Being Prepared

In all of my research on helping kids and dogs get along, one of the most important things is to get dogs used to the physical changes around the house as soon as possible. I always recommend:

• Figure out where baby furniture will live and put it there ASAP. If you can't do that just yet, at least move any dog beds or other furniture that will need to be moved.
• If the dog will no longer be allowed on the bed or furniture when baby is here, put that rule into effect today.
  
• Ban access to rooms that will be off limits when baby appears.

There are of course other things to do, but these are the ones that apply to today's post.

So we've got a new baby coming to our family. Our "Wiggle," for lack of an actual name. The dogs have been through this already and while we'll be reviewing basic obedience and playing the baby sounds CD, nothing too terribly much will change for them. Well, Havana may decide she doesn't want to sleep next to my side of the bed as I have to get up more and more, but that's up to her.

What will be changing, though, is life for my girls. Bug is already pretty used to things being set up for a toddler, but she doesn't remember much of what it's like to be at a newborn's beck and call. Or screech and cry. And this will be totally foreign to Sprout all together.

One of the first things we had to do was change how we talk about dolls to Sprout. We discovered this when we introduced her to a newborn baby and she tried to pick up the baby and rock it like she does her dolls. Well, of course she would! How is Baby Carrie Fisher-Price (the doll) different from Baby L? There is no difference to a toddler. So now we call the dolls "little" and babies "baby". I don't know if it's working or not, but Sprout did not try to strangle Baby A like she does Little Carrie, so hopefully it is.

We're also going to have to move furniture around. The girls will be sharing a bedroom, which will be an adventure for all of us. Bug already knows that this will happen and we've been talking about it when the opportunity arises. It's a little hard to prepare Sprout for this since it's so abstract. And unfortunately she won't be ready for a big girl bed until after Wiggle is here, so I can't have her all set up and ready before he's here. But if one girl isn't freaking out too much that's half the battle.

And because Sprout is a little stinker, we're going to make sure that there is a safe place for Bug and her things, just as we have for the dogs and cats. The plan is to build a loft above Bug's bed, sort of like an unused upper bunk bed, with a railing around it and a little door. With any luck, Bug will be able to climb up there to escape the wrath of Sprout and maybe, just maybe reduce some chaos. Let me have my delusions, ok?

Sometimes it does directly relate...

I always tell my puppy class students that the first time I was taught "look" (the dog looks up at my face on my command), I seriously thought my teacher ran out of things to show us that night. Now it is one of the commands I use the most, especially when we're out in public. Having your dog look at you on cue is just so darned handy, even if it takes a little effort to teach. When your dog looks at you, your dog is probably not:

• Scarfing food off the table/counter/hands of young children
• Barking and posturing at another dog
• Pulling on a leash
• Breaking a stay
  
• Sniffing/eating nasty trash off the ground (can you tell I have a Labrador?)
• Greeting people or dogs who would rather not be greeted
• Missing the next cue I give
• Getting into or causing any number of miscellaneous problems

I love, love, love this cue!

So imagine my delight when I realized it has another application - making sure a 5 year old is paying attention to me. Now instead of repeating myself twelve times (bad, bad Momma, say it the first time and mean it!), I can say "Bug. Stop. Look at me. Do not put stickers on the dog." Just like the dogs, once I can drag her attention to me I can cue her next behavior or redirect the current behavior.

Am I proud that I can get the exact same results for child and canine with the same cue? Well...not really. But it sure is handy. There's been a lot less yelling since I discovered this, though, and that's a good thing. Not that that neighbors have noticed it being any quieter around here. I blame hormones. Don't know what I'll do next spring when the windows are open again and I'm not pregnant.

Who did that?!

Today in my scatterbrained way, I forgot to close the gate to the girls' bedrooms. When I went to put Sprout down for her nap, I was greeted with an upended diaper bin and pieces of dirty diaper all over the floor. (Thankfully we do cloth diapers so the worst of the nastiness has been flushed and dirty diapers are largely inaccessible to the dogs.) Even though I knew it was my fault, I called out "Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! Which one of you bad dogs did this?!?!?" Strangely, no one answered.

I put Sprout down, cleaned up the mess, and went about my afternoon. I realized that both dogs were in "their" room, all on their own, as flat as possible on their respective dog beds, pretending to be invisible. Neither one made eye contact with me, although they both followed me with their invisible eyes in their invisible heads. (Because I am a mom to both canines and humans I can see invisible things like lost shoes, vegetables, empty toilet paper rolls, and misbehaving creatures that no one else in the house can see.)

Now some may say "Oh the dogs knew they did something wrong" or "those dogs are acting guilty." I beg to differ. Once the "goodies" were out of the diapers, the dog pretty much put it all out of his (maybe her) mind. However, the dogs have learned from past experience that if I let out an exasperated growl, chances are they are going to get closed off in their room. And in the past when the dogs have ignored the direction to go to their room, it usually involves a scold and a persistent body block which they would rather avoid. (Body block = me getting big and tall and moving into their space. I never touch them, I just invade wherever they are trying to be and dogs, being dogs, will give way to whoever is in charge. Since I control food and access to outside and all fun activities, I'm in charge without every laying a finger on them.) So to appease Crazy Lady who Controls All Good Things, the dogs just did what had been expected of them in the past. Who knows, maybe the appeasement would work and I'd act like it never happened.

This is quite a bit like when Bug is warned that a certain behavior will earn her a certain consequence. Right now we're dealing with some lying issues and I consider lying a pretty big rule infraction. Bug hates going potty for whatever reason and twice I've caught her telling me she went and then I find out she didn't. Bug knows that if she lies about potty before bed, she will not get a story. Both times, even though I said "You'd better go potty because if I find out you are lying to me, you will not get a story", she took the risk. Then when she got caught, she instantly went into appeasement mode. Suddenly she couldn't go potty, brush her teeth, put on her jammies, and get into bed fast enough - things that are usually a struggle. And she mentioned her story several times during all of this. She hadn't forgotten - she knows full well that there is a consequence for lying - but she's hoping by doing everything else right, things she's been resistant to doing in the past, I'll forget and/or be appeased. Instead, I gently reminded her that she was not getting a story because she lied, tucked her in with the usual love and kisses, and left.

Bug's grasp of the consequence happened after only one incident while it took the dogs quite a bit longer to read my voice and body language, but the end result is still the same - the sudden urge to do exactly what is expected. It's not really guilt acting as much as it is appeasement behavior so things can go back to being the regular pleasant routine it usually is. Dogs don't have morals so they can't feel guilt. Humans do have morals and can feel guilt, but it takes some time to develop and Bug is still developing the finer points. And appeasement and guilt can go hand in hand for humans, but a dog is a dog is a dog. They do what works and we love them for it. Usually.

(And before anyone criticizes me for locking up my dogs or however that may appear, let me just say that the dogs' room is actually my husband's rec room with my husband's office on one side and a half open Dutch door to the kitchen on the other. It has windows, climate control, water, comfy beds and is where we usually do our socializing. The dogs aren't outcasts, they are just put in a room near family traffic without being in the way so I can better manage the insanity in my home. They choose to go there on their own and generally spend their days and nights with the family.)

Word Associations

My little Sprout said her first sentence last night. It was only two words, but it was still a sentence. She said "BE QUIET!!!" when the dogs were barking. Or it might have been "PUPPY QUIET!" Either way it had a subject and a verb and according to 4th grade grammar, that's a complete sentence. Maybe a better question is why on Earth did she choose to scold the dogs as her first sentence instead of something like "Hi Mama" or "More milk"?

I don't know what's going on in that curly little head of hers, but I have a couple of theories. One is consistency. If I am outside and I hear Havana gear up for a barkfest, I will call out "hush" or something like that. Thankfully I'm very careful not to tell the dogs to shut up or else we could have had a bit of a Meet the Fockers moment. But because it drives me nuts when Havana has a barkfest you can pretty much guarantee I'll say something every time she does it. Since Sprout is usually outside with me she hears "breath in, barkbarkbar, 'Havana! Hush!"

There is probably also a fun factor going on. Our yard is big and Havana is loud. As a result I use a loud voice - some might say a yell - to tell her to hush. Yelling is pretty darn fun for a toddler and if Mama does it consistently in a certain situation then it's monkey see, monkey do. Add in that bossy big sister usually follows up Mama's scold with a "Havana! Quiet!" and you've got an awesome behavior chain that Sprout just needs to be a part of.

As I rather sheepishly reflected on my baby's choice of sentence, I started to think about other cases of associative learning that I've experienced. Dogs and kids both use cause and effect to their greatest advantage. Just this week we started the foundation work for "stay" in puppy class. I told my students NOT to say "stay" at this point because the chances that their puppies wouldn't stay was great. And believe me, I have seen many dogs - usually with owners who say "she knows stay" - come on cue, sit on cue, and stay...until she hears "stay" in which case she jumps up and runs to the owner. Or runs away.

The dog does indeed know "stay". She hears it every time she's about to get up, or is already up. So she knows that when she hears "stay" she has changed position into a stand so whenever she hears "stay" she should get up and move. What the owner has trained is actually a really reliable release word and not a command to hold position, but the dog, not knowing English any better than we speak Canine, has connected a specific action to a specific sound. It just so happens to be the opposite of what the human wanted, but was exactly what the human taught.

The saddest of what I call "anti commands" involves botched recalls. I work hard so my dogs not only come when called, they are happy about it. My heart, once it started beating again, just about broke when my foster dog Maya opened the slider and escaped one day. She didn't go far, just in the yard, but it terrified me. I ran over to her and in my happiest voice called "Maya!!! Come!!!" The first time she ran in the other direction, so I grabbed Cousteau to entice her and again called "Maya!!! Come!!!" This time she looked at me with such a sad look and dropped to the ground in an 80 pound puddle of immovable dog. Someone had taught her that if she heard "come", something less than pleasant was going to happen. I'd like to think it just meant she was going to get stuck in her kennel or closed into a room so her previous owners could leave. And maybe it was just that. But still, instead of approaching me when she heard "come", she learned it was better for her if she avoided the human.

Sadder still was a few years after that when I was walking a client dog. This dog, while a great pup, is not known to be Miss Congeniality and she alerted me to the presence of a dog on her street. I looked and saw a golden dancing around the backyards. She was skittish and wouldn't approach me, no matter what irresistible tricks I tried. I put my client dog safely into her house and tried again. Now the golden would come closer to me and I saw she had a remote shock collar on. Once again I called in my happiest voice "Hey! Come!!!" As soon as she heard a loud, firm "come" she tucked tail and ran in the opposite direction. Nothing I did could get her to come near me again. I strongly suspect the electrodes on her neck had something to do with it. She got used to "come"-ZAP and possibly further punishment once she got to her human that she didn't have any reason to approach a human who said such a thing. (I'm not getting into a debate over shock collars. Obviously I don't like them. I know there are arguments for sometimes using them in extreme situations. I'm not prepared to use them for my training so I don't advocate them. End of story.)

So now that my youngest chatterbox is starting to use understandable words I have to think more about the word associations she gets from me on a daily basis. And I need to continue to think about the impact my words and actions have not only on my children, but on my dogs who don't have the luxury of fluently sharing a language with me. And here I thought I could just open my mouth and let the words spew forth.

Why so quiet?

I don't really want to think about how long it's been since my last post. Sprout is now almost 18 months old. Bug will be starting Kindergarten in a few short months. And oh yeah, I'm 19 weeks pregnant with a baby Bug has named "Wiggle". And wiggle s/he does! So humans and canines alike have been neglected while I struggle with nausea and exhaustion. Agility with Havana was not particularly successful as I looked like I was going to vomit and then pass out after a run. Swim lessons with Sprout are going slightly better. I don't feel like passing out or vomiting, so I've got that going for me. Cousteau appreciates slower walks, when I can manage them, but Havana would like to know when we're running our next 5K.

Ironically as a tiny Wiggle was growing and getting ready to make his/her presence known, I was searching Petfinder.com for another dog. I wasn't sure if I was ready for another dog, if I wanted three dogs, if I could give 3 dogs and 2 kids all the attention they needed. Then there was the whole convincing the husband that we needed a third dog. I'd floated that balloon a few times only to get it quickly shot down.

Then I discovered I was pregnant. It wasn't expected, but certainly it's a pleasant surprise. I realized that this would not be a good time to add another dog to our family, but my thoughts about the baby were amazingly familiar. Was I ready for another baby? Could I really give 3 kids and 2 dogs the attention they need? How can I get DH on board with this? In this case the decision was taken out of our hands and we just need to accept, adjust, and anticipate.

But in a couple of years if we have a dog just fall in our lap, I'm not going to complain...