Seven Dogs

I follow Tiffany Poon’s YouTube channel.  She is a concert pianist and publishes a vlog that covers her life as an artist.  She was recently asked about her practice routine, and she replied, “I have a strong dislike for the word routine, it’s quite dehumanizing.”  I bristled at that.  Not the old man part of me that bristles at most things, but the psychologist part of me with decades of professional experience, and even more the dog owner part of me that couldn’t survive without routines.

I think routines are very humanizing.

I consulted with schools and early childhood service providers for over 30 years, and I can assure you that routines are a core part of instructional success.  A colleague of mine, who was the dean of education at BYU told me about his daughter and her first few weeks as a second-grade teacher.  He counseled her to spend much of her first few weeks building routines with her students and not to worry about progressing through curricular standards right away.  After a couple of weeks, she called him to express worry that she was getting behind the other second grade classes.  He reassured her that she was doing the right thing.  She stayed the course, and it wasn’t long before she caught the other classes and raced past them.  Hell, even Arnold Schwarzenegger figured out the benefits of routines as a Kindergarten Cop.

My life here with Courage is full of routines.  Don’t worry, there is still a lot of room for spontaneity.  I use routines to generate structure and create a predictable environment.  This provides Courage with lots of opportunities to succeed and get rewarded.  The easiest things to build into routines involve food and the ends of day.

Courage has access to her food bowl whenever she is indoors, but she gets her raw chicken hind quarter at noon every day.  I take her piece of chicken out of the refrigerator and walk it out to a shady place on the lawn where I hand it to her.  She is confident that her chicken will come at the same time and she does not expect another piece later in the day.

The most amazing thing about many of my Tibetan Mastiffs is their ability to tell time.  Accurately.  To the minute.  Magnus would go to bed at the same time every night.  I swear he had a watch. 

On the other hand, break a routine, and the world ends.  Courage comes to my bedside at 6:02 am and asks to be let outside.  It seems like it’s exactly that time on many mornings.  When I wake up before her official request and I do the asking, all hell breaks loose.  I’m not exaggerating.  If she makes the request to go out, she goes outside and quietly enjoys the morning breeze.  If I ask her to go outside, she starts barking from the get-go.

As for the other end of day, she goes to bed at 10:30 pm.  I open the back door a little before that and call her.  I then walk away from the door leaving it closed but unlatched.  At 10:30 she pushes the door open, grabs a quick bite and sip of water, comes into the living room to check on me, then goes off to bed.  Not every night, but we’re working on it.  I think dogs really love routines; it makes them feel more human.

Netflix has a short series available called “Muster Dogs” that I think everyone should watch.  It’s about dogs, it’s educational, but most importantly, it’s just good TV.  No spoilers here.

“Muster Dogs” follows 5 puppies from one litter of pure-bred Australian Kelpies over their first year of life.  The puppies are kept by the breeder until 3 months of age, at which time they are delivered to 5 different shepherds in all corners of Australia.  These are experienced shepherds that use packs of dogs to muster their herds, and thus know very well how to train these pups for their life’s work.  The goal for this show is to have each pup work as well as a three-year-old by their first birthday.  Episodes are organized around behavior assessments given at 4, 6, 9, and 12 months of age.

Although many of the milestones employed in these assessments are specific to herding, some might be applicable to Tibetan Mastiffs.  Mostly, they make me wonder if it’s appropriate for Tibetan Mastiff breeders and fanciers to negotiate and publish a similar set of checklists for our breed.  This would allow Tibetan Mastiff owners to have maturation benchmarks to consider while raising their own puppies, even if they aren’t working dogs.

Let’s take a look at the 4-month checklist from the show. I’ll use my 5-month-old puppy as a Tibetan Mastiff single subject.  Heck, I was evaluating Courage like crazy while watching anyway.  The 4-month list is more general than the latter assessments as they are more targeted at herding skills. The 4-month list is as follows:

1 – Bluetooth connection – this is a clever way to describe a bond between puppy and owner.  It is evidenced by eye contact, in a calm and playful moment, that is natural, desired, and resists distraction.

2 – Drag 3-meter rope – shepherds train puppies with a 3-meter rope attached to their collar.  This allows the shepherd to stop the dog from doing whatever stupid stuff they are doing by stepping on the rope and reeling them in if necessary.  The puppies need to have the rope attached without fussing about it or playing with it.

3 – Relaxed when held – the shepherds are asked to pick up the puppy and hold it in their arms without the pup wriggling, biting, or trying to get free.

4 – Loose lead walk – the puppy should be able to go on a leashed walk and follow the owner without commands or resisting the leash.

5 – Responding to name – this is not so much a command response as a demonstration that the puppy can look up or make a noticeable response to the use of their name.  Obviously, when you have many dogs working a “mob,” each dog needs to know their name and be able to respond to commands individually.

6 – Calm on chain – these dogs are moved around quite a bit by motorized quads, and the puppies need to comply with very short tethering without resistance. 

7 – Communal feeding – every one of these shepherds had loads of dogs and they were fed together with dry food spilled into a giant feeding trough or bowl.  The puppies need to show that they are one of the gang and head to the bowl with the others and feed without arguing.

So, how does Courage stack up?  Not too bad.  1) She and I have a profound Bluetooth Connection.  I have no doubts.  2) I haven’t tried this, but I don’t need to.  She would just lie down and start chewing on the rope.  3) She passes this with flying colors, although she is getting too heavy now to try.  She just passed 60 lbs.  4) She’s not as bad at this as she might be.  She walks like a drunk, but doesn’t resist the leash and comes back to me when I ask her to.  5) She definitely knows her name.  Which is weird as I mostly call her “puppy.”  I am at the point where I’ve owned enough dogs to forget her name and call her by one of the other dogs’ names.  It’s uncomfortable when I call her Magnus.  6) I know Tibetan Mastiffs are the “tied dogs,” but I would never tether a Tibetan Mastiff.  Just . . . no.  7) She’s an only child at the moment, so I don’t know, but she is a casual eater with no apparent possessiveness or aggression.  I think she would do okay.

This would give Courage a score of 5 out of 7.  Well, that’s my score and I’m sticking to it.  Way to go little girl!  If we ever make a checklist for Tibetan Mastiffs, I vote for an item where the puppy demonstrates self-confidence by looking at the owner while cocking its head to one side and spitting a molar across the kitchen: all without a patch over one eye and a parrot on their shoulder.  Courage is a badass.

I should be doing all the things to sell my book, but it turns out that raising a puppy is demanding.  That said, do yourself a solid and read my book.  Seriously, read it.  Well, at least buy it.  You won’t regret it.

Out of all possible puppy behaviors, only one really irritates me: barking.  I know, dogs bark.  And for the record, Courage doesn’t really bark all that much or that loud.  She is quite disciplined.  There are times I will hear barking coming from the back of the house and when I go to check, it’s the neighbor’s dog and Courage is sound asleep on the lawn.  That said, she just turned four months old and has found her voice.

Oh, before I talk about Puppy Rolls, I should mention that Courage has officially graduated from house training.  She was the top of her class.  Well, she is the only dog in the house, but she accomplished the feat faster than Nika, my previous valedictorian.  Last night, I let Courage in around 10 pm.  She grabbed a quick bite in the kitchen, came into the TV room to say hi, then trotted off to my room and fell asleep.  She barely looked up when I went to bed an hour later and woke me gently at 6 am.  If only it worked that well every night.

Back to barking.  When Courage first started to bark at the neighbors, I would go out to the yard and tell her, “No” or bring her inside.  After a while, she got the message.  But knowing that she shouldn’t bark and not barking are two different things.  When I go out there now to remind her, the guilt is overwhelming.  Courage runs over to me and bows her head at my feet.  The problem is, she bows so low that she executes an entire summersault.  A Puppy Roll.  I’ve never seen that before.  I wasn’t sure if I should scold her for barking or just let myself laugh.

As it turns out, submission is not the only use for the Puppy Roll.  Courage has incorporated it into her play moves with me.  She will take a run at me, grab my arm that’s resting on the carpet, and Puppy Roll over the top of my arm all while maintaining her grip.  Ouch, BTW.  It’s really cute and endearing, but I have to wonder if there is a screw loose somewhere.

And for those of you who read about our version of Fetch, it’s still a thing.  Courage doesn’t like Blue to be inside the house at all.  Cheers.

As a reminder, I am looking for Amazon reviews for my book, Seven Dogs.  I really think you will like the book.  Also, I enjoy writing this blog, but would love to hear what y’all like to read.  I can pretend to be an expert on so many things. 

Alright, let’s get to it.  You give names to your dogs’ toys.  Oh yes, you do.

The other day I was basking in my self-actualized fantasy world thinking about how pathetic people were for naming dog toys.  Then I looked at Courage and told her to, “grab Loopy and go outside.”  Becoming self-aware hurts like hell.  Twenty years on university faculty and a former college basketball coach and I name dog toys: Loopy, Blue, Bone, Kong, and Knobby.  Brilliant names, don’t you think?  Oh, and Blue is actually purple and red.  But that wasn’t all, they have pronouns!

These five toys are left over from the original seven dogs.  They are in really good shape, are safe for big dogs, and have lived in a pile near the couch since L’acy passed away.  I took a walk down the PetSmart toy aisle before Courage arrived but didn’t see anything that I thought added to the current collection.  So, Courage was introduced to full size toys at an early age.  It was awesome to watch her lug these rather large toys around.  She would almost tip forward lifting Kong and Bone.  Now, at four months, she handles them with ease.

At first, the toys lived in the house.  They were perfect for redirecting Courage when she just had to chew on something and my hands, wrists, and forearms were bled out.  One day, about a month ago, Courage took Knobby outside with her.  She pranced through the back door like a trained Lipizzaner; her head held high with the toy firmly in her grasp.  Such pride.  All of these toys are fine for outside, so I let it happen.

After a few days, all of the toys were outside and I had nothing to correct inappropriate chewing.  So, I brought a couple of them back inside.  At some point, Courage noticed and commenced to bang on the back door with some urgency.  When the door opened, she ran into the house, found the misplaced toy, and raced it back outside. In counter to Courage’s industry, every time I ran out of toys in the house, I would go back outside and reacquire some.  Rinse, repeat.  I always struggle to get the door open wide enough before she knifes through with the toy sideways in her mouth, so this often wrenches the toy from her grip.  Undeterred, she wheels around and scoops the toy up before heading full speed out to the back lawn.  This odd game of Fetch continues to this day, but I struggle to see which of us is the dog.

As I look around me, I don’t see any toys.  Sigh, I need to collect some again.

As a reminder, I am looking for Amazon reviews for my book, Seven Dogs.  I really think you will like the book.

I think it’s important to have a training philosophy.  Not just methods and strategies, but an overarching philosophy about how your dog’s behaviors are built and maintained.  My philosophy comes from two sources: my educational training in psychology, and decades of professional consultation with school and district administrators as well as elementary, secondary, and post-secondary school faculties.  The former contributed an understanding and appreciation of behaviorism as described and explored by B. F. Skinner et al.  The latter forced me to make the research of the former approachable for non-nerd schoolteachers and administrators who could benefit from behavior science and use it to teach more effectively and safely manage their schools and classrooms.

My personal philosophy is best described by a label many educators will recognize: Positive Behavior Support.  Unfortunately, this label has been terribly misunderstood, or more accurately, misapplied.  Educators too often thought it was Positive [Behavior-Support], when in fact, it was [Positive-Behavior] Support.  Details matter.  Interpreting the label as Positive [Behavior-Support] had teachers and administrators skipping around schools with fake smiles praising absolutely everything the students did.  They thought they were supposed to be positive.  Ugh.  This interpretation was preferred because the one-size-fits-all intervention was easy to administer; say, “cheese.”  The real interpretation, [Positive-Behavior] Support, required educators to consistently and persistently discriminate between student behaviors that were appropriate, neutral, inappropriate, and dangerous.  The reaction to each was supposed to be different.  Like many skills of value, the learning curve was steep, but once learned, it was a natural and highly effective way to manage the school environment.

Positive Behavior Support is derived from a philosophy of prioritizing the building of appropriate behaviors over punishing away inappropriate behaviors, and the methods are supported by decades of behavioral research.  Support the positive (appropriate or desirable) behaviors through praise and recognition, and correct or ignore the negative behaviors.  Believe it or not, ignoring nuisance behaviors works.  They die from something called extinction.  Not all misbehavior needs correction, and only the most dangerous behaviors need punishment.  Oh, and everything we learned about human behavior applies to dogs . . . and spouses.

One of my favorite books on the subject is called, The Power of Positive Parenting by Glenn Latham.  I knew Glenn and he was an amazing person.  This book should be in everyone’s library, and it should be read more than once.  The main theme of the book is summarized by a quote from S. W. Bijou which is repeated at the end of every chapter: “Research has shown that the most effective way to reduce problem behavior in children is to strengthen desirable behavior through positive reinforcement rather than trying to weaken undesirable behavior using aversive or negative processes.”  I couldn’t say it better.

When Courage first arrived, I still hadn’t decided where we were going to sleep.  I wanted her close by so I could make sure she wasn’t soiling the carpet or chewing something inappropriate.  I also wanted a spot where I could provide food and water as well as access to the back door.  Having over twenty years of experience with these brilliant but stubborn beasts gave me an idea.  I realized that any barrier I erected would make her demand to be on the other side of it even if that made no sense.  So, I picked the couch in the Great room as my bed.  That room is connected to the kitchen where I could put her bowls near a back door.  And, as expected, even with access to the entire Great room and kitchen, she chose to sleep against the couch right below my hand.  Nary a whimper.  Every time she got up and went to the kitchen to get a snack or sip, I would gear up like a firefighter and take her outside in the wind and freezing temperatures so she could pee.  I would praise her as she peed and then bring her back inside.  Also, if she put her teeth on something she wasn’t supposed to, I grunted disapproval and handed her a toy; a doggy version of corrective teaching which uses appropriate alternatives serving the same behavioral function.  As a consequence, Courage only pees outside and only chews on toys; all without the use of yelling or punishment.  Positive Behavior Support.

At this moment, my carpet is clean, and no furniture has been destroyed or even dented.  I expect Courage will complete her training in the next month or so and I can then sleep in my bed again.  My back can’t wait.

As a reminder, I am looking for Amazon reviews for my book, Seven Dogs.  I really think you will like the book.

Well, as I promised in the book, there would be a next chapter, and that chapter has officially started.  Last year we attempted a breeding between Lottie and Magnus’s frozen swimmers.  The one gestated pup, sadly, died in utero.  Being impatient and somewhat practical, I decided to acquire one of Lottie’s pups from this latest litter.  The new female puppy’s name is Courage (pictured above).  Now, before you think it’s cute to mention Courage the Cowardly Dog, I should say that I like this name and I’m very sensitive.  So, be nice.

There will be lots of Courageous stories in the future, but for now I think I will confess what happened on her journey home.  The breeder lives about an hour drive from my house, which is closer than the airport where I have picked up my pups historically.  Given that I have done this many times, I was confident that I knew what I was doing.  Ah yes, confidence, beliefs too often built on sand.

Courage’s breeder suggested that I drive for a block or two, then pull over and let the pup eliminate then and there. This would make the drive home sanitary and dry.  Unfortunately, I set Courage into the back of the cab of my truck, where she nestled into the clean and fluffy comforter and went straight to sleep.  Perfect, I thought in the moment; a long nap later and she will be home.  For the record, the first half of this journey is typically uneventful freeway driving.  The latter half requires that I climb over a mountain pass before descending into the little mountain valley I call home.

Courage slept just fine over the freeway section of the drive, but arose with a such a clatter just as I was heading up the narrow mountain pass to its summit.  I heard noises in the cab behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the road to turn around and see what was happening.  I really didn’t need to.  The mixture of aromas filled the truck cab.  She managed a full triple play: barf, poop, and pee.  She then walked around in it, stood up to put her soiled paws on my shoulder, then began to scream at full volume in my ear.  There was no efficient place to pull over, so I soldiered on and held my breath until I pulled into my driveway some twenty minutes later.

Welcome home little girl.

I want to write about several genetic matters that inform breeding and give us confidence when we brag about our dogs.  Unfortunately, to address some of the more complex issues, I foresee the need to establish a common understanding of terms.  Politicians take note.  A very popular and useful concept for understanding polygenic inheritance is Regression to the Mean.  Too often I hear it used incorrectly, and so the goal of this post is to explain the concept and hopefully align our future discussions. If you already know this stuff, let me know where I made it too confusing.

To start, the “mean” is defined as the arithmetic average of a set of numbers.  Or as we like to say, “the average is mean.”  So, in the simplest terms, regression to the mean implies movement from some extreme value back toward the middle.  And if that’s your understanding, you’re most of the way there!  A more detailed examination of regression, however, suggests that this process, like your phone service, has terms and conditions.

Movement is an odd way to put it because nothing really moves.  What we are really talking about is the observed change from one measurement to the next.  Either measuring the same thing twice or measuring two related things.  The amount of change is always governed to some degree by regression and in certain cases, can be predicted.  To make this prediction, we need to know how correlated or dependent the measurements are on each other; and the more accurate the prediction, the more we can untangle regression from true change.

Let’s use coin flipping as our first example.  Take a bunch of coins, flip each 100 times and count heads.  Set aside the coins that got the most heads and flip them another 100 times.  Regression to the mean would predict that these coins will average only 50 heads in this second trial, not the larger number that got them set aside from the first trial.  That’s because coins don’t have memories.  The trial of 100 flips is completely independent of the next trial of 100 flips.  Perfect and complete regression to the mean.  Yes, a single coin might end up with more heads in the second trial, but on average, the effect is predictable.

Now let’s give a bunch of high school students the math SAT and retest the kids with the highest scores.  They are likely to score high again.  That’s because the test is designed to be a valid assessment of math skills and has a feature called “reliability,” an indication of consistency.  If the test was not reliable, it couldn’t say much about the student’s math achievement and the results would appear random.  So, the second score is likely to be very close to the first, but it too will regress to the mean.  Just a tiny bit, but it should regress nonetheless.  And not only that, the more extreme the first score is the more regression we expect.  Regression works on everything, but it’s more noticeable on extreme values.

To understand why, consider a student who scored 650 on the first testing.  A full 150 points above the mean.  This is a fairly accurate estimate of their true math score, but there is always a bit of error in this kind of measurement.  Let’s say 30 points of error either way.  This means that our student is either a true 620 having a good test day, or a true 680 having a bad test day.  Retesting them will give us a clue as to which they really are.  Since there are more students in the world who score 620 than there are those who score 680, it’s more likely that the student is a true 620 and the second test will yield a score lower than 650.  Regression to the mean.  Of course, the student could score a 700 on retest, but we are talking about a big picture phenomenon.  On average, regression.

So, what does this mean for Tibetan Mastiffs?  Well, the traits that parents pass on to their puppies work like retesting.  The sire’s or dam’s score is the first test, and the puppy’s score is the retest.  Different dogs, but since there is a correlation between parent and offspring traits, regression to the mean is in play.  Stay tuned.

When I first bought this house, the back yard was not enclosed.  It was full of old fruit trees, bushes, and unwanted tulips.  It was also covered in deer droppings.  At that time, my back yard was on the scenic causeway for local ungulates.  And, since I lived adjacent to a university, it was also a pathway from street-parking out front of my house to campus.  Non-ungulates hoofing it to class in the morning.

Constructing my cedar fence rerouted both the deer and the young adult human populations.  It did not, however, restrict everything nature had to offer.  I dedicated much of a chapter in the book to magpies, or Holstein Pheasants, as we call them.  They were persistent interlopers.  Mice and ants also provided large invasive armies, and each required thoughtful defensive strategies as they could be anything from annoying to destructive.  And as you guessed from the title of this post, the last backyard legion was made of squirrels, who still dominate the tree canopy and power lines to this day.

I put up with all these critters for years and let them have their share of the dog food.  That is, until Legacy – a.k.a. L’acy; my tanky Nika x Magnus daughter – decided that she had had enough.  Being a supportive dog parent, I joined forces with her and designed strategies to eliminate the threats L’acy left for me.  Together, with help from a transient Screech Owl we did a pretty good job.  You will need to read the book to find out how awesome L’acy was at playing her role, but suffice it to say, magpies still scare their baby birds to sleep at night with tales of the great killer Tibetan Mastiff known as – Nika’s Legacy for Magnus.

The pivotal battleground was located in the big garden shed I built and named Fort Nika – pictured above.  Over time, it became home for every invading army and as a result, stood as L’acy’s Killing Fields.  By moving the food source and employing a few other strategies, Fort Nika was quickly depopulated; and shortly after that, the fort was cleaned, and a new floor and loft were installed.  More recently, however, I have noticed a great deal of evidence suggesting squirrel activity has returned to my shed.

I found that out for sure the other day.  I stepped into Fort Nika to retrieve my tall ladder when the entire shed exploded around me.  I was in the center of a squirrel vortex.  They raced in circles around me until they got close enough to a hole in the snow they created at floor level near the shed door.  Out they went and took the storm with them.  It required a few minutes; however, for my heart to stop racing.  L’acy, unfortunately, is no longer here to help me wage war in the back yard, and the squirrels aren’t really that much of a problem, but order needs to be restored.  Perhaps a new puppy might be enough to spread a wave of fear among the unruly hordes.  Stay tuned.