How to...in 5 Steps

As a trainer I am often asked how do I keep my dog from barking at other dogs or people etc.? Bessey's Positive Paws teaches you and your dog a behavior that will help greatly in any area where you want your dog to focus on you and not the distraction. It is called  "Watch Me"

What is "Watch Me"?
This is a behavior where we teach our dog that is pays off to ignore the distraction and focus on you.
We make it highly rewarding for them and when they are focusing on you they can't be stimulated by the distraction. To teach the behavior do as follows.

1. One meal a day, hand feed your dog. This means instead of putting your dogs dish down on the floor, full of food, and letting them eat without working for it, we are going to pick one meal or do half of each meal and feed them from our hands. Take a small handful of food, present it to your dog and then before giving it to your dog bring the handful of food up to your face. Once your dog looks in the general vicinity of your face you give the food. We are teaching our dog that if he wants food, or access to something, he needs to ask, and to ask he needs to focus on you.

2. Once your dog seems pronounced at the food bowl exercises proceed to this step. Take a small handful of kibble in each hand and stick your hands straight out so you are forming a T. Naturally the dog will look from one hand to the other many times. Once he makes a split second of eye contact you will give him a handful of kibble. Now we are teaching him that in the face of temptation the reward will come quicker by maintaining eye contact. Gradually, we can lengthen the amount of time we ask for eye contact before relinquishing the handful of treats.

3. Now we move to creating a hand signal to achieve eye contact. Typically this is a pointed finger near your dogs nose, brought directly up to your own face between your eyes. Having done the previous exercises your dog will follow the finger and meet your gaze. He is now giving you attention. Mark this with a word such as "Good" or "Yes" and deliver him a tasty treat.

4. After a week of practicing this in different parts of the home and outside in your yard, you may begin introducing a verbal marker such as "Watch Me". Say the word, wait a couple of moments, and then follow through with your hand signal of a pointed finger to your face. This will help teach your dog what "Watch Me" means. To your dog it is teaching them English. They hear the word and tie it in with the hand signal we introduced earlier.

5. Once you feel confident your dog understands the verbal word and hand signal you can begin increasing the level of distractions. Remember to SET YOUR DOG UP FOR SUCCESS. If people riding by on bicycles is a trigger for your dog, make sure you set it up so they are far enough away that you can regain your dog's attention.

Teaching Our Dog ESL

Did you know our dogs aren't born knowing English? Seems pretty obvious right? Though time and again, I hear owners harping on their 8 week old puppies to sit, sit, sit, SIT. We are their teachers and need to teach our dogs what we want when we say "Sit" or "Come here" or whatever may be your primary speaking language. We have the tendency to repeat ourselves and get louder the longer we go without results. If I asked something of you in Spanish, and you only understand English, and I continued to get louder and angrier it isn't going to increase the chance that you are going to do what I am asking. So if I continually tell you to come here in Spanish, and since you dont' understand me you look at me quizzically, I repeat myself, and then a bit louder, I now am no longer a friendly person but a bit scary and you aren't going to come to me


Um...I don't understand you. You want me to do what?

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Using positive reinforcement, we can grab a yummy treat, lure the dog in to the sit position a few times and then give the treat to him when his hind end hits the floor. In that short span of time, we have taught our dog a general hand signal for sit. Dr. Patricia McConnell did a study that proved dogs are very visual and in tune with body language and hand signals. They do not listen to our voices that well, probably for the fact that we talk at them constantly. Once our dog has a good understanding of the hand signal, we then will tie the verbal cue Sit to it, thus teaching our dogs English as a Second Language (ESL).

5 Minute Cruciate Repair Video

 

A short video of Dr. Cloutier performing a cruciate surgery. This is the same procedure done on Henry, but not Henry in the video. He utilizes a laser which makes the surgery less bloody and overall very clean looking. Dr. Cloutier performs cruciate repairs on a pretty regular basis. One nice feature he does to help try and reduce having to use the elizabethan collar, AKA the Cone of Shame, is keep the sutures below the skin. By using that technique, the surgical site itches less, and there are no tempting suture knots on the surface to nibble at. So far it has been successful with Henry. We haven't had to put a cone on him or really even get after him for licking the area. He so far is being a compliant patient.

Cruciate Repair

Yesterday I had the opportunity to observe my dog Henry's cruciate repair at Veazie Veterinary Clinic. I work at a veterinary practice in central Maine but they do not perform orthopedic surgeries to repair such injuries. I used to live in the Bangor area and had heard good things of Veazie Vet and Dr. Cloutier. Most of our clients in the Augusta area that need orthopedic surgery are sent to southern Maine for repair while I decided to venture the other way and go north.


Henry's incision site

Let me start off by saying that everyone at Veazie Vet welcomed me into their practice with open arms. They provide the courtesy of allowing pet parents to observe the surgery on their pet. While not everyone may have the stomach to do so, I thought I have never seen such a surgery done. Sure I have seen my share of spay and neuters, growth removals and amputations at Windsor Vet but this was different and it was my own dog. I was immediately brought to the surgery room where I met the technicians and then brought upstairs to their break area. Carpeted and spacious with a full refrigerator, sink, counter-tops, microwave, coffee machine and then a second sitting area with a couple couches, a bookshelf for entertaining pet parents with novels, and high ceilings and lots of natural light. Dr. Cloutier and the staff allowed me to hang out in that area until it was time for Henry's surgery. They told me I could be as involved in Henry's surgery as I wanted to be.

I was taken to the kennel room where Henry was going to be kept, and like a champ he jumped right into his kennel and proceeded to lay down. Impressed they were by this, but a vet clinic is Henry's second home. Having had him since 2 days old and needing to be bottle fed every 2 hours, and then the house training phase, Henry spent a good 6 months or so of his life coming to work at Windsor with me. The technicians and Dr. asked if I'd like to hold Henry for the pre-med injections or blood draw etc. While everyone continued to reassure me I wasn't, I didn't want to be a burden or be in their way. So I left Henry in the kennel and asked them to just get me once he was on the table and ready to start surgery.

I nestled in to the corned of the couch and read my book. Heather, one of the licensed vet techs and one I've dealt with the most for Henry's pre-surgery stuff, was wonderful at checking in and had told me he was next, was medicated and we would be headed down soon. I was given the option to scrub in, gown up, and go right into the surgery room with Henry, but because I wanted to take a few pictures, I stayed outside by the viewing window which had better visibility of the surgery. Heather had an opening in her schedule so she stood with me and gave me a play by play as Dr. Cloutier performed a traditional cruciate repair.


Using the laser to make the incision. Very neat and clean

Cleaning out the partially torn ligament

 I felt very relaxed in the environment, having the technicians around, we laughed and joked about how it seems in our profession we always end up with the "problem pets".  But what better place to be in when we have pets that need chronic medical attention.


Adding the artificial ligament

I left while they were stitching up with leg and they were going to call me once he was recovered. Overall the surgery took about an hour or so and they called a little later to say he recovered peacefully, I was concerned about his recovery based off of how he had recovered from his neutering, more or less a bad trip. They use different drugs for sedation and anesthesia than we do at Windsor and he recovered swimmingly. Now that we have overcome the surgery we must approach our next hurdle of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I will keep you posted.



Tuesday's Thought of the Day

Thought for the day: "Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." George Elliot

Preparing for the Unknown

Taking on the responsibility of owning a dog should never be taken lightly. We can predict many things when we do acquire our dog, the house training, play biting, inappropriate chewing but just like with children there comes unpredictable moments.
I currently am experiencing one of those unforeseen moments with my 10 month old lab, Henry. Like many dogs before him, and the many dogs after him, he has torn his cruciate ligament. As I prepare for his surgery I am doing just that...preparing. Some of you that may be familiar with the surgery know it requires a strict rehabilitation process that last for 6-8 weeks.
My husband and I live on the second floor, so stairs are required to get to our living space. Fortunately Henry is a petite lab, about 58-60 lbs, still a weight that I can carry if push comes to shove. One thing I have done to help prep for his surgery is starting the physical therapy exercises now. I have attended a couple physical therapy sessions at Veazie Vet where his surgery will be done and have gotten him accustomed to the hydrotherapy treadmill. Imagine trying to expose your dog to a hind end sling or harness to assist with the stairs after he has already gone through the surgery. Wouldn't it be easier to have worked at it slowly so that he is comfortable instead of just throwing him into and hoping for the best. After a surgery of that extent and expense it would not be beneficial to do anything that might cause the dog to twist wrong.



Underwater Treadmill at Veazie Vet Clinic (picture from their website)
http://www.veazievet.com/index.php?id=737
 

So what have I been doing? As mentioned above, I have taken Henry a couple times to Veazie Vet so he has a nice happy association with the place. He is comfortable with the exercises and the water treadmill. This will definitely help when he is post surgery. I have also practiced massage and cold packing his knee, both requirements of his rehab. Lastly, the biggest task at hand, practicing going up the stairs with assistance. I tried the rolled towel but it was cumbersome and seemed to apply too much pressure to his abdomen. Next I tried a harness from Ruff Wear which is actually for my older dog and was just to see if I should proceed forward and purchase their webmaster harness. It seemed to work well and appeared more comfortable for him. Based off of reviews, other people have used them for CCL repairs and found they worked better than the hind end slings.
Since Henry exhibited signs of lameness I periodically practiced carrying him up all 21 steps. I would encourage anyone to practice restraint with their dogs. You never know when you may have to pick up your dog.  Especially when you have to carry them on stairs it is extremely important that the dog doesn't flail. That can be a very bad situation for you and the dog.

Have any of you experienced a major surgery with your dog?

Greeting a Dog

 

 

A nice comparison of what is considered rude for human to human contact and what that looks like with our dogs. Dr. Sophia Yin utilizes this picture and shows appropriate ways to greet dogs. Often things that we find appropriate when greeting each other, such as direct eye contact, is very uncomfortable for dogs. Direct eye contact between dogs is a threat and could result in a fight. Is it surprising that some dogs react once we stare in to their eyes? Teaching our dogs to like making direct eye contact with us is one thing that I teach in the basic behaviors class. It is easier to teach our dogs to like being stared in the eyes than it is to try and educate every owner in the world to avoid it.  It is also a great tool for getting our dogs to focus on us during distracting times.