Spicy

I’ve been working through some training issues with Frankie in the past few months. If I am honest, these are things I should have been addressing when she was a puppy. I had no idea that she would turn out to be such a spicy little speed demon.

Her performance in the competition ring is quite different from what she does when we are training. The biggest problem, and there are several, is that she won’t come to me at the end of a run.

I’ve done pattern games. I’ve worked on building value for the leash. I’ve dropped leashes all over the training field and interrupted her runs to ask her to run to a leash for a reward. No problem! But in a trial, her brain leaks right out of her ears. I can usually (but not always) get a full run out of her but we rarely finish the course together.  After she clears the last obstacle, she takes off and runs around the ring, refusing all recalls and attempts to catch her. She’s even become wise to people holding out food. She doesn’t take any obstacles, just runs around at top speed. I’ve been complimented many times on how fast she is … while she is running around like a feral beast. Not her finest moments. 

My interpretation of this behavior is that she is so overstimulated that she simply can’t stop at the end of the course. She still has energy to burn.

So what’s the solution? Her drive is off the charts on a normal day. She can ramp up in seconds. I want to use that drive, not squash it. Since I don’t think I can bring her arousal down in any substantial way, I need to try to plane off the spikes. 

On recommendation from friends, I consulted with a local trainer who has a reputation for working with spicy dogs like Frankie. She said, “Look, you aren’t going to wear this dog out by throwing a ball at the trial.” I agreed. Besides, playing with balls and tugs ramps her up even more. Then she dropped this: “But wearing her out shouldn’t be your goal.”

What a revelation! Of course. I need to find ways to shape her drive and help her with impulse control. Trying to make her tired doesn’t address either of those things.

This trainer recommended sniff walks before every run. Those are 10- to 15-minute walks in which I ask nothing of the dog. Frankie sets the pace. If she wants to sniff one spot for 5 minutes, that’s fine. The only requirement is that she not pull on the leash. Sniffing releases endorphins. Walking and sniffing are gentle, steady stimulation, not rapid jerks and spikes like play brings.

I tried this at the last trial in February. It was a challenging task with morning temperatures in the teens, but I managed to pull it off four times each day. The time management was exhausting. But I did see a small difference even though it was the very first time I tried this. Frankie’s focus was better at the start of each run. But she was still running off at the end, especially on the second day. While sniff walks are an important addition to our trial routine, they won’t solve everything. There’s still some training to do!

Since early December, I’ve been training Frankie in contact heeling and its related movements. I will try to remember to film one of our training sessions, but you can check out videos of this online. It’s used to train dogs who do bite and protection work. It’s also used for reactive dogs.

 It’s not just about heeling but about positioning the dog in space. What sets it apart from old-school obedience training is that the dog remains in close physical contact with the handler. Plus, a lot of the contact heeling trainers use positive training methods, even for dogs training for bite work, and I’m all about that. No leash corrections or e-collars for us. Once I learned about contact heeling, I realized it was a missing piece for Frankie! I had already noticed that she likes to be touching me. I realized I could use this training to build more value for being with me, build routines that include movement (Frankie wants to go go go all the time), keep up a high rate of reward, and be able to take all of this on the road, that is, use it at trials, not just at home.

We are by no means experts, and I have no intention of training her up to competition level, but I am seeing a shift in her focus and attention. I’ve added contact heeling moves to our gate and start line routines for agility. Instead of trying to distract her with treats before we go in the ring, which only ramp her up, I ask her to calmly and smoothly move around with me in coordinated, set patterns that she knows and has been rewarded for many, many times.

Frankie will be a life-long project. But I am grateful to be learning so many new things with her.

 

Moving On

I really enjoy my job. I get to see an amazing array of animals and diseases. I am constantly learning new things. The lab’s clients are interesting and entertaining. It’s a work in progress, but I think that the lab section that I supervise is running pretty smoothly. 

But this job doesn't define me entirely. As much as I look forward to coming in to the lab each morning, I don't live to work.  

The stress points of this job have changed over the years I’ve been here. The old incinerator was a huge source of drama and stress. We got a new unit in the fall of 2024 but the hoped-for reduction in drama and stress didn’t show up right away. There were significant operational growing pains and I was still spending entire days and even weeks on the phone with the manufacturer trying to diagnose problems. I performed many of the repairs myself. But things finally settled down with that.

In the past year or so, an entirely new source of stress has popped up. Arkansas currently doesn’t have a school of veterinary medicine, but by this fall, it might have two! Arkansas State University in Jonesboro is nearing the end of the approval process with the AVMA and hopes to start their program this fall. The other school is associated with Lyon College. This private school of vet med is being backed by venture capital. Neither school is building a teaching hospital. They are using a distributed model in which third- and fourth-year students complete required rotations in private clinics and at other vet schools. Both ASU and LC want to send students to my lab for necropsy training.

Our lab is old and small and resources are limited. ASU is being reasonable and has agreed to send no more than 40 students through our lab each year. That is a lot but it should be manageable. Lyon College is not being reasonable. They want us, that is, me, to deliver necropsy training to entire cohorts.

Putting aside the fact that the mission of the lab does not include teaching, the fact that I’m only one person, the fact that we literally don’t have enough space to have that many more people in necropsy, there’s the issue of Lyon College itself.

Lyon College will have few entrance requirements beyond the student’s ability to pay. The VC funding behind the new school is focused on profit, and the losers in that scenario are the students. The dean they hired has a particularly unsavory past. I’ve repeatedly expressed my concerns about the lack of space and resources as well as my reluctance to partner with Lyon College in general. I’ve been told that this partnership will happen no matter what.

The people making that decision are not factoring in one very important variable. I have a choice. And I’m choosing to retire far sooner than I would have if they had not forced Lyon College on me. I will be out before the first students from either ASU or LC come to the lab.

I met with my financial advisor yesterday. He assured me that my portfolio can accommodate this change. We had a great in-depth discussion about my options. He’s good at his job and has really listened to me. I’m already making plans!

 

Ice Storm Hijinks

 It has been a warm, dry winter in central Arkansas this year but January is always full of surprises. Last weekend, we got hit with a thinning edge of the big storm that affected so much of the rest of the country. Arkansas is not prepared for ice and predictions were dire. I stockpiled water and food and staged blankets and crates in the upstairs guest room in case we lost power and I needed to set up a warm room. Since I don't eat much processed food, I cooked for a couple of days and filled all my food containers. 

We didn't lose power or water, thankfully, but we did get hit with three separate deposits of sleet and ice. The dogs are okay with going outside on their own but when it was o'dark thirty and blowing horizontal ice, Frankie had to be pushed. They did a lot of their business directly under the deck.  

The storm had mostly finished by Sunday morning so I opened the garage door to assess the situation. I found a 2 foot tall, 3 foot tall berm of ice snugged up against the length of the garage door. I obviously wasn't getting the car out until that was gone. It took me 3 hours of shoveling to move the berm. 

 

 While I was out there, I did some exploratory chipping and shoveling a little farther out on the driveway to see what I was dealing with. It didn't look good. Since it was mostly ice, the snow shovel wasn't rigid enough. I had to stab down with a regular shovel to break it apart then use the same shovel to move the chunks.

 

The weather on Monday was clear and sunny. I waited until around noon then spent 4 hours clearing the upper half of the driveway. My driveway is long with a slope to the street. This took another 4 hours of work with the regular shovel. The ice was too thick and the chunks were too heavy to move with the snow shovel. It was quite tedious. I finished the job on Tuesday and spread some grit I had left over from my wall projects on the remaining patches of ice. The street was still impassable but that was going to take more than my efforts to resolve.  

 

The fox terriers were running around in the backyard across the top of the ice like Legolas from LOTR, leaving no footprints. We went out every afternoon and played fetch with a tennis ball. It was very cold but sunny and clear. 

With time, the ice compacted down to a glass-smooth surface. So yesterday, when Frankie blasted down the deck stairs and headed out to make her usual perimeter run, she slipped and fell on her side. She had a lot of momentum and started sliding across the sort-of flat middle part of the yard, bounced off the top of a rock wall (I thought for sure she would fall over the edge), and finally slid to a stop against a tree. She easily covered 50-60 feet on her side. She stood up, gave herself a shake then very carefully began to make her way back up to the deck stairs. Since my seat in hell is already reserved with an embossed place card, I was on the deck doubled over with laughter for the entire performance.