Wicked Wednesday, Probably The Biggest Eye Opener Yet!
Today is Wicked Wednesday, YAY! No I haven't gone mad. For those of you who didn't join up on the Training Academy or worse, have never even heard of it (!!???), Wicked Wednesday is the day we get a brand new training video delivered to our inbox! This week, Tom Mitchell our very own vet behaviourist, was talking about flexibility and how it helps our dogs get along in an ever changing world. And I suddenly had a lightbulb moment! All this time, like for four years before TA, I had struggled with Lucky Dog. Although he didn't have any really major issues like reacting to other dogs/noise etc. etc. I had concluded that he was 'very routine' minded. He seemed to like to do things in a particular order. Hubby and I would joke about it, but seriously it did make for a difficult life!
For instance he (Lucky not hubby) would start to worry us around seven a.m. to go for a walk. This made a weekend lie in impossible with constant whining and pacing to go out. Even if we took him out in the yard for a toilet break he would still nag! At four p.m. he would stare at the food bowl waiting for supper but wouldn't actually eat it when it was put down. As ridiculous as this sounds I had to put my jacket on and stand near him and say, "Right are we ready for a walk?" I kid you not. Highly entertaining to hubby, especially in the summer when it was thirty one degrees! Once this little performance was played out Lucky would vacuum up his food, checking every now and then that I was still standing there ready! If I went to get a drink or move away to give him time to eat he would leave the food and go lay down and we would have to repeat the whole thing!
Then we joined TA and they talked a lot about Ditching The Bowl. This was never going to work! It would throw the whole routine out the window and Lucky likes his routine! I guess I had always gone with the notion that in order to feel safe you needed routine. Lucky was a rescue, he'd had a rough start ... being abandoned, 4 owners in his first six months of life, being kicked down the stairs at around five weeks old (the reason he was 'rescued' in the first instance), reportedly being pinned to the floor and yelled at by another owner. He needed routine right? I had to make him understand that he would never be hit/kicked/shouted at. He would never be abandoned and he would always have two meals a day and two good walks. He would be loved forever and never, ever be abandoned. I got so obsessive about creating this routine that would make him feel safe that I actually started to create a rigid, almost OCD, dog!
Well, we did ditch the bowl! In fact we ditched the routine altogether! And you know what? Lucky no longer mithers to go out at seven in the morning, instead he has a kong or a licky mat and then he'll putter off back to bed for a bit! Or, sometimes we just hit the floor and run - insert 'go for a walk' - and then come back for kibble scattered on the grass or in a snuffle mat. And Lucky actually seems happier! And I don't have to wear a coat while he inhales his kibble from a bowl ... HECK we don't even have a bowl anymore! Right now it is eight thirty a.m. Lucky is sleeping on the bed as I type. He's been out in the yard for a comfort break, had a short car ride to the mine and back to drop hubby off at work and had a licki mat of sardines, pumpkin and mashed banana with his pro-biotic powder mixed in.
I guess I grew up with the old school thinking that if you have a dog you must feed it regularly and it must be exercised/walked twice a day come what may. How often have you heard people say, "Dogs are creatures of habit" or "That dog can tell the time you know"? To a degree, of course, they are right. Dogs are creatures of habit in the sense that a dog will do what he has always done - something else I learned from Tom Mitchell. If a dog counter surfs and finds reward/food, then he will always counter surf ... unless you help him to learn not to and to find something more desirable to do with his time. As for knowing you are about to go for a walk at seven a.m. or leave for work at eight thirty ... here's the secret ... they don't look at the clock! Nope, they watch you! On a work day we get up at four forty-five, hubby goes to the bathroom. I put the coffee on and get the lunch box packed and put it by the door. Now here's the thing ... just that alone and L.D. will greet us with a wagging tail, go outside to pee and then go back to bed. BUT ... if I put my glasses on after making coffee then it's a whole different ball game. This means that mom is driving dad to work this morning so, instead of going back to bed, L.D. sit patiently but like a coiled spring ready for the off! He looks for cues and when there's a set routine well it's not rocket science right? No wonder he nags for me to put food down at four p.m! It's what happens! Three forty-five dad comes home, four o'clock mom puts dinner down! After that we go for a walk. Only trouble was Lucky really wanted to go for a walk first sometimes but mom was just too stubborn to notice so we got into this ridiculous game of 'Right! I'm ready!' Not, as I claimed, because Lucky was demanding a routine but because I was!
This morning as I listened to Tom saying how dogs learning the concept of flexibility makes life easier for them (and us) in so many other situations I realised that by being so inflexible myself I had created the demanding monster who dictated my wearing a coat at supper - we call it dressing for dinner haha! I had also created the issues in the car, the high arousal whining, because we always drove to town and jumped right out for a walk. We never just went for a ride to nowhere. We rarely went anywhere other than Penn Lake Park for a walk! In the car meant something very exciting at the end of it and hey presto I had a whining howling dog the whole way! I had even created, ableit in my head, this whole idea that Lucky would not poop in the yard and only on a walk, simply by never really giving him the chance to poop in the yard!
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