Tag: socialization

Week 8 (May 13-19, 2024)

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This week is the last week for most of my little rebeldes – except for Chispa, who will likely move out in week 9. A student just asked how I feel about the puppies leaving. I’ll have to think about it some more once I have … well, time to think! The FDSA term just ended yesterday and for the first time in weeks, I’ll be able to catch a breath … not today because I have plenty of stuff to catch up on, but hopefully tomorrow. Back to today:

7 weeks, 1 day (May 13)

Morning socializing

As planned, we headed to the town square and got there at 7:30 in the morning, giving us half an hour out. It was busier than on Sunday (it’s Monday today.) We saw plenty of school children. Several people stopped to pet the puppies, and the puppies followed a few folks and were enchanted with someone’s shoe laces. They ventured further and were significantly more confident than yesterday already. I suspect this is partly because they are recognizing the location as familiar by now. Mostly new folks, but the same place.

Everyone met 1.5 dogs (I’m counting 1.5 because everyone met the first one, but I don’t think every single puppy met the second one – for one, Chispa did not. I’ll make sure she gets an extra dog encounter when I get the chance.) Here’s the one everyone met:

The second one was an injured Pitbull who didn’t get up, but was gently sniff-greeted by those who wanted. We saw three more dogs, but they just passed in the distance.

The puppies played with each other in the gazebo and had a great time trying to latch on to my sandals and the belts of the carrier. Playful and confident! Everyone ate kibble and followed my pup-pup-pup recall.

Fierro really is currently the most barky when it comes to other dogs. He’s eager to approach, but he likes to bark as he does so. Game was like this as well: she very much liked hearing herself talk as a puppy. Bravo is currently THE most confident (almost always the first to approach novelty), and not barky along the way, followed by Oso and Fierro. Rebelde has shown a fair amount of curiosity as well these last 2 days. She’ll approach humans and dogs and venture pretty far. Right now, Chispa is the one who is least interested in approaching and most interested in watching from a distance – she and Rebelde have switched the roles they held last week!

Because of this, Chispa got pet less by strangers this morning, and she is the only one I know for sure didn’t sniff our second dog (and only sniffed the first one because I held her up to them, like last night’s Chihuahua.)

Chispa’s solo adventure

To boost her exposure, I took Chispa on an out-of-crate solo adventure once we had gotten home, and the lovely store person next door held here while I was rummaging through my pockets for money. Humans for Chispa this week: +1!

Who’s the most noise sensitive right now?

Right as I got home from this afternoon’s ice cream hunt, we heard a siren – and Rebelde ran off. At this moment, she still seems the most noise sensitive even if she’s overtaken Chispa’s and perhaps Fierro’s confidence in other aspects. All other dogs in the yard were completely chill and kept playing though, which, I hope, will have set an excellent example for Rebelde!

… at this moment may have been the key phrase in the paragraph above: when we went to Mercado Hidalgo, the town’s cra-zy Monday market I discovered today, folks were just packing up. Someone was taking down a metal structure and throwing the poles to the side, making very loud noises. Chispa ran off, but Rebelde didn’t!

Who’s the barkiest?

No doubt there: right now, the barkiest puppy is Fierro. He has been barking at dogs, and at Mercado Hidalgo, he barked at a teen who approached him. The dog-barking didn’t go along with insecure body language, but the teen-barking did. I venture he’s – right now, today – the kind of dog who likes expressing himself in words. Tomorrow, he may be a different puppy entirely – or not. We’ll see!

Resource guarding prevention

Puppy popsicles aka frozen chicken feet: take away, better food, return!

Every puppy got a frozen chicken foot to chew on today. I gave them a little time to get into it and then approached, announced “Let’s trade,” bent down, rudely took away the chicken foot, immediately fed a raw meatball and then gave back the chicken foot right away and left. Every puppy got two rounds of this while working on their chicken feet. Rebelde, by the way, was the only one who finished hers completely, in one go and FAST!

I videoed the first two puppies – Bravo and Fierro. Note how in this video, I make sure that the first indicator of me taking the food is the verbal “Let’s trade” announcement. Only then do I bend down. And only once I have bent down and taken the chew do I whip out the even better snack: a raw meatball. This order of events is what you’ll want to aim for if working on this protocol with your own puppy or puppies.

Also, the punching bag in the top right corner of the last clip? It comes with this place. I’ve never had a punching bag. I tried it the other day – feels surprisingly good to have a go at the thing!

Handling and husbandry

Everyone got the nails on their left front paws done and worked through the handling protocol along the way. I recorded the first puppy, who happened to be Rebelde. She also happened to be one of the two most relaxed ones (Rebelde and Chispa.) Everyone else struggled a little – not because of fear but because they had better things to do. It is SO obvious how different this is from a puppy who is afraid of a husbandry procedure. I love that we’ve got this foundation now. Based on it, folks can either build a “no choice” routine (“When I say we do these things, we will – that’s it”) OR cooperative care. Whichever way a puppy’s future human(s) go, they will NOT have to countercondition discomfort or fear before getting to work on the actual behavior (be it the dog opting in or the dog learning to hold still when told to do so.) That should give everyone a major shortcut in the husbandry department! Of course, a new person will have to first win the puppy’s trust, but I’d venture that it will go relatively fast, especially since the new humans will soon be with their puppies – and the puppies still young!

The one thing I forgot in the video above was the “needle” protocol. I got it in later! Note how I announce everything I do before doing it: “Collar off” – “nails” – “brush” – “paws” – “teeth” – “eyes” – “ears” – “collar on.” (The needle announcement is “needle,” and before picking up a dog, I say, “up.”) Announcements are not cues – they are what I use if I am about to do something and don’t want to surprise the dog. Over time, dogs learn what different announcements mean. If you leave a tiny pause between announcement and action, you will be able to see how your dog feels about what you’re about to do based on their body language.

Late afternoon/evening outing: Mercado Hidalgo

I took four instead of five puppies tonight: Bravo stayed home. He’s ahead on the human count and usually gets the most attention because he is outgoing. Leaving him home gave me a chance to focus on the others. Plus four puppies are significantly easier to keep track of (and carry) than five!

We were going to go to the town square again, but came across the tianguis Carla had mentioned happened on Mondays. We took the opportunity to wander through parts of it. It was WILDLY crazy – more so than any of the ones I’ve been to with Chai during her remedial socialization time.

On this particular outing, we experienced: the most crowded space yet (the subway has been similarly crowded, but the puppies stayed in the carrier there – now, they were out, following me on the ground and trying not to lose me – not an easy feast in the midst of the chaotic market!) Children running and crying, dogs, fruit, meat, fried stuff, random objects on sale, people carting, carrying, dragging and pushing all kinds of transport concoctions around, people taking down large tarps as well as metal scaffolding, someone carrying a ladder, someone using crutches, a kid carrying a doll, kid cars you activate by throwing in a coin and that make noise when you – a puppy – get close, various people talking to me (about the puppies), people reaching for them and petting them, hopping on and off the curb, trash on the ground (which the puppies had fun picking up, tasting and carrying), cigarette smoke, pup-pup-pup recalls and working hard to not lose me. It was a wild ride, and they did great.

Some of the many, many things we saw, smelled, heard and people and dogs we met. The highlights were finding a mango stone with delicious mango bits left on it and a greasy paper bag.

When we got home, I heard Bravo whine. I had left him with Chai in the bathroom, but he was clearly not happy. I am sorry, Bravo.

Crate training

Oso

did his 20 minutes in the carrier! Superpuppy!

Rebelde

complained again at first – but only for five minutes or so. MUCH improved from yesterday!

Fun things

… we have time for now that I’m on break: I tried getting a photo of everyone, including me, to have a memory. I’ll give this another try while we’re still all together – two more days – and hope that one of these days, I’ll end up with a picture I like.

Look at Fierro!

7 weeks, 2 days (May 14)

Morning adventure

We got up bright and early and headed to the town square. I left Oso with Game today. The puppies are SO big now that it’s nearly impossible to carry 5 at a time, but 4 still works.

Everyone who came along for our outing got 1/3 of a human again. Fierro gets an entire human because … well, let me get to this a little further down!

They all also got 1/3 of a dog because we saw about 6 or 7 of them, watched, approached a little but didn’t directly interact. Fierro gets an entire dog in addition because he walked up to the injured Pitbull and sniffed them from up close (not after barking at them for a bit, not eliciting a response.)

On the way home, I took a little detour and stopped at the corner where my free-roaming friends live (the ones I feed when I walk past with Game and Chai, and who by now are happy to see us.) I held Chispa and she got sniffed by 3 all at once. Because I held her (she didn’t look like she wanted to be placed down) and initially stiffened (but quickly relaxed), I’ll count 2 rather than 3 of the dogs for her. I also got out Bravo. He got placed on the ground and voluntarily sniffed one of the dogs. +2 dogs for Chispa and +1 for Oso before we headed home!

How Fierro earned himself +1 human this morning

Right as we were headed back to the car, someone grabbed Fierro (who was maybe a meter ahead of me) and started crossing the street, walking fast. I yelled at them; they stopped. I demanded they give back my dog. They handed him over and then said something about the puppy having been on the ground, alluding that dogs on the ground are up for grabs (this dog wears a collar with a dog tag and I was clearly right behind him. Seriously.)

I was curious, so I calmly asked if they had tried to make a joke by pretend-stealing my dog or if they had actually attempted to take the puppy. (They were acting righteously and laughed and postured at me, which made me consider the joke option.) They said they would have taken the puppy. I couldn’t tell if it was true or still part of a bad joke because they kept throwing the occasional laugh in there. I loaded everyone in the car and turned around to see that person staring at me, so I looked them straight in the eyes and told them to go fuck themselves before I drove off. Our species? It’s the strangest one I know.

Barkiness right now

On this morning’s outing, Fierro was the most barky. He barked at all new dogs we met. Not necessarily fearfully, but with tentativeness. What I – not a developmental psychologist, just an observer who has read a lot (most of which wasn’t about dogs because there’s a lack of studies – we tend to study rodents and humans instead) – suspect I am seeing is that Fierro’s ability to experience fear is currently increasing. He is a little more barky today than yesterday because he is able to physiologically experience fear a little more strongly than he was yesterday. And, being Game’s son, he expresses his feelings in words.

This doesn’t mean that Fierro is going to grow up to be fearful or fear-aggressive. It means Fierro is at a point where I would not “force” an interaction. He’s at the point where it’s important to take things at his pace. Because he’s had a lot of socialization experiences and has confident canine relatives, chances are that taking things at his pace will be all that is needed. There are no guarantees, of course, and if a few days of taking things at Fierro’s pace don’t make a difference, my solution would be to teach him CU games and help him cope with the world that way. Since he is THIS young, the CU games may only be needed temporarily.

What I would not do is either force interactions he isn’t comfortable with on him (he’s “too far along” for this in terms of fear development) or completely shelter him from the outside world (his ability to experience fear cannot – or so I assume – be fully developed yet.) We still want to cash in on these early opportunities where the fear response is weak. I’d expect it not to be fully developed for another week or so. But then again – not a biologist here. Just a layperson, so take what I say with a brimful salt shaker.

If I was to keep Fierro, I’d orchestrate lots of dog encounters like the ones we had this morning: where he gets to choose if and how far he wants to approach, and the dogs don’t care at all that there’s a tiny puppy barking at them. He’d learn two things: one, dogs aren’t threatening, and two, barking has no consequence.

This is our puppy/dog video from this morning. Note that Fierro chooses to walk up to the dog on the platform. I haven’t encouraged him to do so. He goes up, he barks, nothing happens. Only towards the very end (unfortunately, Fierro happens to be barking at that moment too) do the free roamers get up to leave because they’ve seen another dog friend they want to greet. It’s not ideal that this coincided with Fierro’s barking (I don’t want him to learn that barking makes dogs go away), but apart from this, these dogs made amazing helpers and I hope Fierro learned a valuable lesson: dogs are okay. Bark at them, don’t bark at them … they’re just doing their thing. (Free roaming dogs are the most dog savvy dogs I’ve met anywhere in the world.)

Morning crate training

Fierro

had a go at his 20 minutes in the morning. I was hesitant to do it in the morning because by the time we were back from our adventure, I had had coffees #2 and #3, jotted down notes from this morning and had a good play session with the big dogs, it was a little after 9AM and starting to get warm. I know from experience that hot puppies are not happy in carriers (understandably; the airflow in there has got to be less cooling than outside on the cold concete or cool dirt or grass, where they could otherwise choose to rest.) However, since Fierro seemed so sleepy (while everyone else was still active! Their rhythms are starting to diverge!), I gave it a go. And he DID it! About halfway in, he mumbled something to himself and changed positions in the carrier and then went back to sleep. Since this kind of mumbling also happens with sleepy animals changing positions outside of carriers, I don’t mind. He was in no rush to get out after his 20 minutes – I lifted him out and he went right back to sleep on the cool concrete.

This catches Fierro up to Oso! Both boys have succeeded at 20 minutes and will be doing 25 next! I’m hoping for tonight. If all goes well, this will allow us to complete half an hour – my goal – before going back to Mexico City Thursday morning!

Who’ll get to go on future 3-dog adventures (there are 3 more before we head back to the city?)

Chispa needs her outings the least: she is going to stay with me past 8 weeks and come to the city with Fierro and Oso, which will go hand in hand with plenty of human and dog interactions. Fierro and Oso will also come to the city and likely meet a bunch of dogs and people there. I’m confident I can bring their count up to 7 before one of the boys leaves on Saturday – especially as I’ll invite Carla (and whoever of her kids is home) over again tomorrow so they can say goodbye. If Axel is around, we’ll get two people per puppy; if not, at least one!

This leaves Bravo and Rebelde. I’m not particularly concerned about Bravo. He has been SO confident that I’m positive he is ready to take the world in stride (OR his fear response hasn’t set in yet, which will also further set him up for success.) He is also going to meet a “new” (well, not that new, but we’ll count him!) person – Alan – on Thursday, and also hang out with Alan’s Border Collie Kiba again.

Rebelde is going to meet a new person on Thursday as well: Irving’s sister. I don’t know if they have a dog or will introduce Rebelde to anyone else before Irving comes back from Chiapas on the 28th. So I’ll want to get as many experiences for Rebelde in as I can before then. She’s the priority, especially as far as dogs are concerned.

This means Rebelde gets to go on every 4-dog outing we’ll have before we leave Teotihuacán. I’ll also bring her if the tamales person is around today and ask them to hold her again, or if I’m going to a store. On tomorrow morning’s free-roamer stop, if I get around to it, it’s Rebelde who I’ll take out to meet my friends on the way home.

Fierro will also get to come on all outings, simply because the free-roamers we’ve got here are going to be non existent in his potential home in the US (in case that’s where he ends up going – it’s a tie between him and Oso), and they are perfect for him at his barky stage.

As for everyone else, I’ll probably rotate through.

A new toy, play, and trading the toy to prevent toy guarding!

We broke out our third fancy toy today: the duck. Everyone loved it; it seems to be made of a material that’s particularly fun to bite into. After letting them have fun with it by themselves, I did a solo play session with Rebelde, Fierro, Bravo and Chispa. After letting them win the duck, I let them have it for a little bit (the time it took to head inside and get meat from the fridge), then traded for a raw meatball and then gave back the toy. Oso will get his turn tomorrow!

Evening adventure

I went on a 3-dog adventure tonight. Taking 3 is SO much easier now that they are this big and active! Three are totally manageable! I took Fierro, Rebelde and Oso. They all did great. We met two dogs each. Fierro barked at both of them, and they ignored him – perfect! After a little barking, Fierro met them along with the others. He was confident and seemingly felt good. We hung out with one of the dogs for about 15 minutes and there was quite some interaction – this other dog was interested in the puppies too (and in my treats.) She also corrected the puppies appropriately with a growl-bark and fast head movement when they went for a piece of chicken she had (while being perfectly content to watch them eat kibble from my hand in turn with her.) It keeps fascinating me that many dogs seem to respect a concept similar to temporary ownership. I say temporary because when it comes to toys, they’ll often be up for grabs as long as they aren’t in use by anyone, but off the table for everyone else once one dog has them. Note that this is NOT the case for all dogs – some want all the resources to themselves while others let anyone steal their toys. Some respect others’ objects/food while others do not. I’ve seen this kind of respect and boundary-setting often enough though to know that it is very much a thing among dogs – just not among all of them. For lack of a better word, I’d call it a part of their culture!

Fierro, Rebelde and Oso: hanging out with dogs and being stroked to sleep by kids.

The puppies saw lots of different humans and got touched by a few, and saw me talk to several ones. We ended up spending about 20 minutes with four lovely kids. The youngest was three (as the oldest informed me.) The oldest may have been around 7 and the other two in between. They were very gentle and lovely with the puppies. The oldest made sure to give everyone equal amounts of pets. They stroked them to sleep and kept hanging out with us. Because there was so much touch and interaction, I’m counting tonight as +1 human, even in the absence of being picked up, for everyone who went on our adventure.

Evening crate training

Fierro

I waited till Fierro had fallen asleep and then aimed for 25 minutes. I expected him to be more tired and had him go first since he had been on our evening adventure while Oso hadn’t. Fierro settled into the carrier comfortably … for 20 minutes. Then he woke up and started complaining at a level 1, escalating to noise level 3 after 2.5 more minutes. The last minute was a level 4, pretty nonstop. He’ll take another stab at 25 minutes next time.

Something interesting has happened yesterday and today: if I was going to keep Fierro or he was the only puppy I crate-trained, I would have let him cry it out today, like Rebelde at the baby gate yesterday. I know he feels safe being close to all of us, the temperature is as okay as it gets these days, and I absolutely feel that now, unlike in the past, the possibility for operant learning is high (operant learning in the sense that the puppy develops the superstition that barking causes the carrier to open.)

Since I am crate training two puppies, I just don’t have the time to let both of them cry it out. I need to switch them after their respective time (in this case 25 minutes.) It’ll be interesting to see if this sets Fierro back on our next go.

Oso

started out great. After 15 minutes, he changed positions and made a peep of talking to himself, but then settled right in again. Sadly, about 5 minutes later, he started whining calmly. Not upset, but not super happy. After calming down a little, he escalated to noise level 2. With 5 minutes left, he went up to a 3. I was tempted to let him cry it out after having taken out Fierro before – but no. I’ll stick to my plan of sticking to a certain time period and see how that goes, and if the puppies do – or don’t – develop superstitious whining. Unlike Fierro, Oso periodically calmed down again between fits of whining, but then went out with brief level 5 screams.

Fierro again

I gave Fierro a second go at 25 minutes. I really thought I’d be able to work up to half an hour for each of them before Joan got here, so … this is me trying to still reach this goal even though I’m running out of time. He settled in comfortably right away, so even though he screamed when I let him out the last time, he has no negative associations with the carrier as such. A good start!

… it’s 25 minutes later and I just had to wake Fierro! He DID it! Go superpuppy!! Next and last goal: 30 minutes.

Oso

got another go as well because I’m feeling confident after Fierro’s turn. Even though I’m ready to fall asleep, I’ll stay up 25 more minutes in the hope that we’ll succeed!

… and just like that, it’s 25 minutes later and Oso was the one I just woke up! Woohoo!! They both did it!

7 weeks, 3 days (May 15)

3-puppy morning adventure

Find the puppies!

I took Fierro, Rebelde and Chispa. Everyone met 2 dogs and saw a bunch of humans – but not enough to count. So 0 new humans and 2 new dogs for the three rebeldes this quiet morning at the town square! I finally got the picture of everyone in front of the Teotihuacán letters I’d been meaning to get. They all ate, tried to tug on my pants and tugged on my bag. The person who’d tried taking Fierro yesterday wasn’t there. Rebelde and Chispa crossed a street for the first time!

Fierro continues in his current approach to new dogs: bark as he walks up to them. Once again, we met two dogs who did not care one bit. I’m so grateful for these calm free-roamers who’ll just let him do his thing! I tried interrupting his barking with a food scatter, and he was able to eat, too – so not a fear response (I venture.) Today was the first day Rebelde followed suit and tried two or three barks at the second dog after Fierro started. Then she lost interest in barking again.

A stop with a helpful free roamer, unimpressed by Fierro’s barking, before heading back to our temporary home.

Duck tug – resource guarding prevention for Oso

When we got back home, Oso got his round of tugging on the duck, taking the duck away, trading for a raw meatball and getting the duck back. He did great:

Morning crate training

Fierro

mastered 30 minutes of sleeping in the carrier! Go puppy! Achievement unlocked!

Oso

started complaining after about 10 minutes. In our long-standing tradition, I left him in the carrier for his 30 minutes anyways and then let him out. He never escalated to top level, but did go back and forth between 10-second stretches of quiet, 2 and 3. Oso and I will take another stab at 30 minutes tonight!

Food bowl resource guarding prevention for everyone

Visitors

Carla and little Emmerson came over in the afternoon to see all the puppies one last time before the first ones go to their new humans. Oso and Chispa slept under the car and didn’t feel like coming out in the heat. Fierro barked at Carla while greeting her, and Bravo quickly followed suit. Emmerson then ran around the yard and for the first time, Fierro chased after him: best! game! ever! Luckily, he didn’t catch up with Emmerson – I don’t want them to feel those playful sharky teeth! Bravo joined the chase a little later, but Carla and I quickly stopped it – i.e. we stopped Emmerson, which is easier than stopping a Mal puppy on a mission!

Rebelde, Fierro and Bravo all got held for a minute by Carla – plus one human for the three of them! I tried calling the other two out from under the car, but they were too sleepy. They woke for a moment though, so they were at least aware that we had visitors and, I hope, got to benefit from a distance. Relaxing in the presence of visitors is a good exercise too.

Carla and Oso … and the bracelets Carla made for me! Thank you, Carla!! They are awesome!

Evening adventure

For our last 3-puppy adventure in town, I took Rebelde, Fierro and Bravo. Bravo and Rebelde got touched by two different strangers, and everyone saw kids running and screaming, a bike and lots of different adults strolling and sitting on benches in the twilight. I’ll count 1/3 of a human for each puppy who got petted.

Everyone also met a dog who was very gentle with the puppies. She showed up so fast that Fierro didn’t have time to bark. Only after greeting her did he remember his new approach to dogs and started barking. She stayed and wagged until he had calmed down again. Thank you very much! Dogs +1 for Fierro, Rebelde and Bravo!

Evening crate training

After spending half an hour in sleep-deprived toddler mode, chasing each other through the house and getting in all kinds of trouble (pulling on electrical cords, tugging on sandals, finding a domino piece under the couch, toppling over a bucket and climbing in it, getting themselves tangled up in a medieval torture device metal contraption for garrafónes, trying to climb on all the furniture, climbing on a metal shelf, pulling on my underwear, redecorating the floor with a sweater and pants and dragging a remote control out into the yard, they all fell asleep. I woke …

Oso

… and transferred him into the carrier. Timer’s set to 30 minutes. Let’s see if we manage this time!

… he DID it! Go Oso!! Archievement unlocked for both the boys! YAY! Just in time!

7 weeks, 4 days (May 16)

Names (again again)

Someone laughed at Fierro’s name tonight. I know fierro is also a slang word for dick, but I’ve never heard it used that way and both Carla and Axel thought the name was cool (I ran it by them to make sure.) They thought the dick connotation was super regional and I shouldn’t worry about it; if at all, it was the good kind of funny. Anyways, because he got laughed at (and not in a way that I like), I decided to change his for-the-moment name before he goes to Eduardo. I love my puppies; no making fun of them! For the time being, I’ll go back to Red when interacting with Spanish speakers.

Morning road trip

Right after an early breakfast, Game, the 5 puppies and I hit the road. Chai stayed behind to be looked after by Carla and Axel for a few days. We had two stops along the way and wanted to get the drive done before it got too hot!

Rebelde

Our first stop was in Vallejo, CDMX: Rebelde’s stop! She is going to stay with Irving’s sister for a few days while he is competing in Chiapas. Rebelde was happy to get out of the car and meet Dalay! +1 new human for Rebelde – and we’ve gotten lovely updates since then! I’ll share them under today’s heading because this was her last day with me, but some of them are from Friday and Saturday. Rebelde also met Dalay’s and Irving’s cousin and has been settling in beautifully! She is being showered with love and her extended new family is already very much in love with her:

Rebelde’s human and dog count for the week: 6 humans and almost 8 dogs. I didn’t meet the human goal this week because I didn’t have her with me all week – but we got an extra dog in. And it’s possible that someone else met Rebelde before the week ended; I’m only counting the humans I know about. In any case – she’s doing great and will have another new adventure soon when Irving gets back and she moves to his place!

Rebelde’s going away presents, apart from a blanket that smells of Game and her siblings, were the dinosaur toy and the furminator I’ve gotten the puppies used to.

Bravo

Our second stop was at Alan’s place where Bravo won’t only meet his future family – Alan’s dad and brother – but also see Kiba again! Bravo, of course, was confident as always! I’m counting +3 humans and +1 dog. He’ll even go to another new location and meet another new human on the weekend as he heads to “his” rancho outside Toluca and meets Alan’s niece!

Bravo’s human and dog count for the week: almost 4 dogs (his goal was 6) and 6 humans (his goal was, like everyone else’s, 7.) In Bravo’s case, I don’t worry about not meeting the goal: he’s been SO confident lately. It is also possible that he met an additional dog (Alan’s mom’s old little mix) and additional human or two (Alan’s mom and sister in law). I’m not counting them because I don’t know for sure. In that case, he’d have exceeded his human goal for the week and be only one dog short.

Bravo’s going away gift apart from a blanket smelling of Game and his siblings: the giraffe toy. He gets the biggest toy because he will live with kids, and they will need something for him to bite when playing! (Alan’s youngest niece is, I believe, 13 – old enough for a Malinois household. As long as they’re armed with a good dangly-legs giraffe toy, that is!)

Game, Red, Chispa and Oso

The four of us headed on home to the apartment. I had time to shower, eat a bite, walk Game around the block and feed everyone lunch before a quick apartment cleaning, and then Joan got here! The exciting part of the day was about to begin because Joan wass going to decide between Red and Oso, based on the temperament I’ve observed over the last few days, what Joan will observe over the next two days they spend adventuring and playing with the puppies and me and a structural evaluation via video call with Joan’s dogs’ rehab and conditioning expert!

We watched an old Chris Zink webinar to figure out how to stack puppies (and had a few good laughs), I probably talked Joan’s ears off telling them everything I could think of about the puppies that wasn’t on the blog yet, and then the boys had their stacking session on a puzzle mat on my fridge. The canine sports expert thought Oso had better structure for a long and injury-free agility career. This coincides with my answer to what puppy I would place in a sports home “right now” (the answer differs all the time.) The structural evaluation rests on Oso’s front angulation, which is similar to Game’s (we had her looked at too.) The boys did their stacking with the help of eating their very first hotdog, and they loved it!

My behavioral answer is that Red is currently barky and Oso is not. Red’s barkiness may not be fear related – he’ll often go up to another dog confidently while barking – but it’s just easier to have a sports dog who’s less barky; it allows you to focus on other behaviors rather than on being quiet. And just in case nerviness is part of what inspires the barking – that’s not what we want in a sports dog either.

Pictures above by Joan. It was nice to outsource photo documentation! Game and Chai say thank you for the gift toys (one of which is in the top right picture by Red’s sleepy feet!)

I know the other boy will have a more predictable routine with familiar routes and familiar people in it, so working through any barkiness that might crop up will be easier than it will be for an athlete who may travel to compete and meet different judges, stewards, sports people and dogs for the rest of his life.

The sports and rehab expert said Red would not be a bad choice either, but they liked Oso’s structure a bit better. So before making a decision, we were going to have puppy adventures so Joan could see the puppies out and about as well!

Evening adventure

We took the two boys to Fresa Parque and then to dinner on a patio. The staff there recognized them because they had been part of the socialization team and were happy to dote on the puppies. I don’t think anyone else held them, so I’m counting 1/3 of a human and 1/3 of a dog for both puppies. They saw dogs in the park and sniffed from a small distance and also next to us on the patio, but didn’t have direct contact with any. They were lazy at the park, but woke up at the patio: it was cooler now and they were ready for action! They got to explore around a stripe of bushes between the patio and the sidewalk, and also on the floor inside the place (where a little kid offered Red their teddy bear and he bit into the teddy bear … and the poor kid started crying. The teddy bear was unharmed, but the puppy hadn’t known that this was a “look, don’t touch” kind of deal. Neither had we humans. I’m sorry, little kid and teddy bear!

Both puppies had a little bit of kibble at the patio too. It was so much fun to see how fast they came running anytime I pup-pup-pup called them if they ventured too far! I reinforced their puppy recalls with serrano ham from my plate, and then they were off again to explore some more. They even found the restaurant’s water bowl and dove in for a drink!

Back home, everyone was wild and crazy and bitey. Joan got to see Chispa and her brothers running around being their crazy playful selves, and Game occasionally correcting them for nursing in a way that was painful.

7 weeks, 5 days (May 17)

Names (again again again)

I’ve changed Red’s name: he’s Mr. President. I unthinkingly called him this today and … it fit! It’s a fun name, and not one people will laugh at. I know Eduardo will give him his own name – he has one prepared that he’ll use if it fits! – but for now, Red is going to be Mr. President to Spanish speakers, and I’ll introduce him as Mr. President to Eduardo and Drago.

Morning adventure

We took all three puppies to Parque de las Arboledas before it got hot. There was A LOT of dog and people traffic! The remaining three rebeldes got touched by lots of different people and met different dogs. Mr. President kept being a little barky – but less so than earlier this week! His barkiness is going down!

He and Oso were the first to approach new people and dogs, and Chispa usually followed suit right away. No barking from her and Oso. I’m counting (and I’m making this up because I didn’t keep count) +3 dogs and +1 person per puppy.

A rare occasion where parts of ME are in the pictures (because Joan took them). No other dogs or people because I took another day off videoing and taking pictures, and Joan’s pictures focus on the puppies – the action was all around us though!

We made a shrine of everything the puppies found and took into their mouth during this morning’s outing. All cigarettes are curtesy of Oso. He’s a smoker, and he’s starting young! Not sure what doG to dedicate this shrine to – it’s up for grabs, all you doGs out there! Assembled with lots of love by Joan, Caden, Oso, Mr. President and Chispa:

Making art with your friends is good for “the soul.”

Evening adventure

After both watching them rest and playing some more with all three puppies, Joan made their decision: Oso will be their puppy!

For his solo evening adventure, Oso – whose name, as can be revealed now, is going to be Judge! – went to the vet’s. He got his third vet exam and a clean health certificate. He was confident and did well, and fell asleep on the table! Now that is one relaxed dog at the vet’s:

Purple Bear says, “Vets? Easy!”

We met two friends for dinner after the vet visit. One of them held Judge again and he got pet by both. So on this evening adventure, we got +2 humans for Judge! Again, there was a dog at the next table over as well. Judge did great and didn’t care: he slept through most of dinner in his carrier and then explored a little on the sidewalk and found the dog water bowl in the restaurant entry.

My food and Joan with Judge at Utopia! No, I don’t usually take pictures of my food. I also don’t usually eat food that looks fancy, so when I do … spinach lasagna!

Tomorrow, Judge will fly! His journey home is going to be the most exciting one since he’ll be on two plances (there’s a layover), three airports, touch two US states and meet Joan’s partner, all in one afternoon/evening!

7 weeks, 6 days (May 18)

The puppies played in the apartment in the morning, giving Judge a chance to get out his energy! Chispa was the last one standing after her brothers passed out:

Then we headed to the airport. After checking in, we gave Judge a chance to pee outside the airport – and he did so pretty much right away! He also explored, found another cigarette butt (oh boy, you really are starting young!), watched cars go by and then decided he was ready to rest – right in time for Joan to get in line for security. I waited until the two of them had made it to the other side of security before heading home.

Seeing Judge off after check-in at the airport!

My first update when Joan and Judge had reached the gate: one Very Good Puppy waiting to board! (He’s in the carrier I trained them with, has – like every puppy – a little blanket that smells of Game and his siblings, and one of the fancy puppy toys I got for the rebels.) From the looks of it, Judge approves of his travel arrangements!

A thought on airports past and present

Judge is the third puppy to leave, and the most difficult for me. On the way to the airport and when assisting Joan in checking in and anything else we were able to do pre-security, I was sad. Not about the puppy. I’m excited about the home Judge is going to. He’ll have a most excellent life. Not only that – he’ll meet several of my colleagues and students in person (he’s going to an FDSA hotspot) and he may show up in my online classes!

Being Joan and Judge’s airport person reminded me of the time I was someone’s virtual airport person when they picked up a puppy and went through their own puppy airport odyssee. They’re no longer in my life. I’d have been perfectly happy having stayed someone who, from a great distance, virtually joined their occasional dog adventure and vice versa in between talking life. As Judge leaves, I get to be sad that did not happen.

Here is Judge’s first friend in Joan’s house: Didi! The video below is from Sunday (May 19), but I’ll add it to Judge’s chapter on his going-home day here – the day he took off on his big adventure!

Judge’s human and dog count for the week: a little over 9 humans and a little over 9 dogs. Weekly goal more than met!

And here’s another update from Monday! The giant Lab puppy is only 16 weeks old. He’s a service dog puppy Joan and Terri are fostering for another week or so. Lucky Judge has got his very own puppy play friend right at home!

Husbandry and handling

After getting home from the airport, I did a round of handling with Chispa and Mr. President. They were being amazing, and for the first time, I clipped the nails on all 4 paws in a single session each. None of them complained even a little bit! Mr. President completely relaxed in my arms on his back, belly up and let me work through all his nails in one go! Superpuppy!

8 weeks (May 19)

Game, Mr. President, Chispa and I got up at 6 and were on the road to Naucalpan half an hour later!

Mr. President

Today was Mr. President’s big day: he went to live with his dad Drago and their human! Both he and Chispa got to meet their dad (who was very excited about the puppies and a bit much for them (the joyful-excited kind of much.) Chispa got held and met her brother’s human as well, counting +1 human and +1 dog for her today. Mr. President, for his part, did not only meet Drago and Eduardo, but also Eduardo’s dad. Two humans, one dog for him at 8 weeks old! AND a new environment: Eduardo’s dad’s car repair shop with tires and tools and all the sounds!

The picture on the right is an update I got a few hours after dropping off Mr. President. He’s already snuggling with his new human and fitting right in!

Mr. President’s dog and human count for the week: a little over 10 humans and a little over 13 dogs. Weekly goal more than met!

Chispa, Game and I carried on back to Teotihuacán for a few more days. Chai was VERY excited to have me back, and Chispa was VERY excited to see Chai! Thank you again, Carla and Axel, for taking care of my girl while I was gone!

Chai looks particularly good now: I used the undercoat rake I had asked Joan to bring me from the US. She’s been shedding, and I brushed out her “pants” with the new rake today!

Chispa

On the drive, we stopped for gas and Chispa got to explore a little around the highway rest stop. She saw a huge truck leave the gas station, several people walking in and out of the little convenience store, smelled gas and tentatively approached a free-roamer sleeping under a bush. The dog very gently curled their lips – almost inperceptibly. Chispa read them well and did not approach further, but went back to sniffing in the other direction. Love a socially savvy puppy!

She was a bit less confident by herself than she has been with her siblings, and seemed a little taken aback by the fact that Mr. President, who had only just been in the crate with her, was no longer there. I’m not counting the gas station dog for Chispa since there was no direct interaction, but I am proud of her for reading the canine stranger so well!

The most interesting thing so far this morning was Chai’s response after greeting Chispa. She kept going back to the car and putting her front feet up on the doors. This isn’t something she usually does, and there was no food inside that might have prompted her to mistake it for a car-shaped food toy. I’m pretty sure she was looking for the other puppies!

Game, for her part, seems perfectly happy to only have one puppy left. She played with Chai when Chai asked her to, I played a little with the two big dogs (before the heat got too much!), and now the three of them are resting contently in the shade.

Chispa’s human and dog count for the week: 7 humans and a little over 10 dogs. Human goal met, dog goal more than met!

Mops on a mission: an update on Caden’s don’t-eat-me protocol

I couldn’t post an update while in the city because I’m using diluted bleach there – not great for puppy mouths. But here’s Chispa today, wildly awake, when we got back to Teotihuacán! I’m using Roma with the Teotihuacán mop. It’s the miracle everything-cleaning-powder almost everyone in Mexico uses because it’s dirt cheap and works for everything from dishes to sidewalks to cars to laundry to watering plants after you’ve used it for something else. Dogs lick sidewalks that have been cleaned that way when they are thirsty and the sidewalks are wet. Birds drink it from potholes. So I don’t worry about puppies having Roma-water-mop fleece in their mouths as the agua del día.

Look at THAT difference! Chispa was the first one to be extremely bitey, and Mr. President caught up to her. The two of them were least interested in the mop and most interested in eating my feet. Only one puppy left to demonstrate how far we have come (when the right mop is near), but YAY!

The first time I come outside in this video is to demonstrate the mop protocol in action: moving around a space I share with a little shark and going about my day, having her sink her mouth full of kitchen knives into the mop rather than my feet and legs. The second time I come outside, it’s to turn off the camera.

Time to start training and fun stuff!

8 weeks is when I like getting puppies myself. If a puppy has been well socialized with their first human, socialization stays important, but can now become a little less of a priority than it was in the last few weeks: we get to do fun stuff now, like learning marker cues, how to follow a lure and toy play! When Chispa was awake again, we practiced some of these skills – I’ll share them in a separate post.

And in case you were wondering: Chispa isn’t staying – but since she’s still with me at 8 weeks old, of course we’ll have fun while she’s here! She’ll move to Jilantzingo on Tuesday.

Week 3 (April 8-14, 2024)

2 weeks, 1 day (April 8)

I woke up with Red snuggled up against me on my mattress. He must have climbed it during the night! Snuggly morning puppies in bed are a lovely surprise! I’m soaking up the snuggly while it lasts before they turn into little land sharks! (The reason they can end up in my bed is that I remove the barrier and push the bed up to the blanket fort entry at night. My bed is a mattress. Mattresses are climbable for at least one 2 week old Malinois!)

Social life

We started the day being snuffled by Chow Otto. Red was the first one and he got up close interest from Otto. Otto was bored after Red, so Blue, Purple and Black only got a more distance whiff of him and vice versa. Mix Chelsey took over after Otto and gave Green an up-close snuffle.

Left: car ride to our favorite park – and the last time in the wooden crate the puppies are outgrowing! Right: green is about to meet Chelsey.

If a helper dog only shows interest in the first puppy, I’ll make a note and pick someone else first the next time. Tomorrow, Black will go first. Who goes first matters because they’ll get the most attention; the order of the others is less important.

Human behavior and puppy dog eyes

Now that their eyes are open wide enough that observers can easily see a slit, the puppies have officially entered “cuteness” and “looks like a dog” mode. Today was the first time a random person in the street asked me to sell them one. They sounded like they would have impulse-bought this 3 weeks old puppy right then and there and looked quite disappointed when I said no, these puppies are too young – I am out here on an early-socialization mission. Funny what a difference tiny shiny eye slits make! I wonder if there will be more random folks like this person going forwards.

The senses

This morning, Purple encountered the cookie sheet with formula on it and started exploring it by the time Game had almost finished her post-breakfast licky snack. Everyone else slept through it. Green purposefully stumbled up to Game’s lunch cookie sheet and licked a little until Game had finished it off.

For dinner, Green walked over the cookie sheet and complained loudly and very vehemently about his wet paws. Out-ra-geous! Who dared put that slippery wet, nasty stuff in HIS blanket fort?! We could say that Green has mastered his first two new-surface challenges: water (well it wasn’t exactly water, but close enough) and metal! He didn’t lick formula today. Black licked drops that had spilled on Purple and then licked the corner of the cookie sheet after Game had finished. Everyone else was asleep when I put down the tray.

I stuck my finger into everyone’s mouth to give them the first of a 3-day round of 50mg/kg fenbendazole – a new flavor as well as a new handling experience. I treated them while they were sleeping and they only woke up halfway. I had suspected the dewormer would taste disgusting, but I tried a tiny little bit – it’s not approved for use in humans, but I figure a tiny amount of most things won’t kill me – and it’s actually flavorless. Since it doesn’t taste like anything to me – I just felt the texture – and dogs have less taste buds than humans, it is probably flavorless to them as well. Human fingers in little mouths are definitely a new tactile experience though.

Now that their eyes are really starting to open, the puppies are clearly showing more interest in the world! I have no idea how much they can actually see – if you’ve got a link to a study about the developmental stages of vision in puppies, I’d love a link! – but I’m guessing that at the very least, they can discern light and shadows and notice motion. They all tumbled over to the low barrier (which has replaced the tall barrier; I’ve taken out the tall one and moved the low one to where the tall one used to be) to look into the living room and sniff Chai through the barrier during the day. There was more walking in the blanket fort and Red and Purple nibbled on their siblings.

I might just take out the barrier altogether tomorrow. I don’t want Chai to go into the blanket fort, but I trust she will respect an invisible barrier by now. I’m curious to see if the puppies will move out of the fort if it’s easy to do so, how far they will go and whether they’ll find their way back without help!

Husbandry and handling

Everybody got the nails on their left front paw clipped with human clippers. They all did better than EVER before. No complaints AT ALL! I’m impressed. I didn’t manage to time the nail clipping right before a milk bar moment, but in any case – VERY happy with how chill they all were today! They definitely prefer clippers over the Dremel. I’m skipping the handling protocol today because they got clippered and dewormed.

I haven’t managed to have anyone sleep on my lap today. Every time I tried, it happened to be open milk bar time and the sleepy puppy I picked up woke up and proceeded to want to head to the bar (and I let them.) It’ll have to be later tonight or we’ll skip today.

Preparations

Chai and I went shopping today and got phone number tags for everyone. They’ll soon be ready to come adventuring, and when they are, I want strangers to be able to get them back to me in case they get lost.

I also got that carrier I’ve been talking about. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be walking rather than driving to the park! I won’t use the wooden crate with the towel anymore – it’s starting to come apart under the weight of the puppies, AND they are able to escape. I got an airline approved bag that should be big enough for an 8 week old puppy to fly, so in case one of the rebels goes abroad and I accompany them or they get picked up, they’ll have a familiar travel bag.1 For now, all five of them will fit. It’ll be cozy for five Mal puppies, but they’ll fit for the next few days!

2 weeks, 2 days (April 9)

This morning, Purple walked through the wet cookie sheet, but didn’t lick. He didn’t complain either though! 2-surface challenge – check for Purple: metal and “water”! Green found it when Game had already cleared it off and licked – there was probably still some flavor left on it. He then quickly proceeded to fall asleep with his face and front paws on the cookie sheet. Black came over to check it out too before I removed it.

Field trips

We were out for almost an hour – longer than I had planned – at the park with the puppies in their carrier where I stepped by the outdoors gym and on an errand to a papelería. I met an acquaintance at the park and their dog helped with today’s snuffles and then they also held Blue for a bit. Blue and Purple both got their sleep-on-my-lap experience at the park today. Everyone got snuffled up close, but I’ll start with Black again next time – she went first, but got the least amount of snuffling.

Left: Ready to go adventuring! Right: Piña and Vaquita – socializing at Fresa Parque.

None of the puppies peed or pooped in the carrier – but they all went pretty much immediately when we got home. I’m impressed. Is this a coincidence or are 16 day old puppies already able to control their bowel movements such as to not go where they sleep?

Newness at home

I removed the low barrier, and everyone ventured out into the living room. Chai snuffled them all several times, and they explored, found Game out in the living room and nursed there, slept there, walked on the slippery floor as well as the puzzle mats in the living room, some climbed over vacuum tube and some stepped on the metal barrier I had placed on the floor. Red was the most exploratory and ventured the futhest, almost all the way to the couch. I’m proud of how well Chai did with the puppies and how she’s respecting the now invisible barrier to the blanket fort!

Visitors

Pabla and JJ came over at night, and everyone got petted and got to sleep in both their arms for a while.

Getting snuggles from JJ and Pabla!

The senses

Green thoroughly investigated the cookie sheet after Game had almost finished her lunch snack. He walked over it a few times, but didn’t lick. Purple put a paw on it and then off again and fell back asleep.

Blue stepped on the cookie sheet for dinner while Game was finishing up and proceeded to be vocally outraged because she could smell milk but didn’t know how to consume it. She hasn’t yet figured out that her mouth works on the cookie sheet as well. After Game had polished the cookie sheet, everyone else woke up and proceeded to walk across it. Not everyone has licked food, but by now, everyone has mastered the metal surface challenge – some of them even multiple times and on multiple days!

2 weeks, 3 days (April 10)

Becoming social animals

Blue licked Green’s face today and was curious about Chai, approaching her twice – once in the morning and then again in the afternoon. The video is from this morning:

Blue also tried playing (at least it looked like playing; it’s hard to believe; they are still so tiny!) with Black: Blue put her front paws and mouth on Black, and Black reciprocated! That entire interaction lasted maybe 15 seconds before both fell over and forgot what they were doing – but it looked very much like the beginning of play!

While the Rebeldes are becoming more socially interactive, I needed a break: the puppies had two human visitors and met dogs yesterday, and I took today off.

Tomorrow, Alan is coming over – unfortunately without Kiba since she picked up a cough – and I may take the puppies to a no-kennel-cough park again. I’m lucky to know folks in all the parks in my area, so if there’s a brote of something, I’ll hear about it. Later this week, we’ll meet two friends again. The rhythm of socializing every second day feels easier to me than every day. Rather than one dog and one human a day, I’ll try and do two of each every second day – whenever it works out that way anyways.

Once we are out of the city next week or the week after, I’ll probably pick up the pace even more: I’ll come into the city two or three times a week and do a local social outing in town once or twice. This means that our city outings will be big ones: I’ll set up in a different park each time and stay for a while. Once the puppies can eat independently, this is going to be easy and fun. I might do a brief test run at Chapu or Ciudad Universitaria this weekend.

Exploratory behavior

Yesterday, Red was the most exploratory, venturing away from Game and checking out other parts of the living room. Today, it’s Green’s turn to be brave while Red is having a sleepy day!

Handling and husbandry

As of today, I’ve added a brush to the handling protocol. We now do: stroke – stroke – stroke, collar off, brush, paws, tail, ears, lips, collar on, stroke – stroke – stroke.

The puppy also got their third and (for now) last dose of Panacur delivered into their mouths while they were sleeping and the nails of their right front paw Dremeled. Now that I’ve Dremeled an entire loop around the dogs (all 4 paws), I’ll go back to only human clippers, which they all seem to prefer. That said, today was the best Dremeling session yet! I’m fascinated how fast counterconditioning (Dremel followed by milk bar) is working on puppies this young! Green and Purple struggled, but significantly less than in any of our previous session. Black only moved his paw a little bit. Blue and Red were second best – moving their paws a little more than Black, but less than Green and Purple. This counterconditioning speed is truly impressive – there’s no way it would be this fast in an adult dog.

What hasn’t been going as planned is Julie’s “relax to be let down” protocol. I played with it a little yesterday and today, and it became clear that puppies a little over two weeks old are either relaxed – or they are not. When they are not, they aren’t yet able to control their impulses and relax in order to archieve an outcome. I didn’t wait them out very long before ending the experiment. It feels like this is currently out of reach for them. I’ll make another attempt in a week or so!

Thoughts on Early Neurological Stimulation …

If I had been doing ENS, following the protocols floating around the Internet, I’d be stopping around now (at 3 weeks of age.) I was thinking about this today. I mentioned in one of Games post-ultrasound posts that I won’t be doing ENS on the puppies because it is not recommended for puppies who may have been stressed in utero, and I believe Mexico City to be an inherently stressful environment even for dogs like Game who do well in it. I made a mistake in this earlier post: it’s not recommended for young puppies who themselves are stressed (for example by cropping or docking.) In any case, the same conclusion holds: no ENS for my puppies, who I’ve been stressing via my early socialization program.

ENS is a strange idea, in a way. It has been popularized among dog breeders when we heard about the “Biosensor” program, a study or series of studies conducted on working dogs by the US military in the seventies. The US military did not publish their results, so the ENS program used by breeders today is half made up and half based on data derived from studies in other species (mostly rodents.) This article outlines the procedures and is one of the few sources to admit how little we actually know. Only last year (2023), a paper came out that reported a studie that was actually done on dogs – and this study found no benefits between ENS puppies and the control group who only received “general handling.” This study was done in a “commercial breeding kennel.”

In any case, looking at the kinds of things ENS asks you to do (hold puppies upside down; place them on a cool moist towel (temperature change); tickle their paws with a q-tip) … a lot of these things happen naturally. For example, from the very beginning, Game would, when cleaning the puppies butts or stimulating their digestive tracts, often turn them over, and once they could rob a little more, they would topple over and end up upside down themselves on a regular basis. Every time I lift them out of the blanket fort, there is a temperature change. And every time I handle their paws/toes/nails, they receive treatment akin to tickling their paws. Looking at it like this, ENS really is for puppies who grow up in a labratory-like environment without other kinds of stimulation – otherwise, most of this would happen organically.

… and early socialization

The reason I feel so comfortable with our early socialization aventures is that I’ve seen free-roaming dogs reproduce. These puppies are born out in the world and have contact with dirt and the occasional other dog from the very beginning. Disease is NOT their biggest enemy – it’s humans (being taken by humans or run over by cars once they can leave the nest.)

Puppies of free-roaming dogs will also learn to be away from their mother from day 1 because they aren’t necessarily born near the dogs’ homes, so the dogs will have to leave to find food. When we breed dogs in our houses, we serve every meal to the dog right next to the puppies – but that’s not how it works “in the real world.” One element of ENS is brief separation of the puppies from their mother. In a way, ENS artificially recreates what a free-roamer puppy naturally experiences.

I’d argue (and this is an opinion; I’m not a biologist) that a dog’s natural habitat is to be free-roaming. A Kulturfolger like urban pigeons, rats and cats. Their niche – the niche where most dogs worldwide live – is in proximity to humans, but not with them to the extent pet dogs often do in the Global North. While your life span will likely be shorter when roam freely and don’t get veterinary care, it is still your “natural” (rather than artificial pet dog) life span. Personally (again, this is an opinion based on who I am as a person and what I project on the non-human animals around me – we would need to ask the dogs to get closer to the truth, and nobody is able to do that), I would argue that an animal’s life span is not a measure of their life quality. I do not believe that animals are better off in zoos than in the wild, and I believe the average free-roaming dog has a higher life quality than the average pet dog. (If you are reading this, your dog is unlikely to be an average pet and probably has a very high quality of life.) Again – this is me just sharing my opinion. I acknowledge that the opposite is just as likely to be true – there is no factual basis for this opinion.

That said, I love what Shuli Branson said when I talked to her for a podcast interview this week: cats don’t like doors – but they will happily stay inside when the door is open. What a great metaphor for how we treat each other and the animals we share a life with: only when you’re free to leave can you choose to stay. (Someone said that; it’s a quote – but unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember who.) Just like I aim to give my dogs the greatest possible freedom while still keeping them relatively safe, I am preparing these puppies for a life that will, I hope, allow them many freedoms.

2 weeks, 4 days (April 11)

Visitors and field trips

Alan came to visit and snuggled and handled the puppies through the protocol (sans brushing and collar off.) After getting individual attention, all five of them got to hang out on the couch between us for a while – their first time on the couch!

Getting our ears massaged by Alan!

One of the puppies will go to Alan’s Dad. So far, Green is the frontrunner. He’s currently the biggest and darkest boy.

Unfortunately, Kiba couldn’t join us today because she’s recovering from a cough that’s going around our favorite park (the one you may know as Kiba’s Park from Chai’s recall posts). After Alan left, I gave the puppies a break and then headed to Toy Play Plaza. I haven’t seen any overlap between the dogs going to Toy Play Plaza and Kiba’s Park, so that’s where our 30-minute field trip led today. To get to Toy Play Plaza, we need to cross a Avenida San Antonio, a big, busy street. The puppies can’t hear yet, but I turned the mesh side of the carrier towards the street to give them a chance to make out the cars whizzing by and smell the traffic smells.

I sat on a bench at Toy Play Plaza and had everyone out for a minute or two. Three pups got snuffled with about an inch or two of distance by mix Valentina and two by her sister Barbacoa.

Everyone also got admired by two strangers, one of whom asked if they could have one! I’m pretty sure this person would have taken home an 18 days old puppy on impulse, just like the stranger the other day. Now that their eyes are open, they really do appeal to people!

Exploratory behavior aka the prison break

In a daring prison break, Green tunneled under the barrier only to fall asleep right before he could enjoy his freedom. He then woke up again, tunneled an inch or two further – and went back to sleep:

Becoming social animals

Once Green had completed the feat of escaping the blanket fort, he approached Chai:

It is fun to watch how different puppies show the most exploratory behavior on different days. Yesterday, it was Red. Today, it’s Green. By the time Alan came over later, Green had exhausted his energy and fell right asleep in Alan’s lap.

Black play-attacked Red and Blue big time tonight, and later play-postured and pawed at Chai on the other side of the barrier! Black’s walking also looks fantastic as of tonight – coordinated, comparatively fast and very little stumbling!

The senses

I’m giving the puppies a head start on their 3 daily opportunities to lick goat milk or formula off the cookie sheet before unleashing Game to quickly lick it clean. They are drawn to it and increasingly annoyed at the fact that eating doesn’t work by osmosis. The audacity! Today, we were complaining particularly angrily. Even the puppies who had figured out that licking is the way to go seem to have forgotten about that part and find it highly frustrating that paw pads don’t absorb milk.

Fun fact: even when everyone is making a complete mess and covered in food, Game cleans them up lickety split after. I haven’t had to clean a single puppy! Once Game is done with the cookie sheet, Chai will come in and pre-clean the floor before I mop it. Teamwork!

In other tactile news, as of today, I’ve added collar on and off and wiping the corners of their eyes to my handling protocol, and for the second day in a row, I use a human hair brush to gently “brush” the puppies. So far, only I have done these new elements; I gave Alan the old protocol today. I just got a soft brush though, so my next visitor will get to do some brushing too! My human hair brush has plastic “spikes” and I prefer handling it myself to ensure the pressure stays soft. Once they are a little bigger, I might introduce Chai’s metal spikey brush and Game’s Furminator as well. And the dog nail clippers instead of the human ones!

2 weeks, 5 days (April 12)

The senses

At noon, the gang (re)-discovered which way the food goes in! This is the most purpose-driven eating I’ve seen so far. They must have read somewhere that taking a bath in goat milk is good for one’s skin.

By the way, the dogs and I concur that goat milk tastes better than formula. I tried both, and while I don’t like the goat milk (it tastes very … goaty), it still beats the flavorless formula.

As of this morning, I also placed a small mirror in the blanket fort (you can see it in the video above; it’s attached to the barrier), and a concrete/rock thing I found. They didn’t show interest in the mirror – their vision may not be strong enough yet – but the rock got explored and climbed over.

The reason there’s a mirror is that I’ve seen older puppies and juvenile dogs show fear and suspicion when encountering their own image in a mirror. My hope is that introducing them to the concept of mirrors as soon as they can see, and then moving that mirror to different spots in their environment over the days and weeks, will set them up for success, or maybe only small moments of surprise, in terms of future mirror encounters. I might ask my future puppy homes to introduce their 4 or 5 months old puppies to a mirror and record their response for me. I’d love to see what it looks like and whether early mirror encounters will have made a difference!

Becoming social animals

Green and Purple played in the afternoon! It was VERY cute!

Field trips and social life

We spent about 30 minutes on a field trip walking to the place I buy Chai’s dehydrated liver trats from. Everyone got loved on by the lovely folks working there who welcomed a puppy break!

We then went to the park across the street to meet today’s canine helpers: Yorkie Peter, Chi Benji and mixy mix Mira. Except for Green, who only got one round, the puppies got snuffled by two of the helpers each. When we got to Green, only Mira was still interested in helping. Those two got their picture taken though:

Husbandry/handling

I clipped everyone’s claws on the left back paw, followed by the milk bar – counterconditioning for the win! They were a little more restless today than last time; I assume because they were hungry.

I also handled and gently held everyone (I define “holding” as purposefully letting them sleep or sit in my arms getting pets or relaxing for 5 minutes or more) at night. Tonight’s handling protocol involved the whole shabang: collar off – squeeze paws/toes – ears – tail – “clean” the corners of the eyes with a piece of paper towel, brush back, sides, head, legs, tail and chest and/or belly with our new soft brush – collar on.

2 weeks, 6 days (April 13)

Field trips and social life

We left for our field trip in the morning, but it was already too late for the heat to be bearable. The rebels were active in the cab, but by the time we got to our destination (after a pharmacy errand they came on), they were panting and then fell asleep: it was too hot to do more than that. I got everyone a little water, put cool water on the soles of their paws and a bottle of cool water in the carrier, but they just slept through the rest of the adventure.

A bottle of cool water and an open carrier – but everyone, including me, was still hot.

I held everyone for several minutes outside at Ciudad Universitaria, which was teeming with dogs and their humans, and placed them down just outside the carrier so they’d have a new surface (what would be grass if there was rain but is dusty dirt in the absence of it.) They slept through it all. Two dogs walked up and sniffed them from a few inches distance over the course of the time we were there, and lots of them were running and playing around us – but I doubt that the puppies had any idea what was going on. They were out!

Sleeping through today’s adventures – partly on a new surface.

I’m not counting today for dog socialization. This will likely be the first week we don’t meet our dog-interaction goal. We may still meet the human interaction goal: two friends are coming over tonight, which will make them humans #5 and 6 for the week. There’s still a seventh new human left on my tracker – we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The cab ride home from Ciudad Universitaria was better because we weren’t stuck in traffic – we moved pretty fast with all the windows down, which created a nice breeze. By the time we approached my place, the puppies just started to wake up again – that breeze certainly helped. By the time we were up at my apartment – which I had managed to keep several degrees cooler than the outside world – they were ready to rumble. Everyone peed as soon as I took them out of the carrier. Black admired herself in the mirror and then tried walking into the mirror. Some of them played for a few seconds. Then it was time for a meal (aka Game’s bar) followed by a siesta.

I feel like today’s outing probably didn’t benefit them in any way, except for the cab ride We went to a fairly loud place and on the way there, which came with being stuck in traffic, there was a lot of honking and motorcycle engines roaring. I don’t think the puppies can hear quite yet though; at least they didn’t respond to any of the noise or the noise of the construction site we got stuck next to in the cab a little later. There even were helicopter sounds really loud and close!

The puppies will turn 3 weeks tomorrow, which is about the time they start being able to hear. I wonder if hearing comes online all at once or gradually. Is it a singular neurological event, like a sudden on-switch? Or is it a physiological slow unsealing of the ears? I know the latter is part of it – their ears have been slowly unfolding over the last few weeks – but I’m not sure if it is the former as well. If it was only the latter, they must have heard at least muffled sounds today with the level of noise they were exposted to – in that case, they’d just have been too hot to care.2

Now that I’ve seen play behavior start, I’d LOVE to introduce them to a litter of the same age. Maybe I’ll look around on Facebook to see if I can hunt one down!

We were out for almost 1 and 45 minutes today3 – and up until now, the puppies haven’t even once done their business in the crate! Once again, they all went to pee as soon as I took them out at home. I’m impressed!

While two friends dropped by tonight, it ended up being a one-puppy-per-person kind of evening. We also got lazy and didn’t work them through the handling protocol, just hung out and made sure everyone got held by one new person. This may end up being the first week I don’t meet all the goals I set for the rebels … we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

More play behaviors!

Today is the first day I’ve seen object play in the puppies: we pawed and grabbed(ish) at the curtain blowing in the wind, and puppy-postured (“Hello! I’m a big strong powerful Malinois! Who are you?”) at the vacuum.

They are getting faster; they come over when I step into the blanket fort to explore my feet; they are more interested in engaging Chai and climbing over Game’s back … they are like perfect little toy dogs! I’m in love.

The senses

Scorching heat! Water in their mouth and on their toes. Potentially dirt under their paws and bodies (if they noticed.) Potentially lots of noisy stuff: helicopter, honking, motorcycle engines, dogs barking. Breathing in dust kicked up by playing dogs.

Before we headed out today, I spritzed everyone with the Frontline anti-parasite spray that’s safe to use in young puppies: the pet supply store that carries it restocked on it, and since I had more interactions in mind for today than actually happened, they got Frontlined. Just a little spritz because it smells bad – it smells like vet.

Meanderings on early socialization and environmental exposure

Heading out (and not getting the socializing experience I had been aiming for), I remembered a question Trish McMillan and Jessica Hekman posed in an old episode of the Functional Breeding podcast.4 They asked where all the nice pet dogs used to come from or will come from in the future. If I remember correctly, the conversation turned to the days in the (US/Canadian) past when people let their dogs roam and breed freely. Trish remembered dogs having less behavioral issues back in the day.

It’s hard to say if this feels as if it was the case simply because it has become fashionable to see a behaviorist while 50 years ago, this wasn’t something people commonly did. It could be like saying there are more gay people today than 50 years ago simply because today, more gay people are out, not because there actually are more – you just happen to know more. In the same way, it is possible that we are only now noticing the behavioral challenges dogs have always faced.

Or – and this is the tentative argument made on the podcast – there just used to be lovely, genetically sound mixes who are getting less and less common nowadays because of the US/Canadian spay-and-neuter movements and because letting dogs take themselves for unsupervised walks has fallen out of fashion.

Another argument that was not made on the podcast – I’m just throwing it out there as a thought; I do not know how much of an impact this difference actually has – is that I’m pretty sure “back in the day,” when the neighbor’s dog had puppies, the neighborhood kids would pick up these puppies, bring their friends over, carry the pups around the neighborhood … pretty much from the day they were born. The reason I suspect this was the case in the US and Canada, which the Functional Breeding podcast focuses on, is that I know this used to be the case in my mother’s hometown when I was growing up as well. It’s less common today, but since it is a tiny rural farming town, it’s probably still happening to some extent.

These puppies were not behütet in the same way today’s Puppy Culture/Avidog-bred dogs are. No one told these puppies that their socialization period only starts at 3 weeks of age. So maybe – just maybe – unstructured early socialization played a part in dogs being more socially savvy as well (if they actually were more socially savvy; I do not know if they were. People were certainly more tolearant of dogs behaving like dogs, and this in and of itself must be causing a bias in terms of what behaviors were versus are considered “normal” or acceptable.)

I don’t know where the “3 weeks” argument comes from. Everybody who is nerdy about dogs “knows” that this is when “the sensitive/critical – depending on who you ask – socialization period” starts … but why do we say that? What study is it based on? Do we assume this because when puppies turn 3 weeks old, they start being able to hear? Do we assume it based on something Scott and Fuller wrote in 1965, doing some study or other no one has ever replicated? Or do we actually KNOW that this IS when socialization becomes important? And if so, how do we know? Does it truly not matter at all whether puppies have contact with dogs and people before that age? (These are not rhethorical questions – I do not have an answer and I am genuinely curious. If you read this and know of a peer-reviewed study, please send it my way!)

The second issue people think about a lot when considering whether to introduce puppies to the world is physical health. Being vaccinated is great – no arguments there. I am all for Western medicine. My dogs have always been vaccinated and de-parasitized and all the shabang. That said, back in the day, in my mother’s hometown, this was not the rule. Most dogs were not vaccinated. Consequently, they didn’t pass maternal antibodies on to their puppies. These puppies didn’t get vaccinated either. Most of them still survived, and if one didn’t, it was more likely due to rough handling by a child or a car accident than due to a preventable viral disease. I’m sure these diseases happened as well – I just suspect outbreaks aren’t as common as people believe. I acknowledge that I may be wrong about this as well – I haven’t seen any numbers/statistics; this is just the subjective impression I have based on my childhood observations of the dogs in my mother’s hometown and my current observations of free-roaming dogs and their puppies in Guatemala and Mexico.

I know that my “early socialization and environmental exposure program” has shocked a few people. I know because they’ve told me, and I assume there are more folks out there who haven’t told me (thank you, since I didn’t ask for your advice.) Just based on having disapproval pointed out to me in my in person life, I assume there may be some folks reading this who also disapprove. I’ve already addressed my reasons, but I’d like to do so again before we enter “the official socialization period” starting tomorrow.

Maternal antibodies

Game is vaccinated, i.e. the puppies are being protected by maternal antibodies for their first few weeks of life. How long these antibodies last varies (based on the sources I’ve found online.) 6 weeks seems to be an estimation many veterinarians share, so that’s when I’ll first vaccinate the puppies. Maybe – probably! – there’ll be a week or two, or at least a day or two, where the puppies won’t be protected by maternal antibodies anymore and won’t be protected by their vaccine yet. I’m okay with this risk. I would do the same socialization program even if I raised puppies from an unvaccinated dog.

My dog trainer bias

As a dog trainer, I see behavioral issues in adult dogs all the time, and a lot of the time, these issues look like they might stem from a lack of socialization. I rarely see medical issues because I’m not a vet. I also see puppies grow up free-roaming and be fine (until they are old enough to get run over or stolen by a human. Litter sizes typically start shrinking once the puppies are between 8 and 12 weeks old. Puzzle is a textbook example of this.)

Due to my background, I’m biased in favor of behavioral soundness over physical health. If there is a window when the puppies are not protected against diseases, I assume it is relatively unlikely that they will pick up anything more serious than a cough they’ll quickly recover from. And even if one of them did pick up something more serious – the behavioral benefits would still outweigh the risk for me. Note what I said here: for me. Opinions vary, and that’s okay. That’s how it is supposed to be! We would never learn anything new as a species if our behavior didn’t vary from one individual to the next.

I work with students with all kinds of different points of view, and I LOVE supporting them in making the choices that are right for them, whatever these choices are. Their socialization choices don’t have to be mine – that’s between them and their veterinarian. I will only weigh in if I am directly asked what I would do, and I will stress that I am not a vet and can therefore only share an opinion, but not an answer based on medical expertise.

Maybe in their new homes, Game’s puppies will be kept out of risky situations until they have completed their puppy vaccination series. That’s just as fine as doing things my way. This is not what makes or breaks a good home for me. I’m just a passionate human with an opinion that is no more or less valid than the opposite opinion of someone else who doesn’t have a medical degree either. What I hope to achieve though is that Game’s puppies will already have SO many neutral and positive social experiences under their collar by the time they go to their new homes that it won’t matter if they don’t meet dogs or strangers for a few weeks.

Opinions …

One more thing on differing opinions (when it comes to dog socialization5): we know very little because there aren’t enough studies that have been done on dogs. I don’t feel strongly about my own way of doing things – but I do feel strongly about everyone getting to socialize puppies in whatever way feels right to them. That includes me – and it also includes you, no matter how you want to do things. I would fight for you getting to have your way just as much as I’d fight for having it my way myself.

Random tangential thought: I wonder if the crazy price tag on dogs is part of the reason puppy buyers are hesitant to socialize early. Are you more likely to take the health risk of early socialization and environmental exposure if you didn’t pay several thousand dollars for your new puppy? I’d be curious to know how this affects decision making in humans!

3 weeks (April 14)

Field trips

Social life

We went to Parque México and on a corner store errand this morning. Everyone got snuffled once. They all also got held and snuggled by Natalia for a few minutes, and Purple even got two turns!

Thank you for your assistance, Natalia and Bruna!

All in all, we were out for about 1 hour 45 minutes again. Leaving at 8AM and being back before 10 really is the latest possible time to avoid the scorching heat of the day!

One of the puppies peed in the carrier for the first time. They all peed as soon as they got out at home as well. This suggests to me that they tried to hold it, but one of them had to pee at some point during the outing and just couldn’t. Still – pretty neat!

First subway ride

We are city puppies, so we also went on our first subway ride tonight!

Two brief subway rides and traffic watching at dusk.

I took an Uber home from the station because the puppies and I were all hot. Our driver wanted to meet one – so Blue got held by an additional person today! I’ll have to start giving them their individual trackers to keep … ahm … track!

As of today, the rebels are rapidly growing their fan club: two strangers asked for my Instagram (which is aptly named “adogisabondbetweenstrangers”) because they want to see puppy photos and the Uber driver, Michel, offered to visit with their kids to help socialize. Many worthwhile things take a village. A village isn’t something you have – it’s something you make. Over and over again.

Life at home …

… is playing, moving, sleeping, eating and lots of being upside down!

As of today, everyone has learned to eat goat milk. I’ve started calling pup-pup-pup before putting down the tray: their first recall cue in the making.

For the most part, they are just being damn cute:

A sleepy puppy pile and perfect little paws!

The senses

I saw Black startle when I clapped my hands this morning! She also tried walking into the mirror again today and got upset when it didn’t work.

Puppy culture suggests introducing a new object to the puppies every day from 3 weeks onwards. I am planning on having them encounter new things out and about every day, but may leisurely introduce objects – mostly surfaces – at home as well. Today, I put a scale on the floor so they could practice walking on a glass surface. Green already walked back and forth over the glass surface and red investigated it by sniffing it without stepping on. Black walked across a little later – no one has been fazed by it so far.

I’ll have to get a dinosaur balloon from the vendors in the park sometime next week – they are pretty odd-looking and should make fun objects.

After seeing Black’s startle response to noise this morning, I just saw Blue have a response to noise this afternoon! (I dropped a book next to all of them to test if they could hear already. What book? The third CU book. We want to get startled by good books only.) Blue and Black were the only ones that startled. Either the others can’t hear yet or they didn’t care. In any case – exciting!! We’re starting to be able to HEAR! All the senses!

The puppies experienced the thick underground air of a city subway station; anyone who can hear heard trains arrive and take off and the sounds of the moving staircase and the crowd. Anyone who can’t hear would still have felt the pressure change/wind/suction feeling of the arriving and leaving train. They were curious, moving around in the carrier and trying to stick out their heads on the train. I’ll take them on at least one more subway ride – we’ll have to see if it happens when they still all fit into the carrier at the same time!

After the subway ride, everyone got about 30 seconds of being held outside the carrier as I sat on a staircase and we watched the cars whizzing by, lights turned on, as dusk turned to night.

We only left around 7PM, but it was still hot. Clearly, mornings are best for field trips these days. We’ll have a visitor tomorrow night and a field trip in the morning – this set-up should work best; we just have to get out the door in time.

Handling and husbandry

Only Red’s nails have grown enough for safe clipping (i.e. clipping a tiny little bit without hitting the quick.) As for everyone else’s claws, I just touched them with the nail clippers and gently pulled on them with the clippers. Purple protested the most (the most still being much less than when I first started clipping); everyone else was pretty chill. We followed it right up with a turn at the milk bar.

Everyone did well going through the handling protocol. Most of them half-dozed through it. Red complained softly for the first 30 seconds. Purple struggled against it. Purple is STRONG! He’s all muscle and is getting really good about trying to push himself out of human arms – it’s impressive! I might give him some extra handling next week – first an extra holding session; then an extra handing one to ease him into it.

Observations like this are most likely momentary: today, Purple is squiggly and fully awake. Tomorrow, someone else will be and Purple may be chill again. In any case, when someone stands out to me in a particular way, I’ll try to give them extra attention in the respective area just in case.

Last but not least: my color tracker obsession …

… which you may not care about if you’re reading this, but I’m keeping it here for my own nerdy records. I love manual notes that are more than just written, involve colors and have a clear purpose.

The only thing missing on the picture is Game’s Sunday dinner – chicken and tortillas deluxe.

The final tally: only Blue reached her new-human goal; the others are one human short – we’ll add that one to week 4! Everyone except for Green reached their new-dog goal. We’ll aim for an additional dog for Green this next week.

I’m impressed; week 3 is the first week I haven’t met all the lofty goals I set – and I almost did!

  1. It is significantly cheaper for a human to fly with a puppy in cabin than to ship the puppy internationally through an agency. I imagine if one of them moves abroad, this would be how they’d get to their new home. ↩︎
  2. Edited to add: I have since asked this question in the Functional Breeding Facebook group, and someone pointed me to this article. Quote: “The ears open at around day 12-14, and after that hearing quickly develops to adult levels by day 20 […].” This isn’t a study, but a summary. Two studies are cited at the bottom, but unfortunately, I currently don’t have the time to look at them, their sample sizes and research methods. Check yourself or take this information with a grain of salt! ↩︎
  3. I’m taking my pointers from Game when deciding how long an outing seems okay to me, and I make sure my Game-less puppy adventures are shorter than the time she leaves them alone. At night, she typically feeds them once between midnight and 2 in the morning, and then leaves them alone until sometime between 5 and 7AM. She’ll feed them more often during the day, but doesn’t hang out right next to them at all times anymore – she’ll enjoy wandering through the apartment, doing her things, or napping on the couch more and more in between interacting with the pups. They haven’t complained. If they call for her, she’ll be right there to check on them. ↩︎
  4. I’ve since found the episode. There is actually less talk about “where the pet dogs come from” than I remember, and the arguments I thought I remembered weren’t made in exactly this way. Here’s the podcast episode. ↩︎
  5. There are other things I feel VERY strongly about and where I don’t consider random opinions to be equally valid; mostly issues related to politics and justice. In contrast, nerding out about dogs is one of my sources of joy. How to train or socialize a dog is not a hill I am interested in dying on – in fact, it’s a reprieve from those hills. ↩︎

Days 56 & 57 – June 1-2, 2023: play, friends, foundation training and The Mall!

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Back to Chai’s diary!

Day 56 – June 1, 2023: toy play, social play and more time with our housemate-for-the-month

+ Marker cues for the win! I marker-cued (“Treats,” my scatter cue) Chai out of playing with a smaller puppy twice at the park today! I love how she is able to switch her attention between stimuli!

+ We took a tugging baseline video for Shade Whitesel‘s toy class that starts today. Check out Chai’s toy play diary for our baseline!

+ We worked on giving in to collar pressure for the first time (I haven’t put a collar on Chai at all so far, but will be working through the “invisible line” method for loose leash walking along with my Out and About students this term.) We had two sessions, and by the second one, she responded every time before I brought out a treat lure. That’s our cue to take things to a new environment! (Videos in the LLW leash pressure foundations post.)

Someone’s tired from all her leash pressure work! (Watch out, Chai! Is that a shark behind you?)

+ We social-played and practiced recalls at the park.

+ Chai spent some more time getting to know and snuggle-play with Zane.

+ Game realized she can stand on the window sill! I am going to have to tether her when I leave – I don’t want her to jump out one day. I trust her sense of balance but not her sense of self preservation. We’re on the 2nd floor and it’s JUST high enough that she might think she can make it and break a bunch of bones.

Nothing to see here! Just a Mal on a window sill!

+ Both dogs did a lovely job waiting for me outside the Santa Clara store while I got ice cream to go for dessert (or dinner. I can’t remember, but I think I shared with my friend rather than finishing it all myself! In any case, let’s pretend that’s what happened!)

Game is practicing her sit/stay; Chai is tethered.

In everybody pees news

When I was home and had the bathroom door open, Chai peed once in the shower and once in the living room. The bathroom-or-outdoors habit isn’t as strong as I’d like it to be yet … but we haven’t been here very long either.

Day 57, 2023 – June 2, 2023: Chai’s first mall adventure!

+ Chai went on a morning and evening walk together with Game and didn’t even need her big sister as a role-model to pee outside at night (all other pees happened in the shower today).

+ We worked on hand touches and leash pressure.

+ We played informally with toys on the couch.

All the toys!

Chai’s first time at an indoors mall

We went to a dog-friendly indoors mall where my adventure dogs walked among people and rode the glass elevator three times (Chai confidently rode the elevator with Game – her bad elevator feelings from the Coyoacán elevator have not generalized!) and joined me at the bank. Cha has not been to a mall before and was being a superstar! She is on the retractable leash (a long line would work just as well) to give her as much of a “freely exploring” experience as possible without getting kicked out by taking off the leash.

While leash walking is important, feeling confident and being able to show exploratory behavior in new kinds of spaces (large, busy, indoors) is even more important to me. It also gives me a better idea of who Chai is than a shorter leash would because it allows for more agency: does she need me as a crutch and can’t take her eyes off of me in order to not have to look at all the stimuli around us? Does she forget about my existance altogether and just try and go off on her own?

As you can see in this video, it’s neither one nor the other but the golden middle: Chai explored ahead of Game and me but checked in regularly before reaching the end of the line and waited for us to catch up in the end of this clip.

Left: beauty in strange places. Right: stopping for a snack on the way to the mall.

Chaiary, day 5: market day!

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Tuesdays are market days at Diagonal San Antonio! We used this opportunity to walk through as the vendors were just setting up shop in the morning.

A week later, the Tuesday after, we went back to this same market. You’ll see the remarkable difference in Chai’s confidence!

We also did – as we do most days – a little (or a lot of) shaping, drove a slightly longer (about 2 minutes while yesterday was about 1 minute) loop on an empty stomach (success! No throwing up or pooping!), spent some time in the car crate, and hung out at home with Game.

Crated and relaxed car puppy

Left: hard at work. Right: tongue-out Tuesday!

Chai week 1: training

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I wrote this post on Chai’s third day with me – April 9, 2023. I will keep updating it as I go. It is currently day 20 (April 26)and a lot has changed already! However, I’m publishing this post now because I only just got around to cleaning it up. More to come soon!

My approach to training with food with a dog who likes to eat

I try to train the puppy in front of me. That means I’ve done things a bit differently for every puppy I’ve raised for myself or for someone else. In Chai’s case, most food is for training (because training is fun and I want videos) or big scatters (the ritual I use to end sessions). Chai doesn’t get food outside unless necessary because I want her to really engage with the world and not be distracted from it.

I will use most food for training. Except from her single outing every day – usually the same park because we can walk there – we stay at our AirBnB. I’ve so far trained up all of her daily rations in marker cue discrimination and shaping stuff. She devours kibble, so that’s all she has seen so far in terms of treats (except for the hot dog I used to get her to eat her Bravecto).

Two food training projects for the puppy in front of me: Chai

For Chai, there are currently food training projects (there will be more as we get to know each other better and shift to different behaviors):

+ Stuff I want for my marker cue (and other skills) game that I’m planning to turn into some sort of class or workshop.

+ Shaping because I love teaching puppies about shaping and could do it all day long.

So far, I’ve used up all her food in that way every day. And here’s food for thought: in my experience, just not going above kibble value (if the puppy takes kibble to begin with) has a high chance of maintaining kibble as a treat the dog will take everywhere (that is everywhere they are able to eat – it’s an excellent gauge). In my case, this means … not exactly a closed economy (plenty in life is free), but it means everything is kibble, and everything is at least marker-cued. There are no table scraps, for example (they would make an open economy and devalue the kibble I want to use for training).

I will take a different approach with puppies who flat out refuse kibble. But Chai does not, so this is the route we are going.

My approach to making Chai permanent-home-able

All in all, these are the training projects I am focusing on to make Chai a dog who will be pleasant to live with for her future folks:

+ Being comfortable out and about in Mexico City.

+ Being comfortable with people coming into her space and visiting people in new spaces – I’m aiming for at least 2 visits a week (as soon as I test negative for Covid again) and at least one good out-and-about interaction a day on non-visit days. I’ll get strangers to play for the out and about interactions. Visits will be friends and strangers who follow my instructions about letting Chai take the lead and take the first step rather than reaching for her.

+ Maintaining her ability to stay home alone without whining (she stays home alone at least twice every day when I head out with Game. If I have a puppy, whenever possible, the puppy will get a separate walk. An exception would be if the puppy was extremely shy and needed an emotional support dog – this is not the case for Chai. Game gets her own walks too because she deserves them. I don’t want Chai to become dependent on Game – neither for staying home nor for going out.)

+ Maintaining her crate skills (the crate is in the car right now; I’ll be popping her in there for a bit every day.)

+ Car sickness: we’ll strart driving super short distances on an empty stomach and gradually extend the length of the drive, aiming for once a day.

Behaviors I am likely to get “for free” with this particular dog along the way

Things that will just happen along the way will be recall, leash walking and grooming. She’s not body sensitive, so I’ll likely get brushing and clipping toe nails for free by “just doing them.” Same with her harness/collar: put it on; no problem for her and no need for a slow introduction. While slow introductions and cooperative care are always worthwhile, I want to focus on other stuff with Chai and will safe her daily calories for these other training projects. Harness, leash, brush and toe nails will be announced rather than shaped. For example before I put on her harness, I will let her know what is about to happen by saying, “Harness!” Puppies pick up on this fast, which gives me an excellent way of gauging if she stays comfortable: if I say, “Harness” and she moves away, I know she’s having feelings. So far, this has not happened.

Outside of what I outlined above, we will just chill at home (if I can help it – training is fun!) I don’t want to turn her into an athlete (if someone wants to in the future, that option will always exist – she’s a Border Collie). I want to help her become a dog who is able to live in Mexico City, and with an “average” active family. This includes staying home alone and being ignored when I work or write rather than constant attention. A very easy solution to keep her from trying to get on the table is to reach for her head anytime she does: like most dogs, she finds this aversive. It’s what I consider a benign aversive. For example if I’m eating and she does this, I reach for her head about three times and she’ll lie down at my feet and stop trying to get food from the table, and it’s only day 3 as I’m writing this. She gets praise for this, but no food. Rather than consciously building a desired behavior here, I am making the undesired behavior disappear (yes, this is a euphemism for: I am punishing it with the consequence of reaching for her head and preventing intermittent reinforcement i.e. counter surfing). Intermittent reinforcement is relatively easy for me to avoid in this case because the kitchen in this AirBnB is a separate room and I shut the door when I go there, and I am the only person living here – so I control all the food on counters or tables and don’t leave it out. This is much, much harder to do if you have an open floor plan, cook more than I do or live with other people. But in Chai’s case, it should work out well. After two months of zero success at getting at food, she’ll be set off on the right trajectory and whoever adopts her can keep this approach or teach her a desired alternative behavior like hanging out on her bed when people eat.

That’s it for today! You”ll soon get real video and photo updates of what has happened between days 4 and 20 with Chai – I just have to find time to video edit. “Just.” I know, I know!

Chai day 2: testing out the puppy’s response to All The City Things

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The Coping Dog has been named Chai (thank you, Chris!). Apart from leaving her home alone on Game’s morning and evening walk, I also took Chai out to the park on day #2. I wanted to see where she was at. After all, this was a 3.5 months old Border Collie puppy who hasn’t left their house and yard in 1.5 months. I knew she knew how to stay home alone and how to be crated – but that was it. She had also never worn a leash/collar/harness (unless the breeder put one of the above on her as a baby puppy – I wouldn’t know). So I bought the first harness I could find in her size, put it on, carried her through the corridor of the apartment building (we don’t want any accidents on public floors!), and put her down in the street. The first clip in the video below starts right after the first time I put her down right outside the apartment building in Mexico City. The car washing/vacuuming place is right next door.

I would then pick her up, carry her towards the park (a couple minutes walking from my AirBnB, but Chai didn’t know how to walk in the street yet). Almost every time I put her down, I took a photo or a video. The video below is a chronological compilation of the stimuli we met and her response to them.

Apart from physically (!) stopping an incoming child from throwing themselves at her, I did not intervene. I just observed (and recorded for you all). I wanted to gather information before approaching our remedial socialization in a more structured manner. So if people wanted to touch her – touch her they could. (Not something I’d usually permit.)

After watching the video above and before you keep reading, think about what this video, in combination with what I have told you about Chai’s past and breed, tells you about her. What kind of dog is she? I’ll share my thoughts below – but think about it yourself before reading them! Do you agree with my assessment? Disagree? See additional things I don’t see? Don’t see some of the things I see? Let me know in the comments!
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Ready? My thoughts are below.

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Chai is remarkably curious and resilient. Even though she missed a large chunk of her puppy socialization period (and was NOT born in Mexico City – she is not a BIG CITY puppy!), over and over again, curiosity wins over insecurity. I see lots of exploratory behavior. She crouches down quite a bit as well, and we see tucked tails, yes. But she just keeps bouncing back to being curious again – as curious as one can be when suddenly finding oneself in one of the world’s largest cities! The noises don’t bother her. She is curious about dogs and a little shy around people, which, as long as no one tries to touch her, shows up as ignoring rather than approaching them (live and let live). She also isn’t bothered at all by the harness I just slapped on her right before carrying her out the door and by the 5-meter line she is dragging and that keeps touching her body.

My conclusion is that Chai is going to grow up to be a fine city dog. I see no Border Collie weirdness despite the fact that this would be perfectly understandable even in a Border Collie puppy who DID get all the socialization opportunities in all the right moments. As far as I can tell, Chai is a remarkably stable animal who, if unsure of something, sits and watches rather than running away. And when she is not scared? Then she’ll approach and explore! She may have taken a break from the world for a month and a half at her previous owner’s house – but she’s back at it now and I’ve got a feeling she’ll be quick to catch up and no worse for it. I am impressed, and suspect that this little boucy one is going to make someone very happy!

Thoughts on puppies (especially this one), outings and food

I was not planning on using food in this outing unless I needed her to come back to me (because she’d otherwise try and cross a street in front of a car, for example). In this situation, I’d squat down, tongue click and offer a piece of kibble for returning (which she’d take and devour). We probably ate around 10 during a 25 minute outing. (Those “about to go into the street” or “about to trip someone with the long line” or “reached the end of my line – what do I do?” moments). This is important to me because I do not want her to learn and check in with me nonstop – I really want her to see all that is out there and process it without being distracted by food. She’s a Border Collie – engagement will not be an issue for her. Environmental sensitivity might – so I am keeping the food distractions to a minimum and plan on doing so again tomorrow.

I’ll leave you with a couple pictures I took along the way as well. Same outing:

Left: watching park life. Middle: watching kids playing soccer. Right: tired after the outing!

PS: Chai is a foster. If you’re looking for a young Border Collie, keep an eye on her posts!

The Puzzle Week, Part 23: Dog/Human Socialization

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Due to their home and the possibility to go out into the alleyway leading past their house and interact with the passers-by, Puzzle and her siblings already got a good deal of default human socialization. Our neighborhood has lots of kids who tend to play soccer and ride their bikes or simply run around in the alleyway (there are no cars, which makes it a safe place to play and hang out). Kids, of course, love puppies, so the puppies got lots of kid time from the time they were old/brave enough to follow their mom out into the alley. In addition, the family that had the litter has a kid themselves – around 7 years old – so the puppies had contact with a child even before they left the nest.

Crowded spaces

The socialization experiences I added on top of this were more urban: I took Puzzle to the most touristy places of Guanajuato, to the busiest open-air taco stands, and walked her around cars and other traffic and city noises – a level of business and noise that is absent in our neighborhood. You’ve already seen Puzzle around people in this leash walking post. Here’s another example from a different plaza I used to take Puzzle to:

Plaza Baratillo

A car-free plaza I used to take Puzzle for off-leash exploration and people-watching.

La Universidad de Guanajuato

People-and-traffic-watching from the stairs of Guanajuato’s university.

These are just some examples of the crowded-place excursions Puzzle and I took.

Inside places

We also entered little supermarkets, bakeries and pharmacies together to help Puzzle adjust to different inside spaces. You can see two example pictures in this post.

Open urban spaces

Apart from crowded outdoors areas and small businesses, we also went to large, open urban spaces: another type of environment that is missing in our pedestrian, narrow-allied neighborhood, but may be part of her future life, no matter whether she ends up with a free-roaming life or a pet life.

This first video is outside of the litter’s home range, but a fairly quiet place. While there isn’t a lot going on, this place is wide and open, which makes it very different from Puzzle’s alley and most environments of our town. To get there, we have to walk along a traffickey street, which also adds a new experience. Seeing and getting used to people in different contexts and environments is important!

Cerro del cuarto

La Alhóndiga

Meeting a free-roamer at the Alhóndiga.

Watching the world go by at the Alhóndiga.

The video below shows some loose leash walking practice at a busier part of the same plaza the pictures above were taken. You’ll see me handling the leash on my middle finger in this video. This, too, works – experiment, and find out which finger loop works best for you and your puppy!

The video below shows more leash walking around the Alhóndiga, around running kids. Included here for your amusement is me yelling at a guy who wants to touch Game. Game, you see, has been instructed to stay with my cellphone on its tripod and make sure no one steals it while I am videoing and focusing on Puzzle. Yes, I’m not being friendly to that guy. In my defense, I doubt he wants to find out what happens if a (generally very friendly and social) Malinois in working mode believes you are about to take my tripod. He heeded my advice, and Game held her stay. Good girl!

My next post is going to be a bit of a mixture of stuff – cute, funny, or useful clips/pictures that didn’t quite fit under any of the headings of the Puzzle series. Stay tuned! 2 more Puzzle posts to come … unless I think of something else! I feel like Sheherazade. I keep writing and writing, putting off the last post in the Puzzle series, and defying George Harrison.

The Puzzle Week – Part 20: The not-so-blank slate, and Puzzle’s Socialization Plan

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The (not so) blank slate: what the puppy brings to the table

The laws of learning apply to all puppies equally. Also, every puppy is different. Both of these things are true: sadly, things are rarely as black and white as we control-loving dog trainers would like them to be.

I was pretty certain my neighbors hadn’t done strategic socialization before the puppies left their nest. However, they likely grew up in a family environment, around young children, cats, ducks, and their dogs (apart from the dam, they have a small male that looks like a Miniature Schnauzer/Chihuahua mix). That’s a good foundation!

As soon as they were ready to explore, on their own time, they started venturing out into the alley with their mother, a little bit braver and further every day. This is one aspect of growing up free-roaming I love: it’s up to the puppies when they are ready to leave the nest, and how far they are willing to go. Their humans just let them be.

Out in the alley, they would meet passers-by and the occasional dog or neighborhood cat. They were also always able to retreat behind the safety of their gate, and had a mom who’d defend them fiercely against passing strange dogs (but not against known neighborhood dogs) until they were between 6 and 7 weeks old, when she intervened to a lesser and lesser degree.

There were five puppies, and this is how I see their baseline temperaments on a scale. Note that my scale only goes from the shiest to the most curious puppy in that litter. It is not a scale of all puppies, or of puppies in general.

Puzzle is a 3 on her litter scale that goes from 1 (most fearful puppy in the litter) to 4 (most confident puppy in the litter). The scale only reflects this particular litter of five puppies.

The parents’ temperament and stress levels

We also know a little bit about the parents’ temperaments: the mother is neutral/friendly towards all people outside the home. She’ll bark briefly when someone enters her yard. She is neutral/friendly towards known dogs, and slightly suspicious of unknown ones. The father (assuming he is who I believe he is) is confident and mellow around all dogs and all people.

Genetically, this is a nice combination for a free-roamer or a pet dog: mellow and neutral, leaning towards confidence from the father’s side; no exuberance or red flag behaviors in the parents.

I don’t think either one of the parents has a particularly stressful life. They have lots of freedom, plenty of food, and a routine that rarely changes. This should result in a good in-utero experience for the litter. (Mothers who are stressed during the gestation period are more likely to produce pups who are prone to depression, anxiety, and social deficits. This is known to be true for rodents1,2,3 and assumed to also be relevant for other mammalian species such as humans and dogs.)

Two sets of experiences for Puzzle

I wanted Puzzle to have two sets of experiences: one set would prepare her for a potential pet dog life, and the other one would allow her to thrive as a free-roamer and scavenger. The second set was taken care of by the environment she lived in and the freedom she had. I focused on the first set. I wanted her to experience living inside a house, being left alone, being crated, mat work, walking on a leash, being in busy places with lots of people, being in stores, being handled and carried, being dog-neutral and dog-confident as well as people-neutral and people-confident, starting housetraining, getting used to traffic noises and other city sounds, being inside moving vehicles.

Not all of these experiences fall under the category of socialization – some of them are more general pet puppy skills. I also did not get through all of them while I had access to Puzzle. However, I think we did pretty well, given the fact that we only had a few weeks together. The aspects I’m going to focus on in my next two posts are socialization to dogs, and socialization to busy urban spaces/feeling neutral and confident around strange people.

Sources

(1) Weinstock, Marta (2016). Prenatal stressors in rodents: Effects on behavior. Neurobiology of Stress, S2352289516300133–. doi:10.1016/j.ynstr.2016.08.004

(2) Cabrera, R.J.; Rodríguez-Echandía, E.L.; Jatuff, A.S.G.; Fóscolo, M. (1999). Effects of prenatal exposure to a mild chronic variable stress on body weight, preweaning mortality and rat behavior. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, 32(10), 1229–1237. doi:10.1590/s0100-879×1999001000009

(3) Soares-Cunha, Carina; Coimbra, Bárbara; Borges, Sónia; Domingues, Ana Verónica; Silva, Deolinda; Sousa, Nuno; Rodrigues, Ana João (2018). Mild Prenatal Stress Causes Emotional and Brain Structural Modifications in Rats of Both Sexes. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 129–. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00129

The Puzzle Week – Part 19: Socialization Science, and a practical Approach

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I’ve written about socialization before, but it’s been a while: I haven’t raised a puppy since Game was little. And she’s turning 5 this year! It’s hard to believe how time flies.

I’m not going back to see what I wrote when I raised Phoebe, Hadley, Grit, and Game. I’m sure my opinion about socialization has changed since then – it’s constantly evolving as I/we dog trainers learn new things.

The sensitive socialization period

I’ll define socialization as introducing a puppy to the stimuli they will encounter in their adult life. Ideally, this introduction will happen during their sensitive socialization period. It is currently believed that the sensitive period lasts from 4 weeks (the age when puppies first leave their nests; Scott & Fuller1) to approximately 3 months. The most important part of the socialization period, says Jessica Hekman2, happens before the age of 8 weeks. During the socialization period, the puppy’s brain learns what stimuli are stressors, how much stress hormones should be released in response to these stimuli, and how long the stress response should last.

While dogs can still learn to tolerate or even like new things later in life, one of the reasons the socialization period is so important is that puppies are much better at generalizing at this age: meet one or two friendly small dogs? Deduct that all small dogs are friendly! Meet one dark-faced, pointy-eared dog – assume that all pointy-eared, dark-faced dogs are friendly. If they met the same kinds of dogs for the first time later in life, they might, in contrast, learn that this particular dark-faced, pointy-eared dog is friendly, but all other dark-faced, pointy-eared dogs are potentially still evil spawns.

I love Jessica Hekman’s image for the socialization period being the time when the on-switch (what turns the stress response on?), volume setting (how intense is the stress response going to be – i.e. what amount of stress hormones will be released?) and off-switch (when should the stress response end/how quickly should the dog recover from the experience) are being set.1

Interestingly, at a very early age – the so-called stress hyper-responsive period – , animals don’t show a stress response at all. Their brains do not yet make stress hormones in response to scary stimuli! That’s another reason early socialization is crucial: puppies show no fear response to scary stimuli before 5-7 weeks of age. Therefore, a puppy that just left the nest around 4 weeks of age is MUCH more likely to form positive rather than negative associations to the people, dogs, and objects they encounter.1 Once the puppy is 7 weeks old, making positive associations to new stimuli becomes significantly harder: suddenly, cortisol is part of the picture!

Genetics

When the fear response first appears varies between breeds. For example, German Shepherds start experiencing fear around 5 weeks of age. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels only start experiencing fear around 7 weeks of age.3 Cavaliers, then, have 2 weeks more time to learn that the things, people, and animals in their environment are perfectly safe – which may be part of the reason Cavaliers tend to grow up to be open and curious towards new people, dogs, and objects, whereas German Shepherds are, generally speaking, more reserved. A lot can be learned in 2 additional weeks of fearlessness! This shows us that genetics are part of the equation, too. The puppy you get at 8 weeks is not a blank slate – it never was a blank slate to begin with, not even in utero.

My approach

Let’s veer away from the science for now, and look at socialization in practice. The trainer I am today approaches socialization pretty relaxedly. In contrast, the trainer I used to be recommended clients with new puppies go through a list based on Ian Dunbar’s recommendations:4 X number of new people feeding their puppy treats every week, X number of weekly new dog encounters, etc. I even had a handout my clients could check boxes off on, based on Ian Dunbar’ socialization list5. Dunbar recommends puppies meet 100 new people in 4 weeks. I lowered the number because I didn’t want to overwhelm my clients before they even got started, but it must still have been stressful for them to see all the experiences they were supposed to provide for their puppies.

High-confidence puppies

Now, I just play it by ear. An open, outgoing puppy (like Game was) – I’ll just hang out around stimulating situations with them, at a distance they are able to contain their excitement. I’ll let them watch. I’ll play a little if they are ready. I’ll let them watch some more. With a socially confident puppy, I’ll focus on relaxation and engagement with me in the presence of distractions rather than actively having them meet stimuli they are already eager to approach.

Fearful puppies

With a fearful puppy, on the other hand, I want to do more than just generate neutral experiences. I want them to have distinctly positive experiences with the people, dogs or objects they are unsure of. To the best of my abilities, I’ll curate these encounters to build a library of positive experiences in the puppy’s brain.

Shy and “dominant” puppies (don’t lynch me for using the D-word, folks)

With an overly (for lack of a better word) dog-dominant puppy, like Grit was, I’ll try and arrange playdates with dogs who will – gently, but firmly – put them in their place if they cross certain boundaries. Lukas Pratschker’s Malinois was a great help with this when Grit was a puppy. My Greyhound Fanta knew just when to intervene, too.

With a dog-shy puppy, I’ll do the exact opposite, and introduce them to the calmest, friendliest dogs available to me. Again, Fanta was the perfect fit. For play dates, I might stick to puppies who are smaller and younger than my own puppy in order to give them a bit of an advantage and up their relative confidence.

With a people-shy puppy, I’ll work on growing their circle of human friends, and at the same time never force an interaction (this is something I learned over the last few years: by the time Grit was a small puppy, I still used to force things). Today, I firmly believe that whether to interact or not should be the shy puppy’s choice. My role as their handler is to make it as likely as possible that they will choose to approach voluntarily. At the same time, whether working with people or dogs, I’ll make sure the puppy has a safe place to retreat to (such as a crate, my body to hide behind, or my arms – they can always ask to be picked up).

So far, so good – that’s my art and science of puppy socialization in a nutshell. In the next post, we’ll look at what I did with one individual – puppy Puzzle – in practice!

Sources:

(1) Jessica Hekman – The Biology of Socalization (Webinar at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, January 27, 2022)

(2) Scott, John Paul and John L. Fuller. Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

(3) Morrow et. al. “Breed-Dependent Differences in the Onset of Fear-Related Avoidance Behavior in Puppies.” Journal of Veterinary Behavior Clinical Applications and Research 10(4), March 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.jveb.2015.03.002. (Thank you for poointing out this study, Jessica!)

(4) Dunbar, Ian. AFTER You Get Your Puppy. Berkeley: James & Kenneth Publishers, 2001.

(5) Dunbar, Ian. Socialization Log. (PDF)