Your Dog Just Growled; Did You Remember to Thank Him?

I have so many amazing clients, and this story is about one of them. Edith is one of those clients that dog trainers dream of having. She has a wonderfully, well-balanced Golden retriever who is a joy to work with. She has taken just about every training class possible and supplemented with private lessons. Lola the dog goes to doggie daycare twice a week to keep up her socialization skills. Lola is also fortunate enough to accompany Edith to work on days when she is not in daycare. Lola is a therapy dog and regularly visits children and the elderly. Despite some health concerns and joint issues (oh goldens!) Lola is pretty much the perfect dog, and Edith is responsible for it.

So, imagine Edith's surprise when last week, Lola growled at a child! After a long day of riding around in the car for work, Edith decided to visit one of her favorite boutiques. Since it was hot outside, she was hesitant to leave Lola in the car, so the boutique owner allowed her to bring the dog inside. Lola was asked to do a sit-stay while Edith looked at an item.

Then, it happened, a child ran up to Lola and jumped on her to give her a hug. Lola then growled at the child, and the child's mom pulled him away. To say that Edith was devastated was an understatement. She called, in tears asking what her next step should be. Should she have an evaluation done on Lola's temperament? Report the incident to someone? Begin a behavior modification plan to desensitize Lola to children? She didn't want her poor dog to be taken away from her or put down!

"No", I said, "you should thank your dog." Edith went silent...

Now, I'm not saying that you should praise a dog for growling at people on a regular basis. But, if you've got a well balanced dog who does not make a habit of overreacting to things, a growl can be a very good thing, and here are 5 reasons why:

5:  A growl may be telling you that something is wrong. In this case, Lola has Bad hips. Her owner and I knew that her hips are sometimes painful after long rides in the car or after heavy exercise. Perhaps this incident exposed something that was painful to or uncomfortable for the dog. As dogs can't articulate this kind of issue, sometimes a vocalization is the only way the dog can get it through to you that something is wrong.

4:  A growl is a signal to you, the dog's owner that he has been pushed beyond his threshold. 8 hours of work+ long ride in the car + hot day + painful joints + screaming child coming at you when you are trying to do something else (hold a sit-stay)= TOO MUCH!!! Oh owners, pay more attention to what you ask of your dog!!!! Don't set them up to fail!

3:  A growl lets you know what areas you need to do more training work. Let's say that your dog has not had much exposure to children holding balloons. But you've noticed that every time your dog sees a child holding a balloon, he gets startled and growls. That's your signal to desensitize your dog to children holding balloons. ASAP!!! Wasn't it nice of your dog to give you that information?

2:  A growl can also tell you that your dog is not a saintly, perfect being that is tolerant of everything...they have bad days, just like us! We hold our dogs to such high standards, don't we? They're supposed to relinquish their toys or food on our whim, heed every command we give with sometimes very little feedback or reward from us, understand all of our body language even though we are entirely different beings, and most of all...never get upset at another person or dog! Seems unrealistic now that you think of it, right? Dogs have bad days, just like people. If you've got a dog who is a good dog, but growled at someone...maybe he's having a bad day. It happens to the best of us after all!

1:  A growl is a growl...your dog did not bite! I see so many clients that say something along the likes of, "He tried to bite me, but I was too fast and got away from him!", to me. My answer to them is always..."He didn't try to bite you, he gave you a warning. If he wanted to bite you, he would have.". And this is true.

So, while none of us would ever like our dear, sweet, dogs to growl, Next time yours does, look at the context of the situation. Remember that growling is often not an act of aggression, it is a form of communication. And if you ever need clarification on what the context of the growl was, don't hesitate to ask your trainer. (And, if you don't have a trainer, I know where you can find a good one...). But, next time your dog growls, remember that he growled, he did not bite, attack, or cross the line. Thank him and remember to be vigilant about where your dog is and who is around him.

The Importance of Proofing Your Sit-Stay...(Or Why Hotels Should Require People Deposits Instead Of Pet Deposits)

 So, here I am, standing in an awful motel, covered in orange juice in rural Virginia.  You can't make this stuff up...

Let me back up for a second and start at the beginning.  My friend, Cindy, and I decided to go to the clicker expo in Nashville, TN to learn some new dog training skills.  As I wanted to bring Uluru, I somehow convinced Cindy to forego her plane ticket for a 12-hour drive to Nashville.  We arrived, exhausted, at the Sheraton in Nashville, where I forked over my credit card.  As the concierge rang it through, she mentioned the non-refundable $75 pet fee that we would incur upon checking in.  My immediate thought was: man, I hope that Uli doesn't get stressed or sick and have diarrhea in the room.  Cindy had an audible thought that made said concierge cock her head much the way a dog would when asked if they would like to go for a walk or a ride in the car; "Do you have to pay a deposit for children too?", Cindy said, "because people are way more likely to mess things up than dogs.". Thinking that she probably just jinxed us and that Uluru would surely puke, have explosive diarrhea, or worse yet, both; I shook my head, grabbed our keys, and we went to the room to settle in.

The next few days were great.  Uli worked well at the conference, I got to be a proud dog trainer with an awesome working dog, we ate good Bar-b-q, learned a lot, and had some good laughs.  And best of all, no diarrhea explosion...phew.

Finally, it was time to go home, back into the car for 12 hours.  We decided to drive for approximately half of the trip, and stop for the night in a hotel.  But the trip was riddled with traffic and we were exhausted, so we stopped at the first pet friendly hotel that we could find...the Days Inn, Abingdon VA. 

Now, this was one of those, Bates Motel-type hotels where all of us have undoubtedly stayed at some point while on a road trip.  The kind where you wear flip flops in the shower and feel things crawling on you in the night.  Uluru immediately started itching when we got into the hotel, and didn't stop scratching until wen left.  But there were beds, and a shower, and we were exhausted, so we crashed. 

So, you are probably wondering, ok, Nicole, tell us about proofing stays...well, here you go.

It was the next morning, around 7:30.  We had our stuff packed in the car, and I was going to walk back to the lobby and hand in our keys.  I took Uluru with me, walked her to the desk, placed her in a sit-stay, and handed the key to the woman working at the desk (in doing so, I'm pretty sure I woke her up).  

I looked over and realized that there was a continental breakfast laid out (well, sort of), and a couple sitting at the only table in the lobby/dining room, eating waffles and talking about whatever folks talk about in rural Virginia.  Uluru was obediently holding her sit-stay.  I decided to grab us a couple of oj's for the road, never fathoming what would come next...

I grabbed two to go cups, filled them with orange juice, and picked up a lid.  I placed the lid over the top of the first cup and pushed down.  And then it happened...in a very Incredible Hulk-type movement, I obliterated the cup.  Oh, yeah, I crushed it.  And there I stood,  in a shower of oj,  juice running down my hands and my jeans, remnants of the crushed cup still in my hand, jaw dropped.  

Not 5 seconds later, probably wondering what was taking so long, Cindy walked into the lobby, dropped her jaw, then burst into a hysterical fit of laughter and yelled, " Napkins!".

We spent the next few minutes frantically sopping up orange juice with crappy paper napkins, wile everyone else in the lobby acted like we weren't there.  It was almost like we were in a time warp.  Nobody moved, offered to help, or even laughed at us.  They just kept on talkin' about fishin', or sleeping behind the desk, or doing whatever!!!  At one point, Cindy asked the desk clerk if she had a mop, and she replied incredulously, "No.". But she did get us a dry washcloth.

We finally had the place cleaned up, and got ready to walk out.  As we were walking out, I looked back, and saw Uluru, still sitting frozen in the place where I had left her about 10 minutes earlier, looking terrified that I would forget to release her from her sit-stay and that she would be doomed to stay in that horrible motel lobby without us.  I looked back and called, "Take A Break", and she left her stay as if we had shot her out of a gun.  As much as I wanted out of there, I stopped for a minute and thought, thank God I practice so much stay!

So, the moral of the story is, always make sure you proof your commands in all kinds of distracting situations.  Sometimes, we get so caught up in teaching fun tricks or challenging behavior sequences that we neglect our foundation obedience.  So take some time today to work on real-life commands like stay and come.  You never know where it may come in handy.

...Oh, and beware the free continental breakfast...