Let’s take a drive to III Cafe & get our dog to behave calmly outside

The last Sunday, Mr P was meeting some friends in the east so we hitched a ride to III Cafe. Perhaps due to the fall in the car she had the day before, it was much easier to get Donna to lie down for a longer time on the back. Remember friends, car safety first! (and yes, we are looking for a pet seatbelt.)

This was our first visit to III Cafe. It’s on the second floor of a row of shophouses and this is what it looks like.

We were there around lunchtime I think. Only one table had dogs and they were very friendly, which made me feel more comfortable to let Donna go leashless. Even though the puppy dogs were smaller than Donna, the corgi was the more playful one and they were able to run around and play for a bit. While the puppies’ humans were more relaxed, I was more uptight and watchful since I didn’t want Donna to accidentally hurt the puppies because she was bigger… I was perhaps too uptight. :P

A black mongrel, Happy, that was bigger than Donna came in later. You could tell he was a little nervous. Since Donna did play in a pretty balanced manner with the small dogs, we introduced Donna to Happy. I was surprised to find out that not only was the other dog younger than Donna, but he was also from the same shelter as Donna. Small world!

For a while, there were more than five dogs running around and I wasn’t sure when it started but I realised that Happy was trying to avoid Donna who playfully followed after him, so I stopped her while he retreated to under his humans’ table.

I subsequently read this post Puppy School of Hard Knocks by Nancy Tanner (if you have a puppy, this is good reading material ;) ) and I was glad that I stopped her when I noticed her getting more rambunctious. The puppies were reined in too as their humans wanted them to tone down a little and suddenly, Donna had no friends to play with.

At that point, it seemed like it was better for her to return to our table and practice staying.

We have had relatively little chance to practice staying when there are other dogs around. As a result, Donna is pretty good at staying in regular environments where the only distraction is vehicular/human traffic or cats. But Donna is very bad at staying when we meet other dogs. That is, unless she is on a leash. Hah!

To be fair, after I made sure that she was staying, I took off the leash and she did still stay. I continued with treating her for every few seconds or minutes that she stayed and was calm. But I’m afraid the treat wasn’t as exciting as the other dogs that were playing at the centre of the cafe. So it wasn’t for very long before she got up and tried to make for the other dogs playing in there. Still she was very good at staying even for a while, but even when on the leash, you can tell from the picture above, her attention to the other dogs and her interest in them. :P

If it was 6-7 months ago, I would never have the confidence to venture to a pet cafe with Donna. Right at the start of her homestays before we adopted, we realised that she is a very excitable dog. Even when playing simple games of fetch she could become so excited that she would start bounding all over the place and up and down the sofa uncontrollably. The effervescent self-entertainment would continue and no amount of “stop” or “no” would work and if you reached for her, she would think you are playing with her and get even more excited doing the doggy bounce of joy. So all we could do was to walk outside of the room to the balcony and wait for her to eventually calm down on her own.

I have inserted a Suzanne Clothier video – “Thresholds, Thresholds, and Doing Nothing” – here. Basically she talks about staying calm, not engaging with the dog that is over-excited, and just do nothing until the dog calms down.  

If you are unable to view this video, please click on this link to view on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLriCeTYxLM

We were sure we didn’t want a high-energy dog that we couldn’t manage but at the same time, we weren’t sure if we wanted to explore adopting a different dog instead when she seemed to fit into our size and age requirements so well. Plus, she was also a very smart dog.

One of the materials that helped me a lot at that time was this video: Capturing calmness – How to train calmness in dogs.

I have inserted a kikopup video here. Basically she talks about how to continue to build calmness in your dog after you have waited him out and he has calmed down and is lying about minding his own business.

If you are unable to view this video, please click on this link to view on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wesm2OpE_2c

While this treating-the-dog-when-he-is-lying-calmly-doing-nothing business was new to me at that time, I was more than eager to just try anything that might work with Donna. She loved running in and out of the study to get our attention, so we treated whenever she was in the mood to tolerate lying by the door and mind her own business. We treated her when she decided she could lay on her strange, new bed to rest. We treated her when she rested outside of the kitchen rather than coming in and getting underfoot (we didn’t have a child gate then). We made sure we had treat jars in the kitchen and in the study so that we treat her very often for staying calm.

And after a while, it seemed she figured out the patterns. Perhaps too well, because she is so very calm nowadays we seldom see Donna playing with her toys or chewing on her many bones on her own much nowadays unless we missed a walk that day. In fact, except for one or two toys that were shredded in the early months, all her toys are intact now, with the occasional aid of a sewing needle.

It could be that once a dog leaves the shelter and gets regular exercise, he works off those excess energy and will in general become a calmer dog. The shelter has seen dogs like this. Logically speaking, the treating of the dog while she is staying calm does not negate but probably helps to enhance the effect (although it may be at the expense of weight management :P)

Mostly after her morning walk nowadays she likes to just lie prone on the floor or curled up like a donut on her bed and sleep the whole day away if we are busy, until after 5pm when she revives and wants to be entertained. Don’t get me wrong, she does still wake up infrequently and come to check on us. But she is generally happy to go back to sleep after a pet or two. Not that we are complaining, since that will fit as nicely into the schedule of working adults as we can hope for. :P

But yes, that is only half the story. Put a dog in front of Donna outside and she would rather meet them than stay. If she were playing, she would come if you call her, only to bound away again as if she has done her duty by coming to you. :P

I did like III cafe. It was very clean, the staff and the patrons cleaned up after their dogs promptly. The staff is also very friendly, even though I only ordered a hot chocolate and stayed for a pretty long time :P (I had intended to have lunch there but ended up supervising my dog as she played. – – Haha! So yes, no food and no pictures while they were playing.)

Overall play experience for the dog depended on the mix of dogs that were visiting though. And given the space, it probably would be too crowded if most patrons came with big dogs. But when I was there, there was only one dog that was bigger than Donna.

But mostly I like that this is a pretty good place with some distraction to practice staying calmly by my feet with Donna. Not a bad place to go to, except for the distance and the shortage of parking space. And of course, the need to pack really high value treats to compete with all the exciting dogs running around!