How not to win friends but still influence people

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Paul

Not exactly peaceful, but I’ll take play fighting over the real thing any day!

As you can see from the above shot, play between Beanie and Biggles has resumed, which I take to be a good sign that things are back on track. There have been two very minor grumps – microgrumps really – from Beanie to do with possessiveness over our bed, so we’ve decided to ban them both from the bed once again. Other than that, things have been pretty good.

Biggles’ confidence seems to be mostly restored

Unfortunately it seems to be the way with Beagles that as soon as you get one problem behind you, another one is already in line to take its place. We’re now having problems with Biggles getting over-excited and spectacularly noisy when certain other dogs are around. He’s always been prone to being woofy, and by all accounts that’s just part of the package with male Beagles, but over that last couple of weeks he has been over-reacting to other dogs when we go for a coffee after a run. He’s fine with other dogs when we’re on a walk, but in situations where we most need him to stay calm and quite – like in one of the very few park cafes in Scotland that allow dogs inside – he’s quite likely to lose his self control. To be fair it usually happens when there are other out of control or over-excited dogs around him, but his vocal outpourings are so loud and penetrating that he’s the one that gets the bad rep. Yesterday however, his rep hit a new world record low. How did he achieve this? Well it went something like this:

Woof at other dogs inside the cafe, forcing us to retreat to the outside seating
Once outside, attract the attention of other dog owners by looking particularly handsome
Drink too much water too quickly, wait until the other dogs’ owners approach and begin fondling one’s ears, then do a huge watery barf at their feet
Further impress and delight the other owners by rolling in one’s own watery vomit
Drink more water and vomit again
Start woofing at other dogs again until all attempts at staying by the cafe have been abandoned

To top it all off, Beanie also took exception to the other owners’ dog, which in all fairness was off lead, pushy, and known to be grumpy itself. All in all, not the apres-run social interaction we’d been hoping for. On the up-side, those other owners have now realized how easy they’ve got it, regardless of the problems they may have with their own dog.

To avoid a spell in the doghouse, always look cute and maybe a little forlorn after you’re been naughty.

Oh yeah, perfect!

Taming the Ferociraptor

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Susan

Pheeewwww….things are starting to ease down a bit!

For anyone that hasn’t been following the saga, out of the blue Beanie (aka Ferociraptor) started attacking her brother. Behaviorist Heather Smith prescribed a NILIF regime for a couple of weeks. The dogs seem to be loving it (not sure if they’re supposed to), but it’s hard work for us! So far so good though. And certainly lots of added benefits from a behavior point of view.

Heather also showed us a game to teach the dogs self-control. Basically a frenzied game of tuggy then take the toy away and put the dog into a sit until it’s calm. Once calm the game can start again. The idea is the dog learns how to rapidly switch from a highly aroused state. Over time the game will become more and more exciting so the dog gradually learns to calm down from an increasing level of excitement.

This game is just what we needed to solve other problems too. We do canicross with the dogs. The idea is that they wear a pulling harness and run attached to us via a bungee line. Beanie and Biggles are both wonderful at it but the problem is they’re a bit too keen. They’ve gradually got more and more excited by it and are desperate to pull. It’d be fine if they were Huskies but their canine physio advised us to keep it in moderation as Beagles aren’t bred to pull. It’s good for them to do a little bit so we don’t want to stop it altogether. We’re working on putting pulling on command so we can control exactly how much pulling effort they put in. But the first step is to teach them to quickly switch out of hunt mode when required. The game will not only help with self-control, but the tuggy will work the opposite muscle groups to those used in canicross helping to keep their joints balanced and healthy.

The above video shows Beanie playing the tuggy game. We start out with the toy attached to a lunge line to increase the excitement – chase, catch, kill. Eventually we hope the game will get them to the level of excitement that we get on a hunt (they go into ‘hunt mode’ during canicross runs) and then we can practice calming down from that. There’s also a clip of Biggles demonstrating his balance ball work – some little routines on a gym ball to work their core and stabiliser muscles. It might look easy but watch Biggles legs shaking after just a few moments. It’s really working the core. He’s mostly balancing the ball himself – I’m just helping a little. Great conditioning to keep them safe in their doggy sports!

You’ll notice the horses in the background. Heather advised us not to let Beanie and Biggles play together off-lead for a couple of weeks. They’re clearly missing their chases. When Beanie went out into the garden the horses were galloping around the field having a fabulous time. She ran around the garden turning when they turned and moving in perfect harmony with them.

Go directly to basket. Do not pass “go”. Do not collect crumbs, socks or anything else.

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Paul

We’ve now made it through three days without any more snarling episodes, but this must be due in part to the restrictions we’ve placed on our two. Basically most privileges have been withdrawn. No sofa time, no freedom to wander about the house unless escorted by a minder, no drinking out of our cups, no humping Susan’s leg and having a pee-gasm, and no free interaction with each other. On top of this, we’re running a strict “nothing in life is free” policy. This is extremely time-consuming for us, and extremely boring for our pups..

Lounging around on the sofa is a thing of the past..

Into your baskets, and stay in there!

It’s our own version of Dog Borstal, and it’s almost certainly overkill – in fact our behaviorist cautioned us that we could be creating an unnatural situation which could itself increase tension – but it’s only been for a couple of days and it has kept the peace, breaking the cycle of attacks. Tomorrow Heather Smith will come to see us and we should have a less draconian but equally effective plan for managing our two Beaglets.

There have been some encouraging signs that the storm has passed though; any time Beanie and Biggles lock eyes, they look like they’re on the build up to a play rather than a one-sided Fight Club session. What’s more, we’ve discovered that we can have a lot of control over our Beagles if we really get serious about it. This morning I sent Biggles to his basket while I got my breakfast, and he stayed put despite all the interesting sounds coming from the kitchen. Even more amazingly, when we all went for a group canicross run later on there was no woof-fest from our two. Until we actually got running, we had the quietest, most obedient dogs of the group.