DOG PARK SERIES

This is a collection of emails announcing my Dog Park Series to students and friends followed by posts describing each one in the series.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

JOEY AND TAG, 4/23/05

Joey and Tag – 4/23/05 - by Megan Cruz (with comments in color by Helix)

Since we are in-between Dog Park Series, Helix offered an opportunity for some one-on-one time with Joey and Tag.

Present were: Joey, 12.5 month intact male Beardie
Tag, 15.5 month intact male Airedale
BJ, 10 yr. old Havanese, good teacher and dog with _Presence_!

Helix: In hindsight I realized that I should have taken BJ out of
the picture. Actually I really didn't "need" him there at all. I'm so used
to depending on him for teaching that it didn't occur to me ahead of time
that we really didn't *want* him teaching, we wanted to work on human
intervention. BJ kept trying to split the youngsters and I had to interrupt his completely appropriate splitting because we really didn't want it at that moment! After we got going, I didn't want to take him in because I only wanted to walk all the way into the house once (my ailing knee). Oh well, we'll know that for next time we do this.

These two have a bit of history, since we discovered Tag’s play-skills deficit in his first interaction with Joey. Tag is very stimulated by Joey’s running style of play. When things heat up, Joey will try to signal a slow down/stop by doing a submissive-type down. This stimulates Tag even further, so that he is unable to read Joey’s signal, and instead gets stuck in a rut where he is pushing Joey down, not allowing him to move. Joey continues to submit, Tag continues to escalate, and we have a bad cycle going (although we don’t allow it to continue!) Joey in particular has very successful play history with other dogs, and while we have noted Tag’s play-skill deficit, he has done well with good teacher/good player dogs, has been able to respond appropriately to their signals, and has engaged in successful play with other (neutered/and or female) adolescent dogs. Joey is the only intact male Tag has interacted with as an adolescent.

Our hope for today was to see if we could get these guys to slow down enough to actually see each other’s signals, and work on responding to them in more appropriate ways; a stretch of their skills, since they each have such very different play styles and approaches!

Joey and BJ were in the play area when I brought Tag in. I took Tag some distance away and had him do a couple of “watch”, sits and downs, while Helix kept Joey on leash next to her. We let both boys off-leash. They ran towards each other and whoops! a little too much too soon. Joey did his down, and Tag was right on him. I used the interrupter here, and though I did have to physically move Tag from Joey, he was able to come right with me without resistance. We need to work out a plan for “low-key” greeting for these two.

When Tag was released, he went right to Joey, who rolled on his back and spread his legs to invite sniffing/greeting. This went well; Joey let Tag do quite a bit of sniffing. He started to squirm around a bit, Tag started to “rise” on his toes a bit (a precursor to him about to tip into a rut), but turned his head and sniffed the grass instead – lots of praise for Tag! Joey popped up and decided to invite some chasing, which triggered the submit-push-interrupter cycle again.

At this point, both dogs started doing a lot of ground-sniffing, greeting the humans, marking (Tag), etc. They would occasionally approach each other; Joey would roll on his back and invite sniffing/greeting. Twice I saw Tag’s precursors, and used the interrupter, but he was able to interrupt himself after that.

Helix: Joey has a tendency to go in and out between the legs of the humans. When he isn't sure about Tag, he'll come to a human and push between their legs. Megan and I realized that, when Joey did this, he didn't have room to give a clear down-with-open-body. When he couldn't do that, then he would panic and do a panic-close-body. We then had all humans step away from Joey when he started coming between our legs so he had enough space to do an open-down.

Joey tried once more to initiate a chase game, but poor guy; Tag tipped over into a play-rut again.

Joey then chose to hang out in the carport area with Joe and Bryn (humans) while Tag tried “testing” BJ a bit, apparently trying to see just how much familiarity BJ would permit – NOT much! Tag went off to explore the perimeter of the yard. Joey followed him, but stayed several yards away, then sat in the middle of the play yard watching him. He clearly wanted to interact with Tag, but he had learned starting a chase game didn’t work! We could really see him trying to work it out, getting up to make an approach, then sitting back down.

Helix: Really! This was endearing. And good for Joey for realizing what he was doing to initiate play wasn't working!

It started raining pretty hard, so humans and dogs all headed under cover, fairly close quarters. Joey and Tag were doing really well. Joey would sometimes do his rolling over/inviting sniffing, and would sometimes partially hide a bit behind someone’s legs and sniff Tag while Tag sniffed him. We started to see some nice head turns and calming signals from both dogs, with Joey gaining more confidence and Tag respecting Joey’s space.

Helix: Joey was squashed up against Megan's legs at one point. I was just about to ask her to move a little so Joey had room to do his down when Tag came over. Joey flopped over in a down still compressed against Megan's legs. He had to really work hard to get into the belly exposed posture. I was particularly impressed that he took the time to make it work rather than panic and do a curled up down. While these things may not seem so magnificent when you just read the narrative of them, for Megan and I, they were very exciting! The adaptations each dog was doing in order to figure out how to relate to the other were very subtle but very cool to watch!! Joey worked hard to get the right signal here and I was really pleased to see that.

They started making brief forays into the yard together, short distances from the carport area, just sniffing things together, then returning to the covered area to mill around and get pets and treats from the humans. They engaged in some mutual rear-end sniffing, with Joey remaining standing, in flank-to-flank position. This was a great step for Joey! (rather than rolling over, etc.) They then made a slightly longer yard-foray, to sniff around a tree. Then they came running back! Not an all-out run, but a slower, more “relaxed” run. Joey stopped in a down position, but did not roll over, and Tag stopped, hovered, and turned his head. No play-rut, no escalation. This was very exciting to see! A little later, Tag offered Joey a small play bow and some rather stiff play invitation behavior. This was very brief, and Joey didn’t take him up on it (kudos to Joey – they made good progress today, but they’re definitely not ready to run around the yard together! ;0) but it was another really nice positive step for these two! The session had lasted a little over an hour by this time, so we decided this was a good stopping point.

Helix: It could easily be argued that these two are intact adolescents (both scheduled for neutering at 18 months of age) and that they are not a good match for real dog play so let's just not have them together until after they are neutered. And that would be a good conclusion. But Megan and I are both intensely curious about how dogs (particularly adolescents) might be helped with the right dog intervention and/or the right human intervention. So we're willing to experiment and see what we can learn and what the dogs can learn. And we are both wanting to take these young guys to a level where they can learn to adapt their play styles to that of other dogs. Who knows? Tag and Joey might be our future Scout and Daisy!!!

It was so awesome to see the progress these two made with each other – especially Joey, and the way he was able to adjust his bouncy-chasey (and really adorable! :0) Beardie-style play into an approach that allowed him to interact successfully with Tag’s very different style. For Tag, I was especially excited to see his little play-solicitation towards Joey – he accepts invitations to play from other dogs, but I really can’t recall him soliciting play from another dog since he left puppyhood!

Helix: As Megan said they worked on this for over an hour! It was apparent that it would take much longer for them to work out a way to play with each other. Joey really needed to learn that he could signal to Tag and that Tag would respond to those signals. And he really really needed to learn that whipping right into a game of chase was not going to work with Tag.

To paraphrase a comment from Helix, it’s sad to think these are two dogs who, in a play-group together , could have been dismissed as too “fearful” or “lacking in confidence” (Joey) and too “aggressive/dominant” (Tag) to play with other dogs; with just a bit of guidance, they made some real steps forward. How many young dogs out there just need a bit of guidance, and an opportunity to learn and practice good dog/dog communication skills? I’m so grateful Helix is offering these opportunities for these young dogs, and for people, too, to learn from dog/dog interaction! (A big thank-you, too, to those of you who bring your awesome teacher/player dogs, who do such a great job with our clueless adolescents! ;0)

Helix: I really appreciate Megan and family for driving all the way down from Milwaukie to work on this. It was very good for Joey too. A new Just Because rule: Just Because a dog seems to want to play doesn't mean he wants to run in big circles. Your task, Mr. Joey, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out a good game for Tag and Joey.

Helix: I had another idea for Joey when we get them together again.
This might be way too much meddling but I think it's worth a try. When Tag
approaches Joey (good or bad approach, doesn't matter), I would cue him to
down. This would be a nice upright down (trained down) rather than a
submissive/appeasement down. The goal would be to see if he can learn to
deflect by dropping into an upright down like Daisy does. The idea would
be to see if Joey can learn that doing this type of down communicates something to the other
dog too. Joey and Daisy had a play session a week or so ago in which she really really worked hard to get Joey to lay down to play with her. I think more of those lessons from Daisy will help too. And Joey will be spending a few days at Daisy's house soon too. Oh boy!!!


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