dog happiness

Koala’s Day Off

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Black Lab Koala runs with a red and white fabric frisbee on grass
Girls just wanna have fun sometimes!

Sometimes, a girl needs a day off.

Koala let her boss know that a couple of weeks ago. It was a Saturday, and they were going for a walk. A nice leisure activity — for the human. But Deni wanted Koala to guide. To work. After a long week filled with lots of work.

Koala wanted a day off. She wanted to wander and sniff and run on the grass (and maybe go into the water…?) … not work.

Koala is pretty clear in communicating what she wants (or doesn’t want) to do. If she doesn’t want to work — and, this is critical, she knows that her work is not essential — she slows down, gives Deni that look, and indicates that she’d rather head toward the grassy park or lie down than put on her harness.

She does have a strong work ethic, and if Deni and Koala are in any kind of situation where Deni needs Koala to work, Koala excels.

But, more and more, she has days when she’d really rather not (I can relate!). She might be dreaming about retirement, though she’s still a relatively young 7-and-a-half years old.

Or, she might be reading up on the Great Resignation / Great Reshuffle. And, like millions of other American workers, she might be re-thinking her work-life balance. I’m guessing that Koala has realized that there’s too much work and not enough life in that mix.

A friend asked me not long ago when I get a full day off — not only off from my job, but free of all types of work, errands, obligations, and other have-tos. I rarely do — and Koala is likely in the same boat.

The great thing about giving Koala (or any dog) a “day off” — a fun day — is that it feels like a day off for the human(s) too: I’m getting ready for a visit to the dog beach with Koala, as I am taking (most of) a day off following a busy work week at a Florida conference. I think it will do both of us a lot of good!

But even on regular work days, I think we all need to build in some fun time for ourselves and our dogs, especially the ones with demanding careers. If Koala gets more time to run and play, will she return to work with more pep and enthusiasm? It’s worth finding out.

 

Just Watching the World Go By

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Cali, a golden retriever, sits in the living room, peering out a large window

Dogs just want to watch the world go by. And interact with it sometimes. Some dog owners clearly understand that!

A brown dog peers through a rectangular hole in a wooden fence
Photos by Ken Gagne

My first encounter with the idea of “fence dogs” came while my friend Ken was spending a few weeks in Missoula this summer. The fence between his AirBnB and the neighboring yard featured an odd window. The purpose of this opening quickly became clear on his first morning there, when a fuzzy canine head appeared.

It turned out that there were three “fence dogs” who liked to visit, supervise the goings-on next door, get nose scratches, Golden retriever Cali looks at the two dogs peering through a fence windowand occasionally bring Ken a tennis ball to inspect.

On a visit to Ken, Cali “met” the fence dogs — and probably wondered why her fence does not have such nice windows.

Several weeks after he’d left Missoula, I was reminded of Ken and the fence dogs when I saw an article about a family’s creative approach to letting their dog watch the world go by.

Then, just last week, I saw an even funnier post. These dogs apparently spy primarily on their mom’s comings and goings, and they have to line up just right with their viewing portals.

Cali, and occasionally Koala, also enjoy watching the world. They use the large window in my living room that looks out on the driveway — and gives them a great view of the road. Cali grumbles at people walking past, escalating to irate vocalizations when a dog dares to walk on her sidewalk. She looks out sadly, staring me right in the face, whenever I back out of the driveway in a dogless car.

Golden retriever Cali peers out a large windowCali just loves watching what’s going on, and dog-height windows were an appealing feature when I first saw what became our home.

She adopted this space immediately. I briefly put a bench with several plants in “her” window, partially blocking the view, and she let me know that this was unacceptable. Very unhappy, she paced, tried to peer out, gave me dirty looks. I soon moved the bench.

I don’t like walking past yards where dogs fence fight or go ballistic, barking and lunging as I pass, especially if the fence is mostly open. But I think there is a balance. For dogs who can handle the stimulation (and who are supervised and brought indoors when they bark at neighbors), a fence window (or an actual window) is a great idea! Dogs are curious about their world and, for the most part, their lives are contained. Many dogs spend a lot of time at home with no access to see or even smell the outdoors. If we can offer them a way to watch the world, why not?

Reward or Punishment?

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A tiny, perfect ice cream cone, about an inch tall
Photos by Allison Lester

Cali barked at someone walking past our back gate. I shushed her. When she did it again, I ordered her inside.

Koala looked at me quizzically, then walked to the door and asked to go in. Deni told her that no, she had to stay outside. Her next look clearly asked why Cali got rewarded for barking — and why she was being punished.

For Cali, going inside is punishment. But spending time outside is often, for Koala, punishment.

The dog decides what’s a reward — and what’s not.

In our relationships with our dogs, and especially in training ,the dog decides what’s rewarding and what’s not. If a dog doesn’t care much about food, most food treats won’t be rewarding enough to motivate her to learn or to do something she really doesn’t want to do. If a dog hates having her ears rubbed or dislikes pats on the head, some types of physical “affection” can be unpleasant — not the bonding experience the human might be aiming for.

Cali knows that getting her ears done is worth more — both in number and in value — in treat-payment than getting the newspaper or putting a toy away. She knows that some great things, like coconut ice popsicles and opportunities to play snuffle-mat, are free — while others, like her special meat treats, have to be earned.

Cali’s pretty strongly food motivated, but if she’s got a tennis ball and a prospective ball thrower, she’s not at all interested in any kind of treat. And when she’s at the vet and the tech wants to lead her somewhere — whether a soup ladle is involved or not — it takes an extremely high-value treat to get her to go. Koala, on the other hand, will pretty much do anything for a treat.

For some dogs, especially the high-drive dogs who tend to excel at search, scent detection, and police training, active play with a ball or tug toy is the best training reward they can imagine. Other dogs will give the toy — and the human offering it — some side-eye and then (again) demand their pay — in food.

The owner or trainer or dog-walk can have whatever ideas they want about what the dog should like or want. But if something isn’t rewarding to the dog, it’s not going to work. That’s true whether the human is trying to train, get the dog to do something — or get the dog to stop doing something.

It’s worth figuring out what foods work best as treats and what non-food rewards — praise, petting, toys or other play — work for your dog. Save the very best ones for special occasions — times you need the dog to come over in a hurry or cooperate with a particularly unpleasant experience (ears, nails, vet) — and use the “good” and “very good” ones for everyday training and rewards.

Waiting for Raspberries

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Golden retriever Cali sits next to the raspberry patch, waiting for berries to ripen
Some day, my berries will be ready …

Cali is a raspberry fiend. When our bushes have raspberries, she’s constantly nosing through the canes, looking for ripe, almost ripe, or just about any berries she can reach. She somehow manages to avoid the thorns.

Throughout the winter, she also kept nosing around, trampling the canes and occasionally chewing on one. I kept telling her that she’d be sorry in the summer because if she ate the bushes, there’d be no raspberries.

I was wrong. I was completely ignorant of the benefits of a dog nosing through, trampling, and chewing on raspberry canes. Our patch is bigger and stronger than ever. And both old and new canes are loaded with potential raspberries. They are not even at the stage of underripe berries as I write this, but within a few weeks … Cali will be stuffing herself.

She’s excited. Every day she goes to check on them. She conducts a thorough inspection of every cane. She sniffs every emerging berry. She sits patiently next to the canes — for hours — waiting for them to ripen.

We’re going to have a bumper crop of raspberries. I hope that the humans get to eat a few.

A Perfect Day (for Cali)

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Cali, a golden retriever, swims in a riverI’d like to get out and hike more. It’s summer in Missoula. I’m an outdoor novice; I don’t go camping (which means I have Missoula all to myself on summer weekends) and I can really only do easy hikes. Even so, I like to get outside in our short, but stunning, summers.

But Cali’s not great off leash. She gets engrossed in something and next thing she knows, she’s miles away and 20 minutes have passed.

There are many wonderful trails where I can’t or wouldn’t let her off leash even if she were more reliable. They’re at the edge of vast wilderness, have too many tempting smells and critters to follow, and I’m not willing to risk losing her. Every weekend in the summer, the Missoula NPR station reads our lost dog reports, and sometimes there are pictures at the trail heads … it’s sad and scary.

So, when I have a little time and it’s a nice day, I face a dilemma. Do I pack Cali into the car and go off somewhere to satisfy my desire to hike? Or do I choose an option that will be more fun for her?

Hiking is fun for her, but still, it’s usually a long walk on a short leash in a pretty place that she’d love to explore, if only her mean mom would let her.

Compared with one of our standbys, a large open area inside Missoula where she can run off leash, and where I usually throw a ball for her to chase … well, no contest. Especially in the summer when there’s water to play in!

I feel a little bad each time I decide to head there rather than gear up for a more adventurous outing, but then, as I make the turn off of Reserve St., and Cali knows for sure where we’re going, her excitement reassures me. This is what she’d choose. This or a trip to Big Dipper ice cream (or both).

She dances with excitement as we get out of the car and I dig out her ball; she squeals with joy as I release the leash. Then she’s off, running, the instant I throw the ball. She doesn’t bring it back, of course, so I walk to her, she lets me take it, and I throw it again. And again.

We walk along the irrigation ditch, currently full of cool water. We walk through a wooded area. When we get to each of the two little pools, I throw the ball into the water for her to swim after. Now she does bring it back, over and over, so I will keep throwing it upstream. Her favorite thing is to get out of the water and drop the ball at my feet. Then, just as I bend to pick it up, she shakes off, sharing the cool water. We both get back to the car dirty, tired, and happy.

I think that she has more fun doing this, even if it’s the same outing two or three times a week (or daily) than she would if we went to new and interesting places … where she had to stay on leash. It’s not that dire; there are a few other places where she can be off leash. But in the summer, this spot, with the trees, water, and open space, is pretty hard to beat. Instead of worrying about taking her more places, maybe I need to focus on taking her more often for perfect Cali days … a swim, some mud, maybe a little ice cream!

The Garden Is Going to the Dogs!

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Cali, under the blossoming cherry trees, with her tennis ball.

It’s February in Montana, so reading an article about planning a “sensory garden” for dogs was a nice escape from the cold. Since Cali has staked her claim to the back yard of our house, though, and much landscaping is needed, it’s also great inspiration.

The first piece of advice is to watch how the dog uses the space — where she hangs out, where and what she sniffs. That’s easy. Cali’s favorite spot is under the cherry trees and next to the raspberries. In the summer, her favorite spot is in the raspberries, harvesting and eating as many berries as she can reach. But even in the winter, she’s most likely to be found in that corner of the garden.

Then, plan ways to enrich the garden for her enjoyment and mental stimulation. This means stimulating all of her senses.

Foremost for dogs is, of course, smell. Plant things that she enjoys sniffing. Ideally, plant several plants and flowers that will bloom and grow at different times of the year. Here in Montana, that’s a fairly small part of the year, so other senses will have to dominate in the winter.

For visual stimulation, the author of the article suggests rocks, logs, items of different heights to create variation.

To stimulate hearing, she suggests running water, wind chimes, or rustling plants. Those wouldn’t really work too well in a Montana winter either, but in our somewhat urban neighborhood, there is plenty of aural stimulation.

Cali surveys her yard from the deck
When not under the cherry trees, Cali enjoys her perch on the deck

Taste is a tough one. I have always discouraged my dogs from sampling the garden plants. Timo, my first dog, loved lemon verbena and once ate every single leaf from a small plant. The plant did not survive the assault, but Timo and the larger one coexisted happily for many years. As a puppy, Jana enjoyed harvesting strawberries and blackberries in our garden. Cali enjoys the cherries and raspberries in season, of course. But the suggestions of verbena, thyme, and other safe and appealing plants are worth considering.

Finally, tactile stimulation is essential. Cali loves to dig; I have thought about creating a digging spot for her in the garden. Another suggestion is using a variety of textures — grass, mulch (check and check) and paths made of stones or crushed granite, or even sand. We can definitely work more of that into our landscaping.

A final suggestion is creating opportunities for the dog to run around. When Cali has friends over, they do create a sort of circuit, looping into the cherry-tree corner and under the clotheslines.

Some other things to consider:

  • Know which plants are toxic to dogs and avoid these.
  • Use raised beds, pots, or plant borders to steer dogs away from no-go zones, like the vegetable patch. Interestingly, though Cali dug up all our baby tomato plants the day we planted them, she never bothered the vegetable gardens after that, even though she loves cucumbers, and the cukes were well within her reach. She quickly learned that the raised beds were my turf.
  • Consider your dog’s age and activity level. For some dogs, simple agility equipment or things they can climb or jump onto are a good addition.

The garden can be very appealing to humans, too. But too many yards are designed only for the people in the family. Since Cali spends exponentially more time in our yard than I do, it’s only fair to create a place she will enjoy fully!

Martin Speaks for “Everydog”

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An ABC promotional image for “Downward Dog”

If you’re not watching ABC’s “Downward Dog,” you should check it out before it disappears. (ABC just announced that the show will be canceled after its seventh and eighth episodes air this week.) Martin, the narrator, does a pretty good job of capturing the cynomorphic take on the human-dog relationship. That’s the dog’s point of view.

Martin, a medium-sized mixed-breed dog, shares a home with Nan, a single woman with a demanding advertising career, an unreasonable boss, and a frustratingly immature and undependable on-again, off-again boyfriend. Martin chronicles the ups and downs of their relationship and his days.

While he might not speak for every dog in every instance, a lot of what he says rings awfully true: His assumption that Nan drives around all day in her car and his inability to understand why she’d want to do that without him; his hurt when he finds out the truth. His certainty that he has super powers when he can make the automatic dog door open (one of our dogs seemed to have the same take on it; the others either thought it was magic or just another way the lazy human staff tried to get out of doing their jobs; Cali thought a trainable ghost ran things). His conviction that he makes the rules in the relationship and sometimes has to show Nan who’s boss — by chewing up an Ugg boot.

One of my favorite parts so far is Martin’s soliloquy on why he is compelled to eat trash. I could just see Jana, my ultrafeminine princess who loved to roll in dead things, nodding in agreement. Sometimes, a dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do.

The show doesn’t get everything right. For instance it leans too heavily on the assumption that, in a dog-human relationship, someone has to be “dominant.” And Nana’s character embodies way too many clichés about single women. But, though Martin is self-involved — like many dogs — he’s a lovable guide to the dog’s world.

I’ve spent years trying to understand how dogs see our relationships with them; I’ve tried with mixed success to teach students to consider the many angles and nuances of life with dogs from the dogs’ point of view. If I were teaching those students now, I’d use the eight episodes of “Downward Dog” as an imperfect but enjoyable presentation of one dog’s unique perspective.

Better and Better

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Montana just gets better and better.

Cali and Jana’s cousins came to visit recently. Ziggy and Hannah live in Kansas, where summer is full of scary thunderstorms and terrifying lawnmowers. Up here on the hilltop in Montana, there are no lawnmowers at all. Thunderstorms are rare. There’s a huge play yard and lot of places to go hiking. Ziggy was excited.

Cali, Jana, and their cousins went to Missoula to visit Scarlett and her sister, Gracie. Then they went for a walk by the river, saw a huge carousel, met some really friendly Montana kids, and then, best of all, they got to go out for ice cream. The nice lady at the Big Dipper gave each dog her own cone! Ziggy and Jana and Cali ate theirs really fast, but Hannah showed her good breeding and manners, licking her cone delicately and not dripping it anywhere.

Hannah and Ziggy quickly learned to use the automatic dog door, and they each got their own key. Hannah thinks that it opens when she barks at it. She likes to bark, so that suits her just fine. Jana’s friend Molly came for a visit, and she remembered how to use the dog door right away, even though she hadn’t been over to visit in a really long time! She’s super-smart because she’s a poodle. She knows that barking is not what makes the door open.

Molly likes to bark too, but with all the girls barking, Jana and Cali’s mom couldn’t get any work done, so she told everyone to be quiet. Meanie!

The cousins and Molly loved playing out in Cali’s big play yard. They chased the ball, chased Cali or Alberta chasing the ball, ate grass, barked at deer, chased each other some more … when they got tired, they went back inside and piled onto the dog beds or stretched out on a rug. Hannah and Ziggy thought that Montana was pretty awesome. Molly, a native Montanan, couldn’t agree more.

After Hannah and Ziggy and Molly went home, Cali, Alberta, and Jana finally made plans to go to Packer Meadow. Jana loves this place and told Cali and Alberta all about it, but Cali and Alberta had never been there. It’s huge and very green. Jana remembers being there when it was so full of purple flowers that it looked like water. Speaking of water, there’s this really great stream that runs through the meadow. Brrrr. The water is very cold. But a dog can jump in and climb out and jump in and climb out and jump in and … all day (or until her mom makes her leave. Meanie.).

Unfortunately, the day they went, Packer Meadow was closed because it was too close to some huge forest fires. Good thing that Mom always has a backup plan; the girls had a great afternoon at Jana’s second-favorite place, Fort Fizzle. Jana found the first of her heart-shaped rocks there. She loves splashing in the river, finding rocks, rolling on the bank, and chasing sticks. Cali chased tennis balls; one almost got lost way out on the rocks, and Alberta wouldn’t bring it back, but Cali finally agreed to go and get it. She got a bunch of cookies for that. Maybe Mom is not such a meanie after all.

And guess what! They still get to go to Packer Meadow in a couple of weeks. Montana sure is a great place to be a dog.

 

Duck-Induced Deafness

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cali and ducksI’m a whole lot less interesting than three mallards. I’m trying not to take it personally.
I took the girls swimming the other day at the Russian River. We were having a nice time splashing around, and Cali was happily swimming after a ball. Jana was searching for rocks. Russian RIver April 2015She likes to find heart-shaped rocks, as I have described in an earlier post. She added this one (right) to our collection on this particular river excursion. In short, all was well.
Until those darn ducks swam by. There were about 10 ducks, enjoying a sunny day. Jana noticed them first. She’d swim in their general direction, and they’d fly up a few feet into the air, and she’d lose interest.

Then Cali got in on the game. She just followed them around, never getting too close. She was no threat. She was holding a tennis ball in her mouth the whole time, and she never got closer than about 10 feet. Three of the ducks decided to play a little game with her. They did not fly away. They stayed just far enough in front of her that they (apparently) felt safe but close enough that she stayed interested. And they swam around in big circles. They swam across the river, around a big island, back to our side. Upriver. Downriver. Big circles.

Cali paddled doggedly after them.

At first, it was funny. She never let go of her tennis ball. She’s a strong swimmer, but after a few minutes, I started worrying that she’d get tired. My friend and I waded farther into the river, determined to head them off if they headed downriver. They didn’t.

We called Cali and waved. But she was suffering a bout of duck-induced deafness and never heard a thing. Jana had long since given up on following the ducks and was nosing around for sticks on the beach. The other golden in our group had gone back to tennis balls. But not Cali. Back and forth, around and around. Finally, my friend couldn’t stand it any longer. She crossed the river and grabbed Cali, getting soaked in the process. Cali still had her tennis ball. She was not even winded.

Jana used to do the same thing. She once followed a leaping fish pretty far out into the Gulf at a Florida dog beach. But Jana has more sense than Cali. After a while, she looked back, saw how far she was, got a very worried look on her face — and turned and paddled for shore as quickly as she could. I don’t worry about Jana disappearing into the wild. She never wants to lose sight of me.

But Cali is more impulsive and less aware of her surroundings. Was Cali even a tiny bit aware that she had worried us? Nothing doing. Within minutes, she was bugging us to throw the ball some more.

Does this mean that Cali has a poor recall? Not necessarily; even the best-trained dog is likely to go temporarily deaf when confronted with a really interesting distraction. It does teach me to keep a closer eye (and shorter leash) on Cali when I see ducks on future water adventures, though. And it’s a good reminder that I need to practice recalls with Cali in more places with lots of interesting things going on. I may never be able to cure duck-induced deafness, but I can probably relieve some of the symptoms.

Alberta’s Marshmallow Test

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In the 1970s, a psychologist tested the self-restraint of preschool children. Each child was offered a marshmallow. The children were told that they would get two marshmallows if they could delay eating the treat, and then left alone in a room for fifteen minutes. The researcher recorded what happened. The efforts of some children to stare down the treat or to distract themselves from it are both comical and painful to watch. Of course, some children inhaled the treat as soon as the researcher left the room. A recent book (The Marshmallow Test) describes this experiment and the follow-up studies of those children. The marshmallow test and other research on the ability to delay gratification shows that those who can exercise self-control in the face of temptation have better “life outcomes,” as measured by a variety of criteria, including SAT scores, social and cognitive functioning, long-term health, and retirement planning.

What does all of this have to do with thinking dogs?
Alberta experienced her own version of the marshmallow test recently. To say that Alberta loves treats is a bit like saying that I love chocolate. Alberta not only loves treats, she is not terribly fussy about which treats she gets. For sure, there are better treats, for example this bison and beef jerky concoction that I get at Costco and that, for some reason, Jana, Cali, and Alberta will do anything for. But ordinary, boring biscuits are fine too, and they are happily accepted as rewards for a job well done.

In her guide dog work, Alberta comes across many items that fit this dog’s definition of “treat,” and she works very hard to resist bits of food that just happen to be lying on the floor.
Alberta is justifiably proud of her hard-earned restraint, but more importantly, she wants Deni to know. So, in the course of a day’s work, if Alberta sees food on the floor and gives it a wide berth, she also nudges Deni to make sure that Deni knows just how good she is being. She pushes Deni hard with her nose, hoping that Deni will notice the ignored object. She often nudges Deni right near the pocket where Deni keeps the dog treats, just in case Deni might want to reward this extraordinary show of restraint. A girl can hope, can’t she?

Alberta knows the rule that she can’t grab food off the ground when she’s working. She wants to believe that that rule does not apply when she’s off-duty (her harness is off). She also knows that, even while working, she’s allowed to take treats that Deni hands her for particularly notable service. But she recently encountered a situation that blurred these lines a bit, a marshmallow test for dogs. Her reaction was remarkable.
Guiding Deni down a street in Saugatuck, Michigan, Alberta (along with her entourage of two other human family members) passed by a store that not only had a full doggy water bowl sitting by the sidewalk, but also a full bowl of doggy cookies. Just sitting there for the taking. An open invitation. Irresistible.
Or not.
Alberta headed for the water, took a drink, noticed the cookie bowl and … stopped dead. Confused. She looked at the biscuits. Looked at Deni. Furrowed her brow. Looked longingly at the treats. But she did not touch the treats.
We’d all stopped to watch the unfolding marshmallow-like drama. Alberta really wanted to gobble up as many of those dog cookies as she could. But she did not take one. She did, however, look at every one of us to make sure that we all knew how good she was being. Deni rewarded her by picking up a few biscuits from the bowl and handing them to Alberta.
Watching the interaction, I got to thinking. Most dogs who walk by this shop are not trained service dogs. Though many, like Jana and Cali, have had some training and certainly know that they are not supposed to just devour everything in sight, they don’t always have the restraint to follow through. Having more than once found myself alone with a new box of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups, I can relate.
I wondered how often a doggy passerby just digs in and eats all the cookies in the bowl. How many battles between hungry hounds and their hapless handlers has the shop owner witnessed? Does the handler ever win? And really, what was that shop owner thinking?

But back to Alberta. In need of photos for this blog post, I asked Deni to re-create Alberta’s marshmallow test. The photo gallery (presented in order) at the top of this blog post shows that, like the successful children in the original marshmallow test, Alberta devised a series of ways to distract herself. Some of the children looked away, as Alberta did. Some sang songs or recited the alphabet. Alberta did neither of these. Some children closed their eyes. Upon realizing that, even after she had turned away, the bowl of biscuits was still there, Alberta closed her eyes.

Alberta has not only learned to resist random bits of food on cafeteria floors, sidewalks, and the like, but there she was, on that Michigan sidewalk and again in Deni’s office, passing up food that was obviously meant for dogs, placed there for her enjoyment. This shows us that dogs are able to do some high-level thinking and processing.

If Alberta were purely instinct-driven, that bowl would have been emptied in seconds flat. If she were operating only out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, she might have surreptitiously sneaked a mouthful of biscuits before Deni noticed, just to see if she could get away with it — and been rewarded by the treat, even if she got scolded after. But she went beyond a gut-instinct response and even beyond the basic (low) level of moral development that governs much of human and animal behavior. She paused, checked in with Deni, and did the right thing — even though she really wanted those cookies. We’re eagerly looking forward to seeing Alberta’s SAT scores and are consulting her for retirement advice. But in my next post, I will describe more practical ways we can apply the doggy marshmallow test to our relationships with our dogs.