Back to Basics

Nico and Benny Running Hard

Back to Basics

It is now close to two weeks since I first reported on Benny and Nico's debut in the play yard together. Since then things have progressed in all ways: they are learning, I am learning, and no one has gotten into a big fight yet, not even me and my husband Rick!

Well, not quite anyway! Some interesting things have emerged from the work we are doing together with the boys in the yard. Ror a couple of weeks now Nico has been trying to remind me of something he taught me early on in our relationship, but that I seem to forget now and then.

A little bit of back-story is required here to make sense of this. When Nico first came here he was too scared to come in the house at all. I began by carrying him inside, and then sitting on the sofa with him in my arms. Eventually he got to thinking inside the house wasn't so scary a place after all, and was able to walk around, and lie down on the floor like any other dog. But at the least disturbance – someone else coming into the room, a noise somewhere in the house, his first impulse was to take whatever he could get a hold of – – gloves, slippers, the sofa (yes I mean – the sofa!) - and run . If you tried to shut this down by saying “No” in a loud a loud voice as you would to a puppy, or reached out to catch him, he just ran faster while swallowing whole whatever he had grabbed.

We curtailed this behavior initially by simply keeping him on a leash as you would with any puppy. This way, if he took something other than his toys, I could work my way down the leash towards him with the intention of taking the remote or whatever else he'd stolen from his mouth. Unlike a puppy however, he would growl in a way that had to be taken seriously as I approached him. So I started carrying bananas in my pockets. If he took something, instead of approaching him, I would sit down, start peeling and then eat the banana well within his view.

You can see where this is going: the first step was Nico coming close to me, the second was dropping the object so he could take a piece of banana.  I would then cover the object with my foot and evenutally retrieve it. Well, o.k. It didn't quite work like that in the beginning. For Nico the first step was trying to eat the banana with the sofa cushion still in his mouth. But we got past all of that. He is now able to wander around the house loose, without going into panic mode at every little stimulus. But on occasion when the shoplifting urge hits, he will most of the time give up what he steals if I remain calm. 

That's the key though, isn't it? Its a basic principle of training. Every manual says it: “Remain calm.” Excitement on the part of the handler just escalates the animal's excitement and leads to exaggerated behaviors, usually undesirable. The other part is to remember to whom you speak. Benny is a puppy who has never been mistreated in his life. He can handle, “No,” and “no” is a very important part of a puppy's vocabulary. Most dogs can handle a fairly serious “no” without over-reacting, and learn readily what is on and what isn't. But Nico on the other hand is and always will be a damaged dog. He pretty much behaves himself both inside and out of the house now, but when a human shows any aggressive behavior at all, he reverts to panic behaviors, even if he's not really scared..

I have schooled myself,  when Nico steals, to sit down, and say quietly “I love you Nico.” He looks up from his booty, then comes over to see if I'm willing to back that statement with a banana or some other edible sign of affection. If all is to his liking, he will give up his prize with that Malamute smile that says, “Got you!”

The reason why I am revisiting this aspect of Nico's behavioral profile is this: in the play yard, we have been stepping in when the play gets rough with big “no” and pulling Nico back. Then one day, Benny went down with Nico on top, I could not get a hold of Nico right away so started saying very big, very loud No. Then I was able to grab Nico and pull him off, at about the same time I heard growling and squealing.

I reacted immediately to the growling and squealing: I pulled on Nico's collar, and said in a loud voice, “The Puppy is Mine,” and demanded a submissive down. He did it, but I didn't feel good about the whole business.

No one was hurt, Benny was ready to go right back to play, so he wasn't scared. Nico was subdued: he takes correction from me very seriously. And I felt like I'd done something wrong. I found myself wondering if I'd caused the escalation from wrestling to growling. I started reviewing what goes on when the play gets too rough and crazy. I started to see that Nico seems to get more excited when I raised my voice and if I grabbed at him, lunged towards Benny with more intensity. I replayed the incidents in the house when Nico would steal something and all the big “No” did was make him run around in crazy circles, swallowing.

Thunder is sitting beside me as I write this, shaking his head. I'm telling him, Thunder, you have to understand, humans escalate problems between animals is because we get excited too, and anxious.

Thunder says, “Anxiety makes you stupid.” Yes Thunder. But I'm getting it now. Maybe I needed to remember “Nico I love you” in the yard play too. Instead of grabbing and shouting “No,” I ought to try, “Let's go for a walk now.” 

Correction does have its place. After I'd corrected Nico for that last incident which had led to growling and squealing, I could see he was trying not to engage in contact play. But Benny tires of running after Nico, and even more quickly when Nico chases him. Still, both dogs clearly want to play. So I tried throwing a toy into the equation. This looked a lot like throwing a basket ball into a group of young lads about to brawl for want of something to do with their energy! Nico loves to be chased when he has a toy, and once again, the play was on!

Nico doesn't share very well however, and has yet to learn that if he doesn't give up the toy now and again, he'll end up playing alone. Benny, for his part, really wants contact with Nico. Every chance he gets, Benny invites Nico to wrestle with him as no doubt he was accustomed to doing with his litter mates. So Nico found a compromise: Benny wants to wrestle, Nico wrestles, with toy in his mouth! If the puppy insists on jumping on him, Nico grabs a toy and jumps back at Benny without letting go of the toy. This is the funniest thing to see, especially if the toy is the big plastic purple ball, one of Nico's favourites, other than Benny that is! The best game so far is tug-a-war with the rope toy. This game allows Benny to get very close to Nico, while Nico's teeth are firmly fixed in the rope. I take it as a sign of Nico's desire to play that he does not work very hard to pull Benny off his feet and capture the toy. Instead he seems to give him just enough slack to allow him to hold his own, and the game goes on!

Come on Benny: Hold On!

I honestly don't know how long Nico will sustain this “hands-off” kind of play. Benny gets a little more bold with each play session, and clearly wants the contact. Any strategy that relies on distraction to deter a natural behavior eventually wears out, and contact play is very natural to dogs. A couple of times now Nico has let go of the toy, but he is also playing with a lot less force at those times. That tells me that even if the toy falls by the wayside, Nico has become a lot more conscious of the other dog as a playmate, rather simply something to overpower.

Meanwhile Benny grows bigger and stronger every day. Soon he will hold his own with Nico; by then we hope that both Benny and Nico will be so used to each other, the drive to assert status that comes with maturity will be far outweighed by habits of playfulness we are encouraging now.

Nico's hypersensitivity to correction of any sort has brought me to see how to achieve a great deal by gentle means. In the play-yard I am continually reminded of the need. How many of us have escalated dog-dog interaction into dog fights by engaging aggressively ourselves? Of course it can be hard to judge; there are times when you do have to wade in and just shut the whole thing down. If you're lucky you get there before anything bad happens. But upon reflection I have yet to see a time when yelling at a dog-fight already in progress stopped anything. I do not pretend to think that “I love you Nico” is going to stop a fight once it starts. But what Nico is clearly telling me is that if I stay in control of myself, play will likely remain play and there will be no fighting to stop.

Thunder, for his part, asked me to make a correction in this blog. The other day when I was waxing enthusiastic about Nico's excited desire to play with Benny I said Thunder told me to “Stay in control of your dog,” Thunder begs to differ: He says, “No. That's not it at all. You can't control your dog. All you can control is yourself. Think about it.”

Alright Thunder. I'm thinking.  And I'm keeping the bananas ready.