Meet little Samish!

When New Rattitude's Lynn Bonham was evaluating several Rat Terriers that we had been notified about at the Kern County shelter in Bakersfield, CA, she came across one small 4-5 yr old male Rattie mix who hadn't been listed on the Pet Harbor Website.  Kern shelter is a pretty awful place for dogs to land and not many make it out so it broke her heart to think of leaving the gregarious little guy.

Of the 5 Rat Terriers there she was able to pull 3 and headed home to Fresno with 2 females and this little mystery guy who had been missed in the shelter so didn't have a chance out.

Samish when he was in Fresno with his temp foster mom, Lynn Bonham

Yesterday Samish was transported up to us here in WA. He weighs about 10 pounds, loves to hunt and is pretty dang adorable.

Right now he is still in what we call the "belly band stage."  All boys are required to wear belly bands for a minimum of 3 days after arriving since the temptation to lift a leg for a nervous guy in a new setting is pretty strong.  He's also still so busy sniffing and learning about the back yard that it's been tough to get good photos of him so we are still working on that. Here he is in Washington, being forced to pose for a photo when he really wants to check the garden shed for mice.

Samish is pronounced like the name "Sam" with "ish" added to the end.  So he's not a Sam, he's just a little "Sam-ish". :)  Like all of our foster dogs in 2012, his name is part of a Washington State theme.  He's named for a beautiful bay that is east of Washington's San Juan Islands.  Here's a good photo of it taken from Larrabee State Park - http://www.flickr.com/photos/patmeyer36/3438390691/

Introductions take time

First impressions don't always stick in the dog world.  This week we've had a doggy guest at our house and initially she was not at all enthused about Langley and his over the top, energetic way of greeting a new dog. 

I'm pretty sure in Langley's mind all that was going on was "OMG, OMG, OMGEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" because that's about how excited he gets when meeting a new dog.  Instead of going into play position, his entire body flattens to the floor in a quivering mass of potential energy and immediately the new dog realizes they are in over their head and is on guard.  Then Langley launches at the dog expecting a Langley style wrestling match and he instead he finds the dog is growling at him with lip curled.  The end result would be a fight if I didn't intercede since Langley is so far over threshold from excitement that his joy quickly turns to reactiveness.

So, instead of right off the bat expecting the dogs to be in the same room together, I separated them so they can't get at each other, but they do see each other.  For the first day this still drove Langley nuts, but gradually, the sight of Chicory became old hat.  She was just another dog in the house like Tilly or Frodo and he could really care less about her. 

Chicory and Langley, hanging out in our small kitchen

This morning Langley jumped the gate into the kitchen, as Langley does regularly since we only have a 36" baby gate.  My first thought was to get him out of there because he just goes in to steal Tilly's stash of little bully stick nubs. Sure enough, that's what he was doing, but when I got into the kitchen to get him, I realized that both Tilly and Chicory were gated inside the kitchen.  I felt panicky but immediately realized that Langley was completely unimpressed by Chicory being in the room.  He looked for bully sticks, got a drink of water, and then came over when he saw that I was treating Chicory and Tilly for sitting calmly.  No altercation and then I picked him up and carried him back into the living room without ever realizing that yesterday this was the dog that had him half crazed.

So remember when you are introducing a new dog into your pack, or if you already have a dog who is slow to warm to new dogs, give them some time to feel comfortable and safe.  Often times a new dog is a nervous and confused and they just need some time before they are expected to settle in.

Tonight we have a new foster boy arriving so this experience with Chicory was a great test drive to see how Langley could handle another dog in the house. Both he and Chicory did great so I think we are ready to have a second foster dog here.  Wish us luck!

The ever useful "down-stay"

Langley has learned the cue "down" so well that he will be trotting across the room and if I say "Langley, down" he'll belly flop mid stride into a down.  I decided that the next step to teach him is a "stay".  The trick to teaching a good stay is not to expect too long of a stay too soon.  If you do it will be frustrating for both the dog and the trainer since the dog only has so much impulse control in the beginning. That's part of the lesson he's learning - that doing what you've asked, even though it isn't at all what he wants to do can lead to pretty great things - be it treats, praise, or getting a favorite toy.  If you start with a short little stay that you know he can accomplish - a couple seconds even - then you have set him up for success and everyone wins.  The stay can then be lengthened slowly over time.

Since Langley struggles with impulse control, we had to start with a reeeeeeeally short stay - about 2-3 seconds.  Now he's pretty reliable up to 15 seconds.  We'll keep working on it until we can do a pretty long stay. We also will practice him holding a stay while I move around or even when I move out of his line of sight. This isn't the best video since I was so focused on Langley that I wasn't paying attention to the filming but you get the idea.  Mr. Langley has now added a "down-stay" to his repertoire.

All this training isn't just to teach him basic manners  and how to live the life of a house dog.  The most important lesson that I want Langley to learn from all this work is that humans are worth listening to and when things get scary, turning to them for help instead of reacting to his fear is a great option.  It will take awhile but hopefully we'll get there.

Chase Time

While we are trying to keep almost all of Langley's time pretty structured, on occasion we just play. And although our house dog Frodo isn't at all fond of Langley's level of energy, he just can't help showing off his speed and tight turns on occasion.  Because Langley ramps up when playing with other dogs and gets overly excited fairly quickly we keep the length of these chase games super short so everyone ends the game happy. This video was shot after Frodo and Langley had been running and chasing for about a minute.  Frodo couldn't help himself and had to get one more loop through the room before calling it quits.

How to keep calm? Lots of structure

Langley is still a bit of an anxious guy, in spite of the meds.  When given free time to just hang out and do his own thing, his anxiety seems to ramp up and then he displays a lot of stress behaviors and things tend to spiral out of control.  To manage that we try to keep his time structured.  I use lots of puzzle games and treat toys so that what would typically be open play time for most dogs is keeping him engaged in an appropriate activity and also keeping his smart brain busy. 

We also do a lot of basic training - things you'd learn at doggy obedience class - and Langley loves to run through speed drills of these things. He is fast and his eyes never waver from me once he is really on a roll.  "Sit - down - play dead - break - heel - down - stay - break - sit - shake" (we are working on adding to our repertoire).  In this video you see him doing this type of work.  He is a bit distracted because (a) he just ate dinner and isn't super hungry and (b) Frodo just went downstairs with a bully stick and he's not sure what he wants to do about that.  Still, he pulls it off in spite of distractions and a full belly.  Good work,  Langley!

Challenging lessons: impulse control

One of the things that can be particularly challenging for a young dog to understand is that just because something is there and because they want it really, really bad, does not mean they get to have it.  Table surfing, stealing other dogs' treats, taking food from a child's hand, etc., are all examples of a dog that hasn't been taught that not everything in the world belongs to them.  Remember, this is not the dogs fault that they are doing that as dogs are impulsive, live in the moment creatures.  But to live in the world peacefully with humans, we expect well behaved dogs to practice this skill and that means that it's our job to teach it.  A dog that steals food off a table is just being opportunistic, not bad. What would be bad is to get angry at the dog for not displaying a behavior that has never been taught.  I'll get off my soapbox though.

While most young dogs tend to lack much impulse control, one of Langley's issues was he had almost no impulse control at all.  We are talking one out of control, hyper prey driven, food motivated dog.  So we've been doing lots of practicing and this is one of the exercises we do. 

On the plate there are a few bits of venison jerky and a little fish kibble - nice and stinky and delicious and Langley REALLY wants to eat it.  Initially every time he tries to eat it my hand clamps down over the food.  He sniffs and paws at my hand and when he realizes he's not going to get any of it he lies down and my hand lifts up again.  We repeat this until he doesn't immediately go for the food when my hand lifts up.  At that point I gave him a piece of kibble from my treat pouch (not from the plate.)  Then the light starts to go on in his furry little head and he lies there looking at me.

At first we start with the food a distance from him since a dog can only take so much temptation. I play with the food, moving it around on the plate, but Langley holds firm. So then we move it closer.

And then so close that it may be considered animal torture in some countries.   That took some serious self control.  You try staring down a delicious mouth watering Haagen Dazs bar and tell me how much fun you are having!

As a reward for such a well done job and enduring this cruel form of puppy torture, Langley was rewarded with a salmon and veggie filled frozen Kong to relax with. He loves all these structured "games" we play and the trick training we do and the result is a terrier that is much more connected and working with his human.

We do a bunch of differenct exercises like this each day and Langley is getting quite skilled and slowly doing better with being able to focus on me when we are outside in areas that really trigger his compulsions.  Of course we have a ways to go but it's better to focus on the baby steps and he's taking a lot of those. Good job, Langley!

Behavior Modification

While the meds are definitely helping Langley that doesn't mean that we don't have to do any behavior modification work with him.  Drugs are helping to control his anxiety but now that he is calmer, we needed to develop a training regimen that will teach Langley the skills to be a more centered, relaxed dog.  To do this trainer Blair Meek came to visit Langley in our home, see him in action and assess him.

Her input has been a great help to us and Langley and we now have a training plan that includes lots of games and training exercises. His main issues are the OCD and that he has almost no impulse control.  When left to his own devices he gets anxious, runs around feeding his compulsions, and when that doesn't lesson his anxiety, it gets worse and he continues to ramp up.

To help him keep this anxiety under control Langley needs a lot of structure and then he needs to learn some impulse control.  Blair gave us quite a few exercises to work on to develop this skill and since Langley is such a smart boy and is very food motivated he has quickly picked up these exercises and now I'm working to increase their difficulty.

It's a lot of work for a young dog but Langley actually is really enjoying this training as it give him something to focus on and he's better able to connect with people, which also helps him feel more relaxed. And some of this structured time isn't training - it's things like playing with puzzle toys, working to get his food out of a frozen Kong or chewing on a bully stick in his crate.

The happy news is this Behavior Modification work has relaxed Langley to the point that he no longer is needing the tranquilizers and extra short acting anxiety meds in addition to the fluoxetine.