There’s no more appropriate bowl for our boy than this. Except when he’s meant to be testing his self control, that is.

In the last post I outlined all our plans for getting some control over our Beagles in the great outdoors, but after a couple of weeks of practice those plans have had to be revised. As I mentioned last time, Biggles sails through all the self control exercises. The reason for this, I think, is that they don’t tap into the primal hunting  behaviors that can give us such a headache on hillwalk. You might argue that doesn’t matter and that the training will nevertheless give him greater self control over time, but I tend to doubt it. You see he’s just so chilled during the training that we spend all our time trying to gee him up and none trying to calm him down.

Time for self control training Dad? Yeah.. I’ll be right there after my nap.

One day I made what I thought was an irresistible food sock – brimming over with chicken and other tasty stuff. I let him stay beside me in the kitchen as I prepared it; he was wagging reasonably enthusiastically throughout so I had high hopes. However the moment we headed out into the garden, he realized this was an exercise and not a free-for-all and lost all interest in the sock. I made a little hole in it, tied it to the end of the lunge whip and took off round the garden like a nutter in the hope that he’d give chase. His reaction? He found a few traces of bird poo on the grass and started rolling in it. I responded by making a bigger hole in the sock (so that half of the contents fell out), and dangled it just above his nose. He just sat calmly ignoring it, with a blank look on his face and a big white guano stain on one ear flap. To complete this epic failure, when I gave up and let him back in the house he headed straight into the kitchen and “boinged” the oven gloves off of the worktop. Needless to say we’ve given up on the “classic” self control exercises, and instead I’m now concentrating on trying to keep him calm when he sees the postman approaching the house – one of the few things at home that really does get him excited.

Beanie on the other hand has no trouble getting thoroughly excited for the self-control exercises, in fact it would be more accurate to say she gets excited by the exercises. She does whatever is required of her to get the reward, but then for the rest of the day she’s wired, into everything and quite likely to give poor Biggles a good telling off if he puts a foot wrong. Ironically the worst exercise of all in this respect is the chill mat; she now gets over excited at the very sight of it and woofs demandingly when we take it away. So we’ve had to abandon the mat training for Beanie, at least in its original form. Instead we can maybe train her to see it as a surrogate basket – not a rewarding thing, but somewhere comfortable that you just have stay in/on until you’re told otherwise.

And yet in the midst of all these failures we had a remarkably quiet sunset trip up Ben A’an.

It’s fair to say the biggest trouble we had on that trip came from the cheap Tesco popup shelter we’d brought to help with the wind chill. Like all of these things it popped up easy enough, but getting it back into its collapsed state and into its carry bag was another story entirely. As we wrestled with the shelter Beanie & Biggles wrestled with each other – but other than that, our pups were just great. Even on the way down there was minimal pulling and only the tiniest baying outbreak just as we arrived back at the car.

Any takers for a play fight on a mountain? It would seem so..

Encouraged by this apparent progress (which was more than likely a fluke) we invested in some camping gear. We’ve already got a caravan which is great for a holiday of several days or so, but it’s overkill for a brief overnight visit just to take in a sunset/sunrise in the highlands. So, after years of flat out refusing ever to contemplate camping, we now have a tent. It’s apparently quite a good one as far these things go..

It’s quite roomy inside, and has a built in chin rest for boy Beagles.

Biggles has already taken a liking to the sleeping bags. I dunno where the rest of us are going to sleep, but he’s going to be nice and comfy, that’s for sure.

Of course it’s one thing to do a practice camping session in the garden; the real deal – in a campsite or even worse “wild camping” – is likely to be a completely different experience. The cynic in me believes that Beanie and Biggles kept their woofers in check on Ben A’an just so we’d trust them in a tent. Maybe in a few weeks time we’ll be chasing two escaped baying Beagles round a mountain top in complete darkness!

Our recent trip to Skye – though very enjoyable – was somewhat marred by Beanie & Biggles’ reaction to sheep. Admittedly Skye is a bit of an extreme case in that it is absolutely teaming with the blummin’ things, but nevertheless it joins a long line of adventures that have featured unwelcome and prolonged baying/pulling frenzies.

From time to time we’ve tried to tackle this problem using the typical dog training suggestions:

• stopping dead when the baying starts and refusing to move until calm has been restored
• abruptly changing direction at the first sign of a freakout
• trying to distract Beanie & Biggles by getting them to perform tricks etc. when sense they’re about to lose control
• trying to engage them in games

Thus far all these approaches have either failed outright or proved hopelessly impractical. For example the stopping dead approach serves only to build frustration and stress in our dogs (especially Biggles) and they’re quite able to keep up a baying frenzy for several hours at a time. Changing direction isn’t always practical and anyway quite often we’ve completely run out of alternative directions (even the way we’ve just come, which was walked calmly, can suddenly become a trigger for more baying). As for games and food, well you can actually put food in Beanie & Biggles’ mouths when they’re in a highly excited state, and it’ll just fall out onto the floor. Yep, they get so worked up that even food won’t cut through!

The worst thing about the baying frenzies is that they often seem to come completely without warning and sometimes we have no idea what’s causing them. Sheep are often a trigger, but not always. For example, on the final day of our Skye trip I took the two Bs along a sheep-infested trail on which they’d freaked out the previous day, videoing them all the way in the hope of spotting some early warning signs. As Sod’s Law dictates, both Beanie & Biggles remained steadfastly chilled throughout. We got within 10 meters of unfenced sheep and lambs, and short of exchanging business cards and swapping anecdotes over a light lunch consisting of small triangular ham salad sandwiches, the meeting couldn’t have been more civilized. That inconsistency is typical of Beagles, or at least typical of our Beagles. Always expect the unexpected and they’ll still manage to surprise you.

After some discussion we contacted behaviorist Heather Smith in the hope of getting some practical tips for dealing with this problem. Here’s a brief summary of our new plan of action:

Desensitization

While desensitizing Beanie & Biggles to sheep, deer and so on probably won’t cure the problem completely, it must surely help. There aren’t many sheep near us (even though we live in a fairly rural area), and what sheep there are rarely provoke much of a reaction from our dogs. We figured that made them less useful as a desensitization tool but since talking to Heather we’ve realized that non-provocative sheep maybe exactly what we need; the more Beanie & Biggles can experience sheep in a calm state, the better.

What’s more one of our local parks has a kind of mini zoo with deer, rabbits, goats, pigs, birds etc so in theory the two Bs can get used to quite a variety of animals.On previous visits to this park we either gave the animal pens a wide berth, or attempted to distract Beanie & Biggles with training and food as we passed by. Now all that has changed. We actually want our little rascals to be fully aware of the animals; to be close by, watching them doing their thing yet not reacting. Our first couple of “training visits” have gone down reasonably well, although Beanie seems to be afraid of the rabbits (!!) and we had a slightly noisy encounter with an empty bottle that a litterbug had tossed into a hole in the ground. The bottle contained a blackcurrant drink, which  according to Beanie is one of the more dangerous flavors. I guess we could run into a wild Ribena bottle on our next hill walk, so it’s best to be prepared.

Err.. Biggles, the deer are actually behind you

Only Beanie seems to understand the tremendous danger posed by the killer rabbit. Surely this would be a good time to break out the Holy Hand Grenade Of Antioch?

Even the small ones are scary..

And it turns out that Llamas roll just like Beagles. Who knew?

Self-Control Exercises

Recently I’ve been working on Beanie & Biggles’ self control a little during fetch games in the garden. I do a few rounds of regular fetch, then a few where our pups have to sit and wait while I throw the ball, only going after it when I give them the release command. I’ve gradually built the game up and now – on a good day – they can hold in a sit while I run away from them and throw the ball. This is hardest for Beanie as she’s always been the most enthusiastic ball-chaser, but she’s doing well.

Beanie pouncing on the ball – but only after she’s been given the OK to do so.

I think this exercise is easier for Biggles because he’s less excited by retrieval games, but still, it all helps

Since Heather’s visit we now have  couple more self-control exercises to work on. One involves the lunge-whip with a toy tied to the business end. We start with each dog in a sit with the toy some distance away, and begin moving the whip to animate the toy. If the dog can hold the sit despite their desire to go after it then they’re rewarded by a chance to chase and tug at the toy. After each successful round the game gets harder – maybe the toy gets a little closer to the dog, or is moved in a more enticing way, or maybe the dog has to hold a down rather than a sit. One problem with this one is that Biggles generally doesn’t get excited about any toy he’s allowed to have (the illegal ones are way more exciting: Susan’s glasses, socks and underpants, toilet rolls etc) however to counter this Heather suggested using a sock stuffed with food. I really think this could work, but we’ll need a pretty sturdy sock..

Another self-control game is played in the crate, with rewards given for staying inside despite an ever increasing temptation to exit.

Loose lead & canicross training

If we can get Beanie & Biggles more used to paying attention to us and following commands while kitted out for canicross and hill walks, then they’ll be more manageable generally and hopefully less likely to go off the rails when something stimulates them. For the canicross we’re working on simple commands like left, right, stop, go etc. using the clicker. For the loose lead we’re going to devise some kind of physical cue that occurs when the lead is slack and reward Beanie and Biggles each time it’s present, thus making a slack lead more and more appealing to them.

Chill Mat

The idea here is to strongly associate a simple, portable object like a mat with calm behavior. Ultimately, just putting the dog on the mat should induce a calm state. The training starts with rewarding the dog for simply being on the mat, and progressively moves towards the dog lying on the mat on his/her side with legs relaxed and eyes closed. Each progression asks for something small, like staying on the mat just a little longer, maybe sitting on the mat, then holding a “down” on the mat etc. It can take a long time to reach the final stage, but if we can stay the distance we should have an effective tool for calming our dogs in a variety of situations. We’ll likely find this particularly tough with Beanie as she’s never been one for lying on her side unless genuinely asleep, but by using the clicker hopefully we’ll get there.

–/–

When a baying frenzy breaks out, Biggles is generally the noisiest and most out of control of our two Beagles (Beagle boys usually are), yet most of the above exercises seem to be easiest for him.I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Me? Noisy and out of control?

Surely you’ve got me confused with some other naughty boy.

Still, my gut feeling is that if we can stick at these exercises for long enough we may indeed be able to keep Beanie & Biggles below the level of stimulation that leads to a baying outburst, or at least shorten the duration of the outburst considerably. This would make our walks much more enjoyable and generally let us do more (like visiting dog-friendly cafes without deafening the other diners).