Multi-Dog Blues

I apologize in advance: this post is going to be whiny and woe-is-me and venty. I don't usually do downer posts, but you know what? This is my blog, and this is what my life has been like. And if you all have good advice or can just commiserate... well, that'd be even better.

So I have four dogs now. I love my four dogs; they are each such just really cool individuals, and I honestly wouldn't give up any of them. But dear god, it's hard to have four dogs. Especially because I have two resource guarders and another who won't hesitate to fight. And bite. And even though I know you don't break up a dog fight by reaching between them to break them up... well, I'm a slow learner, I guess. On the plus side, I have matching bite-scars on both forearms.

This is a total blow to my pride. I'm a certified trainer, after all! Surely I should be able to handle this better! Plus, one of my good friends has eight dogs living in her house (six of her own, one foster, and one that belongs to her roommate), and she doesn't seem to have even half as many problems as I do! (She tells me that she's been doing this longer and has carefully chosen each dog to fit in with the rest, but mostly I just think she's smarter than me.) 

I keep telling myself it will get better. Only Maisy has really had any training, but we're working on the others. As the rest learn more, it should be easier. Cesar and I are getting better at predicting what will and will not cause fights, and therefore are getting better at management. And soon we will all live in the same house, which will be bigger and have a crate for each dog. This should make management easier, and will provide more consistent routines. I hope.

I don't mean to give you the wrong impression. In all honesty, we probably only have one fight a month, it's just that the fights tend to be much bigger than I'm okay with. And really, for the most part, all four dogs get along fairly well. They will all play together, though we limit that because of noise/shared housing concerns, so most of the time, it's Pyg and Napi playing. In the quieter, nap-type times, though, they've paired off in an unexpected way. Where Maisy is, Napi is, and Pyg and Lola tend to like each other's company.

But some days are just so hard. Please tell me I'm not alone? And maybe tell me what's worked for you?

Minnesota Animal Welfare Conference: Aditi Terpstra on Food Guarding and Adoption Outcomes

In *cough*May*cough*, I attended the 12^th Annual Minnesota Animal Welfare Conference, which was focused on behavior. It was a great day of speakers and info, and I’m really glad I went. Today’s post is a summary of Aditi Terpstra’s presentation on food guarding. Aditi is a CPDT-KA who runs Urbane Animal. She is also the dog program director for the Winona Animal Humane Society, a back-up animal control officer for Winona, MN, and an independent contractor for the ASPCA. She’s also a really cool person.

Zombie Dog resource guards caffeine. That's okay, he's probably still adoptable.

Aditi introduced the ASPCA SAFER assessment in her presentation, which was geared towards shelter workers. The SAFER is not a temperament test; it’s not a pass/fail exam, but rather a snapshot of current behavior, focusing on aggression. Each dog is assessed and assigned a score ranging from 1 to 5, and these scores help shelter workers determine the resources needed in order to place the dog safely. Food guarding is just one area on the SAFER, but it’s an important area to single out as a survey of shelters showed that food guarding is one of the top reasons dogs were deemed not eligible for adoption. Only 34% of the shelters responding to the survey attempted behavior modification for this behavior problem.

What I found very interesting was that the Wisconsin Human Society (2004) did research that suggests that behavior mod in the shelter setting wasn’t even necessary in some cases! In this research, 96 dogs had scores of 3-5 (indicating stiffening, freezing, gulping, growling, or biting a fake hand) on the food aggression section of the SAFER assessment. These dogs were sent home on a “food program” for the new adopters to follow. This program includes advice to avoid conflict around the food bowl, to make mealtime a non-event, and to require a sit (or other simple behavior) before the bowl is put on the floor. They had adopters put small amounts in the bowl at first, and then adding more gradually. Dropping high value food treats was also recommended, in addition to providing a “foraging device” (ie, Kong or other food toy) to the dogs. Only six adopters (out of 96!) reported guarding behaviors in the first 3 weeks. The dogs were followed for three months, and in that time, only one dog was returned. This means that 95 “unadoptable” animals were successful placed!

I’ll admit, I have concerns about liability, but the researchers did not. They were very transparent about the dog’s issues, and provided pre-adoption education and follow-up support. Definitely an interesting presentation. If you’d like more information, you can visit the following links:

ASPCA on Behavior Mod 

ASPCA Videos of the Food Program 

APSCA Publication on Food Guarding 

It's Always Something

Maisy is, to put it bluntly, a bitch. An only child most of her life, she's never really had to share. This has never been a problem in the past. Although she would try to resource guard things from the cats (who would just look at her like um, there is no way I want your stupid Kong, geesh and walk away), she's never really experienced someone fighting back.

Pyg, on the other hand, is socially confident. He doesn't start stuff and he won't brazenly steal things from Maisy. He will opportunistically steal her stuff if she gets distracted, and I've even seen him do the whole oh, I think someone's at the door bark-bark-bark... HA! SUCKER! fake out thing. But when Maisy is a bitch, it's ON.

I know I'm not alone in this; all multi-dog households are going to have the occasional disagreement. So why don't we talk about it more? Well, I've always been honest on this blog, so yes. My dogs fight sometimes.

Most of the time it's completely appropriate and involves a hard stare, a lip lift, or a brief growl, with the other dog licking his lips, looking away, or shaking off. All in all, no big deal.

But sometimes. Oh, sometimes.

I had one of those sometimes recently. I was eating a snack, and both dogs were quietly begging at my feet. In other words, just another day at la casa de los perros. Except I wasn't sharing, and this upset Maisy. I have no idea what was going on in her furry little head, but my anthropomorphic belief is that she was upset about the lack of sharing and this made her anxious/stressed/frantic/bitchy. And so she divebombed at Pyg, growling and snarling.

I did that stupid thing you're not supposed to do: I reached in to break up the fight. I gotten bitten. It was no one's fault but my own, and I think Pyg was as surprised to make contact with my arm as I was to get bitten. About the only good thing is that now I know what Pyg's bite inhibition is like (worse than I thought).

It was also the wake up call I needed to start working on the issue. I'm fortunate to have an awesome friend who currently lives with seven dogs and has a surprisingly small number of fights in her house. I emailed her, and she wrote some blog posts just for me! (Okay, fine, she was already working on them, but she finished them for me.)

Her advice ended up pretty long, so it's been split into three posts. The first one is on management, and you can read it here. For the most part, I've done a prety good job at this. The dogs already eat in their crates, but I've tightened that up to include times when I'm eating something and not sharing or when Maisy is otherwise looking stressed.

The second post is on actual training things you can do to help your dogs get along better. You can read it here. I'm only just starting on this. Pyg has pretty good impulse control, but Maisy's has really slipped over the years, so I've got a lot of work to do.

Part three will, I'm told, include case studies... I'd say that I will update this post when she updates, but, um. Probably not. Oh well. You're all smart. you can find it, I'm sure.

Anyway, I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on how things go...

Why, yes, she does.

Recently, I wondered if Maisy might have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. As a result, I scheduled an appointment with a board-certified veterinary behaviorist to find out. The short answer is yes. But the long answer is probably more interesting…

So, Maisy had her appointment with Dr. Duxbury yesterday. Before I go any further, let me just say that I really enjoyed working with Dr. Duxbury. Since she has so much education and experience, I was nervous that she might be one of those ego-driven specialists you run into from time to time, but nothing could be further from the truth! I really felt that Dr. Duxbury took the time to listen to what I was saying, and she was very respectful of me and the work I’ve done with Maisy. If anyone in the Twin Cities metro area needs a veterinary behaviorist, I would highly recommend her. It was an expensive appointment, but it was worth it.

The actual appointment was about 90 minutes long. Dr. Duxbury complimented me on the pre-appointment questionnaire I had sent in advance; I gave enough details that she had a really good picture of who Maisy is. This ended up saving a lot of time because she didn’t need to take much history from me. In fact, apparently I described things so well that she didn’t even review our behavior logs! Instead, we jumped right into watching videos.

I had about an hour’s worth of video that I had taken at home, in class, while on walks, and even at trials. I really enjoyed watching the videos with her, mostly because she found them so interesting. In fact, she ended up copying all of the videos I brought in so she can use them with her advanced students. She said Maisy is an excellent example of a “complicated case,” and that it will be very helpful for her students to see the video.

I think the video she liked best was the one below. It’s long- 10 minutes- but this is a very typical snapshot of Maisy “relaxing” at home. (The action starts around two minutes in.) Dr. Duxbury was especially interested in the interactions with the cats you see towards the end of the video, especially the stereotypic tail chasing.



Dr. Duxbury’s assessment of Maisy, after viewing the videos, and interacting with her in person, is that she is “functionally anxious.” Dr. Duxbury complimented me on the work I’ve done with her, and said that Maisy might not have been functional at all had circumstances been different for her. Here’s what she wrote in her report:
You have done a wonderful job trying to help Maisy learn to relax and to not react to other dogs and other environmental stimuli. Her continued reactivity and vigilance even in her 'safest' environments (e.g. at your home) suggests that she is generally anxious. This is likely related to her very limited early environment.

I also appreciated that Dr. Duxbury saw Maisy’s good qualities. Most people are quite charmed by Maisy when they meet her- she’s cute, of course, but she has a personality that just doesn’t stop. In fact, it is sometimes hard for people to see that she has issues because she is so functional. Dr. Duxbury described her as “outgoing and social and very eager to play and to work on training, but at the same time she seems overly attentive to subtle stimuli in her environment and reacts… to other dogs.”

Ultimately, Dr. Duxbury diagnosed Maisy as follows:

• Fear related aggression (lunging, barking, growling only -- no bites) to unfamiliar dogs and certain unfamiliar people.
• Resource guarding - directed towards the cats.
• Generalized anxiety - increased sensitivity to environmental stimuli, exaggerated startle response, hypervigilance, long recovery after arousing events.

The main component of the treatment plan was, as I’d hoped, medication. Dr. Duxbury prescribed paroxetine (also known as Paxil). She said she’s had really good results with paroxetine for dogs like Maisy, and felt that it would be the best choice for her given her particular set of issues. The only downside to paroxetine is the dosage- Maisy will be taking 8mg a day, and it generally comes in 10mg tabs. Since that would be very difficult to split accurately, it will need be ordered from a compounding pharmacy, which increases the cost. (Of course, the upside to that is that it will be salmon flavored, which will make it much easier for us to give!)

Dr. Duxbury didn’t have any further suggestions for types of behavior modification. She said that about the only thing I haven’t tried is BAT, which she didn’t feel would be helpful for Maisy (although she didn’t rule it out for the future). She said that I should continue to do what I’m doing, including my classes with my current trainer, Robin Sallie.

She did have some suggestions on how I carry out the behavior modification. These suggestions are relatively small changes to how I do things, and probably things Robin has told me to do a million times before (in fact, I actually asked her if she’d talked to Robin in advance, it sounded so much like her!). Despite being fairly minor revisions to our training, I suspect that they will, in conjunction with the medication, make a huge impact on Maisy. Because of that, I’ll dedicate a separate post to the topic.

Anyway, Maisy will start her medication as soon as it arrives from the pharmacy. We probably won’t see any changes in her behavior until she’s been on it for 4-6 weeks, so she’ll have a recheck with Dr. Duxbury in about 8 weeks. At that appointment, we’ll discuss the medication, the dosage, and whether or not we want to add a second med to the mix (something which Dr. Duxbury said may be needed for Maisy). While I don't believe Maisy will ever be "normal," I am pretty excited to see how this will help.

Training Tuesday: The “Good Lord Why Did I Decide to Do This?” Edition

Maisy and Malcolm doing the relaxation protocol.

It has been two weeks since I instituted the “no more trials until I finish the relaxation protocol” rule, and as predicted, I’m hating myself already. (Actually, I started hating myself a week ago, but whatever.) Thankfully, I posted it quite publicly, and enough of my real life friends read this that I know I won’t be able to gracefully back out. This is good, because holy cow, this crap is boring. BORING.

It’s also working, thank god, because I don’t think I could sustain the motivation needed to get through this tedium if I wasn’t seeing glimmers of progress.

First and foremost, let it be known that the relaxation protocol, while challenging for the dog under any circumstance, is even more difficult when there are cats involved. Obnoxious, nosy, food-obsessed, den-loving, clicker-trained cats. In other words: they are constantly right there when the clicker, treats and/or crate comes out. Unfortunately, Maisy has a bit of a problem with resource guarding when it comes to the cats. This, combined with the fact that Maisy has self-appointed herself as the resident kitty cop, means that it can be very, very difficult to convince her to relax when they’re around. Which they are. Constantly.

While they slow the process down, their presence is a huge help. For one thing, they make an excellent distraction, though not as intense as what we might encounter at a trial. Beyond that, Maisy has a long history of rushing the cats and bowling them over, so when she is able to control those impulses around the kitties, I know we’re on the right track.

In fact, it was just one of those moments last week that helped me know that she’s making progress. During one session, one of the kitties did something that Maisy has decided is naughty, something that she would usually discipline them for. Her entire body tensed up, and she raised herself just slightly from the ground. But then she stopped herself, evidently thought about it, and quickly lowered herself back down. She wasn’t relaxed, exactly, but neither was she reacting mindlessly!

I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit lazy with it all. I just can’t bring myself to do it every day. We’ve done it 9 times over the last 14 days. It’s not perfect, but that’s not embarrassing, either. We advanced to day three in the relaxation protocol on our last session, although that session was a little rough. If the next one is as bad (she had a hard time staying in a down, although a sit isn’t really the end of the world), we’ll drop back down to day two for a bit. I’m also working on duration in the crate, and she’s currently managing quite well with a treat once every 60 seconds over the course of five minutes.

I could probably push her further faster, but I want to build this foundation strongly and carefully. As a result, I’m spending several sessions on each step, waiting until I see her relaxed before I move on. Some of the things I’m looking for includes being rolled on to one hip, rather than in a sphinx down, resting her chin on the ground, and taking treats softly instead of grabbing them roughly.

For her part, Maisy is loving this. She’s inside the crate before I can even get it fully set up. When I call her out, she jumps back in before I can break it down again. And every night, at about the time we do the protocol, she starts to whine and poke at the folded-up crate with her nose, all while looking at me hopefully.

Speaking of poking things with her nose, I think that my possibly hare-brained scheme, is working. It was quite easy to shape her to touch my leg, although she tends to think the proper location is in the left kneecap. That’s fine, really, and maybe even better than doing it anywhere else. After all, this way she’ll have to turn away from whatever’s bugging her in order to poke me there. It was a bit more work to convince her that she could poke me when I’m standing, too, but she figured that out.

Right now I’m in the process of assigning a verbal cue to the behavior. She’s got it about half the time, and once it’s a bit more solid, I’ll start cuing that behavior when she’s whining to get my attention. On one occasion, she did use the nose poke to communicate that she wanted something from me (a rawhide), so I think this could work. I must admit, I’m really excited about the possibility of reducing some of her whininess, although I’m aware that the poking could become even more annoying. I hope I don’t regret this!

Anyway, overall I’m very pleased with the progress she’s making. It’s slow, but I’m hoping that as she understands it better, we’ll be able to pick up the back a bit. I hope so, anyway, because at our current rate of progress, this will take six months otherwise! Although that sounds like forever, I know that the time investment will be worth it. I’ll keep you guys updated, of course!

Continuing to Challenge her Label

Tonight was session two of the Performance Dog Conditioning class (and I promise to post about the exercises later this week). Last time we were there, she did a really good job of managing her stress, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she did really well this week too... but I was. This is largely because she was quite easily aroused this weekend, and mildly reactive while on a hike at the state park yesterday. As a precaution, I gave her some Rescue Remedy, and sprayed her mat with D.A.P. Do these things actually work? Well, I know that Rescue Remedy helps me feel a bit calmer, but whether that's a placebo effect or not, I have no idea.

Anyway, magical supplements or not, she was a great dog! She was much calmer this week. Her mouth stayed much softer, with only one or two instances of sharky treat taking. She was soft through her body, with a loosely wagging tail most of the time. She did need to play Look At That a few times- it took on an almost frantic quality- but she quickly calmed down and returned to her mat once I increased the rate of reinforcement. She also gave a few soft wuffs, but they were in response to another dog in class who was occasionally vocalizing.

There was only one concerning moment. We were sitting next to a little Sheltie. I had Maisy's mat on my left, and the Sheltie was about three feet to my right. I also had Maisy's bag of treats sitting kind of behind me on the right side. At one point, the little Sheltie strayed a bit close to me, and Maisy lunged at him. However, it was a completely silent lunge, and based on the way she moved, I really believe it was more of a resource guarding behavior than a reactive one.

Maisy was also wonderfully affiliative with the instructor, all loose body movements and helicopter tails when the instructor praised Maisy's core strength. I guess Maisy's as proud of her abs as I am!