also keep up the carrier outings: when carrying a puppy in my arms, I can’t give them the same agency to either come out of or retreat into the safe space of the carrier, so I wouldn’t want to put them down. With the carrier, I set down the carrier and open it and it’s up to the puppy to decide if and how far they want to come out. I really like the agency and portable safe space this provides.
Puppy play and canine conflicts
I’ve got two play videos for you today! In the first one, we see that tails are a-ma-zing … and that it may not always be the best idea to get near Game’s tennis ball! She drops it just to my right (not visible in the video), and when Purple approaches it, she corrects him by being loud and moving her head fast into his face (without making contact.) You can’t see her, but you can hear her – and you can see Purple’s very appropriate response: this was clear communication; he understands and he backs up; he’s off to do other things.
A note on emotionally intelligent conflict behavior
As I watched this video just now before uploading it, it struck me how much we could (if we were so inclined) learn from canine conflicts. Game is not beating around the bush or hedging her feelings. She says it like it is: “you being near my ball is not okay with me.” I’m anthropomorphizing for the sake of the point I am making: this is the canine equivalent of stating something clearly. Game doesn’t harm or scare Purple. Even though Game is loud, this is NOT the equivalent of the primate behavior of yelling at someone or being physically or emotionally violent. It’s the equivalent of stating a fact: “This is my boundary. Back off.” Purple hears the statement: “Oh, that’s your boundary. Got it!” He respects it rather than pestering Game to change it or questioning her self-knowledge (“But really, I know you better than you know yourself and your boundary is or should actually be over there.”) He moves on with his day and continues having fun without bothering Game. He’ll respect her boundary (except for when he forgets about it and will be reminded of it, which is also totally okay.) No bad blood. No grudges. No endless back and forth that doesn’t lead anywhere. If we were half as decent at communicating (and listening to each other the first time around), our species would be in a lot less trouble. Collectively as well as interpersonally.
… and here’s some more puppy wrestling … and Purple coming for me!
Crate training
Both Red and Purple mastered their 7 minutes without problems today: I chose a sleepy time and they did great! Up next: 8 minutes!
5 weeks, 4 days (May 2)
I had let everyone outside and slept an hour more. When I got up and headed out, I was greeted by everyone hanging on to my socks and pants! EVERYONE! I tugged with them that way and lifted Blue off the ground once again. Loving my little sharks! They are so Mal now! It is beautiful!
Social life
Solo adventures
Green
went on an in-carrier solo adventure this morning. We left around 9, but it was already hot. We stayed out for about 35 minutes, finding an ATM and taking several breaks for Green to drink water and choose if he wanted to come out of the crate. He came out halfway and observed from there each time.
He got to sniff two free-roamers from my arms observe a third one from his half-out carrier position. I also carried him through a tiny street market and then let him observe the goings-on there from his carrier with the door open for a few minutes. We set up outside a school building, so he heard the voices of small kids in the background as well.
The first of Green’s two free-roaming helper dogs and the market we walked through and observed.
Green complained softly on and off in the carrier (likely due to the heat) and calmed down when he could come half-way out or be in my arms. Anytime I closed the carrier exit to walk a little more, he pushed against it with his paws: open doors please!
We also heard an extremely loud screeching sound right next to us – I don’t know what it was, but it certainly hurt my ears! Green in his carrier didn’t seem to mind the sound.
Blue
and I walked to El Chichimeca in the early afternoon. There was less pedestrian traffic than usual, but more traffic-traffic. Below is an excerpt of Blue exploring (she immediately left the carrier and checked out the environment, venturing quite far) and the vehicles passing by. When I take someone on a solo adventure to this place, it’ll usually look similar to this.
We also heard a blender and a kid’s voice from inside El Chichimeca.
Puppy play!
Just because:
The two puppies without collars in this video are Green (the darker one) and Purple (the lighter one.) I just washed their collars and they are drying in the sun.
Blue is the most feisty and playful of them all today (the puppy without a collar who’s being chewed on is Green):
Part 2 of Blue’s feistiness:
Pedicures
Everyone got the nails on their right back paws clipped. By now, they are SO relaxed about this. I’ll bring the big-dog clippers and use those instead of the little human clippers starting next week!
As of this week, I’ve combined handling/husbandry and nail trims. Everyone got brushed, had all paws handled, teeth checked, eyes cleaned and ears cleaned and collars taken off and on again, with everything I do being announced.
I’ve changed the eye- and ear-cleaning strategy and now use a moist paper towel: there’s actually something to clean now that the puppies are spending parts of their day sleeping in the dusty dry dirt under the car (it’s the coolest spot in the yard.) I also added a new element to my “needle” protocol: it’s not just two pencil stings a la IM injection, but also two a la SQ injection by now (it’s two each because I do it left and right.) Nobody is impressed by this procedure at all. We’re about to find out what they think of their first actual needle when I vaccinate them this weekend!
A new toy!
Today, with Game and Chai cooped up, I brought out toy #2 from our fancy toy collection!
This video is the very first time the puppies see this toy – they are engaging with it in this way with no time to explore or think about it first. Go little sharks!
In the end of the clip, I say that we’re into toy play and object play by now. I meant to say we’re into social play and toy/object play by now (toy play is object play.) Excuse the video angle … I needed to hold the camera because I ran over my tripod.
A happyish (less gentle) vet visit
In the late afternoon, I took every puppy on a solo adventure – sans carrier; I carried them in my arms – to the vet who is practically next door, one after the other.
It was interesting to compare this experience with the first happy vet visit we did in the city. This vet was different (of course they were; every person is different – but I digress.) Their exam: the puppies got weighed on the big-dog scale, their mouths got fully opened (rather than just pulling up the lips like the other vet and I have been doing), and the vet manipulated their legs (and not particularly gently at that.) The vet also pulled up their skin (the way you do to check for hydration status.) No stethoscope this time.
The cool thing: the surface of the table was no big deal for anyone except (maybe) Black. This table was metal too, but it had texture unlike typical vet tables – maybe it didn’t feel as weird, or maybe the first happy vet visit table time made a difference.
Purple went first and Black went second. With Black, the vet observed (it wasn’t visible but I’m sure if they said they felt it, they did) that she initially trembled on the table and then stopped and calmed down. None of the other puppies trembled. Given how warm it is, trembling is fear-related, I assume. (Technically, it could also be related to some other state of arousal.) Assuming it is fear, Black’s physiological fear response has set in now as well – at 5 weeks and 4 days old, I’m seeing the first sign of it. Isn’t it wild how long “we” typically wait to start introducing puppies to the world? The average pet or sports puppy sees very little before having fear in their experiential repertoire. (This is NOT true for the average free-roaming puppy, who is the average dog. Pets and sports dogs only make up a small fraction of the world’s dog population.)
I let the vet do their spiel. After all, nothing cruel was being done to the puppies and I don’t know who their vets will be later in life. Maybe they’ll resemble this one! In the end of the visit, every puppy was mostly relaxed, even Black who didn’t start out that way.
A note on human behavior and first impressions
What stood out to me was how differently the vet treated each puppy based on their first impression of them. They immediately pidgeonholed Black as the most timid. However, rather than being extra gentle, they seemed more foreceful to me when handling her than they had been when handling the first puppy, Purple. This was confirmed with the puppies following Black: every one of them got less prodding and leg-pulling and joint-moving than her. I’d be surprised if the vet was conscious of treating them differently. They handled the most playful puppy (Red) the least and the most gently, and the second most playful one, Green, almost as little as Red. They very clearly “liked” Red best and Green second best because they were mouthy and exploratory and the vet commented on it, sounding amused. Blue resisted a little when she didn’t like something, but didn’t try to play or explore, and Purple was simply calm and relaxed, letting things happen. The vet told me that Red had “the most character,” which (the vet told me) was “a good thing in this breed.” Being a language person, I can’t help but notice that character (not a scientific term as far as I know) was seen as something dogs have a certain amount of. The vet didn’t use the term to describe a trait every dog has and that looks different depending on the individual, but as a trait some individuals have, to pick a unit at random, 5 ounces of and other individuals have 10 or 15 ounces of. Apparently, in the Malinois breed, the more ounces of character you have, the better. I wonder: if I asked the vet (which I didn’t do because I would probably have confused the poor person with my semantic eccentricities), would they tell me that there was a maximum amount of character an indivudal dog could have (say 15 ounces) or whether it was always relative to the litter in question (one would rank the puppies within the litter from most to least amount of character and consider the one with the most character the best if the dogs in front of one were Malinois. It might be the other way around if they were Cavalier King Charles Spaniels or Golden Retrievers.) In the latter case, if Red was part of a different litter where the other puppies had MORE rather than LESS ounces of character, Red wouldn’t be the best. This discussion isn’t meant to go anywhere; it’s just … semantics. But interesting ones that point to human biases! We all have biases, of course – it’s just a lot easier to see them in others (such as our vets) than in ourselves.
Being carried to the vet and back, everyone saw a person or two in the street. Purple also saw a dog in the waiting room. Black got pet in my arms by a stranger with two dogs when I carried her back home, and briefly got to sniff one of the dogs while I held her. I won’t count them as a new person – too little contact – but I’ll count their dog!
This vet liked hearing themselves talk, so I listened. They charged me quite a bit, so I made the most of our time there and stayed in the environment with every puppy until they had finished talking and sent me out.
A note on human behavior and actions considerd ethical/the subjective value placed on lives
I now know that they “rescued” a Belgian/GSD mix who was going to be put down because she killed farm animals. They kept the dog (even though they also have a farm.) Sadly, the dog has to always be chained up or they would keep killing. They have, in fact, been let loose a few times over the past few years, and several farm animals died in the wake of it.
It was interesting on several levels to hear this dog’s story. The previous human of this dog had either considered euthanasia kinder than a locked-up or chained-up life, or they were simply pragmatic and didn’t want their dog to kill their other animals. Maybe they considered all lives equally valid, and didn’t think it okay for this dog to kill others. Who knows.
The vet, on the other hand, considered living on a chain the better choice for the dog than death. At the same time, the fact that this dog stayed alive has apparently led to the death of several more farm animals over the years. I didn’t ask them to clarify their moral point of view and I don’t have arguments for or against their decision regarding that dog – but it sure is fascinating. Once more, I’m finding the dog world (our cross-species intersection with canines) to be like a mirror image of the world at large and its complexity of points of view and hard convictions.
Crate training
Purple
complained around level 2 on and off throughout his 8 minutes. I put him in the carrier when he was sleepy – but everyone started waking up right after and he clearly wanted to be part of the action. He’ll be doing 8 minutes again next time.
Red
slept through his 8 minutes and will be taking a stab at 9 next time!
Exploring the house
At night, it looked like it was about to start raining. So rather than hanging out outside like we usually would, I let everyone in and allowed them to explore all of the (studio) house. I’ve kept them outside during the day and in their puppy area at night because this is very much not my house and I don’t want them to pee everywhere and eat the furniture – but a puppy needs to entertain oneself when it’s raining! They had fun dragging everything they found (plastic bag, towel etc.) all over the place, tasting every object and exploring the nooks and crannies! There only was a single peeing accident inside. (And it didn’t rain more than a few drops after all.)
5 weeks, 5 days (May 3)
I let everyone outside when they first wake up in the morning and ask me to. Currently, that’s around 6AM. Then I sleep a little longer before joining them outside. This is what it looks like right now! (So far, Blue is the only one I can lift up – for the second day in a row!)
Here’s another delightful snippet of tugging with Blue. Yep, of course I’m teaching them to tug on clothes. As I said, these puppies will hopefully be socially and environmentally confident – gotta make sure their future homes have something to grapple with! Isn’t that why humans get puppies?
At 7:30, we got yet another new level of bomba (extremely loud firecrackers) loudness from the other side of the wall around the yard. Game asked to come in the house – this level was unfun to spend without me – but the puppies kept playing through it! I love that they are getting this experience. Except for the one puppy that is going to be very much a city puppy and the one who might go abroad, everyone is bound to hear these kinds of noises on a regular basis.
They have Game’s and Drago’s genes, but we believe (as far as I know) that almost everything behavioral is a gene/environment interaction. As a puppy, Game had no exposure to this noise level – she only encountered it as an adult, and at that point, she was ready to sensitize. All five of the puppies played through it today. Here’s to hoping this is going to immunize them from developing big feelings about explosions! (Just to give you an idea – gun shots are nothing compared to the loudness level of these bombas. Game wouldn’t flinch on what’s part of many bitey working dog apt-for-breeding tests, which is not responding to a gun shot. This kind of noise is nothing like a gun shot. It is only the second time I’ve heard bombas like these in Mexico, and I’ve been here for over two years. In Guatemala, we heard them or even louder ones almost daily.)
The second round of bombas next door happened around 10AM. This time, it went on for a while, and both Game and Chai (who I’ve never seen show concern about firecrackers) responded. Chai croached and tucked her tail and Game stress-panted. Red observed the adults, and since I don’t want social learning (puppies watching the reaction of an adult dog to determine whether a stimulus is something to be concerned with), I put Game and Chai in the house and played with the puppies. Red fell back asleep and Purple hadn’t woken up in the first place. Green, Blue and Black all played with me. Green and Blue got convinced right away; Black needed a bit longer to start playing despite the sounds, but then went on to play with her siblings rather than me.
The third round of firecrackers happened about half an hour later. These were a little more in the distance, but Black looked concerned (at a noise level she hadn’t previously been concerned.) I got her to socially play with me a bit and come close for snuggles that relaxed her. She also watched Green play wildly with my other hand. Green was being an excellent role model, and about half a minute after this round of firecrackers stopped, Black was ready to play with him. The other three puppies slept through the noise.
The rest of today’s firecrackers was the usual noise level and further away, so everyone stayed chill during those.
While I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that puppy temperament tests aren’t proven to be reliable to judge adult personality, I will take Black’s higher noise sensitivity into account. Maybe it will change – but maybe it won’t. Noise sensitivity is one of these things that (anecdotally) get worse rather than better the older a dog gets. I have nothing else to go on and it will be up to me to place the two girls myself, even though I’d rather have their future people pick: I’ll drive one to Miguel, who can’t pick up their puppy because they don’t have a car – and this will be before Irving is back from a work trip. Neither one has decided on a puppy and they both want one of Game’s – no matter who. If I keep seeing the difference in noise sensitivity, I’ll place my decision on this (we need to base our decisions on something and in this case, it is at least not entirely arbitrary): Black will go to the quieter home (in Mexico City) and Blue to the louder one (Miguel’s town is one of the loudest places I’ve been to in Mexico.)
Blue is currently my favorite because she’s SO feisty and fight-y. I love how I can lift her up, all 4 paws off the ground, attached to a sock! I can’t help it – I love the biteyness of Mals. It’s one of their most fun qualities. It’s fun and informative to stop and reflect on my favorites and how they change all the time.
Solo adventures
Black
and I walked to El Chichimeca. Black’s experience was pretty much the same as Blue’s video yesterday – except that it seemed even hotter. Black came out of the carrier right away, had a drink of water, explored around the carrier and in the entrance to El Chichimeca for a bit, had another drink and fell asleep in a shady spot under the bench. We also learned that there is a reason for today’s cohetes: it’s El Día de la Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is the saint in whose honor bricklayers put crosses on top of buildings they are working on.
Cohetes at night
It rained a little and the puppies got to turn the little house upside down again (after having fallen asleep under a bench outside and getting a little wet; smelling rain!)
When the rain stopped, the firecrackers next door started up again big time. This last round was the BEST. I left the big dogs inside and the puppies and I ran through the yard social-playing – I’d call pup-pup-pup, run away, they’d all chase me and get wiggly and excited when they caught up to me, and I’d play and pet them. (Human touch is currently highly reinforcing to them.) We played for a few minutes, until a little after the firecrackers stopped. Everyone was ALL IN the entire time, tails up and wagging, joyfully chasing me around the yard – including Black. I LOVE the change I’ve seen in her in this single day! It will be interesting to see what happens if/when there’s another saint being celebrated while we’re in town.
5 weeks, 6 days (April 4)
We drove to the city bright and early. Saturday morning traffic was light AND my new shade structure worked very well. No complaints from the gang in the trunk! We dropped Game and Chai off at the apartment and then the puppies and I met Alan and Kiba at Kiba’s Park. Apart from hanging out with them, the puppies met a few other dogs and people each and had a snack eating kibble from my hands at the park. Nobody hesitated to eat or drink out and about.
I saw Blue’s first big (comparatively) fear response: she yelled when she saw the first up-close dog today, before Alan and Kiba got there. She warmed up within about 20 seconds and proceeded to be confident around every other dog she met up close or saw from a distance.
Left: Alan’s arm, Kiba, Blue and Green! Right: we met Jambi and one of their people again – everyone got sniffed and held!
After a while, we switched spots and hung out outside the playground gate. Two kids, 8 and 9, came over and had lovely puppy interactions for about 15 minutes. They held and petted everyone and were very gentle with them.
We also met a Pug at Kiba’s park … and fell asleep in the bushes after having fun with the kids!
The puppies also saw to younger kids running. The first one caused them to watch with what looked like alert. The second one was taken in stride.
We got home and took a break, and then had the first of our two weekend visitors at the apartment. The puppies were still tired, so everyone slept in my friend’s arms. By the tame Rachel left and Pabla came by, the puppies were just waking up. Everyone played a little with Pabla, licked their beard and pulled on their shoe laces. It was delightful to see them interact so confidently!
I had asked Pabla to bring an umbrella because I can’t find mine. We startle-recovered two puppies. Everyone else had fallen asleep again and I didn’t want to wake them. Good thing I just remember where my umbrella is; I’ll give the others their turn tomorrow!
Unfortunately, Purple’s video is the only half-way decent one I took – in the others, you can pretty much only see the umbrella and not the puppy’s response. Here, you see the puppy’s response and can hear the umbrella opening … but you don’t see it. Oh well! In any case, Purple’s fast recovery is awesome!
I also fit in a solo trip for Purple. He went into an electronics store with me in his carrier, and then I carried him through a pet chain store without a carrier. The cashier briefly held him. Plus he got to experience the hustle and bustle of a busy parking lot.
Pet store adventure selfie with Purple … and Pabla is being eaten by Green!
What is becoming really clear to me is that temperature can be both reinforcing and punishing to puppies this age. Obviously, it can be both these things for any dog (and other animals, including us humans) at any age, but puppies are VERY responsive to it – definitely more so than adult dogs. Anytime the puppies are hot, they will immediately complain. I can observe this well when someone, like Purple today, is in the foot space of the car seat. He complained anytime it was hot and immediately stopped when I set the AC to the footspace. When I changed it to blow at my chest, he’d start complaining again almost immediately. It’s fascinating and I get the impression that at this age, temperature would be a stronger reinforcer (or punisher) than food or social interaction. From my subjective perspective based on my subjective observations, at this age temperature is the strongest reinforcer (or punisher) for the puppies, followed by social interactions, followed by food. I bet it would be possible to teach young puppies quite a bit with an experimental chamber containing floors of different temperatures!
After dinner, I took the puppies to Fresa Parque to check off our evening/night park time and people/dogs watching at weird light conditions. They looked alert at first, but again, were fully comfortable and started exploring after about 20 seconds. Everyone met dogs. Black got held by a stranger, and we were approached by a teen in inline skates wearing ALL the protective gear. Several people stopped to talk with me without interacting with the puppies; some with and some without dogs – another great experience for the puppies. The park was VERY busy tonight; it was perfect!
Night time puppies at the park! Much busier than last week! Black is panting because we just got out of the car, and it’s been HOT! (No worries; water was about to be served.) It was darker than my image makes it look.
We then switched spots and went into the very busy playground to hang out and observe kids running and playing, riding bikes, screaming and swinging in swing sets. The puppies are all able to visually track now and follow them by turning their heads! We observed and listened to yelling, screaming and laughing until everyone had fallen asleep. Purple stayed awake the longest and played with the tiny water dish (we’re outgrowing it) and then lay on top of a sibling and slowly dozed off as he was watching the world go by.
Tonight’s last station was an ice cream store they all joined me for in their carrier and backpack. Two kids came in right after us, and since I had opened the backpack (only 3 puppies fit in the carrier now, so 2 go in the backpack – and its ventilation isn’t great), the kids saw them and asked to pet them. Everyone got pet with the two backpack puppies – Green and Black – getting the most attention. They were awake while the others slept through the pets. I won’t count these two kids because they didn’t hold them, but it was a great experience, at the very least for the pups who were awake. They must have been a bit younger than the kids in the morning – maybe 6 or 7?
Now we’re back home and everyone is sleeping. It’s been a long day! I can’t believe how much I fit into it: seeing three friends, visiting two parks, running an errand and the drive back to the city! Today is my day off this week, which makes things feel lighter. We’ll see how long my energy and social batteries last. Raising these puppies isn’t only a great experience in terms of learning about very young canines – it also is a laboratory of getting to know myself.
6 weeks
As of this morning, we are chewing and pulling on and playing with everything we can find. My solution is to have out as many chewable objects as possible: half of the paper tubes, empty paper bags and cardboard boxes I collected over the last few months, our apartment toy … not worrying about anything that is indestructable or can’t be chewed up and putting electronics out of reach! They are SO fun to watch, and my favorite part was when Blue and Red climbed over the new and enhanced (in height) barrier and Blue was the first to be all over me, as excited as one puppy could possibly be to greet me in the morning!
For the first time this morning, Chai (poor rough-coated dog!) got the same greeting as me with puppies all over her, trying to hold on to her feathers. Being a pacifist, she had to flee to the couch for safety.
Becoming social animals
We started the day with a trip to Parque de las Arboledas. Everyone met LOTS of people and dogs! The puppies took turns sleeping and exploring/being held/meeting dogs/playing with each other and also ate kibble from my hands.
We met ALL the people and dogs in the morning! The puppy who fell asleep after opening this person’s shoelaces is Black.
A video – way too long! – of everything summarized by the pictures above, for myself as a memory, future rebelde homes and anyone else who’s got too much time on their hands and loves watching puppies:
BLOM
In the late afternoon, we went to hang out with our friends at BLOM1. I’m only counting one person per puppy and one dog for Black since Viri directly introduced her to their Yorkie Martina, but I didn’t keep track. We had Diego, Viri and Miguel – Diego is on the wait list for a puppy, but will probably miss out, but they sure aren’t missing out on the fun – as well as two random customers and Viri and Diego’s dogs, Yorkie Martina and Pit Maco to hang out with! I was only going to go for an hour, but it turned into two and a half. It was great! The puppies explored, we humans had fun with them and time flew by. Miguel broke out delicious pan de nata they had gotten at a feria and we all shared slices. The puppies ate kibble again and watched dogs and people walk past, some of whom stopped to talk to us. A little Chi barked angrily, and one of the puppies – I believe it was Red, but I’m not 100% sure anymore – went to go hide briefly, but was back out 20 seconds later, watching curiously as the still-barking Chihuahua was getting smaller in the distance.
Bottom left: venturing about 8 meters from where we were on the sidewalk! Bottom right: one of the two strangers who stopped to get to know the puppies!
Again, a video of what’s summarized in pictures above for those who (like me and everyone in this video!) can’t get enough of the little ones! This time, we’ve got Purple in a leading role. The thing inside the tote bag that he tries to get to is a wrapped stack of tortillas. Purple will currently eat everything he finds.
This afternoon, Purple was the most travieso of all and gnawed on everything in his way. Viri got him to play with them with a rug.
Of the two boys who haven’t been picked yet, I’d have sent Red to a sports home yesterday. Today, I’d send Purple. This just goes to show that REALLY, we don’t know who puppies will grow up to be. Unless they are outliers and very different from everyone else, we just don’t know. They change SO much.
There is only a single trait that has been somewhat consistent in a single puppy so far: Black has appeared more “think before you do” and “watch first” than the others, who are more likely to jump right into anything new. Black has “jump right in” days as well and the others have “think before you do days.” Black has just had more tentative days than the others.
“Breeders” (I don’t like this term, hence the quotes) who play matchmaker like to be in control (like most of us humans do), and they know that it is currently (in the US and probably Canada) considered best practice for breeders to match puppies with homes – and everyone wants to signal that they are “an ethical breeder.”
I’m European where you typically get to pick yourself (unless you signed up for a puppy later, in which case you take whoever is still available.) I prefer the European model that doesn’t attach ethics to puppy selection. I will pick the two girls because I’ll be the one driving one of them to Miguel (a different Miguel than the BLOM one) before either Irving or Miguel have a chance to pick – not because I want to.
Alan got to pick for his Dad. As for the two remaining boys, Eduardo (Drago’s human) is happy to go with the last one, whoever he turns out to be. I would let the second home for a boy – Joan; we can reveal a first name now! – pick, but I believe they do want my input. I will share it WITH THE DISCLAIMER IN CAPS that it means very little (because it CAN not be meaningful – I truly believe it cannot. Unlike some “breeders,” I have no God complex in this regard.) It will mostly depend on the day I’m being asked. We could, of course, Volhardt Red and Purple (or everyone) just for fun if Joan would like to. They’ll be a new dog person we could use as the evaluator before they meet them in a more casual way!
The senses
Vaccines – round one!
Red screamed. Everyone else barely woke up (I picked a sleepy time of day). Black looked at me briefly and then put her head back down. I suspect I didn’t sting Red in quite the right way, causing him pain. OR he’s more sensitive to it, or just got really startled. I may give things with an actual – empty or saline-solution filled – syringe (instead of a pencil) another try in a few days to find out which it is in his case.
In case the above is confusing: I typically vaccinate my own dogs in places where this is possible; i.e. where you can buy vaccines over the counter. That’s because I want vet experiences to be as relaxing as possible for the puppies and only emergency solutions for adult dogs. (This behavior on my part is caused by my own mistrust and anxiety around physicians and vets.) For these puppies, I hope to have created positive vet experiences and stung them with needles them in a less stressful context, at home. I know Miguel does the same thing with their dogs, so at least one puppy will get vaccinated by his human going forwards as well.
Exploring a bit of the corridor
Purple was the first one out the apartment door when we came back from Game’s afternoon outing, but everyone followed quickly. Purple and Green ran about 6 meters away along the corridor to explore, and Black, Blue and Red climbed 3 stairs each when I led Game up ahead of them. And then, they tumbled down the last one on their way back down! Brave puppies!
Green, Black and Purple were all fascinated by the mirror today (I had it show up in different places over the course of the day again.)
The Uncanny room, take 2
I transformed the former blanket fort into another uncanny room while the puppies were sleeping:
The order the puppies approached the uncanny room says something about the order they woke up in, not about who’s the most curious. After scaring himself, Purple was back to playing with the others 20 seconds later – outside The Uncanny Room though. I’ll set up Fred for him again when we get another chance so he can have a positive interaction.
I also found my umbrella and startled the remaining 3 puppies with it. They all had great startle-and-immediate-recovery responses!
Names
As I’m reading through this post and editing it before I hit publish – it’s Monday, May 6 – I’m thinking about names. I didn’t know if I would name the rebeldes before sending them off to their new homes. If I did, it was only going to be once their personalities – which may still change – started showing.
This weekend, Mexican friends suggested Principe for Purple. And somehow, I now feel like naming them all! That’s even if they’ll only have their names for 2 weeks before going to their new homes and probably getting new names along with it. For me, Purple will be Oso (bear). Green will be Bravo (corageous; aggressive in Spanish; great, super in German). Red will be Fierro (Mexican slang for alright; gun). Blue will be Chispa (spark) and as for Black … I don’t know yet!
If you’ve been following Chai’s diary, you probably know that she was not house trained when I got her as a foster and hasn’t learned to only go outside since then either. I suspect there is a sensitive period for learning not to pee and poop where you sleep, and Chai was confined to a small space during that time (i.e. she had no other option but to go right where she was). That’s just my best guess. I don’t know what parts of her backstory check out. I only know that some of it does not (she did not have the chip number she supposedly had, for example). The story I got was that Chai originally came from the state of Guerrero, was bred on a farm from a sheep-working sire and a pet dam, and her previous owner had gotten her for themselves but needed a foster or rehome fast due to a tragic family incident.
Assuming there actually is a sensitive period for learning not to pee/poop where you sleep would imply she did not grow up the way she supposedly did – growing up in a family/farm environment and then moving to a different family environment would not cause the pee/poop response to be repressed because there would be plenty of space to leave your sleeping spot to pee. Unless, of course, the sensitive period only happens after 8 weeks (when the previous owner supposedly got her) and she was then confined to a crate. She was in a crate when I picked her up – so maybe. I suspect it happens earlier though. I know folks who do not put effort into housetraining at all and still end up with a house trained dog – just a little later than the folks who do put in effort. That data, of course, is entirely anecdotal and my sample size is small.
Another anecdotal data point was shared with me by one of my wonderful students. Their breeder shared a video where 3 week old puppies would crawl away from the “puppy pile” when needing to go. To me, this suggests a sense of cleanliness kicking in when the puppies barely open their eyes. But again – this is a single anecdotal data point.
A second hypothesis about Chai’s past (I do not know how likely it is and it doesn’t matter) is that her previous owner told me the truth about their job: they procure puppies for pet stores. It is possible that Chai was a pet store puppy (I’ve seen these puppies; they are usually kept in the tiniest cages and definitely cannot pee/poop somewhere they don’t sleep) who aged out of the pet store without being purchased. I know pet stores sell Border Collies around here because I’ve seen them. The most popular Border Collie color in Mexico City is blue merle – not Chai’s color. She may simply not have been purchased while being tiny and cute enough to be put on sale and have gone back to the person procuring puppies after – who did not want to keep her. In that case, things would add up and this would explain why Chai still pees and poops in a crate, too, anytime the thought crosses her mind and she happens to be in her car crate. She may either have been in the pet store cage (resembling a terrarium around here) from an early age on and/or come from a puppy mill type situation, growing up confined to a space she and her mom and littermates barely fit into even before she got to a pet store. (This is not necessarily the case for pet store puppies here. Pet stores also purchase puppies from private folks whose pure-bred looking dogs happen to have puppies.)
I’m aware that I’m just telling myself these stories. I prefer to assume that people tell the truth, but there are 4 things that make me wonder in Chai’s case:
1. Chai’s chip number didn’t check out. 2. The previous owner stopped responding right after I picked her up. 3. They didn’t answer my question about Chai’s birth date (they may not have known). 4. The strange peeing behavior. 5. Her sociability (if she was a pet store puppy and got handled by folks, this would make more sense than if she hadn’t seen anyone but the previous owner between the age of 8 weeks and 4.5 months).
Is there a sensitive/critical period for no house soiling?
I’ve tried to pinpoint the elusive sensitive period of no house soiling but can’t pin it down. I have found a number of sources and meta analyses that found dogs from commercial breeding operations (“puppy mills”) and pet stores have significantly higher incidents of house soiling as adults. However, none of the studies I found went into the details in terms of whether/when there is a sensitive/critical period. I also came across an article (not a peer-reviewed study) claiming dogs who are not house trained by 1 year of age are unlikely to ever become so. Chai’s fake first birthday is in 2 days, and there’s no house training on the horizon.
Gamification
Anyways, so Chai and I have been working on this ever since I got her. I ran a gamification course – partly because I love gamification hacks and partly because I wanted to gamify the house training challenge for myself to stay on top of it – and playing is more fun in good company! So I created a 4-week peer-support course around the topic. While cheering on others, I also set myself a specific goal: I was going to play a streak game for 4 weeks.
I divided the four weeks into four 7-day streaks and came up with the following rules:
During waking hours, I wanted Chai to pee more often outside than inside. Any day I accomplished this goal, I would add one turquois check mark to my weekly streak.
If I got as many or less inside pees as outside pees, my weekly streak would reset and I would start over with check mark 1 of 7. Previously completed (entirely turquois) 7-day streaks would remain – only current weeks could reset.
Anytime I got an outside poop (still a rare occurrance), I would automatically color the check mark for the respective day, independently of Chai’s peeing behavior.
After any 7 day streak, I’d get a brownie. (Very tasty and sold for the most ridiculous price I have encountered, so it’s not something I’d usually purchase.)
After four 7-day streaks (no need for them to be uninterrupted by resets), I’d treat myself to a large house plant.
Example of week 4/4.
I played in a closed group together with my amazing students. Everyone gamified one challenge or another – some of them life related, some of them dog related. The creativity of folks was truly inspiring and I LOVED how our little community cheered each other on and how our virtual group became a confidential and vulnerable space of trust, sharing and compassion. I ended up adding a second more complex life-related quest game for myself as well because playing with this group of people was so much fun. Thank you to all who participated!
Curated peeing patterns
I was aware that I influenced Chai’s peeing behavior heavily by means of taking her out as much as I’d take out an 8 week old puppy. I also always brought Game and encouraged Chai to pee (mark) over Game’s pee and then reinforced. Chai did that pretty reliably, but often only a drop or two. I put peeing on cue with the help of Game peeing first, but would occasionally only get a dry squat from Chai: turns out I had put squatting rather than peeing on cue!
Because I caused peeing outside with the help of antecedent arrangement (Game pees first) and consequences (reinforcement), I ended up with a much higher number of total pees (more pees I ended up counting were single-drop marking instances rather than actual bladder-emptying pees which still mostly happen indoors).
Anyways, I became aware of this since I counted the pees every day and realized Chai peed a lot more often than an average dog her age. So I decided to chart the 4 weeks of the game. In this chart, the inside pee number is higher than it was in the game because I added all nightly (inside) pees to it too.
Pees during the gamified month of August 2023. The number of shower pees is higher in the chart than in the game because I added the nightly pees (which I didn’t count in the game).
What does the data look like if I stop consciously influencing the numbers (playing the game)?
I suspected if I influenced Chai’s peeing behavior less (if I didn’t take her out quite as often and stopped encouraging her to mark), I’d get less daily outside pees than inside pees and a lower number of total daily pees. To test this hypothesis, I kept counting for 17 days after the game had ended. I didn’t play to win brownies anymore but just lived my life. I was right:
The reason I counted for only 17 days is that I traveled and boarded Chai starting September 18.
Finally, I wanted to visualize how the total number of daily pees was higher in the gamified condition than in the no-game condition. (Apparently, once C-s learn to graph things in spreadshits, they can’t stop.)
I used the first 17 days of August 2023 because I only had data for 17 days in September.
I was right again: clearly, more total pees in the gamified condition!
What do we learn from all this?
Nothing in particular (except how to make graphs – thank you, Zane, for helping me work out the last kink!) I still plan on ruling out medical stuff, but I suspect the reason that Chai pees smaller amounts more often while Game pees bigger amounts less often is simply that Game holds her pee until we go outside while Chai has no motivation to hold her pee inside. (She can hold her pee and will for many hours if we go exciting places, but she won’t hold it at home – she’ll go right away.)
I suspect this is just going to be what life will look like: shower pees for Chai. That’s okay. Of all the issues a dog could possibly have, this is probably the one that bothers me the least – especially as long as she keeps peeing and pooping in the shower rather than elsewhere. It just means I’ll clean the shower more often than I would otherwise. That’s not a big deal for me.
What we optimize for
A random observation here is that gamification and reinforcers cause us to optimize performance (no surprise there). The data for August shows this well. However, I did not end up optimizing what I intended (Chai’s peeing behavior outside) but my own behavior (the number of times I took her out in a day). I became aware of this quickly, but did NOT stop playing because I wanted to keep collecting brownies. So this is really interesting too (to me anyways): even if we are aware we haven’t optimized for our actual goal, we may keep our rule structure as is because we want the pay-off (in my case the brownie) and don’t see a simple way to change things around and get brownies just as easily. Brownies I would not otherwise treat myself to are a strong motivator for me, as was the visual representation of seeing my streak grow! Human behavior is fun!
Note to self (and anyone else with a human brain): cafeful what you optimize for (if you actually care about your goal!)
Afterthought
Just in case it isn’t clear: I love this dog and couldn’t love her more. I don’t care where she does her business, and I don’t care what her backstory is. I just found it interesting to think about my house training adventures and share them with you here!
We only spent 15 minutes at the almost empty Fresa Parque: Game crashed into a park table/chair, whined and stopped putting weight on her left front paw. So we headed right back home, she got a dose of Rimadyl and is now sleeping on the couch. Pobrecita!
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone for Game’s shortish noon loop (trying to let her paw recover – luckily no limping for now, but I can’t tell if that’s the Rimadyl or her body recovering).
Noon and PM: Chai’s solo adventure
Once I finished work, it was time to head out and meet a colleague and their dogs for some dog geekery. Chai got to hang and play at Dead Poultry Park for 4 hours. She is passed out on the floor now! I had hoped to do some morning shaping (but work got in the way) or afternoon shaping, but I suspect we’ll just let sleeping dogs lie today! This was a lot of exercise and fun! Lucky Chai found a stinky water hole to get muddy in, played with my colleague’s dogs Hilo and Nemo, earned lots of treats for staying within a mostly approved-by-me radius, found a tasty bone and did really well hanging out next to a park bench while the humans had tlacoyos. Good puppy!
Dirty dogs are happy dogs!
September 4, 2023: a formal recall success, 3 parks and a little shaping
Activity level: average
The AM
The three of us had 25 minutes of fun at Fresa Parque. Chai got to play with a young Mal and then found something to eat somewhere behind some bushes where I couldn’t see her. (Of course, my informal pup-pup-pup recall didn’t work because found food is EVERYTHING to Chai and I am not using my formal recall in real life yet.)
Game was running around cheerfully again even though I haven’t given her a painkiller yet – looks like she’s all good! YAY! So glad! That “I am in so much pain” face and whining as she came back to me after crashing into the park chair/table really had me worried for a moment. She usually dismisses pain entirely if it happens while she’s having fun, so that was a strong reaction for her!
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone briefly while Game and I walked errands.
Solo adventure and formal recall success!
Chai and I spent 20 minutes at Toy Play Plaza. We started out by repeating last time’s recall on a long line … and succeeded! Go Chai!
Then there was a taco de birria for the bestest girl and looping around the park, briefly greeting two dogs and playing in the fountain (our personal public baby pool) twice before heading back home.
Shaping
We worked on the sit up trick. Unfortunately, I believe I got what Silvia calls an “ugly sit” again but didn’t see it in real time: Chai’s back paws weren’t facing directly forwards but to the side. I’m going to have to experiment a bit more to learn how to see the perfect position in real time!
We also worked on one object in another on the roof. The smaller container I’m trying to use instead of the last one isn’t working either … I’ll have to find something else. It may be time to go shopping for more kitchenware and look for bolitos in all the sizes! (I’m very much not someone who gets excited about shopping … unless it’s for dog-related stuff! Or plants!)
I had planned on also working on 4 in as well, but work got in the way. Hopefully tomorrow!
Kiba’s park with Game
Game, Chai and I went to Kiba’s Park to run around dogs, screaming and running kids and large umbrellas for half an hour:
They also did a lovely job waiting for me outside a pharmacy.
September 5, 2023: park time, formal recall oops and a little training
Activity level: average
The AM
We started the morning with 40 minutes of park time for Game and Chai. Mornings tend to be enrichment-based (unless Chai is in a mood to play with other dogs): both dogs will scavenge all over the park, finding scraps of what folks left behind the previous night and pieces of bread and tortilla chips the bird-and-squirrel lovers sprinkle like perfect scatters in certain areas in the morning.
Scavengers in their element!Now that Chai’s stomach isn’t as sensitive anymore, she gets to have all the food-finding fun as well.
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone around noon when Game and I went out to get Chai’s recall taco.
Solo adventure
Today’s solo adventure was short – just long enough to get a formal recall oops in! But a solo outing is a solo outing, and we’ll take it!
Tricks and obediency stuff
We worked on 4 paws in, one object in another on the roof and down/good/get it in the afternoon at Fresa Parque (no video of the last one but Chai did very well!)
PM at the park
Before it started raining, both dogs got to go back to Fresa Parque for another 40 minutes. Together with Chai’s solo outing, we’re at our solid 1.5 hour outdoors average (not counting noon and evening pee loops).
Chai found a cup of consomé and opened it for Game and herself, and they shared it. It smelled delicious and from what I could see, it tasted just that way as well.
Chai then went on to do her afternoon job: steal the balls of all the dogs in the park she could steal from to bring to me and trade for treats. She’s a busy Border Collie with a lot of jobs!
September 6, 2023: a typical BC fun-and-training day
Activity level: average
The AM
We spent 40 minutes at Fresa Parque and Chai had a good time with her park friends. Game did great taking treats for just letting everyone be, and then both dogs wrapped up with a little sniff-and-scavage fun.
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone while Game and I ran errands for 20 minutes. She hasn’t been home alone for longer periods of time lately, but we’ve been doing a good job keeping up with multiple weekly 5-30 minute home-alone sessions (without Game). Normalize, normalize and normalize again!
Chai, Game and I went to Fresa Parque, waited outside a store and practiced foot-on-leash downs at a papelería for 1.5 hrs. The walk there took us quite a bit because Chai was in the mood to pull on her back-clip harness, resulting in many, many circles! I’m really happy Game is an off leash dog, allowing me to focus on Chai when I circle!
On the walk back from the park, Chai walked partly in collar mode. I reinforced every 5 steps today – that way, I needed hardly any nose bumps even though Game was off leash ahead of us us!
At the park, Chai played a bit with two new dogs, both her and Game scavenged and both worked on the tunnel cue since we had the dog park to ourselves. No solo adventure today, but a good day for dogs! Especially for Chai who got an easy formal taco recall (when she was already looking at me!) to super-charge “Schnee!”
Good dogs waiting patiently at the papelería while someone is trying to figure out how to print a page without margins for me.
September 7, 2023
Activity level: going for low today to catch up with work and make sure every week has its low energy day! Let’s see if we’ll succeed …
Note from the future: I succeeded! Low it is!
The AM
Game and Chai spent 30 minutes at Fresa Parque, scavenging and, in Chai’s case, playing a bit with her friend Sam the Doberman. Game got brushed at the park: she is blowing her coat and there’s Malinois fur everywhere.
Chai got bullied a bit by another dog and came back to me to be protected. I love that she trusts I will look out for her, reinforced and did my best to keep the bully at arm’s length.
Happy morning play with Chai’s friend Sam!
Training – just a little bit!
We allowed ourselves a single sit-up session. I forgot to hit record, so no video. In any case: a single sit-up session is totally okay for a quiet day! We’re still within the boundaries of calm-day-ness!
The briefest of solo adventures
We went out briefly to practice a formal recall on a back tie at our usual spot and marvelled at a squirrel together. (Tip: show your dog that you share their interests!)
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone briefly while Game and I ran an errand, and both dogs stayed home alone when I went inline skating at night.
Watching Chai on a calm day
Chai has been really good! She played a little with what’s left of the dolphin toy tonight, tossing it up in the air and pouncing on it. She has been really good about relaxing and isn’t being a pushy, demanding pup at all, but totally able to entertain herself. I’m very happy with how she’s developing!
September 8, 2023: lots of training and fun with friends
Activity level: average
The AM
We spent 30 minutes at Fresa Parque. Chai played a little with now 5-months-old little Doodle Pipa and the dogs enjoyed their urban enrichment jungle (aka finding food and sniffing stuff) for the rest of the time. I ran an experiment with soaked tortilla-chip pieces someone had left for birds and squirrels by sprinkling kibble on top. These two food items seem to be the same value.
After I worked a bit, we did sit up on the floor and then I shaped a sit on a crate. I hope the crate is narrow enough to “force” Chai to keep her back legs facing forwards which, in turn, would allow me to work on the sit up trick ON that platform:
The video above ends right where I should have ended the session. Start to finish sit on a platform – perfect. Leave it at that; take the fact that a treat got stuck under my suitcase kitchen door as a good moment to end.
That’s not what happened in real life. See me continue for a few more minutes and Chai’s response below!
Solo adventure
Chai and I went to Kiba’s park to meet up with Alan. I got another successful recall away from Kiba before saying hi and we both worked our pups – Alan on leg weaves and downs and me on downs and stands, and both girls got to play single-toy fetch with Kiba’s ball.
We walked part of the way back in collar mode (5-20 steps between treats).
Chai also met Loki, a mix she enjoys playing with (see middle picture below), and found a dog food bag to climb into. Maybe she’s telling me to change our kibble brand!
September 9, 2023: out of the city with friends!
Activity level: high physical
Both dogs got their own morning loops today and then hung out at the house while I worked a little. Before it was time to leave on Chai’s solo adventure, Game got another brief pee loop by herself.
Solo adventure at Los Dinamos
Kristen, Kala, Luca, Chai and I went to Los Dinamos for the better part of the day. Chai and Kala played A LOT. Chai saw horses and mules – both grazing freely and with horseback riders – sheep, goats, got rushed by 4 of the shepherd’s dogs and recovered fast, saw various groups of suddenly appearing people and had no feelings about them, rolled in horse poop, played in the river and ate parts of an apparently delicious head- and partially legless rotten animal. It was mostly skeleton with little flakes of rotten meat stuck to it – probably either a small sheep or a mid-sized dog? I don’t know, but on the drive home, the entire car smelled deliciously corpse-like. Chai did not throw up on the drive there and back and did not get frustrated about Kala being squeezed in right next to her crate before getting to properly greet her. She was gentle with Luca and didn’t bother him at all, and interested in sticks and stones a kid tossed into the river for Kala and her. She also did an excellent C-runs-away easy taco recall – meaning the next one gets to be a distraction one again! The conversation with the shepherd was fascinating, and Kristen and I had a fun time. This may be the last time we’ll hang out because they’ll be moving abroad, but we sure made the most of it!
Left: Chai and Kala explore the river. Right: Luca is practicing being the cutest boy e-ver!
The last time Chai saw a horse, she got spooked. This time, she first contemplated this mule from a distance and then decided it was safe to go closer and sniff. (I didn’t worry here because Chai’s body language lets me know I’d be able to call her off and the mule doesn’t mind her presence.)
Chai and Kala came across a flock of sheep and goats!
The flock and two of the shepherd’s 10ish dogs. They are all related and puppies are raised with the flock, like lifestock guardian dogs traditionally are. Young dogs learn from older ones. They both guard and are able to keep the flock together. When nothing is going on, they doze in the shade. They are out with their human and the flock for ~6 hours a day. I learned so much from this shepherd, who was kind enough to hang out for a bit and answer all my questions about living with sheep and dogs as a small-scale subsistance farmer.
Left: right before Chai got rushed, she got just a little too close to the flock and the dogs made it clear to her. Right: watching the sheep from a distance after the shepherd has communicated to their dogs that we are friends. Chai’s herding instinct didn’t kick in – but it’s also possible she is still recovering from getting rushed and would have reacted differently to a flock without dogs. In any case, I’d venture it is safe to say that Chai is not magnetized to sheep. In the background story I have been told, her dad is a working sheepdog, but I am somewhat doutbful about the truth of this story.
I could have spent another hour talking to them, but didn’t want to keep them too long. While what I said above is what they told me, what follows are observations and parts I pieced together based on what I’ve read on this way of life in other parts of the world – it may or may not actually be the case for this particular shepherd and their flock.
The dogs and the life of subsistance farming (observations and thoughts):
The dogs are shepherdy-looking mixes about Game’s/Kala’s size; some with slightly more coat. From what this shepherd said, they are all related – so they have puppies and the puppies learn from their parents.
It is interesting to me that the dogs who are actually used for herding by people who do this for a living are not a particular breed of herding dog or even a landrace. I’d venture the most common breed in Mexico that is widely recognized as a herding breed is Australian Cattle Dogs (they are everywhere in the city, but usually not used to herd sheep), followed by Border Collies (used to herd sheep by people who do it for fun but not by people like this shepherd) and Old English Sheepdogs (who I don’t think are used for herding, but are a popular family dog breed around here). I’ve seen Australian Cattle Dogs throughout economic backgrounds while Border Collies and especiallyOld English Sheepdogs are fancier-neighborhood-dogs. I also have seen one ACD who was actually herding, but I was only passing by. I had the impression that this dog was an actual sheepdog, not a rich person’s hobby herding pal.
I found it extremely interesting that the dogs of the shepherd we met had a bubble around the sheep. There was clearly a boundary outside of which they allowed other dogs, but inside of which they would guard. Chai overstepped the boundary and their behavior changed immediately. Once they had chased Chai back of the bubble, they went back to chilling. I asked if the shepherd had taught the concept of the bubble to their dogs, and they said no – the dogs are doing this naturally.
It was also deeply fascinating to me that the dogs seemed to naturally surround the flock, protecting them from all sides. The flock did not seem bothered by the dogs at all and the dogs seemed very relaxed. The way they surrounded the flock kept the flock together and the invisible bubble kept intruders (like Chai) out.
I asked the shepherd if Chai and I might approach a little more so we could test how she’d react to the sheep when being closer (this is just something I’ve been meaning to test). The shepherd had control of their dogs – once they invited us into the bubble, the dogs stood back. (The shepherd had a stick and used body language to communicate with the dogs, but not in an aggressive way at all – they just communicated clearly that Chai was a friend to be welcomed into the bubble.)
I would love to spend a day with this shepherd, the flock and the dogs. I wonder what their everyday life looks like: how far from the green space do they live? How much do they walk? Are they always on the move or do they stick to one general area? How often is there a potential conflict? And is it always with visiting dogs or is there also wildlife or other pets to look out for? Maybe even humans? Is everyone on the same page about the shepherd using this (public) land for their sheep? What do the dogs eat (feeding 10 mid-sized to large dogs is a lot!) Do they have other sources of income or is it based on the sheep alone – on their meat? What does community or family structure look like? How much interaction is there with the wider capitalist society a subsistance farmer, whether they want to or not, is necessarily embedded in? If this shepherd had a kid, what opportunities will the kid have? Is it necessary for the kid to work as soon as they can walk in order to feed everyone or are they able to go to school, graduate, study; choose a totally different path in life?
I am curious about all of this, but it’s not my place to ask. I’ll probably never know. From the outside, to me, it’s easy to romantisize this life: it is calm. It has nature, animals, movement and little to no technology. It is physical and human-powered, not fossil-fuel-powered, and there is so much to observe about your animals, their interactions, the people you see, the changes of the plants, birds and insects around you through the seasons. I know there is a version of me who’d enjoy this life – its physicalness; the nailing of wooden planks to create a barn; the walking. Naming and observing your dogs. Keeping their puppies (the ones who survive); seeing them grow up. Observing local plants, birds, lizards; how their behavior changes with the times of day and year …
It is easy to romanticize because I wasn’t born into this life. If I were, I might feel completely different about it – after all, as it is, I did not keep the life I was actually born into and the same thing might have happened had I been born into a different life. And spinning that thought further: the life I was born into was a privileged one that allowed me to leave it behind. If I was born into the life of subsistance farming, leaving that life may not be an option. Or it may be just as much an option as it was for me and the live I actually got! I don’t know, but I can’t help but enjoy leisurly following these threads of thought as I’m clening up this pst at 2:30AM in the morning, a day before I’ll release kt.
Check the dog social post for today’s video of Kala, Chai and Luca!
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone for Game’s morning and pre and post solo-adventure walks.
Today was perfect for a calm day: while Chai would have been happy to have another active day, I feel fried. I am clearly not used to hours of uphill hiking anymore!
This morning, we just looped around the block. Chai struggled quite a bit not to pull – either because she had been locked into her luxury kennel earlier last night and let out later than usual this morning OR because yesterday, she got to pull on her front-attachment harness. We’re back to the back-clip harness today, but I can’t tell whether yesterday’s pulling experience carried over to today’s first walk or if she had simply fully recharged and missed her morning off-leash park time.
In the afternoon, Chai, Game and I walked to the Toy Play Plaza and I let the two run around, chase squirrels, drink from the fountains and just be dogs for 15 or 20 minutes and then did one rep of our current barrier recall challenge (kibble container #3 – the live mouse trap). Chai was a superstar and recalled right away! Her back-clip harness leash walking looked a lot better on the way home than it had on the way out, too – getting to run around must have helped!
Husbandry
+ “Brush!” Chai looks very fancy after yesterday’s shower and today’s brushing! + “Claws” (all claws on her left back paw; it was easy for her today).
Mini solo adventure
Chai got to come to the bakery with me and practice “lie down when my foot is on your leash” while I paid. She did well and her back-clip harness leash walking was almost perfect again. I suspect her harness-mode success is multifactorial: not having an off-leash Game around AND having had time to run at the park already, even if it wasn’t for a long time.
“Home alone”
Both dogs stayed free in the living room while I went up to the roof to put my freshly washed towels on the clothesline. No apartments were destroyed in the course of hanging laundry!
Frog!
After a late-afternoon pee loop, I lured a frog … on the mattress and NOT off a cliff!
Thoughts on the calm day
Chai is very active! She is NOT in the mood for as calm a day as we had today (calmer than we usually would because I’m exhausted from yesterday).
House training
The streak continues!
My next brownie is only one more (successful) day away …!
August 7, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
Chai and Game got 35 minutes of running around at the park to start the day. Chai played with Maya, the fun little Corgi, Border Collies Eva and Maki and a mixy-mix friend, but was mostly interested in finding ALL the food scraps.
During a work break, I took both dogs on their short leashes on an errand. Chai did really well not pulling even though Game was around: morning runs really are a must for her!
Home alone
Both dogs stayed free in the living room when I went to get the brownie I earned when Chai pooped outside this morning. (Outside poops immediately spawn a check mark in my streak game.)
Then they stayed home alone again when I ran a slightly longer bike errand.
A new person doing unusual things …
I had asked a plumber/painter/electrician to help me with a shower piping issue. Chai gave the briefest snarl-bark when they first came in, I scattered kibble and then she proceeded to observe from a comfy spot on the couch and eventually join us in the bathroom to sniff all the tools. Brave girl!
Solo adventure
After some more work and two shaping sessions – 4 in, one with only bowl #5, one with bowl #6 in bowl #5 – Chai and I headed out on a solo adventure. She waited in line with my foot on the leash for quesadillas. I used one of my randomization strategies: reward every time a red car drives by. Since the quesadilla stand is located on a medium-busy street and Mexico City’s rate of red cars is just right, this makes for a perfect rate of reinforcement.Have you found creative ways to randomize reinforcement? Let me know in the comments!
We then went to a nearby park where I had my quesadillas while Chai got to run around. She is developing juvenile independence, so she kept me on my toes when wandering to the other edge of the park! (She found dry fish treats on the ground and feasted on them.) We did two recalls with kibble container #3 – in real time, I got the impression that the first one was a double take at the distraction, so I added another one in a different part of the park after a break. Then we headed home and Chai waited outside a corner store and joined me at a pet supply store to pick up – you guessed it! – fish treats.
On my evening pee loop pre-class with Khaleesi, the new Husky client, I used magic hands on a large bag a person was getting plants out of in front of our building.
More home alone time
While I worked with Nancy and the wonderful Khaleesi (¡Le gusta hacer travesuras!), Game and Chai stayed home alone again. Meet Khalessi with the most beautiful eyes:
Young and full of energy! We made an exercise and enrichment plan for her that should take care of most issues.
And more shaping!
We had two more shaping sessions of one object in another: first the baseball toy in a small crate, and then switching from the baseball toy to a paper cup mid-session. Chai did great!
As for the liver treats, small amounts for training seem to be fine. I’m a little suspicious because she teetered on the verge of diarrhea several times since I’ve been using them (relatively sparingly) in recall training. I’ll make sure to keep the amount low. Chicken, so far, is our best bet for high-value treats she can have a lot of. I also prefer it because it isn’t as crunchy. Liver makes a good back up to just have at home though!
Diarrhea
Chai has – once again – diarrhea. I suspect it’s the fish treats and other stuff she found to eat in the park today while I was busy with my quesadillas de flor de calabaza y queso myself and just let her wander. We’ll test out the fish treats soon enough. Other treats I want to test are bread and tortillas – first plain tortillas and then friend ones (two things she finds in the street a lot). If her stomach tolerates them, they’ll be all hers.
House training
If it weren’t for the magic outside poop rule (outside poops immediately earn me a check mark for the day, whatever happens pee-wise), I wouldn’t have been able to finish the week’s streak but would havehad to start over on the last day of the week. Yay for setting myself up for success!
August 8, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
Both dogs enjoyed their 35 be-a-dog minutes in the morning. Chai went straight from the car to the fish treats she had found yesterday and had some more, sharing with Game this time. Then, both of them played with Eva (chocolate BC) and Maki (red merle BC puppy), two of their park friends.
Park friends.
Lots of running and even Game played and let the others chase her!
Chai gave me a diarrhea-y outdoors poop. Diarrhea’s gotta be good for something, and if it’s teaching Chai to poop outside because she simply has to go – I’ll take it.
Home alone
Both dogs were loose in the living room while I ran a 5-minute errand. When I got back, one of them had stolen a kibble container from my desk, opened it and eaten everything in it. We learn: no untethered home-alone time for Game and no unsupervised living room time for Chai!
They stayed home alone again when my friend Kayla, who is visiting for a few days, and I went out for dinner – this time, Chai safely tucked away in the bathroom!
Shaping
I was going to start out with a session of 4 in with bowl #6 in bowl #5 – but Chai let me know it was too difficult today by lying down. So we ditched bowl #6 and just had a few reps with #5.
Our second shaping session was one object in another. We started with the baseball, then did the paper cup, then a shoe and finally a roll of tape. Chai is acing this trick!
Husbandry
+ “Claws”: all nails on her right back paw. She didn’t even flinch! I’m curious if her front paws will continue to be more difficult – we’ll find out soon!
Solo adventure
We walked to the Dead Paultry Park, got pambasos (and treats for being in a down position with my foot on the leash anytime a red car drove past) and park-officed briefly. Since the pup-pup-pup informal recall seems to have lost its power, Chai is dragging her 5m line today. Selective deafness is a common symptom of being a juvenile dog! Sadly, being a selectively deaf juvenile dog today means having to be tied to a tree in my park office. Sorry, Chai. Can’t have it all!
Chai was suspicious of the warm, loud sound/air coming from a vent we passed. We walked past several times, each time marking with my cookie toss marker and tossing the cookie away from the entry once we had passed the vent. Chai did well with that, and I’ll keep coming back to practice more. I’m calling this the treat toss/R- game (until I think of a sexier name). It is R- because being past the entrance was, given Chai’s body language, a relief. Of course I made sure the leash stayed loose the entire time and let Chai decide with how much distance she wanted to move past the vent. The sidewalk next to the building with the vent is very wide and Chai’s comfort curves allowed her to stay on it. If things go as planned, she’ll curve less and less out into the sidewalk with every time we practice.
Friends and frenemies
The mightyNorbert.
I put Game in her car crate for our first evening with Kayla, Barley, Niffler and Norbert in the apartment. (Game isn’t Barley’s biggest fan, and while Game and I worked on the Norbert project during our time in Cuernavaca, neither Kayla nor I were in the mood for a training session tonight. We wanted to work on our respective work things and then just hang out and enjoy nerdy dog trainer talk and friends-catching-up time.)
Chai was fascinated by Norbert and respected the boundaries he set. She played with Niffler (keeping an eye on Norbert at all times, just in case) and enjoyed Kayla’s snuggles.
House training
Week 2 starts today!
August 9, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM and noon
We started the morning with 20 park minutes. Chai’s Corgi friend Maya was around and they played a little, but she was clearly more tired than usual and didn’t feel like running as much.
On our noon loop, Chai was pullier than usual. All rested up and ready for some shaping, little Border Collie?
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone WITHOUT Game (finally! It has been too long!) while Game accompanied me to get a haircut. Game enjoyed her solo outing greatly – and the rawhide she got to chew while hanging out!
Shaping
I did a quick “four” session: 2 “get it” treats with only bowl #5 and then 2 “get it” treats with bowl #6 in #5. Chai rocked it! We’re building back up! (No video of this session.)
The second session after (starting with bowl #6 in bowl #5), Chai considered too hard.
The dogs got a 30 minute outing at the toy play plaza. Chai was pully and peppy! After some work and a quick “Frog” session for Chai (on the couch but not feeding off the “cliff,” my two girls and Niffler stayed home while Kyla, Barley and I went out for dinner.
Lucky Barley got his own taco with extra meat!
Later that night, Chai had a blast playing with Niffler and spying on Norbert while Kayla and I recorded a podcast … and then, she slept VERY well!
The podcast episode we recorded:
The only downside of today:
House training
We broke our streak. The excitement of having guests and me wanting to focus on our conversation rather than constantly interrupting to take out Chai are likely culprits. But that’s okay and totally worth it. Tomorrow, we’ll be back on track. In any case, the good news: no accidents in the living room!
August 10, 2023
Activity level: calm
The AM
We went to the park and the dogs had 30 minutes of fun with Eva and Maki.
I went back home to work and take a nap. It’s probably time to slow down on both the socializing and the inventing-new-projects-for-myself fronts!
Home alone
Because I had taken a nap rather than shaped Chai, the dogs just got a quick outing before I handed them over to Kayla who worked from my place while I headed out to see another friend. Kayla worked for about 2 hours before heading out herself and I got back home 2 more hours later, so Game and Chai had both good company and then two more hours alone.
House training
… and we are back on track!
August 11, 2023
The AM
We went to the park for a full hour this morning to make up for the very quiet Thursday. Chai played with Eva and Maki, found lots of tortilla scraps meant for birds and shared them with Game (tortillas should be next on my food testing spree!) and we trained a bit, using the bench as a start button and working downs and stands until I ran out of treats. No video, no pictures – but we are up and running!
The PM
After working, I did our usual 4 daily shaping sessions1: 3 to work on the “one object in another” behavior and one “4 in” one. Chai did well!
Solo adventure
Chai and I walked to the Toy Play Plaza in one of my work breaks. I had meant to walk there in Chai’s back attachment harness and back in collar mode, but forgot the collar. So instead, we practiced “With me” for crossing streets IN her harness (high rate of reinforcement for the win!), I named squirrel chasing (“Birds!”) at the park and did a single fun obstacle-run-away-recall game with Chai’s formal recall cue at the empty playground.
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone while Game and I went for a walk.
House training
A close call, but we did it again! Go puppy (and go me!)
August 12, 2023
Activity level: average
We spent 25 minutes at Fresa Parque and left earlier than planned because there wasn’t a lot going on except for ALL the food scraps Chai kept being drawn to.
In the afternoon, we had two 4-in sessions and one object-in-another session, went to a different park for about an hour and explored, worked positions (stand and down) and did one distraction recall (container #1 with liver in location #1); liver from my hand and opening the box as reward – Chai did phenomenal! – as well as an easy “Schnee” recall when she was already running in my direction.
Both dogs waited in front of a store and then I walked Chai home in collar mode from there. She had a hard time (Game was off leash and I’ve not worked on Chai’s collar mode with Game off leash much!) We did 3, 5 and 10 steps between treats with most of the reps being 5 steps between treats. If things are hard for my dog, I’ll up the rate of reinforcement accordingly!
While Chai didn’t get a solo adventure today, she got to stay home alone all by herself while Game and I ran an errand.
Finally, after a semi-successful one-object-in-another session where I tried to get Chai to pick up a coin, we played the “2 balls” game with two 10-peso coins to teach Chai to pick them up. She did great and had fun once it turned into a game and she realized picking up coins was possible!
House training
I’ve noticed that if there is a tie before noon (like today), I usually can’t turn things around and the best case scenario is to keep the tie a tie (like today) rather than breaking my streak. It’s as interesting to collect data as it is to watch my own game-fueled behavior!
I’m not saying that every single day for the rest of her life, Chai will get 4 shaping sessions – that’s just how things have worked out over the last couple weeks. There will be many days in her life that have zero training sessions in them. ↩︎
We started out with half an hour of park time for Game and Chai. There was some playing with old and new friends for Chai, but mostly it was a quiet morning of walking.
Back home, Chai wasn’t tired but wanted to interact. That is excellent: training wasn’t available, but snuggles were and I made sure she got to enjoy them!
Both dogs slept while I worked, and then Chai did her first frog in a different location – Silvia had suggested we try somewhere other than the couch. Below is my video and the text I submitted with it:
“I chose another place where I had a “cliff” to prevent crawling off (the mattress). I’m not sure she’d be able to do this without crawling if there was no precipice … What do you think?“
Noon and beyond
I got a nerdy single-paw shaping session in (see this older post I just updated with more detailed geekery if interested), and then we went for an …
Afternoon walk and a little more shaping
After the shaping session, Chai had some inner pressure to get rid of! She wrestled with Game and then we went for a walk – just Chai and me to check off her daily solo adventure.
We visited two parks and did some collar walking in between. The first time we went back and forth between 5 and 15 steps between treats, the second time between 5 and 25. Good puppy!
We ended the day with a final single-paw target shaping session.
House training
The streak continues!
July 31, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
We went to one of the parks in our area and Chai had fun with Border Collie Eva and her new 5-months old sister Maki. Their folks Esteban and Viri will take classes with me if Maki gets to stay – I’m excited; she is very cute! (Still on a trial period though.) Today, we also saw a leaf blower at the park (Chai’s first or second one ever) and she didn’t care. Yay!
I’m aiming to mostly use our AM park time for “just being dogs” stuff for both dogs (and of course cueing/paying pees, paying voluntary check-ins as well as recalls and leave it-s).
Chai’s second adventure of the day is a solo one whenever possible and I’ll train in addition to having her run and play and do her own thing.
A frog
After getting home and working a bit, I tried another frog with Chai after reading Silvia’s feedback:
“I think you can try no cliff as well – should be fine at this stage.”
In this video, I kept the “cliff” (fed off the mattress) but tried for more extension. This led to more leg movement. Going forwards, I’ll try to get more extension without (or with less) leg movement on the mattress and, once I have that, without a “cliff.”
Husbandry
+ Brush
Solo adventure
At noon, Chai and I went on her solo adventure. We took a decently long back-attachment-harness walk – hardly any pulling, i.e. this morning’s run and play time must have been just right – and went to the indoors market. This was Chai’s second time there without Kiba. There was more going on today and she was a little weirded out by people playing the trumpet and the drums. That said, she was a trooper and stuck with me through all my purchasing and laid down anytime I stopped at a stand and stood on her leash!
Waiting in all the places!
AND! On our way out, Chai PEED without Game nearby – actually peed, not just marking! – in the spot Game usually pees! Party for the puppy!!!
AND and! Almost home, we ran into two people with 3 dogs and Chai walked up to them on a loose leash! AND to the water bowl in front of the café she likes to drink out of, again on a loose leash!
Shaping!
We started shaping picking up a spoon, but I got lots of paw touches (no surprise there; we’ve been working on so much paw stuff lately!)
After a pee and corner store walk for both dogs, I tried holding the spoon and then switched to a toy. NOW I’m getting mouth action!
Evening fun
Since I’m planning to make tomorrow this week’s calm day, Chai went out for another 45 off-leash park minutes. None of her friends were there but I found a new client with a 2-year old Husky and Chai played with her as well as a 4-months old little Doodle. (I haven’t seen a single Doodle in any of the other parts of Mexico City I’ve stayed/lived for a month or more. This place is clearly more fresa: there are Doodles everywhere.)
I’ve decided that the Mexico City Doodle index goes from -5 to 10. 10 Doodles means a place is very fresa, and I currently live in a 5-Doodle neighborhood. The neighborhoods I like best are 0-3-Doodle places.
House training
Sadly, tonight’s a tie.
The tie between indoors and outdoors pees means we reset week 1 of challenge #2 tomorrow, starting our counter over with day 1 of week 1. (While frustrating, it works out well: tomorrow is the first day of my gamification class. Just like my students and colleagues, I’ll be starting from zero.)
“Do not judge me by my successes – judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again” (as Nelson Mandela supposedly said.)
August 1, 2023
Activity level: low
The AM
35 minutes of play and park loops. Chai met her friend Dina and I got a spontaneous hug from her human – a good way to start the day!
Home alone
Chai and Game stayed home alone for a little over 3 hours.
Cape ONNN!
Since it’s our quiet day, I had and appointment AND it’s the first day of both FDSA classes and my gamification group, we just did a little bit of fun stuff: a rep of “Cape (the service dog vest) ONNN,” chasing treats and hand touches while wearing it and then “Cape OFFF!” Chai is doing great – no body sensitivity with wearing capes or harnesses at all! I wanted to do the Pride sweater I had bought her as well – but turns out she has outgrown it already. That was fast! I’ll have to find someone with a slightly smaller dog to gift it to!
Husbandry
+ “Claws”: I clipped the nails on Chai’s right front paw. She was not happy about it this time so we called it a day after the one paw. I’ll do the next one tomorrow.
She’s a young dog – feelings change. She may just be having a paw-touchy day or she may be growing up to be a dog who doesn’t like her nails clipped after all. We’ll just have to see and find out. In the former case, things should be getting easy again soon. In the latter case, it’s a good thing we started working on nail clipping early!
Frog
Another calm day behavior is the frog. We did two rounds on the mattress without videoing. The first one went well but Chai didn’t fully extend and was a bit wiggly in the second one. Note to self: this stretch may become physically harder the older Chai gets. Make sure to take a longer break between frog sessions in the future!
Park fun
I used a rain break to let the dogs run around the park for 20 minutes (I set an alarm to make sure my planned “low activity” day really stayed low activity. This, together with this morning’s outing, is the max amount of off leash fun I want Chai at 7.5 months to have on a calm day. It was 20 minutes well spent: Game got to go naked (I usually have a bandana or a collar with an ID on her and so I have something to grab if necessary.) But Game sometimes feels itchy when wearing any kind of equipment. Her favorite style is naked, and since it was drizzling and muddy and we had the park to ourselves, she got to be naked today. She zoomed around the puddles and slid through the mud and had the best time. Game and Chai also found a baseball toy they managed to play tug with (even though it was really small!) and did well with a few Leave it-s from various food items. Chai got paid for check-ins and leave-its.
House training
Like yesterday, we ended up with a tie: Chai peed in the shower as often as she peed outside. I promised myself that if I couldn’t get more outside pees two days in a row, I’d lower criteria from more pees outside than inside toat least as many outside as inside pees. So while we’re starting again from 1 today, I’m giving myself that check mark!
The reason it is so hard to get the outside pees isn’t that I don’t know when to take Chai. I almost always know exactly when she needs to go. The reason is that at this point, most of the time – say 90% of the time – Chai needs two things to be in place in order to pee outside:
She needs Game or her friend Kiba to pee or poop first; this inspires marking.
She cannot be distracted. This part is difficult: for every inside pee I got today and yesterday, I had just taken Chai outside – and she was distracted when Game peed. This just happens to be a distracting city and I don’t have a yard, so luck (distraction-free moments) is a big factor in our success.
Anyways, a tie seems to be doable even on distracting days – so I’ll play with these modified rules! When success feels out of reach, games stop being fun. I want the challenge but I don’t want to keep failing more than one day in between successes due to factors out of my control. So check mark #1 – here we go!
No more resets for ties. Let’s set ourselves up for success!
August 2, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
I set up a park office to work from and also did recalls away from closed container #2, implementing the latest version of my Chai-specific distraction recall strategy! Chai aced it!
We spent about 2.5 hours outside. Park offices are the best!
Husbandry
+ “Claws!” – left front paw. Chai wasn’t exactly happy about it, but significantly calmer than yesterday!
Shaping!
We had three sessions of “4 in” with the cue attached in the last two sessions! Chai is getting better at balancing in our current bowl! Go superpuppy!
We did two shaping sessions of our latest trick with the toy we found at the park yesterday! I love how much she loves to work!
House training
The streak continues and we are on a roll today!
August 3, 2023
Activity level: average
+ Off leash container 2 at location 2: formal recall success!
+ Solo adventure: indoors market, including waiting outside the bathrooms by herself.
+ I park-officed and the dogs were outside for about 3 hours. We also met Kiba and Alan and I got a perfect “Schnee” recall off leash away from Kiba! (Pictures only.)
Shaping
+ 2 “one object in another” sessions. In the first session, the baseball ended up in the bowl in the last rep!
+ 2 “Four” sessions. Today went well! Next time, I’ll be moving my home position back behind my back!
Home alone
Chai and Game stayed home alone for about 3 hours when I went to see friends in the evening.
House training
5 pees outside, 3 pees inside. Go Chai!
August 4, 2023
Activity level: average
The dogs got 30 minutes of off-leash time at the park in the morning. There weren’t any friends to play with but a lot of running around for Chai who also happened to find A LOT of random food, including a fried tortilla-something. (Fingers crossed tomorrow won’t be a diarrhea day!)
Morning shaping
I got home and worked, then did two rounds of shaping one object in another with box #2 I had used for the 4-in game. It’s bigger than the water bowl and the results showed! Good puppy!
Solo adventure
Chai and I walked to and through the indoors market for a while. We came across 2 scary balloons on the floor and conquered them with magic hands, both inside the market and later outside (they had clearly been thrown out so I took them with me). I purchased container #3 at the market: a live mouse trap (I wanted a wire-cagey thing and this was perfect.)
Foot-on-leash cue at the market.
We went into the dog park near the market because Chai let me know she would like to greet the only dog inside – an older Vizsla. They played briefly and then Chai, unprompted, peed in the dog park! Lots of treats for the best girl!
We then set up and did a long-line recall away from kibble in the mouse trap – Chai didn’t even get close before she checked in and I took it as a cue to call her. We looped around the park a bit and then did a second recall set-up in a different corner off leash. She aced it again! Even though the mouse trap looks nothing like containers #1 and #2, Chai patiently waited for me to get out the food for her. Good girl!
As of today, we are working with dried liver as the high value reward – we ran out of chicken. However, if tomorrow is a diarrhea day, I can’t necessarily blame the liver … the lucky girl found even more street food on her outing.
We walked part of the way home in collar mode with 5-20 steps between treats. It was hard for Chai today though and we switched back to back-clip harness mode after a short stretch.1 I stopped at a corner store to pick up toilet paper and Chai waited outside, and then we made it home where the little one is now passed out on the floor while I’m working and Game is relaxing on the couch.
Afternoon shaping
Two rounds of four in – one with home position on my thigh, one with home position behind my back. She worked hard and did well with bowl #5!
Home alone
Both dogs stayed home alone for a little over 3 hours.
House training
Today was another tie of inside and outside pees. I’m glad I’ve changed the rules for ties to count! Otherwise, this would be my third streak break in a week, which would be highly demotivating. Maybe after getting my 4-week streak, I’ll do another round of 4 weeks where ties don’t count? A ver.
Have you ever gamified your dog training (or something else in life)? What game did you play and did you find it helpful? Let me know in the comments!
August 5, 2023
Activity level: high (VERY high physical, low mental)
Rachel, Miriam, Ari and I spent all day at Los Dinamos with the dogs, including 4 hours of relatively strenuous (for a young dog) climby hiking. With the exciting drives (being held on laps), four hours of off-leash, steep climby hiking, playing in elbow-deep mud and getting cleaned off twice (once with a hose at a restaurant and once in the shower at home), both dogs are the good kind of tired today.
Some of the highlights:
+ Meeting a new person (Ari). Chai warmed up to them much faster even though Ari pet her entire body right away. Very little avoidance behavior! She rocked it and then chose to take turns sitting in Miriam’s and Ari’s lap in the back seat on the way to Los Dinamos.
People – as important as dogs!
+ Meeting random hikers – one or two at a time – in the woods. As a Mexico City puppy, Chai hasn’t really had this experience before, except for the one time I took her and Game out to a different section of that same nature preserve. She did phenomenal: I scattered to the side of the road anytime strangers passed us and Chai only gave a single bark of insecurity the very first time someone showed up out of nowhere. Then, the counterconditioning effect kicked in full force and she was no longer worried at all. Game modeling indifference probably helped as well.
+ Getting to run and climb and jump over obstacles. All puppies I’ve previously raised have grown up with natural obstacles – only Chai hasn’t really because the city center doesn’t have these kinds of obstacles. And yet, she was fantastically coordinated and made it across fallen trees, climbed rocks and ran and jumped with Game over rocky, root-y steep trails as well as walking them more slowly on leash. The only obstacle she needed help with was a deep artificial canal she was afraid to jump across (I picked her up and jumped with her).
This is very interesting, especially when I compare Chai to Mick. I got Mick as an adult. He probably had a lot of time running off leash as a puppy, but no obstacle practice – and when I got him at age 2, he was VERY clumsy. So was Fanta who I also got as an adult, and who most definitely did a lot of running as a young dog – but likely never met an obstacle in his life before me.
I wonder how much of a difference body awareness tricks like 4 in, paw targets and the frog are making for Chai and how much is just getting to run and play with other dogs in general. Or maybe it’s mostly genetic – who knows! In any case, it was really fun to observe how well she dealt with her new environment.
+ She settled with Game on a mat (my hoodie) when we took a hiking break at La Boca del Cielo.
+ Game and her settled outside the car while we had lunch: waiting and relaxing outside for quite a while in a new place – check!
+ We did one fun and easy “Schnee” recall when Chai was trotting away from me but not towards anything in particular. (Gotta make sure I balance our formal recalls out with fun and easy ones!)
+ She wore her pulling-allowed (front clip) harness for the second time because I didn’t want to slow the others down with my dog training.
+ No throwing up on the way there and back when she rode in people’s laps!
Here’s a compilation:
And the best news:
House training
As far as I can tell, ALL pees and two poops happened outside today! (Except for a third poop in the crate on the car ride home. The crate may happen to be a place Chai has learned to go anytime she has to in her previous home (she may not have had the opportunity to leave). In any case – happy to report that as of now (9:30pm), we had zero pees inside and two poops in addition to her pees outside!
Proud of a check mark that’s not a tie but a crystal clear win!
Inching closer to the next brownie!
Husbandry
+ An unwelcome shower! Game got one as well, and I got two. We were all covered in delicious mud! Not anymore though!
Speaking of loose leash walking: I’ll be running an intense 4-week group for anyone who wants to work on this. You get to pick one of 6.5 R+ based approaches for your dog, are welcome to work together with housemates or partners, your dogsitter or other co-dog-caregivers and will get time-stamped video feedback. E-mail me for details or to sign up! ↩︎
+ Shaping “Earn it!” with 3/4 of Chai’s daily food ration.
+ After our impulse control shaping session, Chai needed some Game-wrangling time to let out all of that pent up need to move and DO rather than hold back. I totally get it!
+ Then Game and I went out for three hours to bike around and meet a friend for coffee …
Enjoying a chew at the café and guarding “my” Ecobici (Mexico City bikesharing bike) outside a store on the way home.
… Chai got another round of “earn it” – and we made it to food on the floor! This was followed by the necessary roughhousing with Game. Impulse control means all that pent-up DO-DO-DO needs to come out! I have never seen as clear an example of this as I’m seeing in Chai.
In terms of good news, she left a green paleta when asked to “Leave it!” and the same splash of dog poop she was tempted to eat twice. Then, however, she found something else that smelled like a mixture of human poop and rotten animal and managed to eat quite a bit of it before I got her away. Tomorrow will tell if whatever disgustingly smelly something she had the pleasure of enjoying today agreed with her stomach.
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone for 3 hours while Game and I went on bike rides and a coffee outing, and again for Game’s evening walk.
House training
How can this be right? I justhad a brownie! Where does the time go?
July 18, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
Chai spent 20 minutes running around Fresa Parque with dog friends and Game practiced staying calm and eating treats surrounded by the morning craze. I had been planning on repeating the barrier step at the park (kibble in closed container) and, after a break, kibble in the open container just to see where we were at. But since I hadn’t had my coffee yet … I forgot both my tripod AND the container. No recall training this morning. We’ll go back and try again later!
Next, we did some paw target shaping with new objects. I want to improve Chai’s precision targeting!
Noon
Around noon, we headed back to Fresa Parque in harness mode. My plan was to walk home in collar mode and spend the time there practicing the recalls we didn’t get to this morning. And that’s precisely what we did after be-a-dog-time.
After rep #5, I gave Chai time to run and be social with the noon crowd. Her intensity was ratcheted all the way up: these recall games take a lot out of her puppy brain! And all that concentration leads to pent-up “Whaaaaa!” that is best released in playing with other dogs! I took a video from beginning to end of the play session. You can see HOW intensely she plays at first – this is a way for her to release the pressure that concentration and impulse control build up! – and how her social needs saturate within a few minutes and she’s then able to move on to sniffing and exploring. Meeting your young dog’s social needs on a regular basis is a big deal!
I’d usually feed check-ins, but I was out of treats. While running out of treats can be annoying, it is also convenient: anytime I run out of treats, I will substitute personal play as a reward. Running out of treats about once a week ensures that we keep personal play as an outdoorsy reinforcer as well and don’t become solely dependent on tangible reinforcers.
On the way home, Chai got to wait outside the bakery and at a corner store while I went inside. Good girl!
Afternoon
After a fun-and-easy recall from the bathroom into the shaping space (checking recall 8/101 off Silvia‘s modified list!), we worked some more on single-paw targets with easy objects (balance pod, lid of a pot, turned over metal bowl), putting the cue back on and switching both the position of the objects and my position in relation to Chai (turning my back, standing on one foot, feet and hands on the floor and looking at Chai through my straddled legs etc).
The upside-down metal bowl works great – I want to find something stable that is equally tall but less wide (to ensure she only gets one paw on) and then start reducing hight and size from there! Maybe styrofoam will do the trick … I could slowly shave it down and tape it to the floor for stability …
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone for Game’s two short rain-break walks.
Husbandry
+ “Brush!”
House training
(1) New recall rule: I’ve done quite a few into the shaping space and it’s time to mix it up again! I’ll make sure the last two fun-and-easy ones are outdoors! Maybe one for toys and one for food?
July 19, 2023
Activity level: low
Woohooo! Getting this week’s low-activity day out of the way!
Recalls and collar mode in the AM
After a brief morning walk work, Chai and I went to the park to repeat our same distraction recall in the same space, aiming for a single-rep success. Unfortunately – this being Mexico where public spaces are shared and used and alive! – there was a dance class happening in our usual spot with the piano mural.
I decided to go for it anyways, having Chai wait in her usual spot and simply setting the distraction up in the other direction. Would I suggest this to a student? No. I would tell them to go home and try again later But with my own dogs, I experiment more – and that’s what I did here. I was curious if Chai would recall away from the tapedd plastic container if it was in a different spot.
Pre and post distraction recall, we did a short loop through the quiet (except for the dance class) park. There were no dogs to play with and I’m thinking of keeping today low key. I threw in one fun and easy “Schnee” recall when Chai was already about to turn my way, reinforcing it with “chase” and 3 ball tosses. Her ball game was a bit lacksadaiysical today in terms of returning the balls, but it was a lovely recall and a fun “chase” reinforcer! Recall 9/10 for Silvia – check!
We then walked home on a collar (5-35 steps between treats). I upped the rate of reinforcement to every 5th step when passing a single dog and a group of dogs. Chai did SO well today! I used to feed a lot more when passing dogs, and now she’s just rocking it!
Home alone
Chai stayed home with Game for 5 hours while I co-worked with a friend, and then again alone by herself during Game’s brief pre-rain walk.
“Cape ONNNNN!”
For the first time, I announced the service dog vest (cape) and put it on, fed the unimpressed Chai a few treats that required her to move around and then “Cape OFFFF”ed her again. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the airport for the first time. She will probably not wear the cape – it’s still new to her – but if someone asks, I want to be able to put it on without her freaking out!
“Frog” progress
I used the remainders of Chai’s meal for the day for two frog sessions. For the second one, I did not fold the pillow! This is a great calm day activity, and my (randomly discovered) trick of feeding with Chai’s head off the couch is helping her to not try and crawl towards me: there is nowhere to crawl when your front end is at the edge of A couch!
House training
Woohooo! I’ve got a 3-week/21 day-streak!
July 20, 2023
Activity level: average
Morning fun and formal recall success
Chai nailed her single-rep success recall with our latest barrier strategy – a closed container I will open for her after recalling for chicken. Go Chai!!! Then she got to run around with several dogs she knows at that park, found a mud puddle to lie down in and is now – after half an hour of training and off leash fun – peacefully asleep on the couch.
Rough-housing – and a break at the exact right moment
After resting up, Chai and Game enjoyed some fun roughhousing around the apartment. Timing was perfect – the people in the apartment below us were also being loud, so I didn’t worry about them being bothered by the dog nails screeching on my floor (their ceiling). After roughousing, I scooped up Chai to put her in the bathroom for a break … and when I came in just minutes later for my own bathroom break, she had already peed in the shower. Yay for great timing! May the housetraining streak continue!
Even juvenile dogs who are already learning where to do their business may forget when they are all wrapped up in playing – until they can’t hold it anymore and pee on the spot. Supervision still matters (even more so with Chai who hasn’t learned to pee outside as a young puppy, but really with any young dog.)
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone while Game and I went for a brief late morning/C-gets-a-brownie walk. The person working the place that sells the brownies already knows me and invited me to come in WITH my dog(s) the next time: they had seen that I asked them to wait outside every time and let me know they are welcome. People are lovely!
Chai had another brief home-alone stay on Game’s evening loop.
Husbandry
Chai got brushed – she’ll look good at her first day at the airport!
“Cape onnnn!”
We practiced putting on, walking with and taking off the service dog vest one more time, just in case. (I didn’t end up using it at the airport.)
Airport adventures
Getting ready: when going to a place that your dog may consider indoors as well as outdoors – be sure to bring cleaning supplies just in case! (We didn’t need them. Tip: if you get Nature’s Miracle, do NOT get the “melon burst” scented version I accidentally bought. It smells disgusting.)
Left: be prepared – don’t forget your cleaning supplies! Right: airport parking garage. Ready to adventure!
We went for a socialization trip to the airport, saw LOTS of people, heard suitcases roll on different surfaces, rode the airport elevator and I carried Chai up and down an escalator. She also got smacked in the head with a “Caution-wet floor” sign by a cleaning person in the bathroom who didn’t see Chai and just bounced back. She took it all in stride. Go Chai!!
The only thing that didn’t go as well as it could have: Chai threw up in the car on the way to the airport. She happily got in again after our adventure though. No fallout from car sickness so far. Fingers crossed it stays this way!
After getting home, Chai joined Game’s sniff loop to empty out the puppy so she could hang out in the living room without accidents. Just now, a bit after 6PM, both dogs got to go on a short pre-rain loop – and we got an empty puppy again!
I tried two frog sessions with the tired evening puppy: one with the (unfolded) pillow and then one without a pillow. She couldn’t do it without the pillow so we went back to the pillow for session #2. Short and sweet, praising gently and releasing with “okay.” Me putting the pillow on the couch is becoming a cue – Chai goes right into frog position! Feeding off the edge of the couch keeps her from crawling forwards!
House training
New week – time to start a new streak!
It looks like I might really get that massage …! Only 6 more days!
July 21, 2023
Activity level: average
The AM
We spent half an hour at the park. Game got to sniff and chill and Chai played with her dog friends and worked on positions in between. She did great!
Home alone
+ Chai stayed home alone for Game’s noon loop.
+ Both dogs stayed home for a little over 3 hours while I ran errands at a no-dogs-allowed place, and again briefly when I picked up dinner.
Shaping
+ We repeated yesterday’s session from bowl #2 to #3 (no video). Next time, we’ll start with #3 right away!
I trimmed Chai’s ear fur back a little: another no-big-deal (for Chai anyways) grooming procedure preceded by an announcement.
Frog
We worked on the frog behavior again. Silvia agreed with my plan of taking out the pillow and filling the pillow case with smaller and smaller things. First, I tried just a hoodie but that was too hard. A hoodie, a t-shirt and shorts did the trick though! We’re already downsizing from the pillow in the pillow case and it’s looking good!
The evening
The dogs did some gentle roughhousing, the three of us had snuggles on the couch, went on an evening pee loop together (yay for empty puppies) and had fun with informal toy play in the apartment (with both dogs at the same time and the always-out toys). We’ve been building gentle fun with tugging between the dogs and me, and Game has been a great teacher for Chai. (No video.)
House training
Wheee! I keep winning at my game! House training, including the version of it I am doing, is mostly a matter of consistency and vigilance: I know when it’s safe to let the puppy into the living room and when it isn’t, and she does already pick up some slack for me, like the other day when she herself went to the bathroom (the door is always open) to pee and poop while I was distracted and let her in the living room too long.
After week #4 (which may or may not be in only 5 days), I’ll up the ante on myself and try to get more and more outdoors pees. I still have to make up the rules of the new game, but I think I might do something along the lines of “green check mark any day she pees outside more often than in the bathroom” to start with.
We’ll also have to take a closer look at pooping again once I’ve streaked through week 4: Chai hasn’t pooped outdoors in a while, just in the shower. I’ll have to go back to massaging her belly and spending more hours working from a park office rather than from home: after the pee games, I’ll come up with a poop game! (These games are for me, of course, not for Chai: they motivate me to set her up for house training success every day. I hope to get her as house trained as she is capable of becoming, which, due to her unknown past, may or may not be fully housetrained.)
One of Chai’s favorite spots because she can reach the toilet paper from there if I forget to put it out of reach – and toilet paper is FUN!
Chai and I then walked to another neighborhood in harness mode to meet Alan and Kiba. We started off with my new recall plan for Border Collie stares/recalls: shaping. I’d wait her out at the end of her leash and then release her as soon as she gave me a weight shift or any sign of reorientation. This was easier said than done, as you’ll see if you follow the link in this paragraph.
I’ll be helping Alan with Kiba next week so I may be able to repeat the set-up. What I want to change next time: call her the moment she gives me a check in rather than immediately releasing. Feed and release! This may be clearer to Chai – and it brings us closer to the actual goal, which is a recall anyways!
We then just hung out and Chai and Kiba got to socialize with Ivan’s Border Collies and their dog sitters. Nicole had fun throwing Kiba’s squeaky ball for Chai, and Chai found a non-intimidating way of interacting with Nicole, a kid who is at the park a lot and wants to hug all the dogs!
On the way back – harness mode again because I was out of treats – Chai waited for me outside a store. Good girl! Waiting is no problem, even when Game is not with her! She trusts I will be back for her.
More shaping
After coming home, I worked on the frog twice for a handful of treats each. Silvia’s feedback on my last video (see above):
“Left leg looks great here – but right seems a bit harder (going out 2nd, leaning to the left when she does so), so I would stay on this height for a bit to get her totally relaxed with the right leg as well before fading the support further.”
Silvia Trkman
For now, we are staying with the hoodie, t-shirt and shorts in the pillow case!
After a little break, we went back to single-paw target shaping in 4 brief sessions. It is coming along nicely!
Home alone
Chai stayed home alone during Game’s potty walk at noon and Game and Chai stayed home alone when I met folks for a picnic at a no-dogs allowed (sniff) section of Chapultepec.
… and MORE shaping!
After getting back home, we did a 4-in session, starting right away with bowl #3! Chai did well!
An evening loop …
The three of us went on an evening loop during a rain break. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in empty puppies … so Chai went to bed (aka to into the bathroom) a little earlier than usual. No living room time for puppies who still need to pee! I want my weekly brownie!
This evening walk came with a startle for Chai: right in front of us, someone at the wall to our left tossed a rolled-up sweater to someone standing at a car to our right. The person catching the sweater was wearing an (according to Chai) creepy and unusual yellow dress. Chai growled for a second before I interrupted her with a scatter cue, tossing the treats ahead and away from the people, and then we quickly moved on. (I know, Chai! You never know what articles of clothing the big city will throw at you next!)
After returning to our headquarters to strategize, I decided to start over with the last successful step: a closed plastic container taped shut. I also changed my reinforcement strategy: not only would Chai get a handful of chicken – I’d also open the kibble container for her after the “okay” release. She has taught me that she needs both reinforcers for me to be successful: knowing that she can reach a distraction, even if it is lower value than what I have, trumps coming back to me unless she also gets that distraction. So we’ll try for a compromise: what, little Border Collie, if I reinforce you from my hand AND give you access to the distraction after?
A closed plastic container!
July 18, 2023
Another barrier attempt at distraction #3 at the park! The reinforcer: a handful of chicken (rather than a single piece), “okay” release, and I am opening the plastic box for Chai to eat the kibble distraction as well: look how powerful your person is! That opposable thumb thing is quite amazing!
5-rep session:
In the session above, I set Chai (or rather myself) up for success in all the ways I could: we haven’t done any impulse control work today and she has already had some time running around to get out the cabin fever. I also made sure she acclimated to the space I was going to train in before setting up.
When acclimating, Chai met two toddlers (human kids her age who were fascinated watching her). Nice experience! They just watched each other; no direct contact, which is perfect.
Then our first session with the closed see-through container taped shut took, as you just saw, FIVE reps until we got a success! Good timing: after rep #5, I was both out of kibble and chicken.
This is fascinating to me! Chai clearly learned yesterday that in this situation, she can blow through her recall because she’ll get the kibble – and this set us me back in the sense that she now also tries going for a closed container that she used to succeesfully recall away from in the past!
With the adjusted reinforcement ritual, I hope Chai will learn that she’ll get everything (chicken AND kibble) if she comes back, but will not get chicken if she doesn’t. With the closed container, she still got the chicken after trying to open the closed container in vain. Once I use freely accessible kibble, if she doesn’t come back before reaching the kibble, she won’t get the chicken (but still get the kibble if she blows through my recall). We’ll have to see how good the pragmatic little Border Collie’s mental accounting skills are!
Tomorrow morning, we’ll try for a single-rep success at this same location, repeating today’s set-up and reinforcement ritual!
July 19, 2023: will we get a single-rep success after a night’s break?
We changed the direction of the recall … away from the piano mural rather than towards it … because the piano mural stage had a dance class going on. Now if you were a student of mine, I’d tell you to just wait and try for your single-rep success some other time. But I am me and with my own dogs, I LOVE to experiment. Since I knew Chai wouldn’t be able to help herself to the distraction without my help, I decided to give things a try with this slightly different location. I had no idea if she’d succeed the first time – but I wanted to find out! It took her two reps:
Would she have been able to do it in a single rep if we had kept the environment exactly the same (not changed recall directions because of the dance class)? Maybe! Maybe not. There’s no way of knowing! One thing, however, I know for sure: tomorrow we’ll go for that single-rep success again!
July 20, 2023: single rep success with the closed container!
Woohoo! Now just to decide how to proceed from here … I don’t expect the previous strategy of the open container to work – at least not yet. We need another, more different dragon plan! Time to take a break and strategize, little Border Collie …!
After succeeding at the barrier level, I came up with a plan of how to – potentially – set myself up for off-leash recall success. By now, I know that Chai is either a pragmatic dog or is going through a pragmatic phase (she’s a juvenile pup – a different dog every day!)
Either way, I don’t want to wait for her to be older to continue training my formal recall. I’m very much enjoying our strategy game here: Chai’s goal is to get to the distraction as fast as possible, and mine is to convince her that it’s worth her while to come back to me as soon as I call. We are playing a game in which the two of us have different goals. My way of getting closer to my goal is to set up the game board in such a way that it maximizes the probability that I’ll get a recall. Chai’s way of getting closer to her goal is to try and see through my game board set-ups (OR train me to up my reinforcers!)
I’m having fun with this, so I’ll continue. If you were a student of mine, I might ask you to take a training break and revisit the challenge when your dog is a little older. That would be to make things easier for you in case it was a phase rather than your dog’s personality.
In any case, I decided, since Chai has “won” when I presented her with unprotected food distractions in the past, to break down the big step from protected to unprotected distractions by using an in-between step: opening the barrier she has already succeeded at, but leaving that same barrier there in order to remind her of how well things used to go for her when she recalled away from said barrier. After recalling her away from an open barrier (in my case the open plastic box), I’d then recall her from the same distraction without a barrier present.
Note that at this point, I am not following my recall protocol anymore, and quite consciously so: I’m just experimenting with my own dog and I am also curious what I can get away with and how Chai will respond to different set-ups. Having eliminated the empty plate at our last stage, I’ll also eliminate distraction B (the bag that used to have food in it) at this new stage I’m inventing for Chai:
While I’m breaking down the step from closed to open container, I’m no longer splitting down environments. I want to find out if we can take this additional step (open kibble container) as a short-cut to off-leash food success (kibble without barrier in the real world).Note that experiments like this, where I don’t know what the outcome will be, are something I LOVE doing with my own dogs but wouldn’t ask a student to do. My students get tried and true protocols – it wouldn’t feel fair otherwise.
(Still) July 17, 2023: our first park experiment with the open box!
We play at our usual spot, but it’s unusually busy – and a number of the people out here are eating. So we have people weirdness and distracting food smells, which leads to a slower recall response and to a hesitant approach of the kibble box once I release Chai. Since I want to see a response at baseline speed (as fast as if there was no distraction) and the usual joyful approach of the distraction itself after my “okay” release, I’ll repeat this same set-up before checking the box off the list above. She did very well though and recalled despite all the distractions!
We hung out and explored the park for 15 minutes, and then tried again:
Oh puppy! You are making me laugh! This session was really interesting!
Sometimes, the best way is to end and go back to the drawing board, which is my plan here. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder on our walk back from the park: WHY did Chai blow through this recall after nailing it the first time? Here’s a few possible explanations I can imagine:
She only recalled the first time because the people were confusing and Chai didn’t realize what she was even recalling from.
She didn’t recall the second time because the first time, she learned that the kibble container was open. in the second session, she KNEW that we were working with an open rather than closed container and went for it. In the first session, she may only have learned that the kibble had been accessible all along after my “okay” release.
She didn’t recall the second time because right before, during our break, I had removed her from eating something that looked and smelled like a mixture of poop and unidentifyable dead animal (Chai has a sensitive stomach; if not, I would let her eat whatever she finds, like Game) – about 3 or 4 times. (I kept releasing her once we were at a distance from the disgusting food source because she wanted to play with her adolescent Doberman friend Sam. However, inevitably, after a little play, she ended up back at the food source and I ended up walking up and removing her again – it was too good for our “Leave it,” which is still under construction, to work.) Maybe this frustrating experience did not set her up for success in the recall session right after.
We’ve worked on impulse control (“Earn it”/Zen bowl/a marker cue for taking food from a bowl) quite a bit today. Maybe after all this impulse control – impulse control is hard for puppies! – she couldn’t help it and HAD to go for the distraction right away.
Or one of countless other possible reasons!
In any case, I’ll need to come up with a game plan! This distraction recall step is tricky – it keeps coming back to bite us in the butt! I might need to gamify this for myself some more …
