I hope you had a great summer!
I will be posting when I can … when I have a good idea for a post …
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As the weather warmed up in fits and starts, I decided that Orly was finally mature enough to get to use her dog door.
Past attempts to allow her to let herself in and out ran into obstacles, primarily a golden-retriever-shaped obstacle named Dotty, who was nowhere near door-ready when she was living here. Other obstacles include tendencies to bark at goings-on in the alley, a compulsion to enthusiastically greet doggy friends (Taco to the east and Cecil and Hans to the west). These have diminished but not disappeared. The habit of digging large holes in the yard, though, seems to have moved along… right around when Dotty did. It’s just not as much fun alone, apparently.
This column also encountered an unfortunate bump: It was meant to be an homage to Merle’s Door, a wonderful book about what the author learned about dog intelligence, social lives, problem solving and more, once his dog, Merle, was granted his own door. Merle developed an extensive community and social life, as his door allowed access to a rural area of large open spaces, dog-friendly neighbors, and a wonderful absence of fences and traffic. This post was also meant to link to my review of the book and encourage you all to read both. The problem? It seems that I never actually reviewed the book. Stay tuned. That link might still appear.
Unlike Merle, Orly lives in a fairly urban setting, with a lot of traffic, houses fairly close together, and, therefore, fences. Her door opens to a large fenced yard equipped with sad brown grass, many plants and flowers, a deck for sunning oneself, and a dedicated doggy digging pit. Sometimes there’s a dog pool or splash pad, too. It’s not too shabby as urban dog homes go.
In addition to all of the above, Orly’s door grants her access to her preferred water bowl (the large metal one that lives on the deck all summer), her favorite sunny spots, and the ability to come and go as she pleases, without waiting for the human (who is often sitting upstairs, working at a computer) to notice her “magic sit” requesting doorperson services.
But, as most things with Orly are, this turned out to be less than straightforward.
She does love the door. She sometimes goes in and out, over and over, just because it’s fun. I often go downstairs on a break between meetings to find her stretched out in the grass or on the deck.
But.
As I discovered when trying to get Orly to use a doorbell, Orly appreciates good service — even more than she appreciates freedom. As she sees it, my most important job is waiting on her. She never did take to the doorbell.
Besides, she likes the cachet of living in a building with a doorperson. She will stand by the door and look meaningfully at me. I might say, go ahead; you have agency. You want to go out? Go out!
Unmoved, she continues to give me that look.
Anyone with a golden (or maybe any dog) knows that look. She might nudge me, then go back to sit by the door. There is nothing wrong with her communication skills; she’s crystal clear. She knows she can let herself out; she knows how; she just prefers to be waited on.
Similarly, when she’s ready to come in, she’ll peer through the windows next to the door, press her nose against the door, sometimes even poke her nose through the dog door to give a disdainful snuff, but … right. She stays outside, waiting for me to open the door and let her in.
I’ll re-read Merle’s Door. Maybe I missed the part about teaching your dog to appreciate her privilege and freedom.
The Thinking Dog is taking a break from regular posting. New posts will appear … whenever Orly or Pam has something to tell you about!
We’re hoping to spend more time outside and less time with our screens. We hope that you get outside and enjoy your summer too!
It seemed like a good idea at the time. And, to be fair, it was, for a while (and with a different dog).
The idea was to teach Cali not to react to fence-fighting, barking, or just plain rude dogs when we passed them on walks. We started with dogs in yards, but eventually were able to walk past reactive dogs on leashes. Cali remained calm and collected. And as soon as we were past, she’d pause and look at me expectantly. Because the reason she refrained from responding to the rude dogs was that she got a treat and a lot of praise.
Cali and I had several routes we’d choose from for our morning and afternoon walks, many of which included yards with rude dogs. I noticed that she started eagerly looking for the dogs as we approached. So far so good.
Then we got Orly. Cali and I taught Orly the drill. I made sure to have plenty of treats when we left for walks, though they were willing to wait until we got home to be paid, if I made it worth their while (better treats and more of them).
We lost Cali to hemangiosarcoma when Orly was just over a year old. In the two-plus years since, Orly has matured into a smart, silly, thoughtful, and very resourceful dog. And, she’s engineered our walks, slowly, over time, to to the point where I am not sure who’s leading whom on these walks and other adventures (although I always drive).
I often let the dog choose which route we walk, primarily because walks are their time and their opportunity to experience new smells and catch up on neighborhood news.
A while ago, I noticed that Orly consistently chose the routes with the largest number of rude dogs. She’d peer ahead to see whether Milo and his brothers were out in the yard before deciding whether to go left or right at one corner, for example.
Gradually, I noticed that she liked taking detours from our usual routes. And that these detours always took us past yards with dogs in them.
She started to prefer turning into the alley after we said hi to George (a friendly, not at all rude, golden who is something of a neighborhood mascot. Or prince.) rather than continuing down the hill into the park. It only slowly dawned on me that there were not one but two rude-dog opportunities on the alley route that were not on the park route.
Then one day, I noticed her pulling toward the fence each time we passed one particular yard. It’s a typical 6-foot privacy fence, solid boards, maybe 4 inches of ground clearance under which we often see the nose and/or feet of a little terrier. A terrier who generally ignores us… unless Orly’s nose or feet are visible. Then, the dog would bark, Orly would not, and …
The terrier was no slouch, and soon learned to ignore Orly, so Orly upped the ante, bumping the fence or whining a bit. I was a little slow to catch on, assuming she was just excited — the terrier lives next door to the house with the treat hydrant. (Yes, more proof, for anyone who still needs it, that dogs are smarter than their humans.)
But no (duh!) Orly was doing her best to cause the other dog to react so that she could get a treat. Someone must have taught Orly about back-chaining, a technique to teach dogs (and humans) to perform a series of actions to earn a reward.
I did finally figure out her game.
Mostly I am impressed with the creativity and thought behind Orly’s conniving.
But when we merely pass a dog on a walk with her human, or a calm, relaxed dog in his yard, and she turns expectantly to demand payment, I find myself annoyed. I feel used. Is she a doggy mafia don demanding her due? Is our entire relationship transactional?
But then we get home and she cuddles up to me with a contented sigh … and no, I don’t want your thoughts on how she’s manipulating me in those moments, too. Just go cuddle your dog.
With my first stint as a puppy raiser recently ended, I read this article from a new perspective: Sit, Stay, Say Goodbye.
Puppy raising is hard work. That’s partly because raising any puppy is hard work! But knowing you will not enjoy the payoff — a well-behaved adult dog friend — makes it harder. Having to work through fears or bad habits that you can (and do) let slide in your own dogs makes it harder. Feeling the pressure to get the puppy out, get her ‘experience’ in all kinds of situations — without doing something that screws up her future — makes it harder.
That’s why I am in awe of the family in the article. A family that raises multiple service dog puppies at a time. And has raised 17(!!!) puppies so far.
They are puppy raisers for Warrior Canine Connection, an organization started by my friend Rick Yount. They place service dogs with veterans.
The ideal puppy raiser might be … you. The NYT article profiles the awesome couple, both retired. And a family with 3 young kids and a pet dog. (Having done it solo, I do think having a backup person is a good idea.) A service dog puppy fits in well with a busy life; in many states, a service dog in training can accompany her humans anywhere a working service dog can — grocery stores, malls, the airport, museums, kids’ school sports events, etc.
If you’re in/near Missoula, Montana, or Northern California, you can puppy raise for Dotty’s school. If you’re in the eastern or southeastern US, you could raise a puppy for Hildy, Koala, and Alberta’s school (Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York state). Wherever you live, a local, regional, or national program might be looking for dog-loving volunteers.
Continuing the theme of working dogs … here’s a compelling story, one which might raise lots of difficult questions for you, as it did for me.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard that DOGE had cut funding to my favorite federal employees — the dogs.
The truth is a little more nuanced than that. According to Snopes, what happened was a 30-day freeze on credit-card purchases as well as a freeze on requests related to care of TSA’s bomb-sniffing the dogs.
As Orly commented, that’s semantics. No Money = No Food. No food? No work.
Orly’s not wrong, but I doubt it will come to that. I am sure that the dogs’ handlers will continue to feed them… but it did get me thinking. As I returned from a recent trip abroad, I did not see a single TSA dog.
I did see a tiny beagle, proudly wearing her green USDA jacket, hard at work “Protecting American Agriculture.” She looked well fed.
She took her job very seriously, standing on her tiptoes to sniff at the backpack I was wearing. Detecting no contraband she walked on, sniffing at suitcases, carry-ons, and people’s purses …
When she reached an elderly woman with an enormous pink purse, the beagle paused. She sniffed. The purse was resting on the floor, and this dedicated federal worker took another careful sniff. Then slowly turned to face her handler and sat, making steady eye contact with her human.
Busted!
My suitcase arrived so I did not see whether the owner of the pink purse was hustled off in handcuffs.
In all seriousness, the dogs, whether at TSA, USDA, or another federal agency, do important work. And I admire all working dogs, regardless of their career choice.
An Immense World is neither a new book nor a dog book, but I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to share it!
Ed Yong’s second book, subtitled “How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us,” references philosopher Thomas Nagel’s essay, “What is it like to be a bat?” — then goes on to explore the Umwelt or “perceptual experience” of a being, whether human or not.
Spoiler alert: You won’t learn what it’s like to be a bat from this book. Or a dog, moth, dolphin, mole, or any other creature. You will explore the many-more-than 5 senses that various creatures use to perceive, navigate, and understand their worlds.
You won’t learn what it’s like to be a bat because you can’t!
Bats, and most other creatures have senses that are so astonishingly different from humans’ few, limited means of perceiving our environments that even with a deep scientific understanding of how those senses work, we still can’t imagine or experience the world as their owners do.
There is a lot of science in this book, as well as in the copious footnotes — worth reading; some are really funny! — the 44-page bibliography, and the endnotes. Whew. It did take me more than a month to read the book, though it’s only got 355 pages of actual content. I needed time to digest each sense (each chapter) before moving on to the next. And it’s not exactly light bedtime reading!
My favorite chapter may well be the one on echolocation (humans can acquire this skill!)… or maybe the one on color. Some insects and birds can see whole other dimensions of color that human eyes cannot perceive, literally millions of additional colors.
Yong explores the ways other creatures experience the senses we humans do have, then delves into senses we do not, such as the ability to use echoes and sound to see, or sense magnetic or electric fields and use them to map and navigate our environment.
A thread that runs through the book — and which has always driven my curiosity about dogs — is that our ability to even ask the questions that prompt us to study other animals’ abilities and behavior are limited by our own experience. Which is limited by our senses, perceptions — and willingness to consider that other creatures can do amazing things that we humans cannot.
Dogs’ phenomenal ability to detect and distinguish scents gets some attention, as does a discussion of how dogs perceive color. But no one creature is the star of this book. You’ll encounter familiar and bizarre animals and learn all sorts of interesting, if not terribly useful information: For example, the description of the inky-footprint test used to help determine that European robins know to migrate southwest in the fall using their ability to detect the Earth’s magnetic field is a great story … but a bit complicated for a cocktail-party chat.
If you’re a science nerd who loves animals, don’t miss this book.
The Thinking Dog blog is thrilled to share a guest post from Guiding Eyes Hildy.
Dear fellow Thinking Dogs:
I now know where antlers come from. Like you, for years I’ve been happy to live with the illusion that all dog toys come in boxes from Amazon or Chewy.com. Now I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I thought purple stuffed bears and fabric cows with long stretchy necks were born that way.
Last month, a fellow canine researcher and I were so deluded about the connection between dog toys and once living beings that we spent a whole afternoon dissecting what my human called “Oscar the octopus,” in an unsuccessful search for his missing two legs. We proved beyond a doubt that Oscar was a hexapus through and through. I began to question what I had been told: only the best animals get reincarnated into dog toys.
The magical moment occurred while walking with Kent, a human friend, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Snow was still piled high to require athletic leaps so that I didn’t disappear forever inside a snow drift. I was in the middle of an airborne spin when I spied…an antler. Right there, sticking out of the snow.
I know that antlers are the most coveted dog toys. The few times my partner, Deni, offered me an antler freshly peeled out of its plastic wrapping, she made a big deal about how expensive they are and how lucky I was to have one. I made sure to leave it in the hallway where Deni was likely to step on it and truly appreciate how often I gnawed it in gratitude.
Back in the woods, I grabbed my treasure before Kent could object. I was right. It was an antler. I was wrong in thinking I could pluck it off the ground and keep up with our walk. When I pulled, I found that the antler was stuck like glue on a head that was mostly skeleton with some decorative fur patches. “What demented human could have fashioned such a thing?” I wondered. I thought antlers grew on trees like other branch-like appendages.
I looked to Kent for guidance. He soon brushed snow away and shook the skeleton loose from where it had frozen to the forest floor. “You found a dead deer,” he said with pride. “A two-point buck.” Realizing that the antler I found along with its mate were securely attached to the deer’s head, Kent said, “Let’s come back with a saw..”
A few strokes with the saw and both antlers were safely in Kent’s pocket for the walk home. I was eager to taste a just-picked antler, but that was not to be. While Kent was sawing, Deni was researching how to make antlers safe for dogs. The antlers first swam in warm soapy stew, then danced in boiling water, then spent the night drying out on the top of the wood stove.
When I was given the choice of which antler I wanted first, I was pleased to find that both antlers retained enough of their wild animal smell for me to remember the moment I found them. I was glad to learn that deer shed their antlers and then hide them in the forest for adventuresome dogs to find. When I return to Florida, I plan to keep watch on the lemon tree. Along with sour fruit, I am convinced that it also grows and drops yellow tennis balls.
Guiding Eyes Hildy
Once Orly finally got her wish for snow, lots and lots of snow, well… she doesn’t seem to be able to (or want to) turn it off.
We’ve had alternating periods of huge amounts of snow and bitter cold. “Too cold to snow” is definitely a “thing,” but not one that I enjoy, despite the welcome break from multiple-times-daily clearing the deck and front walks of snow.
To be fair, we’re getting a lot of that lovely, powdery dry snow that is lightweight and easy to shovel, sweep, or snowblow out of the way. But there’s a LOT of it. Several inches in the last few hours alone.
Orly is equally delighted with the 10th massive snowfall as the first. I, on the other hand, have had my fill. And then some.
She still does her thing of sniffing under the snow with her entire head under the snow. She runs and rolls and jumps. This weekend, she also chases and is chased by her buddy Cruiser, a high-energy Weimaraner about her age.
She especially enjoys playing in the deep snow of our front yard while I shovel…
What she does not like? When we go inside, I attack her with a towel to remove the snow she has carried in on her back and dry her off a bit. I’m not sure that she understands that it will melt anyhow…
