save the pit bull, save the world.

The wonderous Bad Rap pit bull rescue in Berkley, CA posted a terrific story in their blog this past weekend about the success they’re having in the Berkley shelter system. Their shelter kill rate has dropped dramatically in the past year, resulting in the deaths of only 50 dogs in 2007. They attribute their success to a number of factors including successful marketing of shelter dogs, low-cost spay/neuter, and support for adopters in the form of free training.

I love the efforts that they have made, especially with the pit bull population there. I love the emphasis they have on making training available to adopters- and people are showing up in droves for it (over 400 people on their waiting list!). I hope that the word gets out, and more shelters clue in. So many shelter dogs were never taught any manners, and taking home a strong, untrained dog can be a bit of a daunting experience. I know it certainly was with Luce! Fortunately, I had the motivation to get her into obedience classes as soon as I could, but a lot of people aren’t willing to invest the money in something like that. Making training available for free and making it appealing can do so much, I think, to help these dogs stay in their new homes. Turning wild beasts into well-mannered pets is no small task, and I give huge props to all of those people volunteering to train owners to train their dogs in Berkley. Good job, guys! And thanks for doing what you do.

. . . .

By way of Pupdate, little Cash is holding his own. His right wrist is septic, and that was what made him so sick, though we still don’t know why it happened, and probably never will. He’s off his iv fluids and on oral antibiotics and pain medication, and he’ll be coming home tonight. Hopefully he’ll do well and not relapse, but that’s a definite possibility. Keeping him eating and crossing our fingers that these antibiotics are the right ones (unfortunately we didn’t tap the joint until after he’d already been on antibiotics for 24 hours, so culturing it wasn’t really in the cards) and will do the trick is the best that I can do for him right now. He’s gained almost half a pound since Tuesday and he looks like a puppy. He was even well enough to go outside to potty for the first time today, and even walked around a little bit.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do with him. I’m growing more and more attached, and I want to keep him, but I don’t know if that’s the right thing for him, for me, and for the other hounds in the house. I will definitely keep him until I know he is well, and that will give me time to figure some stuff out. I had a client at work express interest in him this morning (for her elderly father) and I shut her down right off the bat. Fierce mama bear, rawr! He is not going to someone who doesn’t know anything about Jacks, just because they want a small dog. He may be small, but Jacks are hard work, and I want to give him the best chance to succeed and be a good dog. He sure hasn’t had the best start. And he’s a mill pup, which makes it even harder for him on a number of levels.

I’m intimidated by the idea of raising a pup, especially a pup like this, but I can’t stop buying him things. I bought him puppy food (Innova) and a puppy Kong yesterday. I bought him a collar and a Puppy Fish (because they are hilarious!) today. I already have a leash and a crate for him (though, the horror, his leash doesn’t match his collar).

My mind. It is lost and may never come back.

This is Cash. As in, his owners didn’t have any. So when he came in very very sick this morning, with a painful belly and a swollen, very painful wrist, his life was on the line. His owners could afford the bloodwork and the xrays, but when the bloodwork confirmed that this poor little guy needed to be hospitalized on IV fluids, and quickly, that was the end of their financial road. They didn’t have money to treat him.

I have no doubt in my mind that his people love him. His owner was in tears when he called back with the final decision that they’d have to euthanize him. I heard the doctor on the phone explaining cremation prices and I couldn’t stop myself- I wrote him a note that said if the owner was willing to surrender him, I’d take him. And now he’s mine, or he will be when his owner comes in tomorrow to pay his bill (he authorized the diagnostics and thus is responsible for their cost) and sign the official surrender paperwork. If his owner showed up tomorrow with the money to cover his continued care, I’d rejoice. I don’t want this puppy. The last thing I need right now is a puppy, and a 2.6 pound Jack Russell Terrier puppy no less. But I couldn’t let him die when there’s such a good chance that he can be saved.

So he’s at work on IV fluids, getting antibiotics and pain medication, and we’re crossing our fingers and hoping that he’ll get past whatever is ailing him. I’m hoping he’ll do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Tiny dog, thank the government. You are my stimulus check.

I’m not planning to keep him. I can’t keep him. Three dogs is more than any one person needs, and a barky, prey-driven, little maniac dog is not what I need right now. I’ve never had a puppy before and the idea scares me to death! All of my dogs have been adopted as adults, and there’s been a reason for that. How do I housebreak a puppy who is smaller than my foot?? How do I housebreak a puppy when I work full time?

My hope is that I will be able to get in contact with a Jack Russell rescue and that they will be able to find him a home. I imagine a pup like him will be in reasonable demand, and while I’m very happy to foster him for whatever time they need to screen a family, and I’ll cry like a baby when it’s time for him to go to his forever home, I’d really like to pawn off the responsibility of finding a home to people who know this breed and know what they’re doing. All I really know about them is that they need above-average owners, because they’re spunky little beasts who need owners willing to do the work necessary to keep them safe and sane.

Fingers crossed, little buddy. You’re going to need all the good luck you can get at this point.

(Ok, so yes, I really do want to keep him!)

Someone posted a link to this article on one of the message boards I read, and it really got me thinking. In answer to the question of what I do, the answer has to be both. I use the clicker as strictly an event marker in conjunction with luring or manufacturing behavior, and I also use it for true blue shaping, where I do no luring or anything but click and reward the teeny tiny baby steps toward what I want.

At this point, I don’t see the need to drop luring from my training methods. It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s effective for teaching simple behaviors. It’s also pretty fast. For behaviors like sit, down, front, right and left finishes, etc I see no reason to not lure. But for more complicated behaviors such as the retrieve, which I taught completely through shaping (though Luce was quite happy to pick up the dumbbell from day one- she made my life so easy!), true clicker training makes much more sense.

Two things I’d change if I had it to do over with Luce: I would never have lured attention. I would have completely free shaped it based on what she offered me of her own accord. I think I’d have gotten further faster and I think I’d have stronger attention from her. That’s one big change I’ve made over the past year- I very very rarely ask for attention. I wait for it, and then reward it when it’s freely given.

I also would not have lured heel. It probably doesn’t make that much difference, especially since I played so much “choose to heel” type games with Luce in the beginning and she has a very strong sense of heel as position as a result (which is a lot of fun, actually). The Halt, Sidestep Right, Halt sign in AKC rally required no teaching. It was just there because she knows to stay in heel no matter where I go.

Luce is the first dog I’ve trained, not to mention the first dog I’ve trained with the intention of competing. Goodness knows it’s taking us long enough (going on five years), but she came with a fair amount of issues that needed fixing, and I started out totally green. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve met with a lot of frustration, both with her limitations and my own, but the more I learn, the more hopeful I become, and the more fun it gets.

That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned through all of this- the more fun you make everything for both yourself and the dog, the more success you’ll have. Having a dog that wants to work because it’s a big game is so much easier than a dog you’re forcing to work. Learning to be more creative, learning to change things up, be a little more unpredictable (I still struggle with this), to intersperse training with play, has all been so helpful in training my crazy hound.

Someday we’ll get to the competition ring. And maybe we’ll even manage to not embarrass ourselves.

Last night I conversationally posted Harv’s picture to a message board that I’ve been a member of for over ten years. I was feeling stressed and sad about Harv, who is having trouble again, and posting pictures of him makes me feel a little better. But of course, because he’s a pit bull, the first response I received was one of the “Somebody I know’s third cousin’s first wife’s uncle twice removed’s three babies were eaten by a pit bull all in one serving” genre. She couldn’t relate to anybody loving these “horrible” dogs, sorry.

Yeah, I’m sorry too.

Thanks for trying so hard.

I’m sure other dog owners have to deal with this kind of nonsense, but boy does owning pit bulls sure open a person up to everybody’s hate and media-fed nightmares. This particular devil hound is currently pacing the house in his seizure-drug induced stupor. He’s as non-aggressive as one can ask a dog to be, and he’s never eaten anybody’s dog or baby to my knowledge. He certainly hasn’t while he’s been under my care. But no matter, he could and the only reason he hasn’t is probably that he’s not been around long enough yet. Pit bulls turn on people. That’s just what they do. Haven’t you heard?

Just writing this post makes me feel so bitter and jaded. I love my dogs and I wish they were not met with such fear and sometimes even hatred. I know that’s part and parcel, part of owning the breed, but it gets old. Good old Harv is fugly as hell, but scary? Come on. He can’t see well enough to attack anything. Not to mention, right now he’d probably fall on his face if he tried.

But he’s a pit bull. Gotta watch out for them.

They’re horrible.

We had a lady come in this morning to weigh her six month old Aussie puppy for heartworm preventative. I remember this pup when she came in for puppy vaccines, and she was a sweet, lovely puppy. Outgoing, friendly, all the normal puppy stuff. Today, when I went around the corner of the counter to say hi to her, she freaked out barking, whale-eyes, backing up as far as she could to get away from me.

Her owner yelled at her, yanked her leash, and told me that she doesn’t know why she does that, she used to be great with everybody.

I crouched down sideways and watched her out of the corner of my eye while just carrying on conversation with her mom, and eventually she did come over to me and allowed me to stroke her chest a few times before skittering away again.

I got up and went back behind the counter. A few minutes later, a delivery man came in carrying some boxes. Again, the puppy freaked out, eyes bugging out of her head, absolutely terrified. This time, in addition to the leash corrections, her owner threated that if she didn’t knock it off, she was going to get zapped.

So I looked closer, and sure enough, this scared pup is wearing a shock collar. And sure enough, her owner had the remote in her hand, though she didn’t use it in the time she was there. But clearly she was prepared.

I was so astounded I didn’t even know what to do. This woman is shocking her puppy for being afraid of people and then doesn’t understand why the dog is getting worse. Seriously. Oh how I wanted to steal that puppy away, tell her that she’ll be safe and nobody will hurt her anymore, and do everything I can to try to teach her to trust people again. Who knows if she is damaged past the point of return at this point. I don’t know how long or how badly she’s been shocked.

I am not categorically opposed to the use of shock collars, I want to make that clear. I think they can be very appropriate tools for certain dogs in certain situations. I have thought about using one myself on Luce, but I don’t have anybody around to teach me how to introduce it correctly. But I am extremely opposed to the use of shock collars in this sort of situation. First and foremost, this dog is scared out of her ever-loving gourd. Second, she’s a puppy! Third, her fear and reactive behavior (for some reason!) is escalating. Isn’t that a clue that the current plan of action is not working??

People talk of making e-collars illegal, or of passing legislation so that they can only be purchased from licensed trainers or whatever, and I vehemently oppose that kind of thing, but I swear, that poor whale-eyed puppy made me think twice.

Harv started having seizures again last week. Not grand mal, fall over and convulse seizures, just focal ones, but worse than his normal chewing gum fits. They looked more like what I think of when I think “focal seizure”– he was chewing and foaming at the mouth, but his whole face was twitching as well. During the one on Wednesday night, he was still aware of his surroundings, and responsive to me when I touched his back and said his name. The one he had on Thursday afternoon looked pretty much the same as the Wednesday one, but he was not aware at all. He had a short period of being really wonky and out of it following both, which again is unusual.

Then I looked back at his seizure log and realized that he’s been having seizures about every two weeks, which really isn’t that good. I guess because they’ve been so mild, I hadn’t been paying that close attention. But now I am.

I talked to his vet, and we’re going to start him on Potassium Bromide (KBr), another anti-epileptic drug, in the hopes of stopping them. Because it was the end of the week and KBr has to be compounded, I wasn’t able to order his medication until today, so he won’t be starting it until tomorrow. For the weekend, I increased his Phenobarbital from 1.5 grains to 2 grains.

I also stopped his Prozac, which we were trying to help with the nighttime agitation despite it being inadvisable in dogs (and people) with seizures.

This morning he had another seizure of the mild chewing gum type.

I am so scared to be starting this new medication. Because he’s having seizures and because KBr can take several months to build up in the bloodstream with just regular dosing, we’re going to do a loading dose with him- a very high dose for five days- to get his blood levels up in a hurry. His vet keeps repeating how he’s going to be really drunk and lethargic from the medication, and that it can cause vomiting. Great. Looking forward to it. Harv usually has a pretty strong stomach, so I’m hoping that will work on his side for the medication. But he was pretty drunk and ataxic just from starting the Phenobarbital, which is apparently not that common, so I’m worried about how bad he’s going to be.

The thing is, though, that he may not have a couple months left to wait around for the medication to do his thing. He needs to be on it, and he needs it to be working now, not in July. So I don’t know what else to do but cross my fingers and hold my breath and set up the babygates so that he can’t hurt himself, and prepare myself to be carrying 55 pounds of dog up and down the stairs eighteen times a day so that he doesn’t fall and hurt himself.

And that’s ok.

If it makes his seizures stop.

If it makes him not die.

I’d carry him up and down the steps every day for the rest of his life if he’ll just live forever.

I was going to write a post today about the tragic death of the filly Eight Belles in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, but I can’t say it better than it’s already been said here and here, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Two horses also died during last week’s Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event, both following falls during the cross-country portion of the competition. RIP Frodo Baggins and The Quiet Man. Their deaths were equally tragic, but it seems to me, not quite as preventable.

There is risk in everything we do with our animals. There is obvious risk in something like three-day eventing, or long-distance dog sled racing such as the Iditarod. But there’s risk in the more simple things, too– agility, for example. Or even something as commonplace as a game of fetch in the backyard. The sport of Thoroughbred racing in the US, though? There are so many risk factors that could be lessened. Simply not running these horses until they’re physically mature enough to handle it could prevent so many pointless accidents and deaths. The horses who died in the Rolex were both 12 years old. Eight Belles was a rising three year old. Horse racing, it’s all about money. Get them out there winning purses, earning their keeps, retire them young, and then breed them for more profit.

It’s such a waste.

I finally finished reading Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt and I am officially designating this book as my new bible. (My old bible was Aggression in Dogs by Brenda Aloff, but we don’t need that one so much these days.) What a fantastic, useful, easy-to-apply book. I wish that it had not taken me so long to find it, get ahold of it, and read it! I am so excited, and there are big sections that I need to go back and reread, but I cannot say enough good things about this book.

My biggest stumbling point, my most overwhelming frustration with Luce since the very beginning has been her reactivity and her lack of focus. She’s not a fearful dog, she’s just an extremely environmentally-oriented dog, and she’s got a bad case of Oooh! Shiny! unless she’s absolutely focused on what we’re doing. There are few things more frustrating than a dog who is heeling along beautifully, looking totally focused, and then in the blink of an eye, she’s lunging at something interesting- a smell, a rally sign holder, a water bowl at the edge of the room. So. Frustrating. She’s a 0 to 90 kind of dog in everything she does, and she doesn’t leave attention switching out of the equation.

The advice I’ve received all along has been to get her totally focused on me at all times, to be the most interesting and exciting thing in her world at all times. Yeah. Right. Talk about another lesson in frustration. That’s never going to happen. It is asking for the impossible.

Control Unleashed gave me permission to not be the most interesting thing in the world at all times. It gave me permission to stop fighting with my dog, and learn to work with her instead. Instead of forbidding her to ever look at anything else, it suggests that I teach her the pattern of look and then immediately reorient to me. Thank you so much Leslie. I love you.

The Look at That! game, in which you click the dog for looking at the trigger (for Luce, it’s just whatever she’s gotten distracted by; for fearful dogs, it’s whatever’s freaking them out) and then reward the dog with a cookie, manufacturing the behavior of instantly turning back to you. Lather, rinse, repeat and the turn back becomes automatic.

The other really game that’s really perfect for Luce is the Give Me a Break game, in which you do something highly rewarding (either high rate of reward for trained behaviors, or play tug, depending on your goal) and then stop cold and dismiss the dog and ignore him. After a set period of time, you start the game again, with a very high rate of reward. Then stop cold again. The goal is to have the dog come immediately back and solicit you for more work because it becomes way more fun and valuable than being left to his own devices. One thing I’d really like to build with Luce is more toy drive, so I’m going to be playing the Give Me a Break game a lot with her, I think. And the big thing I’ve always been fighting has been the environment being more valuable than working, so again, this game has the potential to reap huge rewards.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Leslie McDevitt is not that far from me, and I really want to do a road tripper special consultation with her with Luce. I don’t know if I can swing it money and time-wise, but it would be so incredibly awesome.

A big thanks to Brent at KC Dog Blog for the following video clip. Please watch it. The message is so very important.

Tio Hardiman has developed a program to reach high risk pit bull owners in Chicago who have been involved in dog fighting, and aims to change their relationships with dogs and their beliefs about pit bulls. Dog fighting is illegal in all 50 states and a felony, and yet is still pervasive throughout the country. Instead of looking to greater law enforcement, fines, jail time, and other penalties which are obviously not working, Hardiman is trying to get to change the hearts of those drawn to dog fighting. He wants them to see their pit bulls not as fighting machines, but as companions, as “man’s best friend”.

What an important undertaking.

He is trying to find a solution that works. His video brings me so much hope. To see the enthusiasm on the faces of the dog owners in this video, to see them enjoying their dogs and their dogs enjoying their activities, is fantastic. I hope it sticks. I hope it spreads. I hope that his program will inspire others in other parts of the country. I know I’ve read articles (maybe in Dog Play magazine) about groups trying to bring weight pull to inner city pit bull owners in an effort to get them involved in more constructive activities with their dogs. Again, what a great idea.

Thank you, Tio Hardiman. For your hard work. For the dogs you’ve saved. For the kids you’ve saved.