Lucy and Jute’s time with the dog behaviorist.
Our Desi Dogs from India:
We adopted Lucy at about 5 months old thru ISDF, picking her up on the same day she was flown into Chicago. We adopted her brother, Jute, about eight months later, making him about 13 months old when we brought him home. From the shape of their bodies—long muzzles, deep chest, overall lean and athletic build–and the way they are so quick to detect movement, it seems clear that they have a fair amount of sight-hound in their genetics. As puppies they even looked like whippets. Of course there are more localized sight-hound breeds in where they came from—Pharaoh hounds, etc.—so I wouldn’t doubt that their genetic stew would more closely reflect those breeds. An overall observation is that they are extremely hardy (despite some serious puppyhood travails), high energy and very smart. I suspect that this comes from the fact that street life is very hazardous, so their parents, grandparents, etc., had to be all of the above to survive. For example, Lucy, Jute and their sister, Muskaan were the only pups from a litter of eleven that are known to have survived. Since they are clearly not the biggest or meanest dogs on the street, the secret has to be in their intelligence.
Why we went to a dog behaviorist.
Despite understanding and responding to basic commands, Lucy and Jute routinely have periods where they can very quickly get overly excited and won’t respond to our commands. Whether its rabbits in the yard next door or a person walking their dog on the street beyond the yard, we saw bursts of what looks like uncontrolled excitement. We also saw what looked like fear aggression around other dogs and strangers. Plus, with the benefit of the behaviorist’s insight we now know that Jute was following Lucy’s lead and not ours. We tried various types of training techniques (non-aggressive, reward-based), and although they have improved we just couldn’t seem to get them over the ‘hump.’ We have enough experience with dogs to know that it was US and not the dogs, so we went into the behaviorist asking, “we’re missing something here–what are we doing wrong in communicating with our dogs?”
With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that most of our issues came from Jute following Lucy’s lead most of the time and not ours. This was to be expected since he was brought into a completely foreign setting—except for his sister, Lucy—so it is obvious he would have latched on to Lucy. This manifested itself in numerous negative ways, from barking at rabbits and getting each other hyper-excited, to being overly submissive to her in the yard. It also raised Lucy’s status in her own eyes and she attempted to dominate our dogs, including the occasional foster dog. It was to the point where Jute would not come to us when called from the yard unless Lucy came first, which wasn’t a problem since she has almost always come when called. We always believed it was just that he was overly cautious. It’s amazing to us now that we were so oblivious to this. We were attempting to change their behavior without recognizing the source of that behavior.
Our Sessions
The dog behaviorist is named Peggy Moran. Her website is, dogimprovement.com. Our sessions consist of going to Peggy’s facility and into a ‘living room’ type setting, with Peggy at her desk chair in one corner and Margaret and I sitting in adjacent chairs/sofa, each controlling a dog such that they can’t reach or entertain one another.
- The first thing she noticed was that our Desis are extremely smart. She said most dogs have ‘40W bulbs upstairs,’ but Lucy and Jute had ‘Halogen Lamps.’ This needs to be emphasized—Desi dogs are very, very smart.
- Also, what we thought were signs of ‘fear aggression,’ was not. They are being very cautious of anything new.
- Most importantly, our Desis manipulate us, especially me. This was pretty surprising, but once she showed us what to look for it was obvious. Note that this ties back to how smart they are. And that leads to our overall goal…
- The goal of our training is to get Lucy and Jute to trust our judgment and not try to take control.
Tethering Exercise
The first thing we did was a tethering exercise, where I leashed Lucy and Margaret leashed Jute, restricting them to about 3’ of length, keeping them far enough apart so they couldn’t touch/wrestle each other for entertainment. We were told not to look, touch or talk to the dogs in any way. Then Peggy faced us all and began talking, telling us about her history, experience (41 years), education (anthro-zoologist; the study of the interaction of humans and other animals, in this case, dogs) and her training philosophy (all of it based on positive reinforcement and the science of dog behavior).
Remember, we weren’t allowed to acknowledge them in any way! For the next hour the dogs tried everything to get our attention; pulling, whining, barking, glaring at us, all in an attempt to manipulate us into giving them more freedom. It was startling. Jute lay down after about thirty minutes and would take short naps of about five minutes, but then he would be up and complaining again. Lucy didn’t even sit for the first 45 minutes, and didn’t lie down for nearly an hour. At one point he stopped trying to manipulate Margaret and began barking at me from a few feet across the room. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but remember, we weren’t allowed to command them to stop, touch or even look at them! So at one point I had to ask Peggy, “Is he barking at ME?” And she said, “Oh yeah, it’s really hilarious!” Only after they had calmed themselves by either sitting or lying down were we allowed to slowly stroke their backs. At midway through the second hour they calmed down for good and seemed to finally accept that we were in control. In Peggy’s opinion, they had finally given up trying to control US! It was very, very interesting. She said that I was their ‘easy’ mark, not Margaret. Lucy and Jute weren’t just extremely smart, but manipulative and determined.
After a while we added a short 2-3 minute ‘hunt’ around the room where we picked up various objects, briefly examined them ourselves then held them so that the dogs could smell them. Those were the only times that we interfaced with them, unless they submitted by sitting or lying down after which we gently stroked their backs for a few seconds.
We were told to go home and tether with them for 6 hours a day for the next few days. Six hours was pretty hard to do, but we managed to do 4-5 each day. Yet, they never again showed the resistance that they had in Peggy’s office—not even close. At most, they acted out for four or five minutes.
The tethering represented a significant event for our pack and they have behaved differently ever since by paying more attention to us and responding to our direction. This seems to have been the catalyst for most of the positive behavior changes we have seen in them.
Peggy also instructed us to use the tethering technique whenever we brought a new foster into the house. It would signal to the dog that it should look to us for leadership and not our dogs.
The ‘Down Test.’
We also did a test where one at a time we leashed the dogs to restrict them from moving off, positioned them in front of us, made eye contact and said, ‘Down.’ We said that one word, not repeated, and no touching (like the old push down the butt trick). Then we waited. The dogs went through a predictable series of restless behaviors, which Peggy had described to us in advance, consisting of looking around, whining, putting their backs to us, etc., before finally laying down. Just that single command, never repeated. We immediately rewarded them with a brief back pet and a treat. It took Lucy about twelve minutes and Jute about eight. Peggy said she has had many dogs go past 45 minutes! The point is that even though they knew the command ‘down,’ they weren’t going to do it until they decided to. I asked if this was a Test we were giving them or a Test that they were giving us. Peggy laughed and said, “Yes.” We did it a couple more times and their resistance ended much more quickly after each. Since then, when we tell them ‘down,’ they simply do it.
The Duck-Duck-Duck-Goose Philosophy of Training
This means you keep it simple the first three times training an activity then up the ante on the ‘Goose’ and make the task a little harder. An excellent example is to put a treat in your fist and hold it out beneath their muzzle—but do not open your hand and give it to them until they look up and make eye contact. The treat is the reward. Do this three times (duck-duck-duck), then up the ante by taking it to the next level—in this case we suddenly showed them our open palm, held sideways, and not reward them until they touched it with their nose. That begins your next level of duck-duck-duck-goose. This particular training happens to be the first couple of steps to dealing with somebody at the door—more on that when we’re taught the next four steps (LOL!)
Other Lessons.
Peggy has restricted us to certain actions/words/commands for now. That will expand once the dogs are completely on board in implicitly trusting our guidance.
- Training them to make eye-contact is key to almost everything. Read the duck-duck-duck-goose paragraph again because that’s it!
- The dogs are easily excitable so we do not help get them spun-up by showing excitement ourselves. We are calm when we approach them, and the petting is restricted to the gentle back-pets. That means refrain from the old ‘two-handed-head smush-with-kisses (and you all know what I mean!).
- What few commands we use, we say only once. Say them only once! Do not repeat a command! Once, for all commands! Uno on any command.
- We do not use the word, ‘No.’ We are saving that for the future. Instead we use a can of coins to get them to stop unwanted behavior. The trick with this though is that you DO NOT let them see that you are the source of the sound, so you have to hold it out of sight then drop it or shake it so they do not connect it to you. In fact it helps if you look as startled as they do. That leaves them thinking, wow this horrible sound happens when I put my paws on the counter top so I guess I’ll stop doing that. That way they you don’t have to be there to correct them when they’re doing things out of your sight This really works!
- We say ‘Let’s go,’ when we want them to come or follow, and “Okay,” when they can go off and do what they want, whether it is in the house or in the yard. This is actually kind of tricky, and you have to time it to connect the ‘okay’ with their dashing off. The logic is that you are trying to get them to understand that YOU are the one that releases them to play. At first we tossed toys on the ground then literally walked around the room with a handful of treats and alternately telling them to ‘Lets go!’ then, ‘okay,’ for them to return to their toys—which they obviously did when we took the treats away. Note the subtlety in this—you are trying to make them think that their decision is actually our decision. It can get a little chaotic with two dogs, and you’re jumping around with ‘lets go’ and ‘okay’ trying to predict their movements of coming and going. Our dogs now come on “Let’s go” nearly every time, even if they are in the yard barking like banshees at passing dogs. This might be the most remarkable change so far!
- We are trying to restrict our words of approval to ‘Yes,’ or their names.
- We are very careful not to make a big deal out of negative behavior so as not to frighten them. We don’t want to force them to stop, we want to convince them to stop it.
- We are currently halfway through a six-step process for getting them to stop going crazy when somebody comes to the door, so they’ll be more on that later.
- Next time we will be meeting strange dogs, so more on that later, too.
There is a lot more coming and we can take this training as far as we want, but this has undoubtedly been a major success for us already.
How Jute has changed so far.
The change in Jute has been very dramatic. He now appears to be just a regular, highly socialized dog. He is much more comfortable around the house and shows a healthy level of confidence in dealing with Lucy. He has mostly shifted away from Lucy for leadership, and turned to us. This manifests itself in a dozen ways every day, but mostly it means that he responds fairly promptly to direction. As of now, they come EVERY time they are called in from the yard, even if something else has their attention.
How Lucy has changed so far.
Lucy has been demoted and has mostly returned to the way she was before Jute, which means she is accepting us as leaders again. For the past few months she has been a very sassy girl, finding dozens of small ways to do what she wanted rather than what we wanted, only reinforcing her perceived generalship. Lucy didn’t just stretch the boundaries, she stepped over, around and under them! It was as if she thought everything was okay for her to do unless we had specifically stopped her; “well, sure you told me not to do that, but I thought you meant only that one time, at 8:12 in the morning.” If we didn’t let her out into the yard when she wanted, she would very oddly go and stand beneath the table beside the patio doors to the yard and wait for somebody to open them then dash out. She could stand there like a coiled spring, for a long time. If we made her come out, she would wait until we weren’t looking and go back to beneath her table. Now, she accepts when she is not going to be let out and will frequently just plop down beside us on the sofa. Overall, she is, like Jute, far more comfortable around the house now.