The Dog Whisperer Controversy

Critics of Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, say that he has set the field of dog training back 20 years.  I have finally gotten all the words together to say exactly why I disagree.

Say it ain't so!

After copious, self-directed study of Cesar Millan (okay - I obsessively watched over 100 episodes of his show over a couple months), and reading scholarly articles about ethology and how dogs naturally communicate with each other, I finally found what had been missing in my relationships with my dogs.

I learned how to read their body language and behavior in a way no one else had ever taught me.  I learned how they use their ears, eyes, head angles, multiple tail positions, sounds, and much more in an eloquent symphony of communication. 

You mean how I'm lookin' at you?  Or how 

this young upstart is nosing into my bidness?

Yes, Peanut, exactly like that.

Everything in my home changed.  My dogs became more comfortable with each other.  There was less whining and less barking.  A huge load of guilt lifted off my shoulders because I finally understood Peanut, my "problem" dog, who'd been severely abused as a puppy.

Previously, I had the intuition about trying to act like a dog or think like a dog in order to better communicate with them.  But Cesar (I call him that because he's kinda my imaginary boyfriend) opened up vaults of information for me about understanding and learning to "speak dog".

Previously, I had been a proponent of the non-violent dog training approach.  I didn't want to use physical force to make my puppies do anything.  I refused to be cruel, the way some trainers were.  And when I first saw parts of The Dog Whisperer, I was wary about his use of physicality.

Who could hurt a mug like this?

Fortunately I made it through my apprehension and watched enough to understand the wise and deeply soulful messages.

His critics denounce his use of physical touch and "dominance-based" methods as unnecessary and abusive.  This is the same mentality I had when I got Nonga as a puppy. 

Think I'm cute now?  You shoulda seen me back in the day.

I thought, "I'm a pacifist.  I love animals, especially dogs.  I don't believe in spanking kids.  Why would I ever want to hurt my sweet dog?  I can use positive reinforcement to get the behavior I want out of my dog.  I don't need to resort to negative reinforcement."  I have come to understand several problems with that line of thinking.

It assumes is that the best way to train a dog is to use the psychological tool of operant conditioning.  Operant conditioning works on every species from cockroaches to humans and has been essential to dog training for many years. 

It assumes that we should treat dogs the same way we treat humans.  If I walked up to my friend and tapped her firmly on the neck when she did something I disagreed with, I'd:

          a) be reprimanded by her and others for my inappropriate behavior; and

          b) probably have less friends.

Therefore, I should not do this to my dog. 

Finally, (and this was my a-ha moment the other day) this mentality works from a very western model of understanding animals. Culturally, we have a top-down view of our animals.  We teach and they learn.  We command and they obey.  "We continue to treat animals as if they're separate from and external to us," says Charles Bergman.  It is the distance we hold between us and them that is our biggest problem.  If I really want to be in touch with my dog, I have to change, not him.  I have to learn his world.  In his beautiful book Horse, Follow Closely, Gawani Pony Boy includes this Cheyenne saying, "Listen! Or your tongue will make you deaf."  

Can you hear me Major Tom???

I think that understanding and using operant conditioning is an important part of having a good relationship with your dog.  But I think it is most important to open our minds up to the different level of communication that is already happening between human and dog, or human and horse, or whatever animal you spend time with.  When I talk about dog whispering, or Cesar's methods, or horse whispering, at the core of what I'm saying is:

Listen to your animal.  Learn what she has always been trying to tell you.  Become aware of her body language and energy.  Take responsibility for - and change as needed - your body language, your energy and your frame of mind.

I am happy to be what I call a "pack parent" - halfway between pack leader and dog owner.  Dogs want balance and it is my job to see that we have it.  I set the rules.  I trust them and I respect them.  I give them reason to trust and respect me.  We have order and reliability in our home. Very occasionally I will tap Peanut or Nonga firmly and briefly on the neck to let them know I disagree with their behavior.  They understand this touch because it is what their mothers did with them.  It is not abusive or cruel.  It is always accompanied by loving compassion.  And it is such a small part of the incredible "conversations" we are having every day.  I had to change my point of view, and my behavior, so I could communicate with my dogs better.  It is the best thing I ever did for them... and for me.

amen!

Yummy Lamp

In my blog-hopping, I came across this post at The Painted Hive which shows this great idea for making a lamp base out of a music stand:

Awesome idea, and so well staged.  My house does not look like this.

Cut to last summer.  Some friends were having a multi-family yard sale and there (among a large number of other things I had to take home with me) was my perfectly patina'd, old school music stand.  For $1.  Sigh - diy love....

I knew I could buy a $12 lamp kit to wire my baby up, but I also knew my local ReStore (yes we have a ReStore in my small area!) had tons of electrical parts.

I asked the guy at the ReStore what parts I needed.  (I couldn't be bothered to figure this out on my own, apparently.)  He confidently walked over to the electrical section and then, after a little umming and ahhing, said that I should just buy a used lamp from the home furnishings section of the ReStore.  (...which is really a thrift store.  Does your ReStore have a home furnishings section?)

So, dutifully off I went and found a little boring/borderline ugly lamp for $3.

When I sat down to ravage the little lamp for parts, I found out that it is one of those "touch" lamps, where you can touch the metal to turn it on and off.  Which meant I had to evade some other wiring and set it aside until I come up with a scenario in which I need touch sensitive lighting...  Hmmm...  On the front door knob?  The kitchen faucet?  Oh my, so many ideas...

I won't go through the details of wiring my music stand, because that is sooooo 2011.  A ton of people have documented this already, including Kristine at The Painted Hive.

However she lives in Australia, so I am including this link using North American wiring, by one of my favorite bloggers, Mandi at Vintage Revivals, entitled Lamp Surgery 101.  And while you're there, do yourself a favor and check out her Project Graveyard.  This woman is endlessly creative.

(I've done a hell of a lot of linking in this post, huh?)

ANYway...  once the simple wiring was done, I added a $15 linen drum lampshade and now have this:

See?  Told you my house didn't look like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Also this is a bad phone camera  picture because I could not find my nice awesome camera for the life of me.  So you get the phone shot.  Of course, now that I'm sitting down to write this post, I can see the camera from here.  Sigh. 

I am very happy with my new $20 lamp, which stands about 3-1/2 feet tall.  And I really needed the lighting in the living room.  I thought the gold cord coming out the bottom would bug me, but it really doesn't.  If I change my mind, I might put some pewter Rub 'n' Buff on it.

I think this lamp is a good example of my current ideas about redoing The Red Dollar House.  I want to re-use and update pieces that have age, texture and compelling lines.  And I want to do it on a bargain hunter's budget.



(Extra points if you now know what schuhplattler means...)
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Stuffed Pig...

...not ham, though.

I was working for about a month doing some seamstress work.  My old 60's Singer sewing machine and I got very intimate in that time.  I feel I know her better than ever now.  The machine used to be my mom's; it's built like a brick sh&*house and I love it.

I have been sewing some fun projects lately, including these stinkin' cute stuffed pigs.  My friend feeds my creative obsession by letting me consign my stuff at her store.  Somebody bought one as a Christmas gift.  They paid $15 for it.  I'm a  little surprised, but tickled, too.  Thank you for supporting local businesses!

Phone picture... (not too awful, though - huh?)...

I got the pattern from Martha Stewart:

Naturally, mine doesn't look like Martha Stewart, Inc's.  Frankly, I like mine better.

She is using felted wool sweaters.   I bought what I thought was a wool sweater from the thrift store.  After further inspection at home, turns out it's acrylic.  Not a surprise since I abhor most wool sweaters; I feel like I'm bathing in fiberglass - itchy!  I don't know from wool so well.  But it was only 50 cents, so no big whoop.

I believe the acrylic sweater stretched more, which is why my guys have bigger noses. 

And if anyone has ever read any of the Olivia books, you know that the cutest pigs have giant snouts.

I think Olivia should be required reading.  For everyone.

Plus I embroidered eye and nostril details.  Everyone knows that the cutest pigs have little eyes and nostrils.

Now I'm on a pig-making jag.

I bought a bunch of sweaters, and a velvet-like shirt, at a thrift store.

Cut pieces: tail, left and right sides, ears, round nose, bottom piece.

I wasn't so sure about the velvet-y one as it's harder to see his nose/eyes.  However, my local toy expert, my friend's 7 year old daughter, thought this was by far the best one.  So I gave it to her for Xmas.

One thing I do notice is that the placement of ears and eyes make all the difference in the pig's "expression".

I uploaded the following picture to picnik.com and did some messing around.  (Picnik is a great, free tool to do some things to your photos that you might not be able to do on your computer.  Ah, the interwebs.)

original

after strange, virtual, cosmetic eye surgery

See the difference?  I couldn't adjust the ears, but you can imagine...

I'm having fun, plus it's a great time to catch up on some of my Hulu shows.


Update:
I finished a darker pink pig and took a blurry camera phone pic of it...

My little friend, Julia, gave the pig a scarf :)

Linking to:

and the moon and me

A couple weeks ago, I was driving home from a trip into "town" (a.k.a. the largest city in the county, a.k.a. the place that has stoplights).  A giant, full, buttermilk-colored moon was hanging pendulously above the mountains.  That kind of double-take moon, where you're not sure if it's actually the moon or some gas station sign.


I wanted a photo of it.  Maybe to post it to Facebook, or at least record the moment.  But it's hard to get a photo that captures that grandeur on your smartphone, while sitting at a stoplight (one of the many).

...to the left of the yellow "Payless Shoe Source" sign...

Then the moment was slipping away.  The clouds were starting to hide it and my route was taking me south of it.

Then I became aware of a subtle anxiety about not being able to capture the moment.  About not being able to have a beautiful picture to accurately capture the night, in my fifth month of living here, when that buttermilk moon sat like a gift on the mountain tops.

I don't have a marvelous memory to begin with.  Turns out this is a symptom of ADHD, which normalizes it for me and makes me feel less weird.  I've always valued mementos of my past.  I can go through a box of papers from 1993 and be reminded of a host of things about that year, that had previously been absent from my brain (or at least inaccessible).  So wanting a picture of this moon is understandable.

But that little brow-furrowing moment of anxiety/disappointment/longing was unsettling.  The alternative to logging a photo-documentation of the moment is to BE in the moment.  I have a much more difficult time just being.

RSTS ("Random, Slightly Tangential Stories" aka RSTS, might be a Heidi copyrighted phrase):  Toward the end of my Peace Corps service, I had a French boyfriend who lived in the capital city.  He treated me well, bought me dinners, had his cook make us breakfast, etc., etc.  It was so nice to have someone take care of me after taking care of myself, and trying to take care of others, for nearly two years.  One night we were sitting out by the pool of a big hotel.  It was balmy, we had the place to ourselves, so peaceful.  I felt that itchy feeling of wanting to observe the moment or discuss it.  "It's so beautiful out here, isn't it?"  In his French accent, he replied, "Yez... so maybee you shood jest enjoy eet, instead ov talking about eet."  Ouch.  And yet the most Zen thing he ever said to me.

(Remind me to tell you another RSTS about Celestine in Africa...)

 
So, I tried to just be with the disappearing grandeur of the moon as I drove across my big round valley, back to my red dollar house.  The more I tried to be, the more sad I became.  The more still I got, the more I felt.  I was reflecting on my life here.  And how I probably wouldn't be here if my sister hadn't passed.  And while I'm glad to be here and ready to live here, I still wish she was really alive.  Not just alive sometimes in my dreams, where I have to realize, whether dreaming or waking, that she's dead.  But actually alive again.  And that made me cry.  And feel kinda lousy in my gut.

And then it passed.

Now I've written about it, and read what I've written.  And damn it if this isn't an even better way to capture what the moon gave me that night.  Hmmm...




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Three Uses for a Votive Candle

1) As a candle.  (Duh.)


2) To make squeeky drawers run smoother.  My drawers don't have new-fangled runners - just 60 years of wood on wood.  Google told me to use a candle and it works very nicely.  Even on the drawer I've loaded with 40 pounds of dog food.

3) To test for air drafts.  I don't have new-fangled, state-of-the-art steel door casings with a weatherization rating of one million percent.  I don't even have insulation in my walls.  But I can seal my doors and windows.

No air coming in here.

Oooohhh - breezy here.

 Now all my doors and windows are sealed tight.


Not bad for a 25 cent investment.



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Horses/Dogs

One of the many delightful things I have found in my new life is an equine therapy place.  I am "volunteering" there, which means just hanging out for now.  And mucking some stalls.

The generous land-owners/horse-owners have partnered with some other folks (a therapist, a horsewoman, and others) to create this place for horses to help people and vice-versa.  [For more info on equine therapy, check out PATH Intl and a book called The Tao of Equus.]

The driving philosophy behind this center is the idea of "natural horsemanship".

From what I know so far, it is another ethological approach to animals, as opposed to traditional human-centered and learning theory-oriented techniques of working with them.

My fave, the Dog Whisperer, uses a large amount of ethology in his work.  I define ethology as thinking like the animal instead of thinking like the human; trying to understand how to communicate using their language.  Dr. Doolittle style, if you will.

In my experience, I can learn dog better than they can learn English.  I think at least 80% of the problems that people have with their dogs are due to an unnecessary language barrier.

So, back to horses.  Natural horsemanship appears to take a similar point of view.  [I highly recommend the documentary Buck.  He was the lead adviser for the movie The Horse Whisperer.]  Instead of intimidating or dominating the horse into obeying, one tries to see the horse from a horse's point of view.  There is respect and trust in the relationship.

Today I went and spent some time with the folks at the center - just an afternoon to be with the horses.

I helped bring a 4 year old named Leo in from the field.  He's a dark gray color and so tall that I couldn't reach any higher than the top of his head.  He was super-friendly and let me pet him right away, nuzzling me and basically endearing himself to me.  We had that sweet time like when I'm cuddling with my dogs - relaxed, easy.  Except that Leo is 15 times larger.

I later had the chance to work with him "at liberty", which meant we were in an open space about 300 square feet and he had no rope or bridle on.  The idea for this was to ask him to focus on me and move where I asked him to (without touching him), building trust and deepening our relationship.

It was an AMAZING experience.

First I asked him to move in big circles, using my body language, arms and voice to ask him to go, or stop, or change directions.  I would sometimes ask him to follow me as I backed up.  He wasn't so into that.

But what an incredible feeling to be so present with a horse, watching his eyes, the position of his ears, all his feet, his tail and trying to read him and to communicate with him without English.  I've had some experience riding horses, mostly when I was young, and a lot of it never felt like this.  For the most part, I was never taught to get to know the horse well before I climbed on his back.  (However, what gentleness and attention I did learn came from my father.  He taught me that horses often like to be pet between their eyes, under their jaws, around their ears.  My dad is a gentle man.)

Then, after talking with the owner for a little bit, I took a lower-energy approach.  I went back to just nuzzling with him, letting him sniff my hair and coat, rubbing his ears and between his eyes.  I just stood there and enjoyed him and let him enjoy me - essentially experiencing what felt like love.

Then I moved away from him (off to the side, not directly in front of him)... and he followed.  I backed myself up all over that arena and he just followed me around like a puppy dog.

It was such a rewarding experience.  Leo and I understood each other.  I felt part-horse in that moment and I can hardly wait to experience that honor again.




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The Most Important Thing I Ever Taught My Dogs

I read this training exercise in a book that was named something like "Labs for Dummies".  I did it with my first dog, Nonga, and it worked so well, I did it with Peanut, too.

(*If your dog is food possessive (i.e. growls if you get near him when he's eating) then do not attempt this exercise.)


1.  You're going to do this exercise with your dog at a mealtime two days in a row. If you're dog doesn't eat dry food, then you'll need to substitute some for this exercise.

2.  Serve out the normal amount of food in your dog's dish.

3.  Put the dish in a place where you can keep your dog from getting to it.  You will be feeding dinner to your dog one piece at a time.

4. Place a piece of kibble in your hand.  Close your hand around the treat and say, "leave it," (or whatever word you want).   Keep your hand held out. Your dog may lick at your hand, paw at your hand, nudge you, bark, whimper, cry, beg, throw a tantrum. Do not give up the goods yet.

5. You are waiting for you dog to back off enough that you can offer the kibble on your own terms.  When s/he gives you some space (space=respect), offer the kibble while saying "take it". 

6.  Repeat approximately 150 times or until the bowl is empty.

7.  While doing this, work towards the goal of being able to put the kibble in your open palm and have your dog wait patiently until you tell him/her to "take it".  Eventually, place the bowl in between you and pick the pieces up one by one using the "leave it"/"take it" commands.

8.  To reinforce this for the both of you, repeat again the following day.

9.  At every meal time, ask your dog to sit patiently and "leave it" until you are both calm, then give the command to "take it".  Pack leaders control the food.

10.  As a rule of thumb in operant conditioning, if you are sure your dog will repeat the behavior 80% of the time, you can feel free to try it in a different setting or environment.  Ask her/him to "leave it" with a tasty treat on the floor then to "take it".  Ask him/her to "leave it" with a tennis ball at the park, then "take it".  Etc., etc.  If they fail too many times, go back to the drawing board and start at home again.

(Anecdotal evidence:  I can leave a steak on the floor and my dogs won't touch if I tell them to leave it.  Both dogs - the calm, princely one and the squirrel-y, hyper one - will lie down and let me put a treat (or piece of steak) on top of each paw and will not touch it until I tell them to "take it".  Though I like to think they are supremely talented canines, any dog can do it.)

they don't understand the torture, they just obey it

close-up showing the medium-rare steak