Hobbs: Expert Snuggler

Hobbs has shown us that he does a lot of things well. He's smart and has picked up housetraining very quickly. He eats well and can scarf down a bowl of food in no time flat. He's also a talented chewer (always appropriate chew items) and can work through a tendon, bully stick or cow ear in record time. But perhaps Hobbs' best skill is his snuggling expertise.

He can hypnotize you with his gaze of adoration - quick look away before he gets you!

As soon as a person sits down, Hobbs is there to warm their lap. He burrows himself in that cozy spot between person and the arm of the couch and then kind of wraps his front end up onto your lap, snoozing there peacefully. And beyond just doing a great job at snuggling, he also looks incredibly cute while doing it.

Expert snuggling and a high cuteness factor - Hobbs has got it all

Hobbs Chooses Again

Since the last time I attempted the "Choose Game" with Hobbs was a bit of a disaster I decided to talk with my friend and get some suggestions on how to help this work for Hobbs. I mean the whole point of the game is to help him build his confidence and my last attempt did the opposite.

Her suggestion were to find a super low box with no flaps and also to have all the other dogs occupied and quiet in another part of the house before starting the game with Hobbs.

I found a case tray that canned dog food comes in to use as our box and then gated Frodo and Langley upstairs with roasted beef kneecaps to keep them occupied.

As you can see in the video, Hobbs was still a bit reticent, and before approaching the box he comes back to me for assurance before turning around to check out the box again. He quickly grabbed a trachea ring though and sat down next to the box to happily chew it.  Good boy, Hobbs!

Hobbs with his trachea ring prize

We have some other confidence building exercises that we're working on as well, guided by my friend over at A Day in the Life of a New Rattitude Foster Dog. She has a ton of experience building confidence thanks to her work with her personal dog and former foster D-Light. It has been a bit of a turnabout for my thinking since I've been doing so much work with uninhibited Mr. Langley so it has been great to have some help brainstorming ideas of games to help Hobbs.

A Bouncy, Bouncy Boy

I love finding new fun toy's for Langley because believe it or not, he's much easier on toys than most dogs that come through our house. Plus, his reaction to a new toy is so over-the-top joyous that it's really tough not to get a grin stuck on your face for the rest of the day after giving him something.

Langley's toy them seems to be pigs and his favorite by far is still the Go Dog Furry Flattie Pig. It's lost 4 of it's 5 squeakers, but he still loves to tear around shaking it and then it also doubles as his pillow at night.

Anyhow, so it's tough to resist new pig toy's that I come across through work. This one is a new Bottle Buddies line from Kyjen. Someone has invented this ingenious squeaker that screws onto the top of plastic water bottles. So not only does it make the delightful crunchy bottle sound, it squeaks as well.

Langley spent quite awhile tearing around the room and giving it death shakes and once he was sure it was thoroughly dead, stretched out on the couch and started chewing the velcro at the bottom off so piggy got a reprieve will live on for future death shake romps.

Back to Basics with Langley

Langley really loves training and when Langley loves something, he REALLY can get excited. For awhile we had a problem because he loved his evening walks with Troy so much that he would start crying and whining a full hour before Troy got home from work. Then by the time it was really time for the walk he was so worked up with excitement that he was dang near manic. Thankfully moving his walk times around to different times so he doesn't know when to expect them has mostly solved this problem.

However, when it comes to getting excited, Langley can fall back into being more impulsive which makes training work kind of tricky. He's so excited to get that reinforcer that even though he knows the cues very well, he tends to try to through out a few different behaviors in lightning speed in hopes that one of them will cause the magic click sound.

He knows a lot of cues for different behaviors: sit, down, stay, wait, bang (play dead), off, spin, reverse, touch, check in, and probably a lot more that I don't remember because I haven't made a cue dictionary for him yet, like I should.

One of the problems I have as a trainer though is that I get so excited at how fast he learns new things that I don't really work on something long enough for it to be really locked in his brain. That makes it even easier for Langley to fall into his habit of throwing me a bunch of behaviors and hoping one of them is correct.

Langley is very, very still when he does his sit and down, but his tail is always a blur

So over the last week I decided to go back and work on the basics. Forget all the cute tricks and focus on sit, down, stay and then when those are super strong to do recall work that I always tell adopters is the most important thing to train and yet am too lazy to really work on with my own dogs.

It's going pretty well so far. I'm still trying to find a way to help him be a little less excited about training work because it doesn't take much for his brain to lock everything out except "I'M GONNA EARN A TREAT!!!!"

Langley practicing a down-stay while I snap photos

And then I don't help thing by starting to laugh when he gets so excited. Sometimes he gets to a point where every cue is preceded by 2 excited leaps nearly 5 feet in the air and then he falls in this epic belly flop into a "down". I don't reinforce his "leaping downs" with clicks, but I do start to giggle which he knows is a good thing.

So we'll get there but considering my beginning clicker training skills and his impulsiveness we certainly aren't going to be getting there very quickly.

Langley's Turn at the "Choose Game"

We left off yesterday with Langley sitting downstairs in a crate with a few toys and waiting for his turn. Learning from my previous mistakes. I took Frodo and Hobbs upstairs with their prizes to hang out chewing while Langley got his turn.

I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from Langley.  We started off putting him in a stay with the box sitting in front of him and working on a little impulse control. Now that the other two boys were out of the room and he wasn't worried about them getting all the good stuff before him, he was much more relaxed and he sat there like a trooper, waiting for his chance to dig in.

When he was released, he didn't charge it like I expected. He wasn't as worried about the box as Frodo and Hobbs had been but he definitely was not approaching it at "full Langley speed."  Six months ago he would have tossed the box in the air and shoveled up as many treats as he could fit in his mouth but now he gently pulled out the arch tendon that he had chosen and laid down to get to work on it.

Good boy, Langley! I'm thinking this will be a new way the kiddos get their chew treats. They get to practice some impulse control and then get the fun experience of nosing into a goody box and picking out something delicious. How can any dog not like this game?

Langley enjoying his arch tendon

Hobbs and Frodo play the "Choose Game"

A friend did a blog post about playing this game with her dogs and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun and decided to try it. The idea is to put a variety of dog chews in a box and then the dog gets to nose the box open and make their choice. It's a great confidence builder, a game with no mistakes and a very happy ending so I figured the boys would love it. The only rule in this game is for the humans: they have to keep their mouth shut and stay out of it. Trust me, this is a tough rule! You'll hear in the videos that I break the rule repeatedly.  Anyhow, I loaded up the box with an assortment of doggy deliciousness: duck foot, bison lung slice, bully stick, bully pretzel, trachea rings, a cow ear and some arch tendons. Yum!

Unfortunately I didn't really think through the logistics of having Hobbs, Frodo and Langley all together and waiting turns for their chance at the game. My bright idea was that I would put Frodo in a sit-stay and hold Langley beside me with one hand while I taped Hobbs taking his turn with the other. How in the heck did I think I was going to pull this off?! I am still face-palming myself and wondering in what universe that would ever be a good idea.

So what I wanted to be a really successful win-win situation for Hobbs, who is a little reticent and shy, ended up being the opposite. He approaches the box while I hold the camera, then Langley in one odd move licks the lens of the video camera and lunges, air snapping at Hobbs because he doesn't want anyone else to get near the box. So Hobbs is immediately seeing this whole box thing as a trap because he sniffs it and then a dog lunges at him and the human start yelling, Langley's being wrestled back to the chair, cameras are flying through the air. It was complete chaos.

I was determined to play the damn game though. So Langley was taken to another floor of the house and crated and back upstairs I went to try again. I put Frodo back in his sit-stay and this time I open the box to make it less scary for Hobbs. Understandably he wasn't too sure and was worried about approaching the box.

He was also wondering why Frodo wasn't pulling anything out. Frodo in the meantime was having trouble controlling himself. See, I had said "wait" and not "stay" which was a little confusing and hey "wait" means just sit there for a second or so right?   I love this video because you see Frodo trembling under the extreme duress of having to sit next to that box and not take anything. Slowly he starts to lean in and at 16 seconds you see Hobbs looking at him, likely checking for what they are supposed to do. "Do we just sit here? Are you going to try something? Is this a TRAP?!! Will she start yelling again?"

After I saw Hobbs looking at Frodo, I decided to let Frodo take his turn first and Hobbs could see that it wasn't that scary. So Frodo ventured into the box and pulled out a small bully stick and off he went with it to chew.

Frodo with his prize

Hobbs still wasn't sure of the box so I decided that for today with all the drama and my inadvertent poisoning of the game I would let him sniff and then I would pull out the cow ear that he had been trying to get near earlier. I wanted him to have a happy ending, in spite of my awkward first try at this game.

Hobbs and his prized cow ear

He took off for another part of the room to happily chew his prize. So all ended well and I plan on trying this again, just Hobbs and I, so he can feel a bit more relaxed and start to gain some confidence.

Langley got a turn later and I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Changing Perceptions: Being Fair to Langley

In May it will be the one year anniversary of Langley coming into foster care and it has been a tumultuous but highly education journey for both of us. This post has a lot to do with the Labels and Perception post that I did about a week ago, but it's specific to Langley and my perceptions of him.

The quintessential Langley: total and complete goofball

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the topic of perception and how it affects my interactions with both my personal dogs and my fosters. It is so easy to lock onto one's perception of another person/dog/situation as the absolute truth but each individual's perceptions are based on the experiences they've had. Those "truths" that seem so absolute are actually continually morphing and evolving over time as we add experiences to our lives.

Early on in fostering him, Langley had a pretty severe compulsive binge that I had no idea how to handle. I was a mess, he was a mess, and the rest of the household was a mess from having to live with the two of us. Remember this post? Blood, Shit, Tears and a Garbage Strike  That was definitely a low point.

Chewing is a great way for dogs to calm their nerves. Langleygives bully sticks a 4 paws up vote of approval

But Langley and I both have come a hell of a long way since that post and he is not even close to the dog he was back then. In fact, today something happened that really let me know that I needed an attitude adjustment where poor Langley was concerned.

Langley had been having some unstructured time lounging in the living room while I worked on the laptop in the room with him. I was completely absorbed and lost track of time. Suddenly, I realized I was late to pick up my husband from a class he was teaching so I grabbed my keys and purse and ran for the stairs. I was almost out the garage door when I realized that I had completely forgotten that Langley was loose in the living room. 

Now there was a time when Langley being loose in the house meant that I needed to be on high alert watching for signs of him approaching threshold or him getting locked into a compulsion or getting interested in pulling the books off the bottom shelf of the bookcase to check where the cord that ran behind it went. Langley "free time" meant Janell "hyperalert time."

Langley and Neah got along wonderfully because they both have a deep love of rough housing.

That's no longer the case. While he still needs some initial watching when he first gets unstructured time, after a few minutes he finds a toy and will keep himself busy, even occasionally relaxing and napping on the sofa. Don't get me wrong, we still have to manage his anxiety, but this is a dog who at one point could barely sleep he was so anxious. Now he enjoys the occasional bout of lounging.

But my perception of Langley is still that hyper-compulsive, nearly manic ball of anxiety. While I know that he's no longer the master of disaster, I always fall back to that exasperated mindset of working with a difficult dog. Today though I realized I'm really doing the Langster a disservice because my perception of him is not in tune with who he is today.

Everyone goes through their rough patches and if we are lucky we grow and change. Langley has definitely grown and changed over the past 6 months and now it is time for me to do some work on myself and try to evolve my perception of Langley to be closer to who he is today. Because the reality is that he is the best trained dog in my house. Sure he's energetic and has no clue where his body is in space. but he adapts to change much more quickly than in the past and he really is pretty close to "normal", whatever that really happens to be.

Practicing some impulse control exercises with a bison stuffed pickle pocket

So I'll continue my soul searching while Langley continues to be the lovely dog that he is and hopefully my perceptions will come more in line with how spectacularly brilliant and loving he truly is.