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Butch – maybe not the “other reindeer” but may be a dog dear to your heart…

Butch, a blind dog sheltered at ARF in Beacon, NY, needs your help to find his forever home!

Butch-antlers-for-webOkay so he can’t wear his antlers straight and we couldn’t find a real wrapped up holiday box for him to sit in and he won’t be Santa’s next reindeer, but Butch could be one of the best dogs you’ll ever love.

Butch is almost 2 years old now and the biggest, goofiest guy you will ever want to meet.

He gets along with every other dog he has ever met – even the dogs least likely to like other dogs will get along with Butch.  He walks well on leash, plays nicely in the back yard at ARF (with other dogs or alone) and he is currently learning silly tricks like “sit in a box for fun.”  So you can see here he is all ready to be someone’s holiday dog in his holiday box wearing his holiday antlers.

Butch enjoys nose games – looking for food, toys, or other scents in boxes.  And more than anything else he loves being petted and snuggling up with any person who shows him affection.

For all his wonderful qualities, Butch – like Rudolph – keeps getting overlooked.  Butch has Progressive Retinal Atrophy, a degenerative eye disease that will eventually take his sight completely.  He currently seems to see some shadows in the daylight but has already lost most of his eyesight completely.

Just like Santa thought Rudolph with his red nose could not fly a sleigh too many people think a blind dog just can’t have a happy life. The American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists says:  “The exceptional senses of smell and hearing in animals also help pets adapt to vision loss.”  Organizations like  www.blinddogrescue.com and www.blinddogs.net have a host of great tips for living with a dog who is visually impaired and lists of other support organizations online to help folks help each other while living and loving an animal with special needs.  Suggestions like:

  • Teach your dog “new” things to make life even more fun! Try doing “clicker training” that fits in nicely with his/her new skills for* listening* vs. *seeing* and your dog will be very proud of new skills!

Vicky has been doing this with Butch at the shelter – that’s how she got him in the “gift” box and got him to wear the antlers – okay so he can’t see they are not on straight – but you got to give him his props.

Another few tips from www.blinddogs.net are:

  • For eye protection when outdoors where there are low growing shrubs, twigs, etc. , Doggles can protect the eyes.
  • Adding 1 – 2 feet outward of bark chips, mulch or landscape rocks around trees or other dangers in the yard will let your dog feel a texture difference on the ground to warn that something is ahead.

There are loads more suggestions on this and other web sites devoted to dogs with visual impairments – most are pretty simple like the mulch and some are pretty darn fun like the Doggles.

Butch has managed to map the back yard at ARF so he can go out and romp around with other dogs as if he had no issues. He will map your back yard too once he gets used to it.  He walks happily and very well on a leash and loves to go for walks.  Butch will probably never be safe off leash hiking – but he could go hiking on leash and have a blast.

There really is very little he won’t be able to do with you.  While he won’t be able to look into your eyes with devotion you will still know he loves you when he leans up against you and rustles you with his thick soft fur.

I know what it is like to live with a dog who does not see well.  Boo has struggled with his vision issues all his life and they have only gotten worse as he has grown older.  His is a different disorder and has resulted in what seems to be very severe far-sightedness.  He sees the outline of his brother well enough to happily chase him but does not see the door frame well enough to avoid bumping into it unless we guide him outside.  It is a small price to pay for his companionship.  The new stairs in the front have given him some pause lately but he simply reaches out with his front paw to find the height of the new step and then goes slowly to the next one.  We are always right there near him to help if necessary – but the more he can do on his own the safer he will be and the more confident he will be.  Boo has always gone and will continue to go on his visits to see the retired nuns and the kids at the library – I am just careful to guide him through the new environments. No one notices he can’t see well until I point it out to them.

Butch can live a fun, happy, fulfilled life with a human companion who is willing to do just a little more than the usual for him.  Given all that Boo has given us and everyone he visits, I suspect anyone who gives a little extra to Butch will get back ten-fold and then some. Butch is currently living at ARF-Beacon, www.arfbeacon.org and is available for adoption.

Three Dogs Training will offer a special discount for either a private lesson or a training course for Butch and his new humans.

Goodbye Dante

Today we say goodbye to our friend and family member Dante. Our hearts are absolutely broken.

Dante-with-stickIt is with great sadness that we mark the passing of our oldest boy, Dante.  Surrounded by myself and Lawrence, his brothers, and friends who came to say goodbye, he died peacefully at home and left the pain of his arthritis, wasting and cancer behind.

He came to us shortly after we got married and he was the first dog that was “ours” together.  We were living in Greenwich Village and it was an unusually warm Spring evening – so warm, in fact, that we decided that it was just too nice for a regular walk for Atticus so we decided to head over to the dog run in Tompkins Square Park.

We were going into the “airlock” gates of the dog run when a young woman came over to us and asked us if we wanted a dog.  Our apartment was too small for the two of us, Atticus, and our two cats, so the idea of a second dog was out of the question.

She, however, was persistent.  Just say hi to Goofy, she pleaded.  (Goofy was the original name she gave to Dante.)  Lawrence was insistent that we didn’t have the room and we wished her luck and walked past the woman, into the dog run, and over to one of the benches to sit down.

At one point while we were watching Atticus play Lawrence stooped down to tie his shoe.  Suddenly a large Shepherd mix bolted out of the group of dogs, bee-lined toward Lawrence, and stopped only to lick his face in a line of slobber that stretched from his chin to his forehead.  This strange dog then turned to Atticus and gave him a play bark that could have set off car alarms before licking me on the face, too, and darting back off into the play group.

We laughed about it, but then the dog kept coming back to us to check in before darting back out to play.  We noticed that Atticus was unusually friendly with our new visitor, which was very unlike him at the time.

After a while, the young woman we met at the entrance came over to us and asked what we thought of Goofy.  She told us that he had been wandering the streets of Brooklyn by a junkyard near to where she lived and had followed her husband home during a jog through the area.

She pleaded with us again to take Goofy as she didn’t have the room for him at her apartment and her own dog didn’t like the new visitor.  I was shocked when it was Lawrence who was talking me into taking him, but he insisted to the woman that it was only going to be for the weekend to give her some time to find a permanent home for him and to give her own dogs a break.

That weekend lasted from April of 1997 to today, as we both couldn’t bring ourselves to send him away by the end of our first weekend together.  The cats couldn’t make heads or tails of their new brother but Atticus was like a puppy again and blossomed by having a second dog in the apartment.  For us, Atticus sealed the deal but the name Goofy would have to go.

It took us a surprisingly long time to come up with a name, but it was Lawrence who came up with Dante.  From the looks of Dante at the time – severely malnourished, caked with dirt, and crawling with worms – it looked like he had been through Hell and back, hence the name.

For all the unpleasantness that Dante suffered before he came to us, we were amazed by just how none of it ever seemed to dampen his outgoing personality.  He seemed to fill whatever room he was in, going from person to person like a seasoned politician, and it quickly became obvious that he was born to be a therapy dog.

If dogs could have vocations, Dante’s was visiting as a therapy dog.  No matter how exhausting the visits were for us, he would always bounce up and down whenever he saw this Delta Society vest – even when it became clear to me he was past his prime.  His spirit was willing but his body had begun to wear out, and when he retired from therapy work he did so with well over 500 visits to his credit.

His senior years were happy and quiet for him, but in the last year the dog that had spent his life helping others needed more and more help from us.  When he was diagnosed with cancer we knew that his story was coming to a close but, being the dog that he was, we also knew that he would not ever leave willingly no matter the pain he was in.

Today we made the decision for him, and our hearts are broken.

All told, dogs ask very little of us.  They ask us for love, they ask us for patience and understanding, and for our mercy and bravery when their time comes.  And once they’re gone, they part with one final request:  to not let the pain of their loss stop us from someday filling the dog-shaped hole they leave in our lives with another canine soul.

Dante was a great friend and a hell of a dog, and while we will certainly honor his final request – for now the three dogs will be two until the time is right.

French Police to give away free gas to good drivers? Qu’est-ce que c’est?

French police embrace positive reinforcement behavior modification to improve driving safety.

Apparently along the route to the south of France from Paris to Orleans to Limoges to Toulouse drivers during the four weeks of the national “vacances” will be rewarded for good driving with coupons for approximately sixty dollars’ worth of gas.

While the nay-sayers might call it bribery, the fact is that behavior modification is always more effective when a desired behavior is rewarded.  It doesn’t even matter if the subjects – drivers in this case – know their behavior is being modified.

Punishing bad driving over the years has not modified the general habits of drivers to make them drive more safely.  But it does act as a source of revenue for municipalities – so one wonders who is really getting the positive reinforcement for bad driving.  Yes, you guessed it – the city, state, or other local municipality is hoping you will speed through their sleepy little town so they can collect a fine.

They know from years of good, solid behavioral science that punishment will not correct your driving habits – it will just make the subject (again the driver in this case) try to avoid the punishment.  So, again from good solid behavioral science they know all they need to do is simply move the speed trap and the whole process starts all over again.  They want to keep punishing you not to make you a safer driver, but to make up for budget deficits.  They know you will not change your driving habits over the long term for a punishment ticket – and they are happy about that.

However, if you knew that by not tailgating, or not speeding, or by using your blinker, you could end up with sixty dollars’ worth of gas you would actually be happy to see the police and show them what a good job you were doing.  Over time you would want to drive safely in the hopes of getting the sixty bucks and this would become your conditioned new behavior.

Positive reinforcement in this case modifies your behavior to drive more safely.

Punishment in this case modifies your behavior to be a better look-out for the speed traps and keep driving outside the rules of the road.

Positive Reinforcement is not just for dog training and, once your mind is keyed to pick up on it, you’ll be amazed by how often it occurs in our own lives.  If Chief Inspector Dreyfus realized this when dealing with Clouseau all those years he wouldn’t have ended up in an asylum.

 

A Touch of Class

The benefits of our positive reinforcement dog training classes and how they can help your dog go from being a pet to a true family member.

Ask-Professor-Boo-Banner

Ask Professor Boo is our recurring, positive reinforcement dog training and behavior question and answer column. If you have a question that you would like to ask Professor Boo, please feel free to contact him.

[dropcap]Q[/dropcap]:  What’s so important about training classes???

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]:  I have mentioned in previous posts that dogs don’t generalize well.  I think there may have also been some mention about socialization being very important with both people and dogs even if you have many people and dogs in your home.  We also know that when we teach our dogs we are building a communication system that allows us to prevent some behavioral issues that might crop up later in your dog’s life.

Classes allow us to do a little of all of this –

While…

Teaching good behaviors and manners

You…

Build good communication skills between you and your dog

Which Can…

Prevent a good chunk of behavioral problems

And…

Socialize your dogs to other people and other dogs

So you can…

Help your dog to generalize behaviors to a variety of places

And in the end…

Your dog is happier, you are happier, and life is Good!

In short, while classes may not seem like a good idea in times of economic troubles they are usually the most cost-effective way to a happy doggie household since prevention is much cheaper than damage control.

Take a look at the upcoming classes and see if you and your dog might fit into one of these!

Hooray for Hunter’s Helpers!

Hunter, an at-risk dog sheltered at ARF in Beacon, NY, is making tremendous progress thanks to his volunteers!

All of us who have known Hunter since he came to ARF in November 2008 knew very well that he is a loving, devoted and sensitive guy but his shyness has grown since he came to the shelter and has kept him from setting foot outside his run – even into the backyard for fun.  With this level of shyness he was in no position to flirt with a prospective new forever human…  Hunter had been at ARF for over a year and a half and was getting more and more fearful of the world outside his run.  We had to change things for him or he would have spent the rest of his life in that run.

Happy-HunterA call went out to my students and good doggie folk in the area and Linda, Feef, Pat and Vicky stepped up to be Hunter’s Helpers.  Each of Hunter’s Helpers worked with their skill-sets to help Hunter increase his confidence, joy, and allow his loving nature to expand to more and more people. Vicky and Pat increased his confidence via clickers and massages. While Linda and Feef increased his social network via their relatives and friends who came along to meet Hunter and show him the world is full of nice people – who, by the way all seem to have cheese and hot dogs on them at all times…

His dedicated regular volunteers continued to help Hunter’s Helpers by doing walk-alongs (especially Pete and Charlotte) so Hunter could become happy and used to new people.  Great thanks must also go to the volunteer staff at ARF who by continuing to take care of Hunter’s needs as well as the needs of the rest of the animals at ARF allowed Hunter’s Helpers to focus specifically on the behavioral work.  Sometimes it takes a Village to help a dog in need, too.

Although Hunter is not yet completely “cured” he is doing much better and working now on transitioning to Feef’s home as his forever home – yeah!!!  Remember the dog who would not leave the safe confines of his run or the back room where his run is located?  Barb reported to me the following just the other day:

YESTERDAY WAS GRADUATION DAY FOR HUNTER !!

The last dog to be walked last night was Hunter…  He was acting itchy, carrying on…

I had the leash in my hand, then opened his gate… He came flying out…ran out to the kennel, stood there…saw the front door open… ran out !!!!  Across the parking lot…. down the driveway…to the back “40”…..Flo was standing in the lot talking on the phone…. her mouth dropped open…. we both went to the back… Hunter was walking back to the shelter, sniffing all the brush…wagging his tail….went right by us and back to the shelter…all the way back and jumped in his room !!!! WOW !!   How exciting !!

We went at a pace that worked for Hunter and allowed him to slowly learn new people are good and maybe even as good as his two favorites Pete and Charlotte.  We gave Hunter some special attention in the form of calming massages.  We taught Hunter via clicker training that he can actually control aspects of his world.  By doing all of this Hunter has blossomed and is no longer looking at spending the rest of his life in his run at ARF.  While ARF loves all of their dogs as their own and cares for them with special kindness – it is still not a forever-home.

Hunter, his Helpers and all the Volunteers at ARF are a shining example of just how much we can help a dog in need find a life of happiness and joy!