Langley and Zuni: Slow Speed Ahead

While the phrase "full speed ahead" would better describe the personalities of both Langley and Zuni, when it comes to getting the two of them able to be in the same room together, I am moving forward at a snail's pace. It's much better to move too slow than too fast when it comes to introducing dogs in my opinion. If you go too fast and an unforeseen situation or one of the dogs' anxieties causes a fight, you have the potential to permanently damage the chances of those dogs ever becoming pals, or even being able to ignore each other in the same room. While most dogs are pretty forgiving about these things, an anxious dog is hyperalert to potential danger and you don't want them to put that "danger" label on another dog in your home.

I talk about slow introductions to adopters all the time and I talk with the NW foster parents about it a lot too. I'm sure they are pretty sick of me saying all the time "don't forget, you need to do a slow intro with your pack" when I hand over their new foster dogs. I can be like a broken record. However, I have lived with the outfall of moving too fast through introductions and had disastrous results that made life pretty miserable for humans and dogs alike in our house.

So when I saw how alarmed Langley seemed by Zuni's erratic movements, and also the way Zuni reacted to Langley's standard jumping and lunging when he's worried, I knew I needed to be really careful. At this point they are never allowed out loose together. In fact I don't even have them out leashed in the same area at this point. One is crated and the other gets to be politely curious. When Zuni is the one crated it's much easier since Langley immediately relaxes when he knows she's contained. However, when Langley is crated, I watch very closely. As soon as Zuni does a couple appropriate sniffs, I throw two treats - one piece of kibble into Langley's crate and the other about 3 feet in the other direction across Zuni's line of sight so she'll tear off happily and everyone ends the interaction feeling good about things.

Langley quickly figured out that every time he glanced at the crate, I dropped a treat for him. Pretty soon he completely forgot that she freaked him out and was moving closer to the crate and constantly glancing over at her and then looking away at me. Good boy Langley!

 

Slowly the treat requirements increased to having to show some actual nosing at the crate and interaction with Zuni. By that point he completely forgot Zuni made him nervous and he started to show signs of wanting to play. Did I let Zuni out so they could play? NO WAY! We'll need several more sessions and him getting to the point of not showing signs of nervousness around her before they get to play together.

 

How long will I do this? As long as they need me to.  It's wrong to set a time table because while for some dogs it will just a few minutes, another dog might need 3 weeks. You have to watch the dog for signs that they are ready to move forward. 

After doing crate intros a great next step is going for a walk together - both dogs and 2 people. Everyone lines up so dogs are on the outside at first and not needing to touch each other or get close: dog-human-human-dog.  Once they start to be less worried about being near the other dog, you can get a little closer: dog-human-dog-human.  When they seem fine with that you can maneuver a few short "moving butt sniffs" as you walk so dog's don't feel vulnerable. Keep it short! Some dogs like Langley can go full "roto-rooter" with butt sniffs when they're nervous and then you've undone all the good will the walk has created.

Finally, when everyone's body language seems calm and relaxed (if it isn't, save this step for another walk) you can move so the dogs are walking together: human-dog-dog-human. Some dogs will be totally okay with each other at this point, but if one of the dogs is anxious, your best bet upon returning to the house is to separate them with a yummy chew as a reward for a job well done.  You may not get past step one of the walk but that's okay. Allow the dogs to choose when they are ready for the next step.

It may seem a snail's pace to you, but take it from someone who has learned the hard way, better to practice patience now and enjoy a peaceful household and relaxed dogs in the long run.

Another Outing with Langley: Blueberry Farm Park

Langely and I are continuing to work on helping him get better at managing his anxiety outside of our house. This time I decided to try to go somewhere that we would be less likely to see people or other animals so we headed over to Blueberry Farm Park. This park was a blueberry farm and orchard that was gifted to the city. Since it's just basically a grassy field with blueberry bushes, apple trees, and blackberry patches, no one really visits when the fruit isn't ripe. Before we really get into this post I have to apologize for the crazed camera work and smudged lens. Trust me, it isn't easy trying to intensely focus on an anxious dog for signs of approaching threshold while holding said dog's leash in one hand and a camera in the other.

Part of Blueberry Farm Park - Langley and I explored the edges but didn't head down the rows of bushes yet.

A fairly steady stream of traffic passes the park at all times

We started out with a puzzle again and this time he was able to concentrate a little better. But he was pretty concerned about the cars whizzing by on the road.

 I decided that rather than keep working on puzzles I'd just let him explore on leash. We walked on different textures of bumpy concrete, gravel, mud, and short and tall grass. Langley was very alert but seemed to be enjoying himself - especially when I wasn't paying attention and he found a big pile of downed apples that had been rotting away under a tree all fall and winter. He ate about three of them - the last one whole when he saw that I was probably going to take it away.

 

We continued our exploring for a few minutes, Langley sniffing his way with occasionally glances over to the road. While it probably doesn't look it to you, in the previous video Langley was staying pretty close to me with minimal pulling and no full body lunges for things. If you have ever seen Langley in full on hyper alert mode you would realize what a big deal this was for him. But even as well as he was doing it's really, really important in this kind of work to end on a good note. Never push a dog until he's over threshold because then you leave with him remembering that negative end part.

To see where we were at anxiety wise, I asked Langley to "check-in" which is a cue for him to stop what he's doing and just check back with me. He was able to check in, which was great but he also did a pretty long stress shake so I decided we'd head back in the direction of the car.

Back at the car, Langley had remembered this part from last time - the chewy treat! So he was ready to hop in his crate and get the prize he'd earned. I handed over the tendon for a job well done and we headed towards home.

So during our outing he was pretty anxious - lots of pacing spinning, shaking etc., but all along he was able to check in with me. I let him take the park at his pace and go where he wanted to sniff (except the middle of the 3 food diameter rotten apple pile). The trip became more about letting Langley take the lead and make some choices of where and what he felt comfortable doing, rather than me having an agenda of what puzzles we'd play with and what tricks I wanted him to be able to cue to. Much more successful than our last trip and I think we'll visit the park again soon.

Frodo, the Puppy Professor

Zuni is everything that makes a terrier puppy great. She's goofy, wild, sassy, loving, a bit crazy and always cute to the nth degree. This combination is also the reason she and so many other terrier pups end up in the shelter. Not that she's done anything wrong. No, she's just being what she was born to be: an overdose of smart and sassy. The problem is the humans. They see these little spotted chub balls of cuteness and develop a bad case of puppy fever. Once they give in to the cuteness they can rarely think ahead to how 5 pounds of sweetness is about to turn their entire lives upside down - at least for 2 years, but lets be honest we are talking terriers and sometimes they don't grow out of their puppy wildness till they hit 10-12 years old!

Let me tell you that cuteness can wear out very quickly and the worst part is a lot of times these dogs seem to be smarter than their new owners. They push boundaries and learn their humans' every weakness and without some calm, loving leadership on the human's part it is very often a recipe for disaster.  That's how you end up with a Zuni - this bundle of sweetness who has likely been smacked around by a frustrated male and has learned to bite to avoid a man who reaches for her without her first showing she wants to approach him.

While I do my best as a foster parent to repair the mistakes that well meaning and not so well meaning humans do to mess up these little ones, I have found that nothing teaches a wild puppy manners quicker than an adult dog. At our house the best puppy teachers are my personal dogs. While old girl Tilly can handle the mildly rude puppies, for one as energetic and ignorant of doggy good manners as Zuni is, I let Frodo the Puppy Professor take them on.

Frodo the fun police: supervising past foster pups, Astro and Nova

Frodo is very conflicted about puppies. On one hand he detests them because they are pushy and rude.  But on the other hand, when a puppy is in the house that means that there's a lot more training happening and that means the treats start flowing. Frodo will never leave the room while there's a chance that food is going to be handed out. This means that when puppies are out having their supervised play time, Frodo is supervising right there with me (aka snagging their treats).

Zuni attempting to get Frodo to play with her: she starts by respectfully licking his mouth but that can quickly turn into excited muzzle punches

While I'm not an advocate of people just letting their puppy drive all the adult dogs of the house crazy with their rudeness, I do feel it's necessary for the adults to deal with small doses of puppies if they can handle it. Frodo has learned that if he makes it through one of these 5 minute teaching sessions there's a large delicious, chewy animal part in it for him so he has learned to stoically endure them.

Frodo giving Zuni the appropriate "I SAID I don't want to play" signals. Note how Zuni's body is pulling back in surprise? Also notice that Frodo is looking away. He's not preparing to attack or anything, just letting her know she needs to back off by showing his teeth. This time he didn't even have to make a sound.



Zuni, taking the message and backing away for a bit but still pretty interested in Frodo, who she just adores, much to Frodo's dismay

As rude as Zuni was when she arrived, man has Frodo taught her quickly what is expected of her. That doesn't mean she doesn't regularly go back for more and get multiple corrections from Frodo, but the length of time she can respect his wishes and just adore him from afar is lengthening. Yesterday nothing stopped her from coming back for more - not his showing teeth, snarling, or pinning. But today I watched once after a correction and she scooted back, laid down and watched him for about 5 seconds and then tore off looking for a toy. She left him alone for over a minute after that and this is becoming the norm. What a great teacher Frodo is! Below you can see a video of one of their interactions. BTW - this is Frodo's favorite spot to survey the room from - comfy, but ready to spring from the couch should a treat get dropped somewhere in the room.

 

 

 

Now check out this video. Watch how badly Zuni wants to bug Frodo but she knows she needs to leave him alone so keeps checking herself and backing away to do something else. The best example starts at 23 seconds.  Good girl, Zuni! Looks like Frodo is doing a great job at teaching Zuni some early impulse control lessons. 

Not all adult dogs can handle the bad manners of puppies though. Langley gets overwhelmed and feels under attack and he can lash out so he and puppy get the "crate and rotate" routine. Tilly can handle the pups but does show signs of stress and anxiety when they don't listen to her corrections and I don't want her to have to deal with that. Hobbs also gets anxious around her but I had to high five him for the awesome full speed, rolling, wrestling pin that he gave her outside when she ran into him. It was like some awesome Judo move that ended up with her on her back looking into his snarling face and wondering what just happened. After that experience I decided that when Zuni is on the loose, Hobbs get to hang out in a Zuni-free area. He is structurally a bit fragile due to his former injuries and he doesn't need 7 pounds of puppy running into him full speed.

For those of you who feel sorry for Frodo, let me assure you that no Frodo's were harmed during the making of this post. After 5 minutes with Zuni, he was allowed to retire upstairs (sans puppy) with a bison scapula and we didn't hear from him again until he heard me setting out dog bowls at dinner time.

House Squatting with Hobbs

Not that kind of squatting!

Sometimes Hobbs and Tilly hang out in the kitchen together so we keep an extra bed in there for such occasions. Tilly has to have really tough beds made out of upholstery fabric because she loves to chew on sherpa and she is one of those dogs who feels the need to dig a spot for herself before she lies down. It took a lot of experimenting and many a shredded bed to find the shapes and materials that work for the old gal.

I was pretty excited a couple of weeks ago when after talking to a distributor's rep about tough beds, I discovered this Pet Cave bed. It's made of upholstery  material and soy based foam and can hold up to Tilly's nesting habits. She loves the fact that it's a little cave and she can hide out in her den and survery her domain.

Hobbs enjoying Tilly's cave

Well, Hobbs thinks the bed is pretty spectacular as well so when Tilly is busy cruising along the cabinets, looking for dropped food or a cabinet door that's slightly ajar he will hop in the cave and enjoy it for awhile. And if he's lucky, when she notices he's in her bed she'll just go use the other one. This happens about 50% of the time and the other times she grouches at him until he hops out.  This day Hobbs was lucky. Looks pretty comfy, huh? Later Tilly did reclaim her bed, but that's okay. Hobbs found a better spot to snooze later that evening as you can see in the video below.

Rescue Railroad Stopped Here Last Night

It's that time again. The Northwest New Rattitude team had 2 foster dogs arrive last night. You've already heard about our girl Zuni who is a  busy little thing who will hopefully like Langley and be willing to do some wrestling with him. One thing we've learned is that Zuni does bite - she has a fear of men and her temp foster mom has said that she's pretty sure that someone has punished her for her puppy behavior. It's so very sad when a dog this young has been taught that biting is the only way they will be listened to. Not to worry though, I've worked with this issue many times before and we will start work right away to help her learn that guys are not so bad. She's a wild little thing, full of energy, and is true puppy form she's been told off by every dog in the pack so far except Langley, and that's just because they haven't been introduced yet.

Zuni

The 2nd girl who has joined New Rattitude is Percy. Percy is about 4 years old and we are told she's a petite 8 or 9 pounds. She's much too sophisticated to be goofy or tear around with puppies. This gal prefers a home where she'll be undisturbed by wild and crazy dogs or young kids but she can't wait to find some people of her own to snuggle with. She's being fostered in Bellevue, Washington where she has plenty of pals to hang out with.

Percy

On the road with Langley

I am very much a home-body. I love hanging out with my dogs, putzing around the house, doing my rescue work, etc. So while Langley's been with us, most of the work we have done is all at home, in our yard, or on walks in the neighborhood.

Dogs need more than that though. The more they are exposed to, the more resilient they are to life in general and goodness knows, Langley could use some resiliency. He's such a good boy but it doesn't take much to get him to completely lose his focus due to anxiety.

So on Thursday, off we went to Langley's vet to do some practicing in the parking lot. The office is located at the back of an office building in Northeast Tacoma, Browns Point Vet Clinic, and because of the location it's pretty calm back there with very few cars coming and going. The one distraction we didn't think of were seagulls. Since the office is just about a block from the Puget Sound there were plenty of gulls flying over head and you know how Langley is about birds...

My goal was to keep Langley under threshold. That's dog speak for keeping his anxiety under control to the point that he can focus on things other than his anxiety, like toys, treats, and most importantly, me.

First we started out in the parking lot with kibble in the Green.  At first this was an exciting game but then a lady with a cat carrier came out and after that, it took beef liver to hold his attention.

Next we tried a Nina Ottosson puzzle called The Brick. Mind you, this is a puzzle that Langley knows well and typically is pretty systematic in getting each and every piece of kibble out of it. You can see in the video that having to think through this puzzle was pretty tough for him with all the distractions but he did manage to do part of it.

Interspersed with the toys we did some sit, down and spin cues. Again, Langley was able to focus for the most part but it was definitely a challenge. 

At this point I should have probably packed it up and called the day a success but I decided I wanted to see if he could handle doing the puzzles or green next to the front door of the vet. It was slow and there were no animals inside so he managed pretty well but I had to bring out the big guns and use full size hunks of beef liver instead of kibble for treats. That did the trick. It was definitely a lot tougher for him to focus on me even with a huge hunk of liver in my hands, but he was somewhat able to focus so I decided not to push it any further and on a good note I took him back to the car and gave him a hunk of freeze dried tendon in his crate. Chewing is a great way for dogs to relieve stress so ending a desensitization exercise like this with a yummy chew is a wonderful way to finish up the session. It's a high end reward for a job well done and the same time a great way for dogs to self soothe.

When we got home Langley and I were exhausted so he had some crate time and I went downstairs to curl up on the couch with 2 dog warmers (aka Hobbs and Frodo) and a blanket and get some computer work done. From start to finish, including the drive, it took less than 30 minutes but because both of us were having to focus so intensely it was pretty mentally tiring.

Langley, settling in for a little crate time

Arriving Soon: Zuni!

Sometimes people make me crazy and the pure stupidity of some folks can be amazing. Well Zuni's story is one of those that makes you shake your head and wonder how the human race has avoided extinction.

Zuni is young - 3 to 4 months - and like all pups her age she has needle sharp teeth. Anyone who has had a young pup in their home can attest to the fact that it's pretty normal to have little scabs all over your hands thanks to getting snagged by puppy. Add to that fact that they are teething and want to chew and mouth anything that is in their path and you know that at some point a body part is gonna get punctured. Well Zuni's former person had never had a puppy before and they labeled her, a very mouthy and active little gal, as being a biter. She had snagged the person during rough play, causing a puncture wound. Because of this they brought her to the shelter as a biter. You might not know this but labeling a dog at a shelter as a biter can be a death sentence.

Zuni, the "vicious" puppy

The shelter employees played with her and evaluated her and found that what the person was calling "aggression" was just active terrier pup play and the biting was a mouthy, teething puppy who needed redirection onto toys. However, now she had a bite history so she was available to rescue only. Not many rescuers look at biters (me included) but after hearing her story, I said I'd be happy to foster her.

So I'm not saying there's absolutely no way she has a biting problem, but I find it highly unlikely and I trust these shelter employees since our Northwest team pulls over 1/2 of our fosters dogs from this Fresno shelter so we work with them a lot.  Stay tuned to hear more about little Zuni as we get to know her and the habits of her mouth...

Zuni is named for a well known New Mexican pueblo people that have existed as a farming culture in their present location of NW New Mexico for about 4,000 years. Their existence as a culture in the region is much older though and their unique language is 7,000 years old. It's the largest of the New Mexican pueblos with about 10,000 tribal members and is also considered the most traditional. Artistically they are known for their master silversmiths' jewelry making skills (an art form thought to be adopted through the Navajo), their pottery and their fetish carvings.  Religious beliefs are centered on the three most powerful of their deities: Earth Mother, Sun Father, and Moonlight-Giving Mother, as well as  other kachinas.

The Zuni history is fascinating and Wikipedia has a good overview if you are interested in learning more. Their tourism Website has some great info about the modern peublo as well as the history of the region, geological and historical landmarks, and their famous artistry. We were lucky enough to attend a dance showcase in Gallup, New Mexico and below are some photos of the Zuni dancers.

White Buffalo Dance

A harvest dance

Turkey Dance