Archie, Thirty Clicks, and Crate Games

Archie's training is proceeding at a brisk pace. He's the perfect study break. Of course his attention span is very short, although it is improving daily, along with his motor coordination. He still flings himself through life but his aim is a little better now. Even so, I keep his training sessions even shorter, which means sometimes I have less than three minutes to make things count. Planning is required.

Crate training is super important but it was on my list along with a couple of dozen other critical behaviors. By crate training I mean two specific things: the dog will run into the crate willingly and with enthusiasm then remain in the crate until released, even if the door is open. The general behavior of sitting quietly in a crate once the door is closed gets lumped into another category of skills.

To back up a bit, I have a crate for each of the dogs. It is their crate--other dogs aren't allowed in there. Mimi's crate is really just a hidey-hole for her, a place for her to chew on super high-value things. She sometimes naps in there when I'm studying since her crate is right next to me. But even though she has the run of the house during the day, she still has to get in her crate to receive a treat before I leave the house.

Azza and Archie have nice big crates that face each other across the living room. Both of them spend the day in their crates. Both of them have to get in their crates in order to get a treat before I leave.

The routine is this: once I do a final check of my backpack for the things I need for the morning, I say "get in your boxes!" as I go to the fridge to get a yummy soft treat for each dog. I have trained them to, and expect them to run, not walk, to their respective crates, dive in, and wait for me to deliver the treat.

Archie had to be formally introduced to those two specific behaviors I described earlier. I introduced "get in your box" using the clicker in three separate training sessions spaced about two days apart each. To keep Archie on his toes, I train three or four different behaviors in each training session. In sum, I probably went through thirty clicks and thirty treats on the "get in your box" behavior. Remember, I expect the dog to RUN into the crate with enthusiasm. I trained the release command separately, not in the context of the crate but in the context of sit-stay-release. Thirty treats may seem like a lot but I can deliver thirty treats in well under two minutes, depending on the clarity of my training and the focus of my dog--and these were spread out over three different training sessions.

I turned to working on other skills and put the crate training aside. Of course, Archie still had to get in his crate every morning. I simply opened the door and tossed a treat in for him. I'm not a purist and not at all above luring if it seems to be the appropriate tool at the time.

Imagine my astonishment when two days ago, after I said my usual (and invariable) "get in your boxes!" (it comes out more of a sing-song than a command) and headed for the fridge, I noticed Archie was not under my feet as usual. I turned the corner to find him standing in front of his crate. The door was pushed shut so he was looking at the crate, looking at me, looking at the crate, dancing back and forth on his toes, clearly communicating his desire to get in his crate right now! I opened the door and he shot into the crate like he'd been fired out of a gun, whipped around, and stared at me, waiting for his treat.

My jaw hit the floor.

Okay, sure, he's seen this behavior modeled by the other dogs day after day. I didn't specifically train the "wait in your crate until released" but he's seen them do that too. And I did train a stay-release sequence so he had the general idea.

I thought it was a fluke. I released him from the crate, and using the treat intended for Mimi, I said, "get in your box!" and he shot in the crate again! He's flawlessly repeated this behavior every morning and lunch time since. And at night, he now goes into his sleeping crate (pushed next to the bed) on his own.

To be clear, he never resisted going in his crate. I never had to stuff him in a crate against his will. And the breeder had him sleeping at night in a crate from about 10 weeks of age. Heck, he's already crossed international boundaries in a crate on a plane. He's traveled in cars in a crate. The crate isn't even the important part of this whole affair--it's really all about drive and excitement. What is huge about this leap is that he made it so quickly and with so little formal shaping on my part. He watches the other two dogs closely. He already loves the clicker so much that just the sight of it causes fox terrier boinging--training him at this point is a matter of his focus.

I could not have devised a more perfect diversion from the trials and tribulations of vet school.

Archie and His New Friends

Happy Ending

Working nights in the emergency vet clinic, it's guaranteed that not all of the client visits will have a happy ending. Here's one that did.

The owners called around 3am. They thought their dog, an English Springer Spaniel, had bloat. We told them there was nothing they could do at home and that they needed to bring the dog in so the vet could examine her.

The other tech and I talked about this after the phone call. Bloat in a female dog could in fact by pyometra, a horrible condition in which the uterus becomes infected and fills with pus. It has to be removed surgically or the animal will die. I've seen enormous canine uteri on the table in surgery, swollen and discolored. Cut them with a scalpel and really nasty fluids come out. Bloat requires surgery too. Either way, my colleague decided to prep surgery and get things ready for an IV catheter and fluids.

Around an hour later, they arrived. We didn't have any other critical care patients at that time so I accompanied the other tech into the room with the couple and their dog. The dog was an intact female. She was panting, hypersalivating, and dribbling urine. She was visibly swollen.

Remember that at this point, we thought that it might be a fairly dire situation.

Before we wake the vets up at night, we collect as much information as we can, including basic physical data such as heart rate and temperature. The dog's temperature was only 99.9 F. Hmm. Pyometra is typically accompanied by extremely high temps (104 or 105 F).

When we took the temperature, my colleague noticed that the dog's rear end was soaked (springer spaniels in full coat have a lot of furnishings on their legs), was sticky, and smelled like tuna. Urine is usually not sticky or fishy. When I held the dog during the temperature-taking, I noticed that she didn't appear painful in the belly which is typical for bloat, her belly was very squishy (bloat would have made it hard), and her teats were gigantic.

The man told us the dog had been "rooting around" in its bedding and behaving oddly for the past few hours.

Without commenting on any of this, my colleague got the basic info into the computer and we left the room. We then looked at each other, compiled all of our observations, and said "she's pregnant. Puppies!"

When the vet came downstairs, the other nurse told him "Dr. K and Dr. D have a diagnosis for you: puppies!" He grunted and proceeded to the room.

In a perfect example of the white coat syndrome, he came into treatment with the dog a few minutes later and told us that the couple told him that the dog had been bred but they thought it didn't take.

Um, let's review, shall we? About nine weeks prior, they bred they dog. They didn't notice the weight gain. They didn't notice her teats getting swollen. They didn't realize that her water broke, soaking her rear end (that's what was dribbling out of her, not urine). They didn't connect the rooting in the bedding with nesting behavior of a bitch in early labor. They called us saying they thought it was bloat. My goodness.

The vet told us to run a blood panel and get an abdominal xray. As a brief aside, I did a perfect one-poke jugular blood draw on this heavily coated animal, my first successful jugular blood sample on a dog. We got the blood sample into the machine and trotted off to xray.

Here's a picture of the radiograph. The dog is laying on her right side with her head to the top of the image. What can you see?

It's important to count both skulls and spines. Here is a doctored image.

She was a little anemic, not surprising with eight parasites inside her and probably inadequate neonatal nutrition, but otherwise there didn't seem to be any problems. She was in the early stages of labor and didn't seem to be presenting with any birthing complications so the vet sent the hapless couple and their dog back home.

Puppy Class

Here's some really old news but I'm in the process of catching up on the blog so I thought that I would start here.

Back in April, after the regular obedience and agility classes had ended, I was pressured by some acquaintances to offer a puppy class. Because I was going out on leave in May and because a puppy class was something new for me, I decided to limit it to four weeks.

The puppy class was certainly an experiment. It isn’t something I can run on a regular basis since it will be uncommon to have a sufficient number of sufficiently young pups available at a given time here in Dhahran (I found out that the camp vet only has about 800 dogs registered, which is fewer than I expected). Still, I wanted to try my hand at working with younger dogs. Most of the dogs were around 16 weeks old, which is much older than you'd see in puppy classes in the U.S. But I have to work with the dogs that are here.

Azza and three golden littermates, two males and a female (the female is also on the ground next to Azza). I certainly wouldn't have chosen to have three littermates in the same class, but it worked out okay.

 I did a fair bit of research to figure out how best to structure the puppy classes. For example, I don’t allow the dogs in my basic obedience class to interact before, during, or after class (while they are on school grounds, at least). But this rule clearly had to be relaxed a bit in the case of young dogs that need to play with other dogs in order to learn proper play habits and signals, bite inhibition, and so forth. We started each class with a free "play time" in which the pups were allowed to be off leash so they could explore some of these signals.

 

I came up with at least four “what is that?” stations each week for the first three weeks of class. This stretched me a bit in terms of resources, but I managed to drag in plastic bags, a hair dryer, a cardboard box, plastic mesh that I taped to the floor, metal cookie sheets, orange cones, hats and abayas, an agility tunnel, a tippy board…you get the idea. For about 15 minutes of each class, I had the handlers take their dogs through/across the stations. It was a bit chaotic and noisy but that was also part of the exercise. I wanted to encourage all the puppies to explore and be rewarded for it. I also wanted the handlers to learn how to reward their puppies for all types of behaviors, not just the standard sit and come.

I included a short activity on grooming (cleaning ears, clipping nails, brushing coats) which turned out to be revelatory for one handler. She complained to me that her dog resisted all attempts at grooming. Turns out the woman was using a wire slicker brush! I'd resist that to if you tried to drag it through my hair! When I had her use a boar bristle brush on her dog, the pup stretched out on the ground, totally limp. She was so happy to learn this one new thing!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I also had the class play “pass the puppy." This is a great game to get the young dogs used to calmly interacting with other humans. Everyone sits in a circle and passes their puppy to the person to the right. After about 30 seconds of petting and treats, the dogs get passed to the next person, and so on until the pups end up back with their owner. It's another chaotic and noisy game but everyone really enjoyed it.

I brought Azza each week and even though she peed on the floor every time someone approached her to pet here or when she met a new dog, I think it was a reasonably good experience for her.

I have become much more comfortable working with kids and their dogs and now encourage parents to bring their kids as long as the kids are actually doing training, not sitting around doing nothing or even worse, being disruptive. I don't run a day care, right?

Because I only had four weeks, I decided to scale back the formal commands that I introduced to just the basics: hand touch, sit, stay, and come. But I am happy at how many activities I was able to include in just four one-hour sessions. I certainly kept those pups and handlers moving!

This has to be my favorite shot from the class. This is one heck of a dedicated owner. And yes, that chichi did go through the curved tunnel eventually! The chichi was a real hoot, a classic "giant dog trapped in tiny dog body" dog.

Food Bowl Scrum (Puppy Star)

Oct 17, 2005 (age 7 weeks)
From 12 o'clock, it's Viva, Tupelo, Gracie, Elvis, and Mimi.