jetcitywoman

Welcome! He is a cutie, not just the adorable ears, but those slanted eyes! Handsome boy!

Greyhounds are opinionated and often refuse to do things they don't want to. You can try to motivate him with really stinky treats like banana slices, precooked chicken, etc. It's also possible in the agility class you're pushing him too far too fast. Can you let him rest for 10 - 15 minutes when he shuts down, or is there a time limit on the class sessions? Remember that agility looks purely physical to us, but there actually is quite a lot of mental work involved for the dogs.

No kidding about the man-handling part. Capri's one of those bomb-proof dogs, my meet and greet girl. I can touch her anywhere. We brush her teeth with her lying on her side on the floor, because she fusses in any other position. So in order to brush the other side, we had to flip her over. We did this for about four months just fine, no complaints. Then suddenly she got growly and snappy when we tried to flip her. So then I knew it was time to learn "roll over".

Great! I've done the cookie under a cup game too. I've also put treats under an upside-down laundry basket which feels almost like tormenting Capri. She does get it after only a minute or two. But being able to see the treat and not get to it makes her crazy.

Update please! Here's one from Capri: I got her the Dog Casino for her birthday in April. The Casino is one of the highest challenge puzzles, but as with them all, you break the challenge down into small steps that the dog can master easily. The Casino has drawers all around the sides, and pegs in the top that lock the drawers closed. So in order to solve the whole puzzle, the dog has to pull out a bone peg and then open the drawer, and work his way around the whole puzzle until he gets all the treats. I started easy by putting the bone pegs aside for a few weeks and just working with the drawers. Then we played with the bone pegs and not the drawers. Now we do both, but she still has to be prompted because she still doesn't understand the locking cause-and-effect thing. It's very fun for both of us, though. When she gets really enthusiastic, she'll start pulling out all the bone pegs even when they don't have treats under them. I try to put them back in and she pulls them out again. We can go for a few minutes like that, even longer if I manage to get a treat under every third or so bone peg!

Also, if in doubt, dogs LOVE puzzles! They do have to be supervised, and in some cases work the puzzle with their human. But I have a few for Capri and she LOVES them. Here is what we have: Dizzy Ball - a black and yellow hollow ball with a very small hole and a weight. The weight is only one one side and prevents the ball from rolling evenly (it's also slightly flattened on top and bottom). The hole is very small and angled sort of to one side. The angle of the hole and the weight/flattened sides provide additional challenge to the dog for getting the treats out. Only use dry kibble because you can't open this for cleaning, and don't put in anything that won't easily fall out by shaking the ball. Capri chases hers all around the house until it's empty. We also LOVE the Nina Ottoson dog puzzles. You must play these WITH your dog, teaching him step by step how to solve the puzzle. They also have increasing levels of challenge, so the dogs take years to get bored with them, if ever. Your dog will learn how to slide covers off compartments, pull pegs out of holes, open tiny drawers, etc. We have the Dog Brick and the Dog Casino. Capri gets so into the Dog Casino that she'll pull out all the bones (the pegs in holes that lock the drawers shut) even if there are no treats under them. When she really gets into it, she'll pull them out as I'm trying to put them back in until I fall over giggling.

I think we all do what we each feel is best to reduce pain and suffering of the world's animals. It IS hard to stop it completely because the world is just a brutal place. But we can definitely do what we can, whether it's being an ethical Vegan like Merlinsmum, or trying to stop blatant sadism in our food chain like Temple Grandin.

Animals that are so bored they get frustrated start showing behaviors like chewing on inappropriate things, walking in circles, pacing, etc. Of course that's at the extreme end. They may be occasionally a little bored, but aren't we all at one time or another? But it sounds like you give your hounds ample exercise and stimulation.

The thing I don't understand fully about Merlinsmum's position is how it would work. Humans would never kill anything no matter what? While nature is actually quite brutal, animals eat each other and predators don't care about causing their prey pain or fear. So if a coyote gets hold of a calf and rips holes in it but the calf somehow gets away to suffer and die slowly, if the farmer finds it he can't euthanize it? (This was an anecdote that Temple mentioned in the book: a farmer discovered that one of his calves got the hide ripped off his side by a coyote, and he had to shoot it.) Or it's okay to kill an animal that you find is suffering, just not to kill it for the purpose of eating it? There is also the idea right now that some animals aren't able to understand that they're about to die. We know now that apes, elephants, dolphins, and the higher monkeys like chimpanzees understand death, mourn and even feel a sense of mortality. But cattle don't seem to have a sense of mortality, so as long as you don't scare/startle them as they walk into the slaughter chute they never "see it coming". This is what animal scientists think now, but I hope they're right. The more we learn about animals, the more we discover how wrong we USED to be about them.

I agree, if you have to eat an animal, you should care properly for that animal, respect it and give it a quick death with as little pain as possible. I do understand Merlinsmum's stance, though. There are people who feel strongly that there is no such thing as a painless death. I'm not sure about that, but... well we could argue all day long about that. And I'm sure there are vegans who feel that humans DON'T need to eat meat, if you watch your proteins very carefully you can have a healthy vegan diet. I think it's one of those things people will argue about for eons. I think Temple's point is that there are too many cruel and vicious humans in the world and so far we've failed miserably at containing/controlling them. Sure, we should find a way to get rid of people who stomp on chickens for fun and people who run mass murder campaigns on other people. But until we can find a way to do that, the best we can do is to keep the vulnerable out of their hands as much as we possibly can. If a feedlot has horrible brutal practices, they need to be audited and corrected, and if that fails then they need to be shut down and move their business to a feedlot that makes every effort to try to not cause deliberate pain, fear and suffering.

The other thing I found intriguing in the book was how she talked about novelty. Prey animals tend to not like novelty as much, it's scary and they need time to get used to the strange thing. But since predators are more driven by their "seeker" emotion, they're more likely to explore strange new things. She used an example of a small herd of deer in a zoo. Most of the time they would move down an alley from their nighttime shed into the pasture, but occasionally for no reason the zookeepers could figure out, they freaked out and refused to leave the shed. When Temple went to the zoo to try to help, she found that there was a sign that was supposed to be screwed into the fence. Most of the time it was leaned against the fence, but occasionally it would fall over. When the deer came out of the shed to see the sign laying on the ground, that was odd enough to scare them. (The backside of the sign was yellow, so the color helped make sure they saw it, too.) It made me wonder about the spooky greyhounds we occasionally get off the track. How interesting is it that a predator species occasionally acts like a prey animal! I've never had a spook, but I wonder if treating them like a deer would help them overcome their fears. Also, we occasionally get someone posting a thread about how their dog freezes as soon as they step out of the house. I wonder if you stopped, took a deep breath, examined the dog's posture and what he was looking at, examined the surroundings to see if there was anything odd or out of place... For those of you who read the book, if you had a spook, did it help you understand and fix whatever scared the dog?

Capri is really good about staying home alone for a few hours. But when we went to Dewey Beach, we found that we couldn't leave her alone in the hotel room. I would like to train her to be okay left alone in strange rooms, so we can take her on vacations with us and not feel like she has to be with us every second. How do you guys train your dogs to be good in hotel rooms? I would assume it's just like alone training at home when the dog is new, but.... do we have to check into a motel room once a week for a month to practice?

I don't want to start a war, but Merlinsmom, are you a vegetarian?

I just finished reading Animals Make us Human by Temple Grandin, and really recommend it for all you animal lovers out there. Temple Grandin is autistic and went on to have an incredible career as professor, researcher, animal communicator, and meat industry consultant. She feels that her autism has given her a special insight into the way animals think, and after reading the book, I'm inclined to agree with her. Like animals, she thinks in pictures, sounds, colors, smells. She made a comment midway through the book that she speculates that language skills cause the brain to become very adept at abstraction, but less able to remember details. This could be why prey animals spook at the slightest changes to their habitats, and it's so hard for people (for example, zookeepers) to figure out what the problem is. I think this bears more research because it's a fascinating idea. Temple begins the book by writing a chapter about each species: dogs, cats, cattle, horses, chickens, and pigs. She then writes a chapter about wild animals and a chapter on zoos. In the dogs chapter, she speculates that Cesar Milan has perhaps a not quite accurate idea of how dogs think (she states how Alpha theory has been debunked), but that he innately understands pack behavior based on his childhood experiences. But she says his ideas about pack behavior only work for wild/feral dog packs and not household pets who aren't allowed to socialize freely. She quotes Patricia McConnell several times favorably, so the two animal behaviorists seem to agree about dog behavior and training. Her conversational style of writing keeps you turning pages, but she is able to relay a lot of information and thought-provoking ideas. She doesn't mention clicker training until the chapter on horses, but she comments in the zoo chapter that even zoo animals can be clicker trained. She talks about training methods that are cruel (throwing things at a tied-up horse to try to desensitize it) and training methods that work better and are humane. The chapters on cattle, pigs and chickens are a little hard to read, but I got through them and came away with a huge amount of respect for her. She says she's often asked why she works with the meat industry instead of working to close them down. She says that it's our responsibility as humans to provide safe, clean and humane lives for animals and in return we can eat them as long as we make their deaths quick and painless. It's a trade off. She mentions how after horse slaughterhouses were shut down in America, horses were then shipped down to Mexico where they are worked to death. The trade off she's clearly thinking of is sort of a universal one. "Which is worse: I kill an animal quickly and humanely, or ignore the fact that someone else is killing that animal brutally?" She talks about how she invented devices to allow cattle to walk up the chute in a slaughterhouse without being scared by it's surroundings, and taught feedlot managers to remove spooky things like shiny bits of metal. She works very hard on meat industry management to train their people not to be cruel. She comments that when people see a lot of cruelty on a daily basis, they become desensitized to it and it starts to seem normal to them. She's worked with McDonalds and Wendy's to bring pressure to bear on the meat industry to improve their handling of the cattle. If you have a squeamish stomach, you might want to skip the chapter on chickens. She's working on that, but comments that the egg and chicken (meat) industries don't have big buyers like McDonalds and Wendy's that can bring the same amount of pressure as they were able to do with meat. (Fast food sells a lot more burgers than chicken.) There is still a lot of brutality in the egg and broiler hen industry. Throughout the whole book, she discusses how the animal's thinking processes affect their behavior. For example, predator animals primarily require stimulation in their "seeking" emotions. "Seeking" encompasses curiousity, play and hunting. She says that prey animals are driven by their "fear" emotion, they need places to hide or space to run in order to feel safe. She says that stimulating the "seeking" sense in any animal suppresses the "fear" sense. This allows people who work with animals to do a better job once they understand this. For example, you can chase a herd of cattle into another pasture, but that's stressful and can lead to sickness and death. Or you can learn what makes cattle curious, and they will move on their own into the new pasture and be completely unafraid. This reminded me mostly of the "horse whisperer" story. People used to literally break horses spirits by beating them into submission before they could be ridden. Then someone noticed that if you stand quietly facing away from a wild horse, it will come to investigate you. If you are patient and let the animal examine and get used to novel things in it's own time, it is much easier to introduce it to being touched, harnessed, saddled, ridden. And it doesn't take as long as you'd think. She also talks about how stimulating an animal's sense of "seeking" in order to get food makes them happier. Whether the animal is a deer in a zoo or a pet dog, animals love to work for their food. It's surprised zookeepers that the big cats were bored when they were fed on a schedule, but then blossomed when they had to hunt for their food, even when it was the same pre-killed meat they got before. The simple act of having to search for the food made the cats happy. I'm going to ponder this book for a while, thinking about how I can stimulate my greyhound's sense of "seeking" in order to keep her happy. It's a great book!

It's an absolute joy when you adopt a retired racer and watch them blossom when they learn to communicate with you. I also think it really builds a bond between you and the dog. I'm totally cheering for you, Samantha!

OMG, thank you so much for the reference to the olives thread. It WAS funny, and also educational! I never noticed that on a dog before, and I would have thought my boy (when we get him) had cancer too!!! Phew! So, it's very tacky to bring this up, but I'm scared about something else after reading that thread. There were a few references to... doggie masturbation. Do they really do that? Is there a way to train them not to do it that doesn't give them psychological hangups later in life? I'm halfway serious, I don't know if I could walk into a room where two dogs were doing that and just shrug and roll my eyes.

Ahh, gotcha on the rocket. I did grow up with dogs, so I do remember they sometimes... hang out? (Horses too, but that's a different story for another thread! ) I'll look up the olives thread, thanks. Sounds very bizarre!

I'm glad I stumbled on this thread because we're going to get Capri a big brother in a couple months. But now you guys have to fess up on the other things... olives? Red rocket? Do tell, before I get a boy and freak out!

Lol. So he's one step short of having bell pulls for the servants, huh?

I'm a big fan of behavior books as a foundation to learning training. Patricia McConnell is one of my favorites for that. (I think too many people don't understand how their pets think or why they do things, so it's good to learn that stuff. You build a better bond with your dog when you understand him, and when you have a better bond the dog is more likely to respond to training to make you happy.)

They seem to use their nose almost like a finger, don't they? Capri touches us with her nose a lot, soft little touches on the hand or back of the leg as she follows us around the house. When she's anxious for her morning walk and Daddy is lingering overlong (in her opinion) over breakfast, she'll poke him in the ribs and roo at him. He always frowns and laughs at the same time. She doesn't poke me like that, so I don't know what it feels like but he says she sometimes pokes him pretty hard.

You're right! And not just smart, but she's SO polite, too!

It seems that a side effect of giving Capri basic obedience training is that she learned how to communicate with us. We haven't taught her to point, only sit, down, very basic things. She almost immediately started using a very pretty sit to beg for things she wanted. (It's cute as the dickens!) I used to sort of get the feeling she might be pointing at things with her nose. Now I'm sure of it. Last night after dinner, we were putting our plates in the kitchen. I was holding my dirty plate at chest height waiting for DH to move out of the way. We had pork and it smelled really yummy. She'd followed us into the kitchen with bright eyes and ears half cocked and staring at my plate. She reached up and touched the edge of my plate with her nose, then dropped into a sit. Stood up, touched the plate again, dropped into a sit. She did that three times because mommy was giggling like a mad fool at how adorable she was. But I was blown away too. That was the first time that she was very clearly telling me what she wanted. Mommy, can I have THAT? <point> Please? <sit> Anybody else have seen their dog do something like that? It won't be much longer before she's telling us when Timmy falls in a well. (I gave her a tiny piece of pork for being so brilliant and cute. I'm a HUGE sucker!)

That's brilliant! I want to see that in X-games!

I'm still not sure I read her well, so I'm cautious about when and where I snuggle with her. The other night she was laying on the floor after having her teeth brushed. Dh was petting her and so was I. I got to feeling nuzzly, so I bent down to rub my cheek over her velvety shoulder. It was fine for a minute but I guess I kept it up to long because finally she growled at me. Oops! She was like "I'm sorry mommy" after that, and I was like "I'm sorry baby girl". I guess I'm afraid to let her snuggle too long in case she gets tired of it and snaps instead of just going away like my cats do.