Talking With Dogs

As I am moving back into my role as teacher, not only through the upcoming Tricks class at Borderhauss Kennels but as a certified CATCH trainer mentor, I'm realizing how much nonverbal actions and consequences go into my daily routines.  My thoughts are constantly on reinforcing behaviors that I like, eliminating ones I don't like.  There are very few random treats I give my dogs.  I am in the mode of thinking that no cookie goes wasted.  I am, in essence, a training machine.

Til and Ms. Rip hanging out at Cindy's house.

 
While this might seem kind of sad, it puts communication on a whole new level.  I have had to reassess this, too, because now that I have my first border collie, I realize that I haven't made full use of the wonderful cognitive skills in dogs.  I no longer use the grunts and broken English reminiscent of an old Tarzan movie.  I use full sentences.  "Til, Nikita stole your toy and hid it in her cage.  You can find it in there.  Go get it out and bring it to me."

And he does.

I am talking to the border collie much more than I have to others, and the overflow extends to other dogs around him.

A few weeks ago, in house sitting for my friend Cindy while she was away, and caring for her two dogs, I was back to Square One.  The dogs, a Labrador named Nikita and a spaniel mix named Maggie, are both "amateurs" when it comes to the ever evolving "Bailey Method".  Nikita especially is completely clueless.  She is a big, tan, smiling, good-natured oaf, awkward and pushy in her affections.

I hold up a cookie.  "Sit," I tell her.  I KNOW she knows this cue.  She just stands there grinning, ears flattened, whipping her tail back and forth.

At this point, I have another revelation that with rescue dogs, and dogs who have been randomly reinforced, it is better not to talk.  Their lives are filled with meaningless noise.  They tune it out.  So I revert back to my old nonverbal ways and simply hold the cookie back over her head.  She sits. I toss the cookie and she clumsily snaps at it.

With Nikita I would be back to Tarzan Talk for a little while, using the barest of verbiage, while she begins to grasp all over again that language really does have meaning, and to listen intently for more complex instructions.  As she got to know me, she would eventually start to pay more attention.

Perhaps even more importantly, I would have to learn how to listen to her.

Dogs have a more difficult time, I think, when they are trying to tell us what's going on.  They are usually limited to body language and it comes out in something akin to a game of charades.  "Timmy fell down the well?" is a joke -- sort of.

I just finished a stint at the Reading Pet Expo in Pennsylvania, where Til and I performed our freestyle frisbee routine.  Luckily for me, Til is very adept at catching, which compensates for my lame throwing abilities. Add to this the fact that our routine is usually performed amidst the agility course, with the equipment providing a number of obstacles. During one of our shows yesterday, the frisbee fell down inside one of the hollow jump columns, which is about waist high and barrel shaped.  The audience erupted into laughter, but because I had pitched it from behind the high jump, I couldn't see where it had landed.  When I looked around the high jump, I saw Til running tight circles around the column -- clearly indicating where it was.

I don't think I could do that again if I tried!

Yesterday morning, while I was sitting on the hotel bed putting my shoes on, little Estephar the Chihuahua decided to attack me.  We were running late for the show, but I started wrestling with her anyway.  Til came over, picked up one of my shoes, and plopped it into my lap.

That time, again, the message was unmistakable.

As my friend Susan said, "At least there is one mature and responsible member in this family."

Pigs Helping Pigs

This year, Long Island Pet Expo had a booth with potbellied pigs.  This is not unusual for a pet expo, but for some reason I got it in my head that one of them should be trick trained.

My dogs perform in a traveling sport arena called the Classic K9 show.  It includes high jumping, speed racing (over low jumps) and my border collie Til has his own freestyle frisbee show.  We travel all over the eastern USA, and are joined by local teams wherever we go.

Til performing at Long Island Pet Expo.

Some of the expos in Michigan have pig races, where they run around a track.  But I always had thoughts of taking one and training it to run the course in our show as my dogs do.  It may have started when Estephar my Chihuahua got her own pig costume.  Este can run the course, and she's pretty fast.  But she's only 6 lbs so a dog her size has limitations.  To exploit the inevitable breed discrimination that comes with a Chihuahua, I like to dress her up in glitzy outfits and spring her on the audience in the middle of our high speed division -- usually a bunch of border collies.  We play the "Rocky " theme as she skitters over the course in whatever garb she has donned, to the delight of the audience.  She's always a crowd favorite.

Este in her pig suit.

Anyway, back to the pigs.  Not surprisingly, pigs need rescue just like all other domestic animals.  They are abandoned, mistreated and even abused sometimes.   Janice, the thin, elegant lady running the booth for the Long Island Potbellied Pig Association, admitted to me that she was keeping 40 pigs at her house.  It was too many.  They really needed homes where they could get the love and attention they needed..  On Saturday I said maybe we could help the rescue, if I could get a pig to do a trick in our arena as an opening gag for the show.  She was very receptive to the idea.  "Pigs," she told me, "Are the fourth smartest animal."

Somewhere I had heard this.  I suspected the first three on the list were chimps, dolphins and elephants.  All animals can be trained to some extent.  Besides dogs, I had worked with horses, cats, a goat, and an arctic fox.  I'd always wanted to try pigs.  So I was assigned Will, who was one of Janice's favorites.  Will had found a home, but still traveled with Janice to serve as ambassador for other pigs who needed rescue.  At the request of Will's owners,  Janice had already taught him some cute things.  He could play a little piano with his nose, knock down some bowling pins, and turn in a circle.  I was very impressed because Janice didn't use a clicker.  She did a little targeting with her hand, and used Froot Loops as reinforcement.

It's like looking in a mirror!

I got my clicker and some Froot Loops and went to work with Will.  He was about the size of a large ottoman, probably weighing 300 lbs.  His face didn't have a whole lot of expression, at least in terms of what I was accustomed to.  Pigs eyesight is very poor, so I had to think about how to cue him.  He took the Froot Loops from my fingers none too gently with his raspy teeth, but at least he didn't bite down too hard.  As with most new subjects, I started out by just clicking and treating, to get him used to the sound of the click.  When he suddenly grabbed my fingers with a new urgency, I knew he was getting the gist of the click's message.

I taught him to start following me then, and eventually worked up to nudging his knee with my foot.  It wasn't long before he was kicking his foot out.  Soon he was volunteering all four feet, and the back ones too.  It wasn't easy to see his feet, since his big anvil-shaped head was in the way.  I had to bend over and look.  He would follow me around, squinting at me and flipping his nose up, like a nearsighted old man asking for a kiss.

The show was a success.  I had it arranged so that every time Will hit the keys on his little piano, "Beethoven's 5th" would boom through the speakers.  The audience howled.  Will performed all his tricks when asked, including the new foot-shaking. 

Later, when I ran Este in the show, she came out in her pig costume, just to remind the crowd of our Pig Cause.  They shouted in glee.

That night as we were packing up to leave, one of the pigs was left in a running car as his owner went to get something. When he came back, he found the pig, named Junk, had locked the door.  Junk was still inside the car with the engine running.  The police were called and by the time I got out there to gawk, there were four cops standing around the car trying to pry it open, while Junk leered at them from the front seat.  He honked the horn a couple of times, as if to tell them to hurry up.  I snapped photos and screeched with laughter.

Junk the Pig trapped in car.

Janice proved herself a good sport, as she laughed along with me.  "Where's your clicker now?" The pig's longsuffering owner tapped on the window and pointed at the door lock, begging Junk to unlock it.  Alas, no such luck.  Junk was having too good a time scouring the seats for chewing gum.  But finally the cops managed to open the door and Junk was liberated.

The car is no longer a Junker.

When Will performed his tricks yesterday for the audience, I told them the part about pigs being the fourth smartest animal.  I then added, "One of them locked himself in a car here last night.  And the owner was trying to get him to unlock the door.  Well, pigs are that smart!  He didn't get the door open, but he did take the car downtown for an oil change."

Will played piano and bowled for the audience, and I was happy to see him shaking his feet at them too.  I hope we helped raise some awareness for the plight of rescued pigs.  I don't know if we did.  But if 15 years ago I had known it was this easy to train a potbellied pig, I'd probably still be married.