Thursday, March 11, 2010

Going To The Dogs

I work with a guy named Paul. He's Canadian, perhaps quintessentially so. The cultural differences between westerners get oddly magnified here but even so, I think that Paul could be a poster boy for Canada (the english speaking part, at least). Paul is a field geologist who specializes in structure and very old rocks. He's a very good exploration geologist too.

Paul is nominally my supervisor in many of my work activities. However, we were thrown into our current positions in a moment of crisis and our roles quickly became blurred so that we are actually partners with such a strong sense of shared purpose that we can sometimes finish each other's sentences. I really like working with him because even though we have radically different approaches, we always seem to end up with the same solution. He's a good guy to work with.

His wife, Lou-Anne, is also Canadian. Both of them are heavily involved in one of the so-called "friendship groups" that meet on Friday mornings. That is code for groups of Christians of various denominations that meet to conduct religious activities. They keep a low profile of course (for example, wearing religious jewelry is prohibited) but Aramco certainly knows what they are up to as it actually approves visas for people to come and live in camp who have no other function than what we'd just have to call "minister" or "priest". But I am straying onto a tangent here.

A few days before I left on my trip to the states, in one of those casual moments of chitchat between office crises, I mentioned to Paul that I had been toying with the idea of looking into setting up a dog training class, that working with my dogs had been a primary hobby of mine before I took the Aramco job. But I said I wasn't sure how to go about it, and whether appropriate space could be found, etc.

Really? he said. A good friend of his and Lou-Anne's from their "friendship group" just happened to be in charge of the adult education program in the Aramco schools. He told me that she's the one who can help me with all of this--that's her job. He said, I'll put you two in touch with each other. So he sent her an email introducing me, and Susan replied back to me literally in minutes.

She was so excited, she told me, because she is constantly being asked by camp residents if there was some sort of dog training class. I don't know about "constantly" since there are more Saudis on camp than expats and with the exception of the Filipinos, most Arabs are terrified of dogs (plenty of fodder there for another post), but let's accept she was using a bit of hyperbole for effect.

After quite a few emails back and forth, we worked out some parameters for the class. The stated goal of the class is to teach basic obedience and manners, maybe a few tricks if we have time. No more than 10 dog/handler pairs, no puppies (dogs at least 10 months old), owners would have to produce Kennel Club registration (the camp vet clinic), and I and Community Education reserved the right to turn away any dog.

This last might seem a bit odd but there are quite a few of those desert dog saluki hybrids on camp. I'd have to say based on my own observation that 75% of these dogs show overt dog aggression. The aggression seems to be stress/fear (they have a gigantic bubble of space they like to keep clear around them) combined with plain, simple nastiness caused perhaps by poor socialization/crappy breeding/who the heck knows. I have heard of them attacking other dogs out in the open areas but I've not seen it nor has it happened to us yet. Still, we've had a couple of close encounters and what I've seen of these dogs I don't much like. I believe they could pose a risk to other dogs (primarily because of ignorant owners who don't know how to read the signs of stress in their desert hybrid dogs and other ignorant owners who don't know when their own dogs are being impossibly rude) and I don't want to deal with them. I told Susan that I would consider a separate class for just those dogs because so many of them need more than basic dog obedience. Their issues go far beyond just a lack of manners.

So I've got 8 weeks of one-hour lessons offered indoors on Thursday afternoons (that's our Saturdays; all of the shops in town are closed then, as they are everyday from 1130am to 4pm. That covers a couple of of the five prayer periods per day. I digress again.

I have clickers and may spend the first lesson teaching handlers how to use them--but only if I think there is interest in that. Of course, we would progress through sit, stay, down, nose touches, and work on recalls. Leave it is always an excellent skill. I may also work on loose lead walking and perhaps even some simple cone work. If there is interest, I could teach crate games. But crates are hard to come by here. If owners don't already have them, that may not work well.

Earlier I ragged on those awful flexi leads, and Gosia noted my comment about buying nylon leashes during my trip to the states. She said, why not use rope? Well, suitable rope is as difficult for me to obtain here as leashes and I suck at tying knots. Plus I didn't think of that. But money is not an issue on camp so offering nice nylon leashes to class participants at some reasonable cost will work out just fine. I mentioned this to Susan and she told me that other instructors of different types of courses such as photography and art often sell special products to their students.

None of this is a money-making venture. Selling leashes for a dollar or two over my cost and the small payment I get for teaching the class don't represent much of a contribution to the "money" bucket. I'm driven to give this a try out of the desire to do more dog-oriented activities. Who knows, I may get enough people interested in something like rally obedience that we could hold small tournaments or some such. But that is way off into the future.

I have an outline drawn up. But I'm opening the blog up to your suggestions. What else do you think I should cover? How should I break the lessons up? Do you have any teaching tips that you want to share with me?

3 comments:

FiberGeek said...

My experience with teaching classes is that the students are happy to learn the things you consider to be most basic and that I never get as far as I have planned. I imagine if you can just get their dogs under a little control, they will be happy. I know you will do a great job.

BC Insanity said...

I think the first line of business would be for you to evaluate how much the dogs are actually into their owners, i.e. focus and willingness to acknowledge the owners exist.
Maybe simple games of click treat (or yes, treat) just for looking at the owner would load the dog up on understanding the value of treats and focus.
If you get 10 dogs at the end of their leashes with owners not knowing what to do, you gonna have a lot of management to do at first.
A quiet time for dog/owner to connect might be a good start.

Just my gutt feeling after reading what kind of people/dogs you might be dealing with.

Maybe just even explaining the value of reward and what it can lead to might be a good first intro for the owners.
You know, like NILIF even.

Then the name game. I bet most dogs won't even know their names really.

Got plenty of ideas for later, but will wait to hear how the first day went and what your impression is of the group you will be working with.

All I have to say is that it's very exciting to hear you're doing this.
I have to say that the most rewarding thing for me after being now over 7 years in flyball and training many newbies, has been when the owner discovers the relationship they can have with their dogs if they just invest quality time and structure

Agile Jack said...

I've thought about this for a couple of days and then Gosia when and wrote my suggestion...

I've taken a fair number of general public classes with my terriers because I like to work them in distracting, yet somewhat controlled environments.

the one thing I see over and over is a lack of understanding of the value of rewards. It seems to me that this is sometimes a very difficult concept for non-trainers to grasp.

I see people walking their dogs in my neighborhood all the time who are wrestling with their dogs at a cross walk to get them to sit before proceeding. I never see anyone reward the dog for sitting... not even a pat on the head.

I think this is a good place to start, along with a lecture on how dogs learn. Drive home the concept that dogs repeat behaviors that are reinforced.

I also think basic trick training is a good way to teach people how to reward behaviors. Things as simple as a nose touch to your hand, shaking hands, etc...

Can't wait to hear how this goes!

Anne