We live in a flat

So Donna was invited to a social event recently, where she got to meet up with some new dogs and some dogs that she had met before.

Now every contact with dogs, humans, etc is a socialisation event. But the quality of socialisation differs.

You know, what they say for humans – the first impression is most important.

The same may be said for dogs.

If dog gets a good time, he starts to associate positive feelings to the dogs and humans he met. That is good socialisation.

If dog gets a bad time, he associates negative feelings to the dogs and humans he met. And that is bad socialisation.

None of us want a badly socialised dog. And yet, it is not uncommon to see dog owners who take the dog out to places and then let the dog run around by themselves, seemingly not caring if the dog is having a good time or not, and they call it socialisation.

Donna is my dog, so whatever event I take her to, her welfare is my first priority. Therefore, I follow her almost everywhere she runs and track her activities with the other dogs. I distract her by calling her to me when she starts displaying actions that I do not want reinforced. That is what I feel I need to do as a responsible owner.

They say love me, love my dog. But I had always thought it was a little extreme for people to judge others who are not dog lovers.

But you know what, I do that too in my own way. Guilty, as charged.

Case in point, my dog Donna, here. She has been kindly described by Vanessa of therufusway, as having “such a kind look in her eyes” for this photo on our Instagram account.

But the truth is, there were two to three episodes in that session in this environment the photo was taken, where she was tense and growling at another dog. She certainly did not have a kind look in her eyes then.

Now it can be equally stressful for the human, given the circumstances. A roomful of humans and dogs underfoot, all socialising nicely and then your dog starts growling at the other dog.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s probably not uncommon for most people to jump to the conclusion that the one growling is at fault. Especially when it involves a bigger dog growling at a smaller one.

Mr P also pointed out that I always hastily pull Donna away, which also painted a rather guilty picture.

But you know what? There is nothing else I can do.

A growling dog… is NOT a bad dog.

A growling dog… is NOT an aggressive dog.

A growling dog… is NOT a vindictive dog who remembers past grudges.

A growling dog is being nice by growling to let a human or another dog know that they are making him uncomfortable. That they should back off and give the growling dog more space.

A well-socialised dog would recognise this verbal cue. Perhaps before it escalates into a verbal cue, they would have noted the more subtle behavioural cues like looking away, moving away, not engaging with you and not showing playful behaviours.

One of the incidents occurred while I was squatting down and next to Donna and Donna started growling. The other dog, instead of moving away, came closer and started rubbing against her. And Donna growled even more.

So what was I to do. I did what I had to do. I pulled Donna away.

My first commitment was to her. She was tense and verbalised it. If I don’t remove her, I’m just allowing her stress to build.

There is a quote floating about the Internet by Suzanne Clothier – ”One of the quickest ways to get your dog not to trust you is to keep over riding your dog telling you he does not feel safe.”

*I can’t find the exact instance where she said this, but it does sound like something she would say. :P

So yah, I’m not about to do that. I’m not about to let the growling be reinforced time and time again by a dog who didn’t seem to recognise or care about the other dog’s cues and perhaps eventually allow it to escalate into a bite. I’m not.

And honestly, I would worry about the little dog if this is a frequent behaviour for him. Not every dog would be so nice to give a verbal warning first.

Some would snap without warning because they got scolded time and time again when they growl, and they’ve learnt to repress the growling.

Unfortunately, I found I had to keep calling Donna away from the trigger after that. And I started feeling rather haunted by the smaller dog. He’s everywhere! Hahaha!

At least I heeded my own advise from the last experience, and put Donna on the lead despite all the other dogs getting the freedom to play. I was too tired trying to track both dogs to make sure they were separate, and I could no longer supervise effectively which led to repeated incidents.

It’s not Donna’s fault. It’s just that the environment that day was not conducive for her to socialise in a positive manner.

I am glad she did at least kindle a budding friendship with Lexie. Lexie is a young dog, so she can be rather unsure about dogs she is not too familiar with and she needs her space. That’s normal. She shows some behaviour like moving away from Donna and jumping onto the doggie playground, perhaps when Donna got too much for her.

And I’m glad that her human thinks that Donna was respecting Lexie’s body language. Donna was sitting, not moving further into her space. Donna was looking directly at her at times, but she also looked away and turned around and looked at me once. She sat and perhaps patiently waited for Lexie to be comfortable to play. Or at least I like to think so. Hah! They did seem to be playing a little at times :P

On hindsight, a video would have been better to study their interaction. :P It was a highly distracting environment for me too. Haha!

Note: Donna used to be labelled as dog-aggressive at the shelter she was from. I’m inclined to think the label was just that – a label. Donna has never shown any growling/snarling/snapping behaviour to any dog she has met outside the shelter since we adopted her, with the exception of this small dog.  Her body language has always tended more towards being fearful, rather than aggressive. If you have a dog who reacts to other dogs in an “aggressive” manner, I strongly urge you to learn to read dog body language and their behaviour and consult with a positive trainer on the best course forward for your dog.

And of course, do supervise your dog so that he learns to respect cues from other dogs. Please don’t expect other dogs/humans to teach your dog. This post from Barbara of Goodog Positive Dog Training in Australia sums it up rather well.

I offended a fellow dog owner today. My dog was playing with her doggie friends in one of the enclosed areas at St Ives Showground and she let her exuberant 8 months old teenage dog jump right into Shellbe’s face. When Shellbe growled, she said: ‘That is ok, my dog needs to learn some manners.’
I told her in no uncertain terms that I did not want my dog to have to teach her dog manners. The times when we let them sort it out are well and truly gone and owners have to mange and train their dogs and not rely on other well socialised dogs to teach their unruly teenagers.
Even a well socialised dog can become stressed and growly when exposed too many times to under socialised and rude dogs.
– https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=805403872813598&id=164212460266079

So what happens when Donna wakes up from a nap or feels bored just lying around by herself?

She looks for the humans!

Don’t be boring, human, come and play! says the attention-seeking dog

That above is Donna inviting you to play fetch or tug with her.

In the early months when we first got her, we did some research and decided it was necessary to teach her the concept of the “invisible door“.

There were various reasons for this decision.

• The rooms in our flat were pretty small and pretty messy and not very dog-proof.
• I was also allergic to dust at times and Donna sheds. A lot.
• Donna does make a mess on the floor when it storms and our cheap laminated flooring cannot withstand a soaking. It will pop out.

So we preferred her not to enter these rooms, even when the doors were opened and the human wasn’t in the room. That of course is the perfect time for any smart dog worth his salt to sneak in. Hah!

It took a lot of patience just going through motion, repeatedly luring her back out of the room when she comes in, making a big deal of it when when she comes out of the room with us and of course, lots of treats. Until slowly, she realised that she wasn’t meant to be in the room. That every time she comes in to find us, we go out of it so she followed us out again. That she gets treated only outside of the room and not within it.

The behaviour sticks until today, which is why even though we’ve pretty much stopped the positive reinforcement for invisible barrier training, she still stops at the door and stares at you from there when she wants your attention.

Depending on how busy we are, sometimes she gets the attention, and sometimes she doesn’t. That’s  when she hunkers down for the long haul.

I have tons of patience, human. You’ll have to come out of that room sooner or later!

But somewhere along the line, I’ve started to feel that this invisible doors thing was creating a distance between us and the dog. I’m not sure if that’s truly the case but when she settles even within the same room, she always settles a distance from us. (And no, the human does not have body odour, thank you very much.)

So for the study at least, where we spend much of our time, we started to let her in the room. That was when I noticed that this was a great space for her during storms. Her thunder phobia got noticeably milder when she is in this room, compared to others.

So we let her in more often after that, but only when we are in the room since it still is not very dog proof. Haha!

She still retains her habit of waiting by the door, although now she knows she has the option of coming in. Sometimes, she sits at the door and stares at me and I wonder if she’s asking for permission to come in or she’s asking for me to go out and play with her.

Eventually when she decided she had waited enough, she would come into the room and poke me with her nose. Interestingly enough, she started doing that after I taught her the nose to hand.

Forget about “nose”, human! Just gimme the treat!

And more recently, I’ve started having her on the sofa and do “relax” on my lap because well, the dog probably does not have lap dog in her but the human craves a lap dog :P We do this while we watch TV and I give her treats every time she rests her head on my lap.

The result is, she stopped poking me with her nose when she wants attention. Now she’s started resting her chin on my lap instead!

Hello human! It’s time to stop working and start relaxing with your dog!

And I find this so very endearing and adorable, although half the time she really is distracting me from something I want to get done.

The point to this story?

I just find it intriguing how the dog can take what you have been currently teaching her, and use it quite effectively to get the attention she wants.

I can see how the interaction we have with her changes her behaviour along the way, and to me a lot of these changes are unexpected but not unwelcome.

And that’s also why I like to spend the time training Donna. She is a living, breathing individual of her own. The stimulation of learning new things, learning what is encouraged, continues her development in terms of how she has learnt to interact with the world beyond the shelter and build relationships with the people that she meets.

And that can only be a beautiful thing.

  See Beautiful with Sugar the Golden Retriever.

This week on Dogs of Instagram SG @dogsofinstasg, we’re having a hashtag photo activity surrounding the theme of “My favourite pastime”.

I usually like to visit all the submissions when I find the time. So I spent this morning checking them out, and also tabulating them which gives me the graphical view of what our dogs’ favourite pastimes are:

Definitely not surprising that most humans think their dog’s favourite activity is… Tada! Sleeping!

A sleeping dog

Because you know what, lying around snoozing is Donna’s favourite activity too!

Lying around snoozing without ears and lying around with ears. :P 

And lying around.

And lying around.

I bet even she thinks she is boring, once in a while. :P 

Ahhhh, boring! Let’s go bug the human. 

So I stopped to take a break and played with her a bit. And then I needed to get back to what I was doing before.

Donna is actually very independent. Once we taught her the invisible boundaries and crate-trained her, she actually preferred to sleep in her crate away from me. But you know what, I enjoy having Donna nearby, so nowadays I have taken to asking her to remain beside me on her towel.

She’s not actually sleeping here. We’re practising relax where she plasters herself on the floor and waits for her treat.

Sometimes, she has less patience and pretends to be resting her head on her legs when she really isn’t. :P

Eventually, she decides she has eaten enough and moves to lie prone on the floor instead. zzzZZZZzzzzZZZzzzz

I have been working with her on the towel consistently everyday. We are supposed to bring it to Basic Obedience Training, which begins in a couple of weeks.

She can rest for fairly reasonable periods of time (I haven’t really timed her) on it at home. But I’m already predicting that she would be too distracted to even Go to the mat when we are outside with other dogs close by. I probably should bring the towel with us on our walks to practise outside by now.  So yes, time to do that.

Matwork is great for teaching the dog to stay, settle down and be calm.

Here are some more useful links on how to choose a mat for your dog and how to start teaching it.
– How to choose a mat and start teaching matwork
– Settle and Matwork
– Five steps to teach your dog to “Go to place”

The hashtag photo activity ends on Monday. So Singapore dog IGers, there’s still time to hashtag your dog’s favourite pastime photos “#sgdogsfavpastime” on IG and stand to win a pack of Beef Lungs from Feed My Paws. Details here.