August 30, 2010
Confession time… I’m waaaaaay behind in getting a blog done, and now I have a dilemma – there have been so many things happen that I’ve wanted to blog about, like the Humane Society of Washington County donation jar getting stolen from the table at Martinsburg Bike Night, and the subsequent exciting chase, capture of one suspect, and ultimate recovery of the jar with over $250 in it. (It was the father of the two juveniles who actually went out and found the jar!).
 Humane Society of Washington County booth at Martinsburg Bike Night Or my observations from the Humane Society vaccination clinic and flea-less market that drew a long line of dogs and their owners for rabies shots.
 Long line for rabies shots at the Humane Society vaccination clinic And then my good friend Don Hanson and his Greenacres Kennels in Bangor, Maine issued a Position Statement on “Dominance” and I realized I need to to do something similar… but that will have to wait a bit.
But of course, the Behavior Modification Academy wins, hands down, for training and behavior appeal and photo opportunities.
We offer several academies each year; usually three Level 1 Basic Training and Behavior, two or three Level 2 Behavior Modification, one Level 2 Instructor’s Course, and one Level 3 Advanced Behavior Study and Training (the first one of these is next month!). The groups are small – we accept a maximum of 8 in Level 1, 6 in Level 2, and 8 in Level 3. Occasionally we offer a Multi-Species Course. We had to cancel the Multi-Species this year and Sturgis the pig was most disappointed – he was hoping to be someone’s subject animal.
BTW – we have one opening for this November’s Level 1 Academy, and the 2011 schedule is up, so if you’re planning ahead, take a look and get your registration and deposit in!
Level 1 uses shelter dogs, but for the BMod Academy, students (we call them Interns) are encouraged to bring their own dogs to work with. Behavior modification doesn’t usually get done in one week, and if they bring their own dogs they can continue to work with them at home. For various reasons we ended up working with two shelter dogs and one Miller dog for this course, with only three Interns bringing dogs. Our players were:
Simone de Lima from Brazil, and Bonnie Miller.
 Simone and Bonnie. Love the T-shirt! Simone flew in from Brazil for the course, so couldn’t easily bring a dog with her. Bonnie, our Scorgidoodle, has been sensitive about having her nails trimmed since we adopted her at age 7 months, so I seized this opportunity to have someone work with her. I had done some counter conditioning work and she’s better than she was, but she could do better. (I could do better!)
Hugo Gasc from New York, and Jezebel:
 The beautiful Jezebel Jezebel is perhaps a Catahoula/Shepherd mix – very high energy, adolescent, surrendered by her owners to the shelter because they didn’t have enough time for her. She failed her assessment for resource guarding the week before the academy – she growled and snapped at the Assess-A-Hand – intense enough to make her ineligible for adoption. We were hoping to help her enough that she will be able to go up for adoption.
Petra Manis from New York, and Dakota:
 Sweet Dakota Some 7-8 years old, Dakota is a mature, sweet shelter dog (supposedly Pekingese/Shih-Tzu) who did some resource guarding during his assessment – not enough that he failed, but enough that the shelter thought it would be useful for us to work with him. Dakota growled at the Assess-A-Hand during his shelter assessment but did not snap. We all loved his underbite!
 They look like wax Halloween teeth! Marci Haw from Indiana, and Pippy Longstocking:
 Pippi the Rescue Rat Terrier - will be looking for her forever home Pippy is a rescue Rat Terrier that Marci brought with her. She expected to work on mild resource guarding, but found that Pippy has a high level of reactivity to the environment and sudden environmental change, so she worked on that instead.
Cindy Mauro, CPDT-KA from New Jersey, and her Pomeranian, Wiley.
 Wiley in a contemplative moment. Did you know Pomeranians used to pull sleds and herd reindeer? Wiley was a foster dog, and a difficult one at that. He came from an abusive home, with a broken front leg that had to be plated. When Cindy got him, any restraint at all sent Wiley into a ferocious frenzy. She didn’t even like him much – at first – but then ended up adopting him, and now calls him her heart dog. She wants to be able to trim his nails and he’s still very sensitive to touch and restraint, so she worked on that all week.
Our sixth student prefers not to be identified:
 Our mystery guest Students pair up each day with a different person so they have an observer and coach as they work with their dogs. By switching pairs each day they get to see the modification protocols as they are implemented for all the dogs throughout the week, so it broadens their experience here.
We also video the work sessions and review those during the discussion sessions, when the dogs are taking a break. Other discussion topics include the mechanics of doing behavior consults (my place or yours?), discussion of cases presented by the students, a review of learning theory, and mock client consultations.
By the end of the week, Wiley was enthusiastically offering his paw for holding and touching, tolerating pressure for several seconds, and accepting the presence of the clippers being opened and closed near his paw. Cindy used counter conditioning and desensitization to accomplish this, first touching his leg and feeding chicken, and very gradually moving down his leg to his paw. She deliberately started with his left front paw, since his right front leg was the injured one, and he’s even more sensitive, understandably, about that one.
 Don't touch me there!  Chicken? Did someone say chicken?  We love clippers - clippers make chicken happen! Marci worked hard on a Reactive Rover counter conditioning program with Pippy and had great success. From near-tears on Monday to a big grin on Saturday, Marci helped Pippy learn to cope with new stimuli and sudden environmental change. We found, happily, that while Pippy is quite aroused by new stimuli, she does habituate reasonably well, so by the end of the week she was handling the hotel well, and doing beautifully in her work sessions, with Marci carefully keeping her sub-threshold almost all the time.
 Bonnie in the background as neutral dog - Pippi loves chicken too! Petra and Dakota were starts with their efforts to counter condition the little dog’s moderate resource guarding. At first, Dakota was either too stressed or too distracted to even be interested in his cheese-stuffed cow hoof, and Petra was a little dubious that he even had a guarding problem. He did get more interested in his hoof as the week went on, and as Petra learned to stuff it with Vienna Sausage, chicken, meatballs, and freeze-dried liver. Over the week Petra did repeated pass-bys, then approaches, then actual interactions with Dakota’s guardable object, dropping chicken with each approach to convince him that someone approaching means good stuff! On graduation day, when Petra approached Dakota while he emptied his hoof he happily looked up at her and wagged his tail as she snatched the hoof away – and then dropped chicken for him.
 I could guard if I wanted to. Really. Hugo and Jezebel followed a plan similar to Dakota’s, but had to move with more caution. Jezebel gave some low-level warnings from time to time in the form of subtle freezes, so there was no question in Hugo’s mind that she would guard. He carefully stayed sub-threshold all week as he slowly increased the intensity of his approach, and on Saturday he, too, could successfully approach Jezebel, have her happily look up at him as he removed the hoof and then fed chicken. I will be re-assessing Jezebel tomorrow. Cross your fingers and whisper to the gods…
 Hugo doesn't need convincing Simone was working with a Dremel grinder with Bonnie rather than a clipper. Bonnie’s dense black nails are hard to cut and you can’t see the quick (a big part of the reason for her discomfort with clipping) so I had switched to a Dremel some time ago. Simone’s program for Bonnie was similar to Cindy’s with Wiley – slow counter conditioning to the touch and handling necessary for trimming, and gradual introduction to the trimming tool. I promised Simone I would continue with her excellent work. The next time she visits us from Brazil, Bonnie’s nails will be happily short.
 Simone taking notes on her most recent work session with the lovely Bonnie Perhaps the biggest lesson our Intern trainers learned this week was the importance of going slowly. As my friend and fellow trainer, Jolanta Benal says, “If you think you’re going too slow, slow down.” And the paradox to that is that when you go slowly, you actually make progress much more quickly – because you’re not going over threshold and sensitizing rather than desensitizing the dog to the stimulus in question.
 Pooh says, "If you think you're going too slow... slow down!" As for me, as much as I know – as I grok that counter conditioning and desensitization (CC&D) are powerful behavior modification tools that simply work when done well, it still thrills me to the bone every time I see dogs and their humans happily CC&D-ing their way to behavior success.
Great job, Interns – congratulations!
 L. to R. - Petra and Dakota, Hugo and Petra's Archie (Jezebel didn't want to do a group shot), Simone and Bonnie, me, Cindy and Wylie, Marci wihtout Pippi, and our mystery guest. Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
August 13, 2010
One of the things I do in my “spare time” is to write short articles about Pet Law for Examiner.com. From time to time I submit Legal Briefs for which I mine the Internet for reports of animal abuse and cruelty cases and present a short synopsis of some of them. While doing this recently I ran across two articles that stuck me as particularly noteworthy.
Marinated Cat
The first one was just bizarre. Gary Korkuc of Cheektowaga, New York (near Buffalo) had adopted a cat from a local shelter. Sunday night, Buffalo police pulled him over for running a stop sign, and heard a cat meowing from the trunk of his car. When they opened the trunk they found 4-year-old Navarro in a cage, his fur covered with oil, crushed red peppers, and chili peppers.
Korkuc told police at the time that he did it because the black-and-white tuxedo cat was ill-tempered, and he was going to eat him. He also reportedly told them his neutered male cat was pregnant. The officer took custody of the cat and charged Korkuc with cruelty.
In a news interview with a reporter, Korkuc insisted he was “not crazy” claiming the cat had “miscarried” and was sitting in his own blood, that he wasn’t planning to eat him, but was instead returning him to the shelter, upset that his cat had gotten pregnant after being spayed, and miscarried.
Navarro has been adopted to a new home, and renamed Oliver.
Baseball Bat
There’s no element of humor in the baseball bat case. In this horrific incident, a 20-year-old Fairborn woman and her 44-year-old boyfriend/fiancé beat the family dog with a baseball bat and then ran him over with their car, supposedly because he had been aggressive toward family members. Chastity Elliott and Robert Proffitt are due in court August 16th to face charges of animal cruelty.
One report says the Australian Shepherd mix bit Chastity’s 2-year-old brother in the nose six weeks earlier, and quotes her as saying Smokey chewed her brother’s nose “all to pieces.”
Smokey is in the custody of the Greene County Animal Shelter. Officials say he’s making progress, but his future is still uncertain.
So why am I writing about this? Prior to launching Peaceable Paws in 1996, I worked at the Marin Humane Society in Novato, California for 20 years. For 15 of those years I was a humane officer, and part of my job was investigating and assisting with the prosecution of animal cruelty cases. Paul, my husband of 23 years, is also an animal protection professional, presently executive director of the humane society here in Washington County, Maryland.
 
One of the things I always said while working at the shelter was that it was never boring. Even after 20 years, you couldn’t begin to predict what each day might bring. I never investigated a marinated-cat case, but we did convict a man who killed a litter of puppies by smashing them in the head. I’ve continued at least peripheral involvement in animal investigations through Paul, and sometimes more than peripheral, such as when his shelter impounded 75 neglected and mostly-unsocialized horses in December of 2006. We took care of 32 of them ourselves on our farm and a farm across the street from us, (the rest went to rescue groups) and two of them remained as permanent members of the Miller family. (Remind me to tell you more about that case one of these days.)
 
When I see cases such as the two described above, I long to put that uniform and badge back on and go kick some animal-abuser butt. I can only imagine what Smokey must have been thinking, and feeling, as he was being smashed to pieces by the humans who were supposed to be caring for him. How can people be so brutally cruel? I often think there are different subspecies of Homo Sapiens, and that humans like Elliott and Proffitt must have evolved on a far distant branch of the tree from the people I associate with.
Korkuc, hopefully, does have some psychological problems – the scanty information from news reports certainly seems to indicate as much – and hopefully will receive treatment. Hopefully he won’t acquire any more animal companions, at least not until he’s able to properly care for one. While we still have to protect animals from people whose minds are functioning well, at least they don’t seem as purely evil as those who would brutally beat their dog.
It’s pretty common knowledge now that there’s a link between people who are deliberately cruel to animals and the increased likelihood that they might also be cruel to humans. Fortunately, over the last 35 years I’ve seen a steady increase in the willingness of our judicial system to take animal cruelty cases seriously. Perhaps one day cases like Smokey’s will be a rarity. Perhaps someday all people will realize that abuse has no place in our relationships with the sentient beings who share our world, be they human or not-human. Perhaps when that day comes, all our animal companions will enjoy the benefits of positive training in a cruelty-free, force-free world.
Until then, they are depending on all of us, dog trainers and others, to protect them, and to keep moving our world toward a more humane society.
People sometimes ask Paul and I how we can do this work, and bear to see animals suffering. I can only answer, “How can we not?”
Keep Smokey in your thoughts and prayers…
Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
August 8, 2010
Yesterday was the closing day of yet another Peaceable Paws Academy – this one our Level 2 Instructors Course. We tend to not get as much interest in this one as our Level 2 Behavior Modification (BMod is sexier), but it’s an excellent opportunity for trainers to hone their teaching skills – teaching humans is a very different skill set from training dogs. The students take turns teaching our Peaceable Paws Basic Good Manners exercises to each other, and as we do in our Level 1 Academy, students are working with shelter dogs.
This week’s group consisted of:
Bob Ryder, from Normal, Illinois, with 8-year-old Dixie, an owner-surrendered Lab/Chow:
Heather Smith (also a PPaws Apprentice) from Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, with Sierra, a 10-month-old Border Collie/Aussie (according to the shelter, but I’m convinced she’s a Kelpie, or Kelpie mix. Tell me what you think!):
And Alicia Williams, from Blacklick, Ohio, with 6-year-old Rocky, a Shepherd/Lab mix from the same home as Dixie (more about that later):
We also had two shelter employees, Heather and Kelly, attending the class, so our Academy students can get input from “real” humans as well as their co-students, and Shirley and me.
Heather worked with Princess, a 4-month-old awesomely-smart Puggle-something mix (already adopted!):
And Kelly worked with her own recently adopted and very adorable puppy, Pippy, one of a litter of three maybe-Pit mixes – Kelly calls her a Bulldog mix, but actually I think maybe Pit-Boston Terrier mix.
Each day we start the morning with a discussion about teaching-related topics, principles of behavior and learning, and/or review the previous night’s take-home quiz. When the shelter dogs arrive everyone gets to go for a hike to work out some of the shelter kennel stress. Then we convene in the training center for the day’s lessons. Each instructor teaches his/her exercises, then we break while everyone fills out their evaluation sheet for that teacher. Then the next instructor teaches. We video the sessions as well, so we can critique as a group later.
After lunch we do one-on-one coaching sessions, which are also evaluated and critiqued, and then end the day with more group discussion on a variety of topics including marketing a training business, developing a class curriculum (each student has to write up their own to present and hand in on Day 6), and ethical dilemmas. It’s intense, especially if you’re not accstomed to being evaluated and critiqued, but students tell me they learn a lot!
 Heather coaching Alicia, working on "'possum"  Bob coaching Heather on Sierra's much-needed polite greeting behavior On Day 6, Saturday, we start with the 2-hour written final exam. Although the quizzes are take-home, open book, the final is not. As students finish up the exam their dogs arrive for the last time from the shelter, and they get to take them for one more hike before the afternoon practical final. Good-byes are always teary as students load their dogs into the van to return to the shelter after the practical. The Humane Society of Washington County is a full-service, open-admission shelter, so while they have an admirably high adoption rate, adoption dogs are rarely but sometimes sadly euthanized. Occasionally a student even adopts her academy dog during the week, but not this time.
Side-note: This set of good-byes was particularly hard. Two of our academy dogs, Rocky and Dixie, were older, and owner-surrendered from the same home. Dixie in particular was having a hard time with the stress of the shelter environment, and tended to be quite vocal about it – a behavior likely to be a turn-off for prospective adopters walking past her kennel. We suggested the shelter keep her kenneled with her “brother,” Rocky, which helped a lot with the vocalization, and we are hoping they will doing a story on the pair to tried to get them adopted together as a “two-fur.” At PPaws the two were wonderful – we often let them roam the training center while we had our discussion sessions, and you barely knew they wee there. They would be a perfect adoption for someone looking for a ready-made pair of family dogs. (Spread the word!).
 Dixie (left) and Rocky (right) need a together-forever home for two wonderful ready-made adult dogs
For the Instructors Course, I assign each student three behaviors from the no-longer-produced but delightful My Dog Can Do That game. I give them their assignments on Friday so they can prepare, and they have to pick two of the three to teach to the class on Saturday. Among the assignments this session were:
Stand Tall
Sit Pretty
Pick Up Your Room (put toys in a basket)
And
Take a Bow
Heather Smith, now Heather Smith PMCT (Pat Miller Certified Trainer) came away from this academy with high-scoring honors. She has earned her PMCT by virtue of completing the Level 1 Academy (Basic Dog Behavior and Training) and both Level 2 Academies. We just started offering this title last year, and Heather is the 29th PPaws student to attain it. Congratulations Heather!!!
 Tradional PPaws group-class photo, high-scoring Heather on the far right  Oh - I forgot the part about Bob falling off the bench... After all our students had departed and Shirley and I finished tidying the training center, I decompressed with a ride around the farm on Mikey. Paul recently mowed a new trail with the tractor, and it was wonderfully relaxing to explore new territory with Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks and Tiger Swallowtails sipping nectar from wildflowers all around us, brilliant yellow goldfinches picking seeds from the thistles, and red tail hawks soaring overhead.
 Seeing the world from between Mikey's ears Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
PS – No entries in the contest from last week’s blog yet… anyone working on it?
August 1, 2010
Are you ready for a contest????
Description: below are 15 photographs taken during Pat Miller’s travels over the last several years to seminars, workshops, and on the back of the Harley. Your job is to correctly identify the locations of as many of them as possible. Identification must include city, state (if US), country, and a brief description as to what the photo represents or where in the city it is located. The contest will run for 3 months. If more than one person correctly identifies all 15 photos, the one with the most accurate descriptions wins. If there is still a tie, the winning name will be drawn after November 1, 2010. All entries must be received at our office by November 1, 2010. Decision of the judge (me!) is final – no whining allowed!
Prize: A collection of all five of Pat Miller’s books, signed to the winner or recipient of the winner’s choice, or a $100 gift certificate to a Peaceable Paws Academy, Workshop or Class held at the PPaws facility in Fairplay, Maryland.
Caution: I know this won’t be easy – I will be really surprised if anyone gets all of them right, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t get them all!
One entry per person please – multiple entries will disqualify the sender – and be sure to include your name, mailing address and e-mail address.
Submit all entries electronically to: pat@peaceablepaws.com
Peaceable Paws employees are not eligible to win.
Photo #1:
Photo #2:
Photo #3:
Photo #4:
Photo #5
Photo #6:
Photo #7:
Photo #8:
Photo #9:
Photo #10:
Photo #11:
Photo #12:
Photo #13
Photo #14:
Photo #15:
Ready… Set… Go!
Warm Woofs, Happy Guessing, and even Happier Training,
Pat
July 28, 2010
Always a popular class, we offer our Downtown Hound experience just once a year, when we can take advantage of the long summer evenings. It always fills quickly, with some of our favorite students. This year is no exception.
Our class is:
Katie and Brooklyn – an 8 month old Rottie/Shepherd mix (below):
Kristy, Bobbie and Grace – a 1 year old Belgian Tervuren:
Mary and Milo – a 2 year old Collie mix:
Lori and Pearl – a 1 year old Cockapoo:
Ronda and Shea – a 7 year old Australian Shepherd (foreground):
Karen and Cullen – a 2 year old Shepherd mix:
Last night was Week 3 of the class, and we met at the very dog-friendly Prime Outlet Mall just 10 minutes from PPaws. Week 1 is always here on the farm so I can see how everyone does outside the safety of the training center, but without uncontrolled public encounters. Week 2 is at the nearby C&O Canal, where public encounters are usually minimal – although last week we had two off-leash dogs – a Pitbull and a small Terrier mix, some running up the bank from their fisherpeople and play nosey-greetey with all the class dogs. Fortunately everyone handled it well.
We arrived at the Mall at 6:00 pm at our previously arranged meeting spot – between the Food Court and the kid’s fenced playground area. Katie had told me the week before that she couldn’t be there. By the time the 5 dogs and 6 humans had gathered, we were attracting quite a bit of attention. In fact, when I arrived at 5:55 pm, several of my students were already taking advantage of the opportunity to practice polite greetings with curious mall shoppers.
 Attracting attention at the Oulet Mall It’s always a good idea to give your dog a few minutes to get settled in a new place, then practice some basic sits and downs to get their brains in thinking mode. Targeting and Find It-Toss are also good for this. We practiced those, then did a little dog-weaving (having one dog move through the others, who are on a sit or down and being reinforced to attention to their humans).
 Kristy and Grace doing dog-weaves Then we strolled through the mall, taking advantage of various benches, chairs and grassy spots to sit and reinforce dogs for relaxing with us, as well as reinforcing them for walking past mall shoppers, and being walked past.
 Politely passing mall shoppers seated on bench At an open area of the mall we stopped, took a seat on a stone wall, and had each team demonstrate a trick.
 Pausing for a break and a round of tricks at the stone wall  Pearl's trick: standing on her hind legs to target to Lori's hand As we strolled back to the front of the mall we found a mechanical horse to play with (no, we didn’t put quarters in) and then a mechanical dragon that was even better!
 Mary introduces a cautious Milo to the horse. Note Milo's fearful body lsanguage - hind legs out behind him, tail down, ears back...  Cullen wants to *ride* the horse!  Grace needs coaxing to sniff noses  Cullen masters the dragon  Shea needs a little convincing We ended the class relaxing in Amish-built lawn chairs outside Legacy Furniture, and did one last round of tricks. They were such nice chairs Bobbie and I went into the store to find out the price. They ranged from $270 for the simple basic ones, to $700 for the rocking swing. We didn’t buy anything.
 Relaxing in Amish-built lawn chairs outside Legacy Furniture  Cullen says, "That was fun! Can we do it again?" I am so proud of this class! The dogs are great, the humans are doing an excellent job, and at the end, sitting in the comfortable Legacy chairs, no one seemed in any hurry to leave. Good work gang – CLICK!
Next week’s class meets in beautiful downtown Sharpsburg, with a planned stop at Nutter’s Ice Cream. Yum! And it’s a Level 2 Instructors Course Academy week. We’ll be busy!
This past weekend was also a Shaping Workshop at PPaws, with 5 participants. We struggled with extreme heat, and a thunderstorm that shut down all but one of the dogs, but it was still great fun. We started with shaping “Body Parts,” did “101 Things to do with a Box” and then substituted “Prop” for “Box” and began shaping for a specific behavior with the prop. Other behaviors included turning on a “That Was Easy” button, and “Go To Your Place.” This is always one of our favorite weekends – shaping is such a blast! Our 2011 Shaping Weekend dates are June 4-5 and October 29-30. Mark your calendars!
 Mini-Goldendoodle Riley does 101 things with a box I hope you and your dog are having a lot of fun this summer too!
Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
 Artsy photo of the week: Luna moth on cypress at PPaws
|
