Happy Halloween!

We carved pumpkins this weekend! Check them out!

Bark and Lunge

Last night, Crystal and I went to the first class of a six part series for dogs that bark and lunge. Sonoma has, over the years, not reacted wonderfully to other dogs in an on-leash situation, especially small, white, fluffy dogs. She tends to pull on leash anyway, but with the added stress of meeting another dog, she tends to, well, misbehave. So we’ve done a lot of research on how to fix this behavior and have really tried a lot of different approaches. Our hopes were that taking this “Bark and Lunge” class (which, mind you, is way up 101 in San Mateo at 6:30 on Thursdays) would expose us to really solid techniques to change her behavior. After the first class, we aren’t so sure we’ll get what we need.

See, the problem is this. You can read books, attend classes, watch DVD’s and so forth, all geared towards helping your dog’s reactivity. And believe me, we’ve done all that. But the methods taught in these arenas are simply ways to distract your dog to avoid having an over-threshold reaction in a certain social situation. For example, let’s say your dog is fearful of skateboards. You’re walking her down the sidewalk and you see some kid on a skateboard coming your way, off in the distance. You use this time to prepare a treat or reward of some sort, and distract the dog as the skateboarder goes by. This distraction essentially forces the dog’s attention away from the scary skateboard and onto the delicious treat. But the skateboard is still scary! The dog still doesn’t know what to do when a scary skateboard is coming, and still doesn’t know what the best behavior is in an encounter with a skateboard.

We need a class that gets to the root cause of the issue. I’m an engineer, and part of my work is to find corrections AND corrective actions to problems. There’s an important difference between the two. A correction is a way to fix a symptom of a problem. If your dog is fearful of skateboards, a treat in the face will distract the dog from turning that fear into barking and lunging. A corrective action is a way to fix the root cause of the problem. The root cause in this case is the fear of the skateboard. People with dogs that bark and lunge need to learn to fix the psychology of the dog, the root cause. And unfortunately, this class at the Peninsula Humane Society is only adding to or (at this point) refining our toolsets for dealing in corrections. There’s an actual business opportunity out there to provide a class where you address the root cause of the fear and practice techniques to change the dog’s internal wiring. There’s Behavior Adjustment Training (or BAT) where you can teach the dog how to release their own stress by giving themselves space between the trigger (the skateboarder in this case) and themselves. They learn to keep themselves below threshold, instead of the handler forcing them to stay under threshold. Either way, the result is a calm, nice dog that’s not creating a scene on the public sidewalk, but the difference is the dog internally is feeling better and less stressed. The dog’s learning to cope with scary situations and could even possibly transfer the techniques to other triggers (bikes, cars, small fluffy white dogs).

We’ll see where this class goes. After all, it’s only been one class out of six (and the first was without the dogs present). We’re hopeful that the discussion starts to take a turn towards science and behavior modification, but using the first class as a baseline, the content is “fluff”. Otherwise, Crystal and I have been self-educating. We’ll fix Sonoma’s barking and lunging once and for all. As we do this, we’re becoming well equipped to help anyone else who’s finding themselves in a similar situation. And if we’ve learned anything from these other classes and books, it’s that we’re not alone.

Volunteering at HSSV

Crystal and I recently started volunteering at the local Humane Society of Silicon Valley. There’s an incredible amount of training you have to do just to become a “Cuddler”, and that’s the level we’re at. Once we’ve put in 10 hours of cuddling, and passed the test (yes, a written test) we can become a “Dog Walker” and we’re allowed to take the dogs outside on leash! Anyway, the road is long to get fully trained, but here’s a picture of the dog we got to play with at our training on Tuesday. I already forget her name. She was so gentle with her mouth when taking treats from our hands. Perfect behavior for a pitbul.

I’ll put up more photos and talk about the training and volunteering experience in later posts.

My New Tool

During our visit to Cayman Brac in March, we did occasional hiking around the island to see what there was to discover. We saw lots of cool birds, terrain, a lighthouse, and amazing views off cliffs that just dropped off into the sea 1000 feet below. As we were walking along one particular day, I found a machete lying on the ground, and telling by its condition, it seemed to have been there a while. I picked it up and the thing was pretty heavy. Tip to tip, I’d say this sucker was at least three feet long, with a sturdy plastic handle. The blade was rusted pretty heavily towards the tip, and spotted throughout the rest. I gave it a few swings and the whole thing was so long and heavy the momentum was hard to control. After a few swings, it was obvious someone could remove toes – or worse! – with this tool if they weren’t too careful about both the speed and direction of their swings. (Maybe that’s what happened with the last owner and he abandoned the thing as he hobbled away for medical treatment.)

Anyway, I carried my “new” tool back to the car and showed off my new finding to Crystal and her parents. Obviously Crystal’s dad showed great interest in the find. He brings a machete on vacations like this to cut open coconuts, chop down bamboo, or whatever else may need to be hacked apart – you never know. He offered to take the machete back to the states and repair the metal as well as sharpen the blade. I figured it would be a good idea since I probably wouldn’t use it in its current state.

So skip ahead a few months, 7 actually, to this Wednesday when the mailman came by as I was leaving home to go back to work after lunch. He was carrying a long thin cardboard package addressed to me and couldn’t fit it in the box. Seeing it was from Crystal’s dad, I went in an opened it up. I pulled out a nice thick, black nylon sheath that obviously contained my machete. I undid the Velcro strap, grabbed the plastic handle and carefully pulled out the blade. If I know anything about Crystal’s dad at this point, it’s that something like this will have a SHARP blade. Sure enough, out pulls a beautiful, shiny, polished blade with a razor sharp edge.

He did really great work - it looks impressive. And the one detail you're not able to make out in that photo, he had it engraved to mark the memorable event that took place while we vacationed on Cayman Brac.

The blade is a bit shorter than it was originally (about 2 and a half feet now, total length) where a lot of the rust was removed, which will ultimately result in more accurate swings (and fewer missing toes). The unit as a whole is balanced nicely around the handle and the shorter blade lends to a lighter overall assembly. Of course I took it outside and quickly removed a few suckers from the lemon tree. It was like a hot knife through butter. I’m excited to bring it on our next tropical or camping vacation!