A Tired Dog is a Good Dog

PM got back from her summer leave on Wednesday, and the first thing on her mind was scheduling a walk/play date with her yellow lab Nellie and my dogs.

We usually let Nellie and Azza race around in an empty yard but I suggested that we meet very early this morning and take all of the dogs to a nice big yard. It took us a bit to find one. I had spied out two very nice empty houses in anticipation of PM's return but their yards turned out to be less than desirable: one had a massive sprinkler leak and standing water at one end and the other had a pool. It would have been so easy to let the dogs loose in the pool but we like slipping into the yards of empty houses and messing up a very nice pool with dog hair is one way to jeopardize our ability to continue to do that. So we marched on to my third choice. And as they say, third time's the charm.

This house is being readied to put on the bid list and a worker had turned on a sprinkler at one end of the yard (which surprisingly didn't have an underground system already installed). We decided to leave it on, a good decision since it turned out that the sprinkler became a focal point for the dogs' play. PM made a quick recon of the yard looking for feral cats (too many bad experiences have made us a bit cautious, right, Mimi?).

Nellie immediately pounded Azza to the ground and then they were off! Mimi tried to start some shit a couple of times but she eventually calmed down and joined in the chase but not the pounding. The dogs were running huge, looping arcs down and back, swooping in and out of the sprinkler. Even Azza is starting to appreciate the joys of spraying water (due in large part to the persistence of PM in getting her to drink from a hose). When it came time to catch their breath, they'd take a roll in the wet grass (Nellie also like to walk over the sprinkler so that it sprayed directly on her belly) followed by a nice, long roll in the dry, sandy grass at the other end of the yard. Chase and wrestle, get hot and out of breath, roll under the sprinkler, roll in the sand, repeat (for this post, I decided to use the "roll in the grass" label which I have only used once before in what is truly a different lifetime).

After half an hour, the girls (Nellie, Mimi, Azza) looked like they'd been living on the street for weeks: white parts smeared grey, bits of dry grass and sand stuck to their fur alternating with patches where they were soaked to the skin.

PM and I stood in the shade, drinking coffee and gossiping (she brought the coffee, two bananas, and a prezzie: dog cookies from Harrod's!). I had to laugh! I don't need a bribe to meet up with her and Nellie for dog walks and play dates. On the other hand, it's nice to be looked after!

Where was old man Harry during all this ruckus? I was a bit concerned about turning him loose with the crazed beasts but it turns out he is far more sensible than I gave him credit for. He's getting a bit fragile and if they were to run into him at full speed, he could really get hurt. But he never strayed more than a few feet from me and PM. He nosed around in the sand and grass for bits to nibble, came over for pets now and then, and more or less occupied his time quietly hanging out.

I mentioned to PM that it looked like his frisky days were over. And she said, well, he doesn't seem to be fretting that he can't go run about with the others. And that is exactly true. Harry was as wild as any terrier can be in his flyball heyday but he appears to be happy now simply being around his people and letting the young'uns have their play time. 

Cue Circus Music....

Today in ring one, we have Azza, half desert dog, half beaver! Having decided that reducing dog toys to a pile of slobbery lumps each exactly two square centimeters in size was becoming too pedestrian, too every day, Azza graduated herself to a new level of destruction: chewing a melon-sized hole in a treasured, handmade bed cover that I got in Indonesia almost 20 years ago and a companion hole in the brand new sheets below it. Azza now gets to sit in her crate when I take a shower in the mornings, a crate which no longer contains any bedding since she chews that up too.

In ring two, we have the little fookin’ orange devil known as Kinky! Kinky is fascinated with counters, or to be more specific, with the ease with which he can move things off of them. For his latest accomplishment, this morning he fished two hardboiled eggs out of a bowl on the counter where I had left them to cool, and rapidly moved one of them onto the kitchen floor! The other rolled out of his reach behind the cutting boards, thankfully preserving it for its intended end as my lunch.

In ring three, we have Mimi! Mimi’s trick today was to bring upstairs the last few scraps of eggshell and egg white in order to show me her treasure, which almost certainly fell like manna from heaven directly on top of her head since she knows about the orange devil’s counter surfing techniques. If she hadn’t preserved those last bits to show me, I would have never known what happened to that egg since she hoovered up every scrap of it! At least eggs are digestible and nutritious.

If I wasn’t laughing, well, I’d probably be laughing anyway. The fun and excitement never stops at CircusK9.

Portland: Mountain, Ocean, and Agility

As part of my long leave that spanned nearly all of August, I spent six days in Portland catching up with an old friend. She was quite the host, cramming non-stop fun into my visit.

One of the many highlights was a hike that A, I, and her two terriers made to Burnt Lake located near the foot of Mount Hood. It was a rather warm sunny day even by Portland standards and even though I was just a bit disappointed by the weather (I can get hot and sunny any time here), the blue sky and the bright sun made for a great walk in the woods.

Too bad those terriers couldn't pack their own poop bags back to the trail head!

We saw this little guy on our way down: a flying squirrel perched on the side of a dead (burned) tree.

Ironically, we almost missed the stupendous view of Mount Hood! We didn’t even realize it was looming over us the entire time until we stopped on our way back down above a small group of hikers on the trail in front of us taking pictures. What were they looking at? Oh, at that gigantic snow-covered volcano up there! The fabulous view was over our shoulders the entire way up, and even though we stopped in that very same clearing to admire some dead trees, we never looked behind us! We stopped at the lake and didn't go all the way up to the saddle at "Zigzag Mountain" from which the view of Mount Hood would have been a lot more obvious. 

Mount Hood.

The next day we headed the other direction to the ocean for a leisurely stroll in the surf. The fog and mist and surf (the tide was low when we arrived then coming in so the waves got bigger with time) combined with the nearly empty beach and sunny, clear sky made it an extremely restful morning. And of course, for a couple of terriers, a beach is an endless source of things to sniff, put in one’s mouth, or pee on.

A and Skeeter in the surf and Forrest with me attached at the other end.

Forrest with real treasure: a deliciously crunchy but very dead starfish.

Mist. Wet sand. Reflections of the trees. And a clear blue sky over it all.

Me with Skeeter and Forrest.

A generously indulged my pork and wine needs. We managed to eat brats (first boiled in beer with sweet Walla Walla onions then grilled with more of those fab onions; apparently a northern/midwestern recipe) three nights in a row (although the middle night was leftovers from the first night but it still counts)! And homemade berry jam on very good, locally made, whole grain bread. Decent bread is nearly impossible to find here in KSA. I refuse to eat that soft, mushy, sugary stuff they call bread and do without until I head to some place that isn't KSA. 

A is rather crafty. She knits and crochets and felts and makes dog tugs and leashes from fleece. I had no idea she had such skills. I don't do those sorts of things. Oh, sure, I can make jumps and pause tables and such but that's more engineering and less crafting. A makes cute purses and totes and even small bowls out of felted wool. We were in a pet store and I pointed out these catnip-laced body pillows for cats made of fleece. They look fun, I said, but not for 7 bucks each. Oh, A said, we can make those in no time at all! And so later that week we did just that using fleece scraps and some catnip that I bought for the purpose. I left one of the body pillows with Bhumi, the Siamese mix that I rehomed with my mother, and brought three home for my two feline beasts. I can't leave them out all the time since fleece equals dog toy in Azza's head and all she wants to do is eat them.

My mother's ancient cat Freckles (he may be 18 or 19 years old) curled up with Bhumi. They became BFF nearly upon sight. I always suspected that Bhumi was gay. Sorry, A, no pics of Bhumi slobbering on his catnip body pillow! I owe you a pic of Kinky and Tsingy slobbering on theirs.

A particularly memorable part of my visit was the Saturday we spent at a local agility trial. When I was corresponding with A to arrange the trip, she casually mentioned this local trial was going to be held the weekend I was there, and said, oh, would you like to run Forrest at the trial?

I know I have some non-dog-sport readers so let me take a moment to elaborate on this. Very few dog sport people are willing to let someone else run their dog. The reasons usually come down to “you might break my dog” and “you might make me look stupid.” Yeah, I know, not logical or even particularly sporting but that’s how it is.

But I guess I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got some amazing dog friends who don’t let that kind of thing get in the way of a good time. For example, there’s DW who let me run his beautiful red BC Eris last year for the entire weekend of a flyball tournament. And now A offered me her PRT for a full day of agility!

The second point to be made explicit here is that I am blessed with amazing dog friends who say, hmm, what would make CircusK9 happy? Oh, I know, how about having her run my dog! Friends like that are treasures indeed.

The amusing part of the agility affair is how many hours A and I spent trying to get into Forrest’s fuzzy little brain. We set up a course in her backyard and during the week I ran him through it several times as well as working tricky sequences such as dogwalk/tunnel discrimination and sending to the back side of a jump. He worked fairly well for me in her yard, and whenever we went out and about, A handed me his leash and said, you’re in charge of him! She coached me on her routines at the crate and at the start line, at contacts and even for the end of the run (she taught Forrest to jump into her arms). I practiced them all.

The trial was held outdoors in a covered horse barn. It was hot and dusty...just like most other horse barns that I've done agility in. When it came time to actually do agility in the ring, Forrest wasn’t particularly sure he liked his new handler. For the first run, he did six obstacles before leaving the ring. On the second run, we managed to get to the 10th obstacle before he shut down. A said that he had ring nerves and used to do the same with her so this wasn't new behavior. Before the second run, I bought him super special treats (dried lamb lung, mm!) in a shameless attempt to bribe him, but even that wasn't enough to convince him that I was worth the trouble. 

The time for our third run was approaching and we had tried just about everything we could think of. That left only the unexpected. I asked her if she had ever done a “drop and run” with him. Yes, she said, when he was very green she did that a few times. Drop and run is when the handler holds the dog in her arms at the start line, then drops the dog to the ground and both take off at the same time. It is often used by handlers when their dog doesn't have any control at the start line. It can also be hugely motivating for some dogs--it's really just a chase game. She also felt that I was being too soft with him. Me, a soft handler? "But, but, but," I sputtered, "he’s not my dog!" It’s really hard to get tough with someone else's dog! In the end, though, that is exactly what I did, drop and run at the start and became the drill sergeant handler. I badgered him all the way, staying in his face, clapping annoyingly, doing front crosses way, way late, but by god, we completed that third course. In the video, which I present with no editing, you’ll see that I bailed on the weave poles. Forrest has lovely, fast weave poles but he simply wasn’t prepared to do them with me that day. Pfft, no matter, it was all for fun. And at the end, he jumped into my arms like he'd been running with me for years.

A note on this video: because I am now using a wireless internet connection instead of fatter, faster DSL, I couldn't push the original video through. I had to cut way back on the resolution to get it to load. Still, I think that you'll get the idea. 

What's the message here? Well, Forrest is a fast, happy dog who enjoys agility (especially at his new jump height of only 12") and while he wasn't too thrilled to be out there with me, he's still gave it a decent try. And A generously allowed me to fumble my way around the ring all day long with her dog...because she thought I'd enjoy it. And I did.

Coming here to KSA has been a lesson in what is truly important in life. I lost many things...and in the end discovered that I could live pretty well without them. They were just things after all. I instead gained some perspective on what you can't live without. Pork, good wine, good friends, and happy dogs all go on that list (perhaps not quite in that order). It's a good holiday when I can combine all of those things together.

Simple Basil Lamb Curry

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After my pork fest in France (posts are in the works, be patient!), I thought it might be a nice change to have a bit of lamb.

The local lamb is pretty gristly (and grisly too when you walk past the butcher shops and see headless sheep and goats, dappled with flies, hanging in the unrefrigerated storefront windows). A couple of the local supermarkets carry imported lamb and I suppose there has been some pressure on the commissary to get with the program because they have started putting New Zealand lamb on their shelves. I bought a very lovely NZ lamb steak, bone in, cut from the thigh.

I cut the meat into chunks, discarding the bone (only one tiny one, not enough for three dogs to share), and tossed them into a large pot with coarsely chopped, organic, two small red organic onions (yes, organic Saudi onions!), chopped garlic, olive oil, salt, and a generous amount of red pepper flakes. I also added one large sweet potato, cleaned and cut into coarse chunks. I stirred the meat, potato, and spices well then put on medium heat.

While the meat was browning, I mixed 1/2 cup of coconut milk powder with 1 cup of water. Even with a whisk, you have to stir this often to get the powder to completely dissolve. I use the powder because it keeps for a long time and doesn’t take up as much room as the cans.

When the meat was still pink on the inside but nice and brown on the outside and the onions were starting to turn clear, I added about 3/4s of the cup of coconut milk slurry and a large handful of fresh chopped basil. I gave it all a good stir then let it simmer for about 15 minutes until the potato chunks were cooked through.

For a side dish, I cut up a beautiful fresh mango.

No rice is needed since the potato is in there.

That’s all it takes for a simple basil lamb curry.

Be Happy, Be Healthy

As part of my continuing efforts to keep myself occupied, I joined a Beginning Running class sponsored by the Dhahran Road Runners Club. I paid a small fee to join the club and a small fee for the class, which meets for two nights a week for eight weeks. The class is based on interval training, building up longer periods of running in between increasingly shorter periods of resting (walking). This was something of a spur of the moment decision. I want to drop some weight but I’m not having much success. My diet is under control (for example, I eat vegetarian at least three days a week) and I already walk the dogs (briskly) for about an hour and a half each day between their morning and evening walks. I take the stairs at work. By all standards, I eat better and get far more exercise than most people. But I just can’t seem to lose more than a pound or two.

Last night was the first meeting of the class. I showed up on time, quarter to the hour, and was amazed to see an enormous crowd already gathered at the bleachers next to the running track at the school. There were well over a hundred people who had signed up for this class! It was quite a sight: people of all colors and ages and sizes, even kids. There were a few enormous Saudi guys inevitably drenched in perfume. (I will never be able to clear my head of the cloying, nauseating scent of Arabs wafting perfume at every step. It’s everywhere: at work, in the shops, on the running track, it sticks to door handles and seat belts in taxis, even the money reeks of perfume. They reapply it throughout the day and when they get in groups, the combined effect ends up smelling very much like a dumpster in the summer. Last year, I measured the distance between lamp posts on the path around the golf course by pacing it out [40 feet] and discovered that I can smell the perfume of some of those guys over a distance of more than 120 feet while outdoors—it’s that strong! They are continually surrounded by a fug of it.) But back to the beginning runner horde.

As all of you know, being successful at something like a running class often requires an exercise partner. I scanned the crowd to see if I knew anyone, and recognized a few faces from work and dog classes, but decided to get on the track and see what happened.

To my surprise, I was sort of adopted by a Kiwi who is an executive secretary to a manager in the power unit (she’s rather dark skinned, looks kind of Asian, and might be part Maori, which is interesting). She commented on my spiffy neon yellow shoes (you probably saw many examples of these if you watched any of the track events from the Olympics; I told her I bought them because I hoped that they would help me run faster) and then we simply continued the rest of the class side by side.

With our focus on running and walking and setting a good but reasonable pace and a bit of chatting in between, the knowledge that we were on the track with more than a hundred other people sort of faded away. Even though it was work, it was relaxing to engage in such a simple activity. I am looking forward to giving this a go.

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.

Training Azza 8

I was worried that a month with Upul would set Azza back in her training. He is really good about following my instructions (he doesn't let her jump on him too much and he makes her sit at doorways). Still, he lets her get away with a lot more than I do.

Her leash behavior did degrade a bit but this will probably be an ongoing training project just like it is for Mimi. Otherwise, she didn't seem to develop too many bad habits while I was gone. (The cats are another problem altogether. It turns out that Upul gives them dog treats too each time he leaves. Now the annoying beasts expect them from me as well!)

So I'm really excited to report a huge breakthrough in Azza's training. I have been seeing signs of her new learning for the past week or so as the dogs and I re-establish our routines at home but this morning she was putting it all together in a way that tells me that she truly has learned some new skills.

I make an effort to play with the dogs regularly and they have begun to expect, even to anticipate, when I am going to start a game of "baby." I generically call all dog toys "baby" (it's either creepy or sad, take your pick) and I refer to a game of fetch as "let's play baby!" I usually speak to my dogs in short but complete sentences using more or less adult language so I don't know where this came from. Nonetheless, the word "baby" has become a trigger for displays of extreme excitement from all three dogs that includes bouncing, pulling random babies from the various storage baskets, whining, etc.

The baby game itself is simple. I sit on a low stool at one end of my living room and I throw a toy to the other end for one dog at a time. To avoid collisions, I time each throw carefully. The game works best if each dog brings his toy back directly to me. There is always a mass of dogs and toys at my feet. They seem to handle this very well since one rule of the game is that no stealing is allowed!

Harry and Mimi have always had strong toy preferences. They will play with any toy I give them but they prefer specific, individual toys. When I say the magic word, if they haven't already done so, they run to get their favorites from the baskets.

All my terriers have had mad toy drive that I only had to shape a bit. With Azza, it's been a different experience. I've had to shape her interest in toys as well as the behaviors. I never formally made a lesson plan to teach Azza these behaviors. Instead, I gradually introduced them and repeated them over many, many sessions of play that always includes the other two dogs. The behaviors include chasing a thrown toy, returning a thrown toy to me, dropping a toy on command, and tugging on command. There is one more behavior that is somewhat secondary to toy play but that is pretty important in my opinion: the dog needs to learn to move in the direction that I point.

Let me explain this one a bit more. Thrown toys don't always land where I intend them to. They might fall behind something. Dogs can get distracted and not see me throw the toy or fail to see where it lands. It disrupts the flow of the game if I have to get up to retrieve a lost toy. I teach all my dogs to find their toys by moving in the direction that I point. I also teach them a verbal "out" command which means keep moving farther away in that direction. This is a very complex behavior that includes a willingness on the dog's part to move away from me without an obvious reward in the offing (the toy is initially hidden although they learn that it is out there somewhere). It also requires the dog to observe my body position and movement (outstretched arm, pointing finger) and read meaning and intent into this very non-canine action. Many dogs have to be taught this behavior.

There is no doubt that Azza is learning partly by watching the other two dogs and imitating them. But she is also learning directly through the mechanisms of conditional reinforcement. If she does something I like, I reward it. If she does something I don't like, I either ignore it or I let her know I don't like that, but in either case I don't reward it. And from the beginning, Azza's rewards have only been a continuation of play with me. I had to first shape playing with me so that she found it rewarding before I could expand the game and start throwing toys for her. In this way she learned the rules of tug. She is happy to tug with me even while the other two dogs are chasing thrown toys. But I wanted her to be able to retrieve toys too.

This morning, as usual, I selected a toy for Azza to use in the baby game. To my complete surprise, after a couple of throws, she selected a different toy to continue the game. That's a huge leap forward for her. I'm not talking about refusing to play with a toy, or changing toys with every throw. She chose a toy that she has played with before and stuck with her choice for the rest of the game. She now knows that she has the freedom to make those kinds of choices for herself, and that I will honor them.

Usually, she brings the toys back halfway, flops down on a dog bed or the floor to chew on them, and only comes to me when I call her. The first hundred times, she came to me but left the toy behind. I had to teach her the command "bring it" which I use with Mimi too. This week, Azza has been enthusiastically running all the way back to me, slamming her body into my leg, and pressing the toy towards my face or my hand. Another huge leap forward! I have become the source of rewards for her! Both Harry and Mimi do this and I'm sure Azza noticed how much praise I give them when they do.

She flings herself after her toy, giant paws flapping, and flings herself back. Enthusiasm all the way, and for the duration of the game. When I first introduced her to the baby game, she'd chase the toy a couple of times and then stop. Now, she will do it 20 or 30 times, just like the terriers.

Finally, near the end of the game this morning, I threw her toy and she didn't see me do it. She was looking around my feet for her toy so I showed her my empty hands then I pointed to where her toy had landed and said "get it!" She stopped, looked in the direction I was pointing, and launched herself for her toy. Another huge success! This was a deliberate behavior on her part, not random.

I suppose that I am most pleased at the fact that all of this has happened entirely within the context of play. I probably did make a formal plan in my head but I never set out with a goal along the lines of "today I will teach her to drop toys on command." I of course knew the behaviors I wanted her to learn and I have managed to be patient enough to let her discover them in her own time.