A Few Final Thoughts on Puppy Class

This weekend, the five puppies in my puppy class will graduate, all with honors, I might add. No, seriously.  They have all done so well and their owners have accomplished quite a bit in the six weeks we've been together. Very few setbacks and a lot of forward progress is always worth celebrating! At last week's class, I reviewed everything that we'd accomplished so far, and frankly, the class seemed astounded. I asked one of the participants after class was done and I was cleaning up our space, why she was so surprised at what had transpired over the previous five weeks.  She told me that she'd taken puppy classes a couple of times before, and while she enjoyed the classes, they just weren't like mine.  She felt that she'd learned so much and that her puppy had learned so much, way more than her previous puppies.  I appreciated that feedback as it provides reinforcement for instructors like myself who put their time and energy into understanding the science of puppy brain development and finding ways to implement that science to benefit puppies and their people. I thought you all might find it interesting to know exactly what this group of puppies accomplished in just five weeks time:

1.  The basics of cooperative care:  Teaching cooperative care exercises to puppies (and kittens, for that matter) is much easier than trying to teach an adult dog who has already made negative associations with body parts handling.  We handle feet, ears, mouths, and tails, looking to see where the puppies might resist, if at all.  Any resistance is met with understanding and a different approach.  For puppies who don't like their mouths messed with, we don't force those mouths open!  Instead, we smear peanut butter on a finger and present that for them to lick, guiding the yummy coated finger into their mouth to rub their gums and teeth.  Each session, we do the same, rubbing around a bit longer until the puppy loves having their mouth opened and explored with peanut butter.  Then, we put the peanut butter on a finger toothbrush, and ultimately a dog tooth brush. Once that all works, we move on the dog toothpaste and we're able to open that puppy's mouth, and a bonus, brush their teeth!

2.  Games with a purpose:  The puppies in my class all knew their name, but a couple would choose not to come when called, both at home and in class. So, we took their leashes off (counterintuitive, I know) and dropped a treat in front of them.  Then we took a couple of steps, said their name, and when they looked at us, dropped another treat.  It's like Hansel & Gretel!  Then, we started tossing the treat away from us about 18 inches, watching the puppy scamper after it and then look back as if to say, "Where to next?"  We'd toss treats in several directions before returning to drop a treat at our feet, bringing the puppy back to us.  Now, we've got the puppy's attention and can add in the word "come!" in an upbeat tone when we drop the treats at our feet to get them closer.  Once we could get puppies to come without a leash, we put long lines on them and let them wander off and get distracted.  Funny thing happened.  Because we'd worked so hard getting them to come to us without a leash on, they came readily when they had the leash on, even with those distractions.

3.  Loose leash walking:  We all dream of dogs that don't drag us down the street.  Loose leash walking starts with puppies wearing no leash at all.  Counterintuitive again, I realize. We walk all around the classroom using a handful of treats and our most upbeat voices to get the puppies to follow us around. If they wander, we guide them back with the treats and our voices.  When they can do this reliably, THEN we put the leashes on....and we throw a bunch of really interesting "trash" on the ground to distract them!  At that point, we can not only practice loose leash walking, but we can practice "leave it" and "drop it" in a very real-world situation.  

4.  Tricks training:  We didn't just teach the puppies to "sit," "lay down," and "stand" when asked.  We taught them to "touch" an outstretched finger or hand; "crawl" on the ground; "flop" on their side; "rollover" completely; "turn" both left and right; "bow" and hold that position; "weave" through our legs while we walk; and "back up" when we step toward them.  Why teach all of these tricks?  Well first and foremost, because it's fun.  Second, because each of those tricks has real-world application.  A dog who knows "back up," for example, will move out of your way reliably and with ease when you walk through the door with your arms loaded, maneuvering in a narrow space. But the big reason we teach all of these tricks is that puppies' minds are sponges just waiting to soak up directions and guidance.  If you don't teach them things, they get bored and then they get into trouble.  Because they can learn so fast, the real shame is all those adult dogs out there who weren't taught all of these fun tricks as puppies; sure, they can learn to do them as adults, but it's so much easier with that puppy brain guiding the learning and soaking it all in. Plus, you give that puppy a foundation for learning and show them that learning is fun.  Then, their only limitation is you, their owner, coming up with other fun tricks to teach them as they continue to grow and mature.

5. Play is valuable:  We have two play sessions each class, one at the beginning and one at the end.  It's fun to watch how play changes when puppies are a bit more tired.  Play is a big part of their learning process: Learning to get along with each other, learning different play styles, learning that making another puppy squeal means you might lose that friend, at least for a little while.  Puppy play is really fun to watch, but it is so much more that just entertainment.  Play is a critical part of development in young animals.  Those who are deprived of play are often timid and behaviorally stunted.  They don't read the body language of other dogs with ease like dogs who played when they were puppies do.

As you can probably tell, I love a good puppy class, and this one was no exception. I'll be excited to follow the development of this group of puppies as they move on to adolescent classes and beyond. I have high hopes for a rally dog in this group, and one for agility as well.  Keeping their options open is important; they are just puppies after all!

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

People are always surprised when I tell them that Henley did puppy classes too!  Why?  Because he needed to play with other puppies and he needed the opportunity to do all of the things I outlined above, with the distraction of other puppies around.  He attended my puppy classes under the watchful eye of my daughter, since I was the instructor.  That was good for him too; he had to listen and follow directions from someone other than me.  The result? He's incredibly bonded to my daughter and takes direction from her just as well as he does from me.  He's a very good boy indeed.

Musings From My Latest Adventure

As many of you that follow me on social media know, I spent three days last week in Colorado visiting my friend, Lise Morgan, at the beautiful ranch where she and her husband raise, care for and nurture many animals, including their beloved collies. Foxhaven Collies takes a very different approach to the breeding, raising, and preparing of puppies for their next adventure as someone's beloved canine family member.  Zelly is a Foxhaven collie: She is confident, inquisitive, loving and lovable, with beautiful movement, carrying herself as a collie should.  While staying with Lise, we shared many conversations about how puppies of any breed should be raised and the kind of challenges those puppies face right out of the gate as they head to their new homes.  I wanted to share one of those conversations with you all as I thought it was particularly important for anyone raising a puppy, or thinking about acquiring a puppy.  

Giving puppies a leg up on life begins even before they are born.  Nurturing their mothers with an appropriate diet, a predictable, comfortable space, and adequate rest and exercise ensures that mother dogs are not under undue stress as they prepare their bodies for the birthing process.  Those puppies will then come into the world and nurse from a mother whose body hasn't been constantly flooded with stress hormones, affecting the quality and quantity of her milk.  Even before their eyes and ears open, puppies are absorbing the experiences around them. These "puppy potatoes" respond to the warmth and care provided by their human caretakers.  Once eyes and ears open, it's a race to keep up from a developmental point of view!

The environment your puppy is raised in between birth and 10 weeks of age should be ever-changing.  Their space should grow in size and complexity and include safe spaces for hiding or resting in addition to chewing, climbing, and play opportunities, as well as the introduction of novel foods to prime their gut.  The variety of items available in their space should be rotated daily, at a minimum, to maintain interest and encourage exploration. Puppies should be observed after these rotations to see how they are responding to the novel items, placement of objects, etc., noting what objects garner immediate interest, if any items spook or startle a puppy, and if any are actively avoided.  Any puppy that startles, note whether they recover quickly or whether they move away and continue to avoid what startled them.  You want your puppy's response to be elastic, like a rubber band; you want them to bounce back and try again, as if to say, "I was afraid of that crunchy tunnel at first, but once I saw a sibling run through it, I wasn't afraid anymore!"  That's bounce back and that's learning.

As puppies mature even more, you want to know that they were exposed to situations and experiences outside of their breeder's home.  That might mean a stroller excursion into town with a visit to a coffee shop, or it might mean having a couple of friends come by to meet and engage the puppies.  You want to know that your puppy was exposed to all different kinds of people so, again, if they are startled the first time seeing someone in a hat, they bounce back the second time that they are exposed.  Which brings me to my main point of telling you all of this in the first place.

You can flood a puppy (or a dog) with experiences, one right after the other, over and over, sort of like having a puppy party where you invite twelve people over and a bunch of screaming kids and have them meet your new puppy.  Flooding is a therapeutic technique, yes, but it isn't generally a successful one, particularly with puppies.  Flooding refers to rapidly exposing an individual to fearful stimuli in the hopes of them overcoming their anxiety and moving past it.  Puppies who are flooded with fearful experiences, like that puppy party, become quickly overwhelmed, making a permanent negative association in their brain that their caregivers can't be trusted to protect them.  If instead, you introduce your puppy to one new person, or a couple of new people at a time, allowing the puppy to choose whether to interact with those new people, or simply observe, you are providing your puppy with supported exposure.  This falls under the category of systematic desensitization, a much more successful means of exposing a puppy to new people or novel environments, allowing them to build confidence through successive, successful exposures, with rest in between.  And, yes, rest is not just important, it is critical to the process.

I'm always harping on puppy owners to make sure their puppies get multiple naps every day.  The timing of those naps is important as they should occur, in particular, after your puppy has been somewhere new, acquired a new behavior, or solved a difficult problem.  That nap afterwards is when your puppy's brain processes what they learned, building new neural connections and pathways.  If they aren't allowed to rest, those new neural connections don't happen.  Rest is restorative in more ways than one!

Just as (hopefully) your breeder did with your puppy during those first 9-10 weeks, it is your job to curate your puppy's experiences every day once they are in your home.  Gradually exposing them to new situations, objects, and people.  Watch their body language and be aware of what they are telling you.  Are they moving away or boldly approaching?  Are they leaning away from new people, or leaning in?  Are they yawning, scratching, shaking their bodies as if they were wet?  That's a puppy who's overwhelmed.  Read your puppy's body language and respond immediately; don't let them get flooded or overwhelmed.  Instead, build trust in you and confidence in themselves through relationship rapport, responding to each other.  Your job is to provide your puppy with supported exposures to new things, building on the lessons they received from their breeder.  Your breeder gave your puppy their head start and the foundation. It's your job to continue to help your puppy thrive, becoming the well-balanced, confident, capable dog they were born to be.

It really was a joy to observe puppies raised this way.  When I temperament tested this recent litter of three Foxhaven puppies, I was reminded yet again why choosing a good breeder is so important.  For myself, I want to know that my puppy had all of those benefits right from the start, including a happy dam and a warm, nurturing home environment.  Daily, age-appropriate challenges, including novel food and food puzzle experiences as well.  And most importantly, humans who loved them, nurtured them, held them, played with them, and watched them carefully for signs of stress or anxiety.  If you can find a breeder who loves with their whole heart, uses science-based methods, and revels in every little developmental step with awe and wonder, then you've found your next puppy. I know I have.

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

Here I am with Lise Morgan of Foxhaven Collies

 and her three, nine week old collie puppies!

Time For Some Fun!

As many of you know, I've studied, researched, published and logged thousands of hours of observation on play behavior in animals.  What's currently grabbed my attention is something slightly different: The importance of dog owners playing with their own dogs.  While I've certainly spent a lot of time watching puppies play with each other, as well as adolescent and adult dogs playing together, I'd never specifically thought about people playing with their dogs beyond the obvious "you should play with your dog to help foster a relationship with them." Turns out just spending an extra five minutes a day playing games with your dog is even more beneficial to your relationship with them than spending five extra minutes on training exercises.  Now, before you get too caught up in this, one caveat.  You still need to spend time training your dogs!  Even if doing so isn't the sole foundation on which your relationship is built, it's still important.

The type of games you play with your dog also makes a difference. For example, a game of fetch wasn't even included as part of the study. Instead, they looked at games whose focus was on the social interaction between the dog and the human.  So, games that included rough-housing, tug-of-war, chase, and hide-and-seek were seen as social bond building, creating a foundation for the formation of a solid relationship between the human and the dog.  I found this fascinating! Just a few years back, there was a backlash against people playing tug-of-war games with their dogs or engaging in rough-housing style play.  At that time, the argument was being made that doing so fostered aggression in dogs.  Consequently, I'd have puppy owners roll up to puppy classes and ask what they should be doing with their puppies since they "weren't supposed to play tug or rough-house."  I was always quick to debunk the mistaken connection between aggression and rough and tumble play.  That's not where aggression comes from and playing this way with your puppy isn't going to make them aggressive. If it did, then every dog I knew during the 70's and 80's (including my own!)  would have been aggressive because that's how we all played with our dogs!  The bottom line is this: They are most likely to be aggressive if they inherited some form of aggression, not because you played with them a certain way when they were puppies.

Now, it's certainly also true that not all dogs enjoy rough-housing play, and that's okay too. You know your own dog.  Most of the dogs I meet love tug-of-war, even if they don't love to wrestle.  And if they don't like tug or wrestling, they enjoy hide-and-seek.  I love encouraging the kids in my puppy classes, in particular, to play hide-and-seek with their dogs.  It's a great way to have a child get their dog to come to them by having their dog try to find them as part of a game. That doesn't mean that you, too, can't play hide-and-seek with your dog.  Try it yourself; a return to a game from your childhood will be good for you as well.

As Ozzie has gotten older, he likes to be tickled.  I don't know how to describe it, but I hug him and make tickling gestures and sounds and he makes that dog laugh I talked about last week. It's really quite funny.  When he was younger, he loved tug-of-war and hide-and seek, but he never liked rough-housing at all.  Henley loves tug-of-war and his favorite game involves me making my hands into spiders that wiggle around and try to tickle his feet or grab his toy.  He will bounce around, bark, and make the dog laughing sound, so I know he's having a good time too.  I have always enjoyed playing with my dogs, so now knowing that it's actually helping to foster a lasting bond between us is just the icing on the proverbial cake.

That's it for now.  Henley is asking to play tug-of-war and I'm certainly not going to say no to that.  As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

Here's Henley playing tug-of-war with me!