What To Do If Your Dog Digs

Perched precariously on the edge of the pot, Pan was in his element. Paws pumping, dirt flying, tail waving wildly, he quickly and professionally excavated the area, messily transferring potting soil from inside the heavy clay pot to a wide swath immediately surrounding it.

Pan and Trout dug under our shed to access a nest of baby rabbits. Dogs often dig for a purpose.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” I exclaimed as I turned around, dumbstruck at the amount of chaos a determined terrier cross could cause in only moments when my back was turned. In answer, Pan snorted up at me happily, eyes dancing in delight, before returning to his energetic digging. Gathering my wits, I asked him to “leave it,” which he did with a grin and a play-bow before zooming off in ecstatic circles around the yard. What a delightful time he was having!

Less delightful for me, of course. Only minutes before, I had carefully planted some [dog-safe] bulbs in that very same pot, placing them the proper distance apart before covering them with the correct depth of soil. I looked at them lying on our cement patio. I looked at my dog, bounding around in pure joy. It was time to do some training.

Digging is a common behavior for all dogs, and especially for certain breeds such as terriers and dogs with more primitive roots. There are many reasons why your dog might dig, and one of the first things that you need to do is figure out what’s motivating your pup to let their paws fly.

Most commonly, dogs dig for fun. It just plain feels good! There’s something especially satisfying about the feel of loose dirt or sand between their paws.

Pan just cached a special chewy in this hole. Photo by Matt Helgemoe.

However, dogs will also dig for more practical reasons. Many dogs will dig holes to cache special treasures such as treats or toys, covering their prize carefully after depositing it in the hole by scooping dirt or sand back over it with their nose. You may also see this behavior indoors, when your dog pushes blankets over his food bowl or perhaps even makes the motions of scooping with his nose in the air above a special prize. Dogs also dig due to social facilitation. This is why your dog might start digging next to you in the garden every spring – your digging prompts his interest, and he joins in on the activity. Dogs will dig with one another, too. Some dogs will dig burrows, especially if they are hot. Digging into the cool earth provides them with a more comfortable place to rest away the heat of the day. Some pregnant dogs are determined to dig a “den.” Dogs will also dig to achieve a goal, such as escaping from under their fence to go on a grand adventure, or digging under your shed to get to that compelling nest of baby bunnies.

If your dog is digging for a specific reason, addressing that reason completely resolves the digging. For example, our older dog Trout dug out of our yard multiple times shortly after we moved. Every time we thought we had Trout-proofed the yard, she showed us a new weakness in our fortifications! Luckily, Trout is always supervised, so we were able to quickly retrieve her before she wandered onto the nearby busy road.

Trout’s digging issues were fairly easily resolved through management. We prevented her from digging by burying cement blocks in all of her favorite digging locations. We also used ex-pens to shore up any weak areas where she could squeeze under the fence until we were able to build a better barrier to keep her in the yard. We didn’t just take away her digging options, though. Digging out of the yard told us that Trout was bored, and the world outside her backyard looked much more green than the ground she’d already explored inside her highly-reinforced “AlcaTroutz.” So, we needed to make things more interesting.

Increasing the excitement of the backyard wasn’t difficult, but it did require some minor maintenance. Sprinkling interesting scents in random areas of the yard kept things interesting for Trout. A small handful of used hamster bedding, a few feathers from a friend’s chicken, or the dust from the bottom of a bag of beef liver dog treats were all big hits. Trout also thought that the trail of juice dribbled from a can of tuna was fascinating, and she loved it when we threw a small handful of treats out in the grass for her to find. Of equal enrichment value was our brush pile. After we removed two arborvitae from alongside our house, the brush became a frequent playground for her. She climbed, burrowed, and sniffed amongst the branches for hours. We made sure to position this brush pile well away from the fence so as not to provide a convenient staircase into the world outside her yard, and Trout soon stopped attempting to dig out at all as her backyard became the paradise that she’d always assumed the rest of the neighborhood to be.

Providing enrichment such as novel scents, sights, sounds, obstacles, and toys in the yard is one great way to reduce your dog’s digging, especially if he or she is digging out of boredom. However, I recommend against doing away with digging altogether for the vast majority of dogs. Digging is great enrichment, a great stress-reliever, and wonderful exercise! Instead of forbidding your dog from digging, I recommend that you instead channel his or her digging skills into appropriate outlets.

Trout and Pan dig apart their straw bale.

How you do this depends on your available space and how much your dog likes to dig. Those with less space can use a single straw bale sprinkled liberally with treats to create a fabulous digging surface (let your dog tear the bale apart, don’t bother spreading it out yourself). A wide, shallow rubbermaid tub can also be filled with shredded paper, strips of fleece, or even playground sand, and provided for your dog once a week (or more) in an easily-cleaned room of your home (bonus: it’s quite satisfying to vacuum up all of the spilled sand afterwards). Or, you can go to the gold standard in doggy delight: create your very own digging pit.

A digging pit is a clearly defined area where you not only allow, but encourage your dog to dig. You can mark this out with wooden planks, cement blocks, flags, or other landscaping materials. I decided to go with a large box made of treated cedar planks, which was situated on a gravel bed in my backyard. In my last several homes, our digging pits have been made up of a children’s plastic sandbox (with a lid to keep out brave but suicidal neighborhood cats, whom my terriers may not have greeted kindly on their turf), a bed of straw under a deck, and a sand/clay area where nothing but a couple of determined hostas grew, which I marked out with fist-sized rocks in a large square. Look at your available space, and determine what you can provide.

Add interesting items, like toys or treats, to your dog’s digging area to keep them coming back.

Now comes the fun part! Most dogs are delighted to discover that there’s an area where they can get their legal digs out. Make the area extra enticing by burying prizes for your dog to find. Hard biscuits, dental chews, bones, toys, and bully sticks are all good candidates. Start by making it really easy for your dog to “win” in their digging pit lottery by sprinkling some small treats on top of the dirt or sand in that area. As your dog starts to show some interest in the magic treat spot, let him or her watch you as you theatrically bury a larger biscuit under a very shallow layer of substrate. Then, encourage your dog to get it. Help him dig, if he seems hesitant! Remember, social facilitation is huge for dogs, so when he sees you digging and hears you encouraging him to join in, he’s much more likely to get into the game. Really make a big deal over him when he digs up the treat, regardless of whether he used his nose or paws to extract it.

As your dog gets better at the digging game, you can make the challenges you provide for him harder. Bury prizes more deeply, or do so when he’s not looking so that he has to use his nose to find them. Planting “surprises” in the box once or twice a week will keep him heading back to the same spot over and over to see what fun he can [quite literally] dig up each day. It’s okay – even good! – if your dog doesn’t find anything most of the time when he digs. As long as he keeps getting rewarded for digging in your designated area on occasion, he’s going to keep playing the digging lottery in that special spot that sometimes pays off.

Providing your dog with a designated digging pit isn’t enough to stop him from digging in other areas, however. As Pan proved with his potted planter excavation, dogs need some additional training to learn where they are and are not allowed to do their yardwork.

This is easily accomplished with supervision, redirection, and most of all, consistency. After his joyful hole creation, I watched Pan carefully. Anytime he started to dig in off-limits areas of our yard, I interrupted him with a cheerful “leave it!” or “oops!” and an invitation to run to the sandbox. Anytime he went to the sandbox on his own, I praised him profusely. Sometimes, I ran over and planted a prize for him to dig up. Sometimes, I ran over and dug with him, using my hands or a small trowel to dig alongside him (a reward even better than food for Pan, who relished the chance to do something fun together). Sometimes, I’ll be honest… I lay in my hammock and simply praised from afar, too comfortable to get up. Hey, dog training doesn’t always have to be a lot of hard work!

Pan’s nose is still sandy from caching his deer antler.

Our first “aha!” moment actually happened late at night. I was finishing up some bookkeeping indoors when Pan asked to go outside. He’d been given a new deer antler chewy earlier that day, and when I opened the back door he ran to retrieve this prize from where he’d buried it under his dog bed in his crate. I waited patiently while he found a spot to pee in the yard, antler in mouth. He then ran over to his sandbox, where he spent almost fifteen minutes under the light of the moon carefully excavating a hole, depositing his treasure, and covering it with layers and layers of sand. He came back in with his head covered in sand, a big smile on his face. Mission accomplished! He could sleep easily, prize cached in a safe location. The next morning, my husband reported that Pan dug his antler up first thing before once again conscientiously caching it under the sand.

Over the course of a month, Pan’s digging attempts in other areas of the yard became both less common and less intense. However, his digging in the sandbox continued on, strong as the day we’d built it. He cached treasures, dug up treasures, and oftentimes dug just for the delight of the sand beneath his speedy paws. I replanted the flower bulbs, which grew quickly in spite of their early and abrupt departure from their home. Pan left my pots of plants alone. He left the soft earth where a tree stump had been removed alone. He joined Trout in digging under our shed to devour a nest of bunnies, and we added gravel, landscape boulders, and an ex-pen around the back of the shed to keep our suicidal long-eared guests safe. He gave up on the shed and went back to his sandbox. I stopped having to issue “leave it” reminders.

Too often in our dogs’ lives, we forget to let them be dogs. We forget that they’re intelligent, autonomous beings with their own likes and dislikes.

Layla chomps on a crab apple that she’d cached in her straw digging area.

Activities like barking, chewing, chasing, and digging aren’t intrinsically bad. The problem comes not from the activities themselves, but from when and where your dog engages in them. Rather than punishing normal and natural canine behavior out of your best friend, consider instead whether you can direct it into a more appropriate channel. Consider how very good that activity feels to your dog. Consider how that activity benefits your dog: in the feeling of fulfillment from carrying out a centuries-old instinct, in the discharge of pent-up energy or anxiety, or perhaps in the cascade of dopamine that enjoyable activities releases. Why take that away from your best friend?

What opportunities do you provide for your dog to dig? Please share your stories in the comments section below!

[Mostly] Wordless Wednesday

My message would be simple: training is not a luxury, but a key component to good animal care. Everyone who has a pet should understand that basic fact. Training is a way to enhance the quality of life for our pets. It is far more than just teaching a dog to do a cute trick. Training is about teaching a dog (or any animal) how to live in our world safely. -Ken Ramirez

Enrichment

Enrichment is the act of changing an animal’s environment to encourage species-specific behaviors. The enrichment I provide for my pet gerbils, Wheelie McGerbilface and Silent Bob, consists of opportunities to chew, burrow, dig, climb, nest, and run. The enrichment I provide for Layla and Trout, and for every foster dog who comes through my home, also includes opportunities to chew and run, in addition to sniffing, ripping, and scavenging. These canine-specific behaviors make dogs’ lives with us better. The more opportunities you can provide for your dog to be a dog, the happier and more fulfilled your dog will be.

Photo by colorblindPICASSO on flickr.

We often focus very intently on what we want of our dogs, but it’s important to remember that our dogs want things from us too. They want to feel safe from physical and emotional harm. They want to know that their physical needs for warmth, shelter, food, water, touch, and companionship will be met every day. Most of us are very good at providing these things. However, dogs also want to use their brains and bodies in ways that feel good to them, and this is where we sometimes fall short as dog owners.

The things that feel good to dogs are not necessarily things that feel good to us as primates. We like looking at things. Dogs prefer using their noses. We enjoy using our hands to explore our world. Dogs explore their worlds with their teeth and tongue. We like to create new things. Dogs love destroying stuff.

As you figure out how to enrich your dog’s life, remember to focus on the things your dog enjoys. If you’re not sure, try a few different enrichment games throughout the week and watch how your dog responds to each one. Remember that canines are social, predatory scavengers. They have a rich and nuanced language of their own, which they use to communicate with one another. They are also experts at finding (and sometimes catching) food.

The toys that dogs enjoy massage their predatory instincts. Squeaky toys sound just like the death cries of small animals. Ripping apart a plush toy mimics dissecting a furry animal’s corpse, and chasing a rope or ball activates the same part of the brain as chasing a squirrel. Tugging on a toy is much like fighting with a prey animal that’s trying to get away from your dog. Even the seemingly benign Kong has its roots in the dog’s scavenging past; the mechanics of getting peanut butter out of a Kong are strikingly similar to those of licking marrow out of a raw bone. As much as you may wish to see your pet as a furry baby, the truth is that inside every furry face lies the brain of a smart, social survivor. Your dog doesn’t want to be pampered, he wants to be engaged.

So, readers, what enrichment activities do you provide for your dogs? Post your favorites in the comments section below!

Got a minute?

The alarm on my phone chimes as I’m putting together behavioral case notes to send to a client’s veterinarian. I switch it off, then count 15 treats into my hand. Setting my phone’s stopwatch for one minute, I grab the toenail clippers and call Layla over. As the stopwatch starts, I quietly hold out a hand. Layla eagerly places her paw into my hand, and I click with my tongue and hand her a treat, letting go of her paw as she swallows. She puts her paw back into my hand and gets another click and treat. We do this four more times, and on the seventh try I gently tap one of her toenails with the nail clipper, clicking and treating her for holding still. She gets three more clicks for offering her paw, then I calmly clip the very tip of her dewclaw for another click and treat. We end the session with four more clicks and treats for offering her paw. I stop the stopwatch on my phone. It’s been 47 seconds since the start of our session. I thank Layla, give her a release cue, and return to writing my case notes. My phone’s alarm will go off again in another hour, and it will be Trout’s turn to enjoy a short training session. I decide that I’ll work on her newest trick, yodeling on cue.

Photo by Walter Rumsby

This sort of training session is common in my household and in my client’s homes. Setting aside five, ten, or fifteen minutes to train every day can be difficult for the busy family or professional, but it’s easy to find a minute of time to work with your dog. A lot can be accomplished in sixty seconds!

Setting an alarm to go off once an hour whenever you’re home is a great reminder to work with your dog. Decide what you’d like to work on ahead of time, then keep it short and sweet. Ideally, it’s best to choose a skill that you can reward frequently: ten to twenty treats in a minute is a good goal to shoot for. If you count the treats out ahead of time and have them ready to go, so much the better.

So, what can you train in a minute? Here are just a few skills that I commonly have my clients work on:

– Loose-leash walking: snap the leash on your dog’s collar and spend sixty seconds walking around your living room or driveway.

– Recall: toss a treat across the room, then call your dog to come, grabbing her collar when she reaches you and then feeding a treat. Repeat this game as many times as you can in a minute.

– Muzzle or Gentle Leader love: click and treat your dog for targeting the muzzle or Gentle Leader. As your dog gets the idea of the game, begin feeding the treats inside the basket of the muzzle or through the nose band of the Gentle Leader.

– Stay: click and treat your dog for holding still as you shift your weight in front of him, gradually increasing the difficulty until you can jump up and down in front of him, turn in a circle in front of him, and walk in a circle around him without him moving a muscle.

– Ears, nails, and tails, oh my: if your dog doesn’t like to be touched somewhere, spend some time teaching him that touch predicts food. Touch the offending area (or the closest area you can touch without stressing him), then reward. This is a great way to teach dogs to enjoy brushing, nail trimming, ear cleaning, toothbrushing, or any other sort of handling.

– Sits, downs, and stands: can your dog differentiate these cues? Practice your sit-down-sit-stand-down-stand progression, mixing up the signals in an unpredictable order.

– Tricks: trying to teach your dog to fetch a tissue when you sneeze, bow, spin, or sit pretty? Work on it in little bits!

– Leave it and Zen: can your dog offer eye contact while you hold a treat out to the side? Can she ignore a treat in your open palm? Can she offer hand targets while a pile of treats is sitting on the ground?

– Noise desensitization and counterconditioning: if your dog hates thunder, beeping, or other noises, you can play those noises softly on your computer, following each with a tasty treat.

– Crate games: reward your dog for running into his crate. Practice manners when the crate door is closed. Teach him that the crate is a magic food spot where wonderful things happen.

– Attention outside: click and treat your dog for checking in with you as the two of you stand near an open door with your dog on leash. As your dog gets better at this, practice in your front and back yards.

– Scary objects: if your dog hates the blender, the vacuum cleaner, or the mop, pair the offending item with treats. Start with the scary thing stationary, turned off, and far enough away that your dog can eat treats. Gradually work on getting closer, then add movement, and finally noise.

These are just a few ideas, and pretty much any skill can be worked on in little chunks if you’re creative. Set a goal to train your dog for sixty seconds every hour you’re home, and you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll accomplish! So, what do you plan to work on this week? Share your one-minute training goals in the comments section below!

3 Puppy Life Hacks

Recently, I started fostering again after a one-year hiatus. While I’ve fostered over one hundred dogs, this was the first foster I’ve had since moving in with my boyfriend and his brother. Both guys commented on some of the choices I made for Alex the foster puppy. While these choices seem like common sense to most trainers, many pet owners neglect them to their puppy’s detriment. So, here’s a list of my three favorite life hacks for puppy raising.

1. If you love it, put a leash on it. Would you allow your toddler to roam about your house unsupervised? If not, then why would you give that freedom to a puppy?

Even in our fenced-in yard, Alex wore a leash.

Puppies learn about their environment through exploration. Lacking opposable thumbs, most of this exploration is done with their mouth. In addition, until your puppy has learned where you want him to toilet, he’ll do so whenever and wherever the urge hits him.

Keeping your puppy on a leash gives you the chance to supervise him and help him make good choices. When I could watch him, Alex dragged his leash. If I couldn’t watch him, he was tethered to me (I hooked the handle of the leash to my belt loop with a simple carabiner) or to a sturdy piece of furniture. Had I had Alex longer, he would have gradually earned off-leash privileges when I knew he was empty (right after a toilet trip outside) and when he was consistently able to make good choices about what to chew on.

2. Throw out the food bowl. Alex ate about five cups of puppy food a day. He got some of this food from puzzle toys such as Kongs, the Kong Wobbler, and the Magic Mushroom. These toys kept him entertained when I couldn’t supervise him, such as when I showered, as well as keeping him happy in his crate when I had to leave. They also provided important mental enrichment for his developing brain. The only time he ate out of a food bowl was if I was practicing food bowl approaches.

Alex demonstrates puppy zen with several pieces of his kibble.

The food that didn’t get delivered in puzzle toys was hand-fed to Alex throughout the day for making good choices. I carried a bait bag with two to three cups of his food in it whenever Alex was out of his crate. Any time he sat, lay down, chewed on puppy toys, or pottied outside, he received several kibbles. He also received a lot of food during short (thirty to sixty second) training sessions a couple times an hour. We worked on leash manners in my driveway. Alex learned about hand targets, focusing on me, stay, puppy zen, and leave it. With his age and natural intelligence, he quickly picked up on this basic obedience, all while eating his daily food ration.

3. Socialize, socialize, socialize. Puppyhood is a lot of fun. It’s also a very short window of time in which lots of important experiences will shape who your dog becomes as an adult. By the time you bring a puppy home at 8 to 10 weeks, you have less than a month before the first socialization window closes forever. It’s much harder to socialize an adult dog than a puppy, and even harder to help a dog overcome bad experiences from this time.

Playtime with friendly adult dogs is one important part of socializing your new pup!

Remember that socialization refers to positive experiences with new things. At four months, Alex was a bit past his primary socialization window, and this showed in his tendency to be suspicious of anything new or different. He needed a little bit of time to hang back and observe when he encountered anything new. A few times, he growled softly and hid behind me, telling me that we needed to start further away from the new thing. That said, he was still young enough that he quickly gained confidence and became curious in new situations with a little time to habituate. He never refused treats in these situations and explored within a few minutes.

During his week with me, Alex met close to sixty new people. Most of them fed him treats. Many of them were men with facial hair. He met different ages, including children, as well as different ethnicities. He met old dogs and young dogs, playful dogs and crotchety dogs. He rode in the car both crated and wearing a seat belt. He met kittens, nice cats, and a mean cat. He met chickens. He was crated at dog classes in four different facilities. He got to try nose work. He had his toenails trimmed and his teeth brushed. He saw flapping plastic bags, all sorts of vehicles, bikes, a hose, a balloon, and even power tools from a distance. He worked for treats and toys, learning about tug and fetch. He napped in several new locations and played in several more.

Alex has been adopted, and I hope his new family will continue teaching him how to be the good dog he wants to be. If you have a new puppy, he or she wants the same thing. Help your puppy succeed using the tips above in addition to enrolling in a good puppy kindergarten class, and you’ll be well on your way!

 

Fearful Dogs

Last week we discussed brittle dogs, those dogs who have a hard time coping with stress despite the best start in life. The dogs we discussed were born that way, and couldn’t deal with scary or uncomfortable situations even with their golden-spoon upbringing. But brittle dogs can also be created in spite of a solid genetic basis. Today, let’s discuss those dogs who don’t have the best start in life.

Some dogs lose the socialization lottery. Maybe your dog was born or raised in a puppy mill or kept in someone’s barn or garage. Maybe your dog was a stray. Maybe your dog grew up in a no kill shelter that didn’t have enough volunteers to get all of the dogs out and about or which kept puppies sequestered due to concerns about disease. Maybe you just didn’t know about the importance of socialization and so didn’t get your dog to puppy class before his socialization window closed between twelve and sixteen weeks.

Photo by Peter Kemmer

Whatever the reason, if your dog missed out on critical socialization he may still be okay. Or he might not be. If you have a brittle dog whose early experiences were less-than-ideal, studies show that you could have a long haul ahead of you.

Ongoing studies on Romanian orphans have shown us just how crucial early development can be. The “socialization window” during which the majority of social brain development outside of the womb seems to take place appears to be about two years in people compared to the shorter three to four months for puppy development. However, many of the developmental processes are identical.

So, here’s what we know: children with neglectful upbringings do not develop the same way as children with supportive and enriched environments. Their brains are physically different. They develop less white matter, or myelin tract, which leads to deficits in their abilities to form neural connections. The neural pathways in their brain are weaker and the electrical activity of their brains is significantly reduced from children who grew up in supportive environments.

In addition to this alarming physical deficit, many of the children from neglectful environments also appear to suffer from adrenal impairment. Their bodies produce significantly less (or in fewer cases, significantly more) cortisol, a stress hormone, than other children’s bodies, and this causes them to show altered stress responses.

The parallels to our dogs who come from neglectful, unenriched environments are obvious. Many of the dogs with the very worst behavioral issues that I work with have low heart rates even in situations that obviously cause them a good deal of stress. These dogs sometimes appear to suffer learning disabilities and to have issues with impulse control. Their owners report that the dogs develop new fears at the drop of a hat, but that it takes months or years to get over any fear even with appropriate behavioral interventions.

Taking all of this in can be overwhelming to the owner of a brittle dog. If your dog’s history suggests developmental disabilities, it’s important to realize that your dog is not a normal dog. He has special needs. Asking your dog to suck it up and go to the dog park or to stop cowering behind the couch every time visitors come over dismisses the very real disability your dog lives with every day. It’s as insensitive as calling someone in a wheelchair lazy or laughing at the retired combat veteran next door when he asks you to please give him a head’s up before you light off firecrackers. We wouldn’t ask a dog who was missing a limb or an eye to engage in behaviors which were potentially dangerous to him, but because we cannot see the damage to the brain of our previously-neglected dog with our naked eyes we oftentimes forget to give him the same respect. It’s unconscionable to ignore a disability just because it’s not instantly visible.

So, how can you help your brittle dog? Once you acknowledge that your dog needs some special help, the research is very promising! There’s a lot we can do to help these dogs become more confident, happy, and behaviorally healthy with some simple interventions.

First of all, the five suggestions for brittle dogs with positive socialization histories apply here. Go review them now. We’ll wait.

Finished? Great! In addition to supporting your dog in all of the ways mentioned last week, research also suggests that you work to create new neural pathways for your pet. The brain is remarkably plastic, and new neural pathways develop anytime we learn a new skill or experience a new sensation. The trick is to do this without putting more pressure on your dog. Introducing your dog to TTouch obstacle work, agility (with a skilled instructor who will free-shape your dog to interact with the obstacles on his or her own terms), trick training, or canine nose work can allow them to interact with their environment in new and interesting ways. Feeding from puzzle toys or using other search and find games can also be helpful. Anything that engages your dog’s curiosity is good! Be patient and let him or her progress at the pace that makes sense for them. Encourage exploration and applaud small efforts.

The progress many of my clients see in their previously fearful dogs when we create safe places, actively teach coping skills, socialize appropriately, utilize classical conditioning, consider medication, and promote the development of new neural pathways through nose work or trick training is absolutely astounding. These dogs flourish in ways that they’ve never done before. They grow and they learn and they surprise the hell out of us at every turn. They impress us to tears. There’s nothing quite like the first moment when a fearful dog completes a successful search in nose work class or works up the courage to eat in the presence of a stranger. These magical moments of bravery show us how hard these special dogs try and how very much they can overcome with patience and a plan.

If you have a brittle dog, one of those special dogs who lost the socialization lottery, I hope this blog post has given you a better understanding of your dog’s very unique needs and a sense of hope at all that you can achieve together. I’d love to hear your stories, tips, and tricks about your own special dogs, so please share them in the comments section below!

[Mostly] Wordless Wednesday

Photo by colemama on flickr.

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

-Mary Oliver

Socializing your Dog: an Illustrated Guide

Thanks to Lili Chin of Doggie Drawings for collaborating with me on this socialization poster! You can click on the picture below to view the full sized version. Lili and I have previously worked together to create the illustrated guide to playing with your dog.

Do you have any socialization tips or tricks? Please share them in the comments below!

Nose Work Class Photos

This gallery contains 18 photos.

We love K9 Nose Work! Any dog (and any handler!) can participate, and the dogs think it’s the best game ever. Check out these great shots from last week’s Beginning K9 Nose Work class by Laura Caldwell. Want to start playing with … Continue reading →

Lessons from Shedd: Why You Don’t Really Want a Smart Dog

“What a smart dog!”

As I worked with Mischief, an adolescent mixed breed, the onlookers watched in awe. Mischief was engaged and happy. Her stubby tail wagged and she responded quickly and precisely to every cue she was given. She watched me intently, ignoring the small crowd of Beginning Obedience students gathered around us. Several people remarked positively on her apparent intelligence.

I’ll let you in on a secret: Mischief isn’t that bright. She just enjoys training, and understands the clicker game.

This is ideal, because she’s a wonderful pet. She’s also a great performance dog: at 10 months of age, she’s earned her first rally obedience excellent title with all first-place wins.

Mischief (Photo by Sara Brueske)

This common misperception about intelligence happens with any well-trained animal. People are amazed at how “smart” the beluga whales, dolphins, sea lions, and otters are at the Shedd Aquarium. However, IQ has little to do with it.

We can train sharks, goldfish, rodents, lizards, and hermit crabs. The laws of learning apply to all species, and Ken Ramirez is fond of saying that you can train an earthworm and a graduate student the same way.

Many dog owners are quick to tell me how smart their dogs are. I always respond with my condolences. Here’s the thing: smart dogs are much harder to live with.

Smart dogs get bored quickly. They’re creative, and quick to figure out their own entertainment. They’re more likely to test the limits, push at boundaries, and question rules. They require more from their owners: more training, more attention, more play and exercise, and above all, more skill. My smart dog, Layla, figured out how to open up the fridge door and back gate on her own – something Mischief would never dream of trying to puzzle out. Which dog would you prefer to live with?

Intelligence has nothing at all to do with trainability. Sure, a smart dog may learn a skill more quickly. However, that same dog is also more likely to test your criteria for that skill. Once she knows what you want, she’s going to start trying variations on that behavior to see just how hard she really has to work.

A less intelligent dog may take longer to learn the skill initially, but once she knows what you want, she’s going to be happy continuing to comply without continually offering improvements or modifications on the behavior.

So, how do you find an easy dog if intelligence doesn’t have anything to do with it? Most people actually want a biddable animal, one who is bred to work and cooperate with people. Breeds who are bred for cooperativeness, such as sporting, toy, and herding breeds, tend to be easier to train than those breeds who have been bred to work independently, such as terriers and hounds. This trait, called biddability, is what you’re probably looking for if you think you want a “smart” dog.

Is your dog smart? Biddable? Please share your stories and comments in the section below!