Dogs found!

Great news from Bradford this evening. Chester and Drift have been found and reunited with Angela. What a relief! They had it seems been dumped by the thieves but were spotted wandering on a nearby estate together by a lady who took them in and phoned the number from a poster. Fantastic news.

And it shows how important posters and publicity are in getting lost and stolen dogs back quickly.

Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word.

Dogs stolen in Bradford

PLEASE EVERYONE SPREAD THE WORD : PUT UP POSTERS IN ANY AREA : TELL YOUR FRIENDS: THESE DOGS COULD BE MOVED ANYWHERE

Angela Briggs’ van was stolen with her two dogs, Chester and Drift, inside – this is from Angela:

It happened outside Bierley Community Centre, Bierley, Bradford at 10.20pm Tuesday 28th, I have been up all night searching for them, I or the police haven’t a clue where the van is or where my boys are, I am absolutely destraught as I write this – its now 03.56am Wed 29th. As soon as its light I am off looking again, goodness knows where but I have to find them, I have alerted police, dog lost so far, when light I will ring dog wardens, RSPCA etc etc. Printing posters as I type this. It must have been a planned thing as as soon as I got out of the van with a view to going and locking the gates after taking our heelwork to music classes, he jumped in it happened so quick but yet in slow motion I was/ am in absolute shock, Karen who was thankfully with me at the time managed to get a glimse of him but he had a white mask on thats why I think it was planned, probably just after the van but my boys were inside.
Van is White Vauxhall Vivaro Reg letter “PAW” … As yet there is no word of either the van or, more importantly, the dogs. Drift is a short coated red and white Collie, Chester is an old dog, black with lots of grey hairs on the muzzle and chest. If you live in the area please keep your eyes open for the two of them, obviously don’t know if they are still with the van or have been dumped out of it somewhere.

Drift

Chester

Doglost page for Chester — Doglost page for Drift

Download poster for Drift — Download poster for Chester

Introducing Mirri

Mirri is our beautiful ex-stray lurcher. Found running on a main road as a puppy and unclaimed, she has been with us for two years. She is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had the pleasure to live with: she loves people and is very tactile and affectionate – and she is bright and quick to learn. She is also very much a sighthound – she will spot movement across the valley and fixates on squirrels and rabbits when out and about. But it is her response to other dogs that is the real challenge.

The first day I found her I took her to work in the car and at lunch time took her out in the park beside my workplace. She went ballistic lunging and barking at a German Shepherd across the other side of the park – I had not even seen it as it was a couple of football pitch lengths away! This was my introduction to Mirri’s issues with other dogs.

However like all things that involve living creatures her behaviour is complex – and I have to be careful not simply to label her as “reactive” and make assumptions on that basis. Thankfully she is fine with our own dogs. She adores Jake the Smooth Collie and is respectful of Grace the Maremma. She will play roughly with Jake but in lurcher fashion and she will accept his telling off if she oversteps the mark. Here she is trying to initiate play with Jake!

In some other contexts she has also been fine with outside dogs – for example, when I know the dogs and owners, with family dogs and at the small boarding kennel she occasionally visits. So I am certain that she is picking up on my increased anxiety when she is less familiar and less controllable situations.

She lacks manners in the way she approaches another dog: she will race at them, skidding to a halt a few feet away and bark at them. I suspect part of this is a clumsy attempt to initiate play as it can be accompanied by play bowing and general bouncing. You can see something of that in this video which shows her first meeting with a family dog:

However she will also nip at other dogs – and if a dog approaches her she is clearly fearful and will snap. And of course having a lurcher bark and bounce in your face is not what most other dogs consider a good time. Needless to say all this restricts the opportunities she has to interact off lead with new dogs.

Her on lead threshold for other dogs has improved tremendously but still depends very much on the dog. She can now work closely with calm dogs who ignore her and can generally pass small dogs walking. She can’t handle active dogs – running, fast movement, or excitement all wind her up and she will bark and lunge. Here her acceptable distance varies: a dog running at top speed a football pitch away can set her off but in general she is OK from about 20 foot if we can start playing the Look at That game soon enough. Once she fixates however she is unable to focus on anything else.

So what have we done so far? Positive training in an advanced group has been excellent. The dogs are under control and she is therefore able to learn and stay under threshold. TTouch, of course, zig zags being a favourite for reducing her stress and refocusing her. Lots of positive reinforcement of calm behaviour near other dogs, using games such as Look at That from Control Unleashed. She’s taking part in our little CU group so it will be interesting to see how she progresses there.

She has come a long way since that first day in the park but I’d be interested in further suggestions: when it is your own dog and you are emotionally involved it is very different to working with other dogs – and it is very easy to miss the obvious! So please feel free to add your comments.

Grace and TTouch

This is for those who have asked to know more about Grace, our Maremma Sheepdog.

Grace

She is now twelve and a half – a good age for her breed – and doing very well. Although physically she is weaker these days, emotionally she is more relaxed and calmer now than ever before.

Grace had been a fearful dog since puppyhood, when she changed overnight from a normal confident puppy to one scared of her own shadow – a reaction to her second vaccination the vet concluded. Whatever the reason for her fears, Grace found life outside the home a trial. She was afraid of everything: plastic bags in the hedge, shadows on the wall, any change in her environment – and people. If strangers approached her she would bark furiously and hysterically, and when visitors came to the house she would bark every time they moved.

We tried many things: from different training techniques to herbal remedies and homeopathy. We even tried TTouch albeit in a haphazard way (I had read about it in a book). Some things made no difference, some things helped calm her in the moment. But she remained fundamentally fearful and over time we learned strategies to manage her behaviour.

But about four years ago everything changed. I started to learn TTouch properly, learning how to work on her consistently over time to address the long standing tensions she was holding and this was the turning point for Grace. You can read more about it in this article, which I wrote for the Maremma Sheepdog Club of Great Britain at the time.

Today she is a different dog. She is generally relaxed, willing to meet people and even socialise with them. She can go for a walk without being frightened of everything – and if something does startle her (as of course things still do on occasion) she will recover very quickly. At the grand age of 10, she even passed her Silver KC Good Citizen test, which included being examined by a male examiner!

It’s been a long road for us both but she has taught me so much. One of the most important lessons is this: don’t give up!

Introducing the dogs

I’ve just realised I haven’t said a lot about my own dogs as yet so I’ll put that right shortly. For starters here they all are:

First Mirri and Jake:

Mirri and Jake posing

and, not to be out done, Grace:

Grace - 12 and a half years young

So here they are. I’ll tell you a little more about each of them later. Grace has an accupuncture appointment and needs her chauffeur!

Quote of the week

If you think your dog is not motivated by food, you probably need to improve your cooking.
Jane Killion, When Pigs Fly! Training Success with Impossible Dogs

Control Unleashed Week 1

Off lead control is top of the wish list of many people attending training classes but, when their dogs are overexcited or reactive to other dogs, it seems like an impossible ask. Even getting the dog’s attention in the presence of another dog is a major challenge. And I know the feeling! Mirri, our young ex-stray lurcher, finds other dogs very difficult to cope with. She is highly stimulated by movement – and frightened by dogs in her face. She can work in a class without much difficulty but only because the other dogs are also under control and therefore not overstimulating to her. So how do we help her, and dogs like her, keep their focus in those more challenging situations?

Enter Control Unleashed, a programme designed by Leslie McDevitt, to help dogs like Mirri relax, develop focus and become more reliable off lead. The book was recommended to me last year by Morag Heirs and I loved it. As a TTouch practitioner, helping dogs build confidence and self control is part of my raison d’etre, and this is where CU begins. CU is complementary to TTouch – and Leslie herself is a strong proponent of TTouch, recommending it as part of her relaxation protocol for dogs. But while TTouch uses bodywork and groundwork to influence behaviour by improving self awareness and balance, releasing tension and increasing confidence, CU offers a programme of exercises and training games to teach the dog specific behaviours to help them cope with difficult situations. As I read the book and, later, watched the brilliant accompanying DVD, it seemed like the perfect companion to TTouch, and I wanted to have a go. Morag was also up for it and had a friend with a very overstimulated collie who was also interested – and so our little CU group was born!

We had our first session this week. I didn’t take Mirri and we concentrated on some basic confidence building and relaxation work with Max, the collie. Mat work is important in CU – ensuring the dog has a safe place to go back to which is a cue to relax. Max had been working on his mat for a week or two, using TTouch to calm and relax him there, and he was soon remaining there even when the other dogs worked in the box. We also worked on his reorientation – building a reliable whiplash turn back to Trish, so he learns to reorientate to her when he hits a potential flash point (such as a transition or meeting another dog). Our final game of the night was Look at That (LAT): teaching the dog to look at the thing that stresses it and then reorientate back. Insisting on focus on the owner when under stress has never made sense to me. I have a phobia of spiders. If I knew there was a great big one in the room but someone insisted I keep looking at them I would freak! How could I know what that spider was doing? But if I could keep an eye on it – and even get something good every time I looked at it calmly – I would be able to start to relax and I would feel far more in control. So LAT is a no-brainer for me. And rewarding looking calmly at the stimulus is what we do in TTouch groundwork when working with reactive dogs. But making a game of it as CU does means that, after a while, the reorientate becomes the more important thing and the look at often reduces to a quick but very deliberate glance to earn the reward. For dogs that fixate on things this is a hugely important core exercise.

It’s early days with our group but I have a good feeling about it. Mirri joins in next week and we will see if we can get some video!

Still the tail, still the dog

Today Hayley, Lesley and myself went up to Newcastle for our second MyPetStop TTouch workshop. Picking up feedback from Leeds we had adjusted a few things, spending more time on touches and wraps and less on the confidence course. It was another fantastic day – a great bunch of dogs with their people, all becoming more relaxed as we went on, as is invariably the case.

One response that stood out for me came from a young staffy. She was a sweet natured girl but quite reactive with other dogs and rather hyperactive. I noticed that her tail was continuously on the go. A tail that is constantly busy and wagging is not the sign of a happy dog but is often associated with tension in the back and hindquarters and reactive and excitable behaviour. So I gently asked her to still her tail: I ran my hand down to the base of her tail and simply cupped my hand over the top of her tail and held my hand still (having first checked with both her and her owner that she was OK with being touched in that area!). No pressure, no restraint, simply the intent to still the tail. Her tail stilled and instantly so did she – completely. She stood calmly watching the other dogs, able to then focus and start to learn.

Stilling the tail can be a very useful technique to start to calm hyperactive dogs. Obviously you would only do this when safe (some dogs who hold tension in that area do not like the tail to be touched). Do not force the tail still, but encourage it by cupping your hand down over the tail base. As you do it, breathe deeply and ask for calm. It can be useful to make contact with the other hand on the chest or collar. The result can be remarkable and it gives the dog a new experience – of being calm and self controlled. Once they have stilled, you can start to work on releasing the tension through gently circling the tail, and doing TTouches along the length of the back, base of tail and tail.

TTouch workshop at MyPetStop

Today saw the first of our three workshops at MyPetStop centres in the North of England. First up was Leeds. It is an amazing venue – a huge enclosed indoor arena, perfect for the large group and allowing a full confidence course alongside a seating and work area. I was running this jointly with Hayley Price (P1) and Lesleyann Jones (PiT) which went very well – having three of us to present meant that we could add more variety and interest while ensuring plenty of individual attention for the owners and dogs attending. For those unsure of what a workshop might entail here are some pictures (courtesy of Lesleyann). As you can see, all very informal!

TTouch workshop at Leeds MyPetStop

Relaxed after TTouch session

Putting on a body wrap

In the TTouch labyrinth

“But he loves them at home”

At classes people are often surprised that their dog is not interested in the rewards they are using: “but he loves them at home” they say indignantly! It is important to remember that rewards have to be adjusted for different circumstances – the more distractions there are, the higher “value” the reward must have to the dog.

Identify three levels of reward or treat for your dog: ‘basic’, which can be given where there is little or no distraction (like at home), ‘pretty good’ for minor distractions, such as being in a class the dog is used to, and ‘top class’ for those situations where you are competing with serious distractions – whether that is squirrels, other dogs playing or simply the excitement of being in a new class.

Bear in mind too that these levels are very individual to each dog. My own three are very different. I am convinced that Mirri would consider a piece of cardboard a treat at home! She will certainly work quite happily for kibble or plain biscuits. For her, a coachie or moist dog treat counts as pretty good – but she still needs chicken or sausage in more stressful situations. Grace is much the same – though she does turn her nose up at the cardboard! But Jake is much less food orientated. He will not get out of bed for less than moist dog treats and really needs chicken, sausage or cheese to get him really motivated.

Ideas for rewards that might hit the spot with your dog: coachies, sausage, chicken, cheese, dried liver, Nature Diet Nuggets or Garlic treats from Willow’s Kitchen – and of course, for some dogs, play with a ragger or ball can be much more motivating than food rewards.