In the weeds

Way back at the beginning of my career as a horse trainer, I worked at a jumper barn and we had this wonderful client who had a gelding (Monterey) that he just doted on. Monterey was a huge beast of a horse, well over 17 hands with feet like dinner plates. He could jump the moon. Monterey’s dad paid more for this one horse than I would make that year, or most of the years following. He was that kind of horse.

When the trainer who worked with Monterey and his owner first told me about them, she said that dad didn’t care about how to ride, he just wanted to jump big fences.

The combination wasn’t always pretty, but Monterey was never to blame, and when things came together it looked like everyone in the ring, not just the horse, knew what they were doing.

I am not like Monterey’s dad. I need to know everything. I need to get down into the weeds regarding every aspect of my horse, and every one of the horses I trained over the years. I learned to watch horses and let them tell me what their future held, where they would succeed and where they would struggle. I could place riders or myself on these horses and through years of endless study and observation create a team of two species that moved like one. I allowed my students to fail and taught them to let their horses make mistakes. Everyone grew together this way through mutual respect and forgiveness. Eventually beauty would flow through the heart of the horse and through the hands of my students and anyone watching would see what it was and feel elation.

Everyone knows what a good team looks like, regardless of species. We know it when we see it.

I am a geek. I am a geek about everything I care about. I not only knew the name and function of every piece of equipment that could conceivably be placed on a horse, but had also analyzed how that equipment affected movement, communication, and relaxation. I knew how every bit lay on the tongue, and knew that some bits sold as friendly were everything but and that if I put my tongue on the place where steel hit copper on a bit I would feel a little electrical ‘zing’, no wonder the bit was sold as an aid to keep the horse’s mouth wet!! Yikes!

I’m now walking a different path than the one I knew so well, and I know frightfully little. I now find myself staring at simple tools people buy every day to teach their pets and find myself asking familiar questions: How does this device work, what makes it effective, what will keep it effective, who should use it and under what circumstances?

I want the answers. I don’t want opinions; I know how little value opinions carry. I want facts, whys and hows, and I want to get down into the weeds of every single tool, whether I will personally ever use it or not.

Training dogs is totally different than training horses. Horses have no intrinsic need to be trained, nor do they particularly care to please us. Dogs live for training, they are eager students, ready and wanting instruction, thrilled for the opportunity to please us.

As a beginning trainer, I feel that my fullest effort should be in preserving and shaping that eagerness and enthusiasm. Bringing it out in shy and worried dogs, while shaping it in more forward and eager dogs. Towards that end, I will study every nuance of the work of others; the science of behavior and canine movement. I will acquire videos, books, and hands on learning from those who have best preserved the joy of learning in their own dogs, then I will take it all home and point what I have learned at my own dogs, my shy ones, my high drive enthusiastic ones, and those in between. What works, I will keep and improve upon, what fails I will tuck away for further study.

In dog training, as in horse training, I have once more found myself down in the weeds, just where I love to be!

Don't Tell me you Rescued your Dog

You will never hear me say that I rescued any of my dogs. If you ask me how I got them I may tell you that I got them through a series of events, or tell you their story, but I will never tell you that I rescued them, for the very simple reason that I did not.

When I managed a veterinary hospital in a PetSmart, part of our mandate was to make nice to all of the rescue organizations that lurked the store’s hallways and bring in new adoptees for exams. I learned several things while I was doing this work: some rescue people are nuts, some rescue people are wonderful, some dogs are beyond rescue, and some dogs just need a helping hand. I also found out that the worst thing a client could say – especially when presented with a costly treatment plan was – “he’s a rescue.”

Amazingly, many people who told me this did it to excuse the next thing that they would do which was to deny their rescued pet necessary medical care. The way, I suspect that they saw things was that they had rescued the pet, and therefore the good was already done. No need, at this point, to pony up yet more money.

Now, of course this is anecdotal, and I, of all people, reject anecdotal evidence especially if it helps defend a preferred position. I have known thousands of clients through the years, and their thousands of rescued pets, and most of the pets were treated as well-loved family members. It was only if the words, “I rescued him” were spoken out loud would things go badly.

Those words were also used to justify unjustifiable aggression or fear from the dog. They were usually followed by “he was abused”, which is an excuse for the pet to be handicapped with a disabling emotional problem for the remainder of his life. I can assure you of two things: 1. Most abused dogs do not fear people and 2. Most fearful/aggressive dogs got that way not through abuse but from lack of proper socialization as puppies, and ongoing isolation by protective adopters who do not wish their scarred dogs to face the real world. It’s tragic and unfair.

But none of these are the reason I will never say that I rescued any of my dogs. Rescuing implies two things: risk to the rescuer and that the act is altruistic. Neither of these is true of the dogs I have. I have never jumped into a burning house and rescued a dog.  Every dog I have, I have wanted. Did I buy any from breeders? No, but that doesn't make me a rescuer, it just means I'm cheap. My dogs came through various sources and homes where they did not fit in for whatever reason.

I got one dog through rescue. In fact I fostered her for the rescue and simply fell for her, but I didn’t rescue her. I wanted her and she was available. There was no risk to me and my actions were not selfless.

Does this mean that I believe you have to jump into a frozen lake and save a drowning dog to rescue it? Of course not, and rescue organizations do step up and help out pets and gain nothing for themselves; they network and put in the miles and money, and they provide a wonderful service and they do rescue pets for people like me to adopt. But that is what I did, I adopted.

I adopted from a rescue, and from the Humane Society, and from people who got in over their heads with the wrong breed, or who were trying to do right but another dog in the house wasn’t having it, or from kindly people who found dogs in the desert and knew I was looking for a certain type of dog and gave me a call. But I did not rescue any of these dogs. Even the dog I got from a shelter I didn’t rescue. I adopted her as well. Had I not adopted her she likely would have found another home, had she not, she would have probably been put down. I adopted her and a different dog was put down in her place. I chose her.

Only with pets do we routinely, “rescue”, no one tells people that their adopted kid was rescued.  I understand that the word, “rescue” brings with it an emotional reward. People who are rescuers are good people, altruistic. The problem is that wanting a dog, searching out a dog and then purchasing a dog from a rescue – regardless of the dog’s back story – is not an act of charity. I’m sorry, but you are not a hero for adopting a dog from a rescue. You are a pet lover sure, and no doubt, a wonderful person, but you are not a hero.

Why, you ask, do I even give a shit what people say about how they got their dogs or cats, why should it matter? I did have to ask myself that, because I am passionate about the use of the word ‘rescue’ and I had to examine where that comes from.

I believe that there are several layers to my antipathy towards the word. First, rescuers are people in society whom we should hold up as examples to us all. These people are firefighters, police officers, strangers who do dash into burning buildings. The word has meaning and it should remain untainted by watering down to the point where buying a dog from the pound qualifies.

Second, it seems too often to be prefaced with, ‘but’ and used to justify failings in the dog’s personality. Often these failings are extremely detrimental to the dog’s ability to function in the real world. “But, he was rescued” creates a crutch that excuses the owner from ever asking the dog to live in the real world, both victimizing the dog for life and excusing their own failures as pet owners.

There are wonderful people who work in rescue, and they do rescue dogs, and for them the word has meaning, as they end up with little to show for it but depleted check books, chewed up furniture and the joy that comes from placing a dog in it’s forever home. It is a disservice to their efforts to equate writing a check or picking a dog up off the highway to the work that they do.

Did I get some of my dogs through rescue? Sure, but I didn’t rescue them, someone else did. I just wrote the check and made them a home; and that’s enough.

Confessions of a fake dog trainer

I recently made the leap to professional dog training. By recently, I mean about 4 months ago. If you are a Facebook friend, or even, in some cases, a family member, this is news, because I haven't exactly been shouting it from the roof tops.

Truth be told, I find my new job embarrassing. Not the dog training part. Well, actually, yes kinda, that part too.

Mostly it's the venue. See, I took a job as a dog trainer at (a big box store). That, for some reason, is the crux of the embarrassment, after all, what 40+ year old takes a job at a big box store?

I've run businesses for myself and others. I've been in management in one form or another for twenty plus years, and here I am, starting all over at a job that would've been cool when I was twenty, but I'm treating it like a dirty secret because I'm 40 (+).

I keep telling myself that this job isn't my real job. My real job is writing, and this dog training gig is just to keep me from trying to have conversations with houseplants, get me out of the house, introduce me to new challenges, etc...

That, is of course, horse shit. I needed the money that writing wasn't providing; I was sick and tired of the personalities and hours of the veterinary profession, and I wanted something new.

And now, shhhhhhh.... It's a secret!!

Some of this stems from the whiff of retail, a job I have never had. The other is that a big box dog trainer is not a real dog trainer.

I know real dog trainers (many of whom - again - know nothing of this dirty new career path I've chosen). I respect real dog trainers. I have worked with, mooched advice from, and generally lurked in the same circles with real dog trainers for the past 15 years or so. They all know more than I do.

So, there's that. I'm also a poser. Sure, I trained horses professionally for over a decade, and at that I really was qualified, and also very talented. Then I worked in veterinary hospitals for 15 years, speaking to clients about behavior, and learning the clues to avoid getting myself bit. But neither of those exactly qualifies me to train anyone's dog.

I know, intellectually that I am a passable dog trainer, and that because I study and bother others incessantly for advice, I will eventually be a good one. But in the interim, let's just keep this to ourselves, what do you say?

What's the story with purebred dogs?

I've been thinking a lot recently about the debate raging about purebred dogs. The debate, for those of you who have not been paying attention is largely between the rescue folks who tend to be anti-breeder and anti-purebred dog, and the dog breeder and working dog folks who think mutts are a horror story of genetic unknowns.

For the record, I come at this debate largely  from the perspective of the equine world, and I do stand firmly on the side of purebred horses. The reason is that horses, which must perform to have any value, are bred with certain characteristics in mind. A thoroughbred makes a terrible cutting horse, while a showy cart horse looks gorgeous but would be left standing on the race track. Mixing two types of horses, in most cases does nothing to help produce a better horse. Yes, there are exceptions, but the deal with crossing is that while you might think you're adding bottom (stamina) and height to that short coupled and elegant-moving Spanish horse, you might be getting a short, lanky flat-moving outcross - the worst of both worlds.

Having said that, I have also seen the horror show that breeding for the conformation ring begets; quarter horses built like cows, tottering on tiny diseased feet, Arabs with long weak loins that collapse under a rider's weight, are just two examples.

In horses, there is usually a counter current driving the show ring crowd back to sanity - because a horse is a very expensive 'pet', and failure to perform keeps the conformation folks from going completely off the rails. Compare that to the freak dogs that come out of the AKC's idea of beauty; unlike horses, dogs simply have to fail to die. That is not a very high bar.

Horses and dogs both suffer from over breeding, however, horses rarely land in shelters and look pitiful; they quietly go to auction and head down to Mexico. Both scenarios are terribly sad, and neither speaks well for us as humans, however, no one is raving in the streets that people need to adopt horses rather than breeding them.

The first thing we all have to face is that if we want to have dogs in the future, someone needs to breed them. Purebreds come with a host of known faults and genetic abnormalities, mutts provide owners with an element of surprise.

A valid argument could be made that the discussion shouldn't be about mixed-breed vs purebred, rather it should be between well-bred and poorly bred, with the outcome of the latter being a functional, sane, biddable dog with the least amount of genetic maladaptions. Perhaps breeders do gain something when they mix Anatolian shepherds to great Pyrenees, I have no idea, as long as the end result is a sound minded, sound moving, healthy animal with a purpose, then the pups will find homes, and more importantly, keep them.

Coming as I do, from the equine world, I have been able to watch different breed organizations (there is no overhanging AKC in the horse world) get it right, while others failed to help their breed remain true to its origins.

For many European bred warmblood horses, as well as some Spanish horses, the horse must pass a set of standardized tests to be admitted into the registry as breeding stock. If your Oldenberg stallion eats people, moves like a three legged donkey, and has toes that point at one another, you can breed him all you want, but his kids are not Oldenbergs.

I am actually a huge proponent of this system. Yes it means that your registry cannot admit one-million new animals a year, but it provides people buying your product (and yes, horses and dogs are products, no matter how much we may love them, they are part of the same system that produces Barbie and Dr. Pepper) can be reasonably certain that it isn't a steaming pile of very expensive horseshit.

The same cannot be said about the vast majority of dog breeds. For example the other day a gentleman introduced me to his brand new two-year old sway-backed pig-shaped atopic (skin disease) 'blue' pit bull, that he said was registered somewhere (pit bulls to my knowledge are still not a breed, rather they are a type) as something. He paid $600 for this walking vet bill!

Now, I know we cannot protect people from stupid, but if every other damn dog in the country wasn't 'AKC registered', we might be able to help people escape the more egregious levels of stupid.  'AKC registered' has no meaning. It does not speak to quality or health, it is simply a list of 'begats'. People say, 'my dog is registered', like it means something, and in a better world, it would.

And yes, the blue pig-dog still had two dangly balls to make more swaybacked bad-skinned, wrinkly-faced horror shows - yay.

Some people come down on 'conformation' as the issue, for example, the American Border Collie Association hates conformation, and if your dog gets an AKC conformation title it will be summarily booted from the ABCA - perhaps for border collies, sickle hocks, poor gait, and pigeon chests don't affect performance - perhaps border collies are magical, and do not need to have proper underlying structure to stay sound through long active lives. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!!

Form matters. This plus mind and other traits is why we have breeds to start with! Terriers who chase rats in barnyards need to be short. Greyhounds who chase mechanical rabbits need to be lanky with good structure to hold up under racing, retrievers need a long enough muzzle to retrieve.

What dogs do not need to perform these tasks is certain ear shapes, certain coat lengths (though shorter makes most sense for dogs performing outside in temperate places), and certain colors. So having a fluffy black and white border collie with just so tipped Lassie ears does not make her better at catching sheep, but pretending that form doesn't matter is foolish.

Unless you have a purpose in mind, you shouldn't breed, and that purpose should not be to make money off puppies. The goal of breeding any animal should be to produce a set of characteristics in the offspring that enables them to perform a function. I cannot see risking the chances of cross-out catastrophes in any mixed-breed experiment - maybe some are great, I just haven't seen it, and I have yet to see a cross breed that fulfills some task not already covered in existing breeds.

This brings us lastly to health. An argument can be made that mutts are healthier, and while it is true that certain issues are strongly correlated with certain bloodlines, breeding 'pure' does not necessarily produce genetic disasters - breeding poorly does. Lipizzaners are famous for the minuteness of their gene pool (six stallions at the start in the 1500s and a small herd of 250 that came through WWII). . Lipizzaners are not beset with genetic diseases.

This could be partly because genetic diseases were not permitted to enter the gene pool in the first place, and partly because many lipizzaner breeding programs very tightly controlled. Compare this to quarter horses, the largest registry in the US, and therefore, logically, one of the breeds most likely to suffer from poor and lazy breeding. Quarter horses have numerous genetic issues not found in the larger equine population. A whole disease in quarter horses persists in spite of the fact that it originated from a single over-used stallion.

This is what happens when people forget that the point of breeding is not to produce fifty out-crops for every decent animal, but rather to have a good, sound animal every time.

For breeders and other advocates of purebred dogs to prevail in this debate they must show why their breeds exist. They must produce dogs who can be pets and can perform (to say they're mutually exclusive is just as idiotic as stating that thoroughbred stallions shouldn't have manners - they should, and many do, so it can be done). For some dogs 'perform' may simply mean be able to be potty trained, walk on a leash and not eat people - a very tall order for some of our shorter breeds!

An ABCA border collie who is so high drive that she cannot function in a real home without going nuts is as huge a disservice to the breed as a beautiful AKC champion who won't herd sheep.