With NYE ’24 just days away, we can prepare our pets for yet another onslaught of fireworks.
For a full run-down and more links to more supports, check out our Halloween prep-post…which only seems a couple of weeks ago.
Once we get through this, and Chinese/Lunar New Year in February, we have a relatively clear few months and that’s when we can really get stuck into fireworks work…
It’s that time again when the thoughts of celebrations can be met with some trepidation for dog guardians…
Check out our Christmas Bites series here for lots of getting prepped and staying sane during the Howlidays.
Be kind to yourself too; this isn’t always the merriest time for everyone so take care of yourself and your dog.
Wishing you & your dog the absolute very best!
Join us for a brilliant and FREE webinar on Monday evening!
This is such a relevant topic given the time of year.
This paper will just be the jumping off point for us discussing pet purchasing behaviours, particularly pre-, during and post- Pandemic. And that allows us to examine the effects of acute increases in demand…similar to what can happen for all pet species around Christmas and the Season.
If you work with pets and their people, please come along. This is a truly an interactive event and we want to hear from you so that we can all collaborate on learning and ultimately improving the welfare of pets and their people!
To book your spot, email IVBAed@gmail.com and I will respond as soon as possible with all the details.
Adventure Class is back! Find all the information here, and application to join us!
We are starting on Sunday 10th December at 9am in the Phoenix Park, Dublin.
What do we do in Adventure Class?
This is just a glimpse of the fun from one class!
If you have any questions, please let me know by emailing info@anied.ie
Halloween is just upon us and over the last month or so, we have been trying to spread the word about planning to support our pets on the night, particularly in relation to fireworks, but other activities too.
For a full, in-depth program see: Dying of Fright.
The distress and stress associated with Halloween don’t end once the night itself is over. Not only might fireworks continue, the stress response elicited on the night might continue to impact your dog’s physical and behaviour health.
Check out our guidance for the morning-after too: Halloween Hangover.
Happy Howl-o-ween everyone, stay safe!
Normal things in weird contexts can certainly cause spooky responses.
Another’s fear won’t be your fear, and vice versa. The dog’s behaviour is information telling us about their experience.
This is a pretty low-stakes situation. He’s a pretty resilient fella and will recover immediately, it’s a bike and there’s no person or animal nearby and we have space to move on and by.
He’s certainly seen bikes parked here before and people doing all sorts of odd things, without batting an eyelid.
Why was it more meaningful on this occassion? I don’t know.
But here’s a consideration that might not always be prioritised: physical issues including pain.
Chronic pain (relating to OA) is linked with sound sensitivities (Lopes Fagundes et al 2018), so it’s reasonable to link pain with other environmental sensitivities, particularly if the seemingly sensitive response is unusual for the individual or for the context. (Mills et al, 2020)
When this happened, Decker was undergoing some treatment for an infection and was also taking pain relief. Seeing this, I supplemented his pain relief afterwards and made sure he got some good rest with appropriate activity.
We can be social models and supports for our dogs when something scary happens, reassure them, give them space and time to recover.
Also recognise that while behavioural responses are always environmental, the environmental conditions may be more or less salient dependent on the internal condition.
Pain, for example, may cause things to be more or less salient and may mean that fear related behaviour is more effective at keeping the behaver safe.
Fear related behaviours like these cautious and avoidant responses are more reinforcing (R-) when the body is experiencing stress and pain, and therefore functional and more likely to be repeated.
Dogs can’t be in pain. The better we become at spotting less obvious signs suggesting the dog may be in pain, the more efficiently we can treat pain, even if just-in-case.
Check out Mills et al, 2023, and consider pain as well as discomfort.
Duration is often used as a criteria for success of an enrichment intervention, usually a puzzle or food dispensing toy. Guardians might be gleeful that it took their dog x minutes to finish the toy, that it kept them busy for ages.
Sometimes, duration is a more relevant criteria in our programs. We might want to provide the dog with a longer task to encourage independent environmental interaction, to encourage persistence in a task and facilitate stress recovery. The proportion of time the dog engages in behaviours of concern versus healthier behaviours we facilitate might certainly be relevant.
But, duration alone is not necessarily a sign of success, or a sign that the dog is now “enriched”! We want to know about the behaviours that the dog is demonstrating and if those behaviours are contributing to meeting their needs.
And when it comes to duration, we want to know how much time the dog is engaged in enriching behaviours, other than just eating.
To get to a point where the dog is likely to persist for longer durations of behaviours for just a little bit of eating requires shaping. We are not just giving the dog an elaborate puzzle or complicated toy and expecting them to work and work and work. Start simple to ensure the dog has lots of easy wins before gradually upping the challenge.
This compound puzzle appears simple, but there’s lots of behaviours and persistence required to get to the goal.
Start with just the toy that’s stuffed with some lappables, and when the dog is fluent with that, add the bag, and then add the bag to the box.
Fruitless persistance and extended durations busying themselves might not be the key to enrichment. We don’t necessarily want frustration to be behind these endeavours as that might just not be so enriching.
The goals of sniffing and foraging games are not really to maximise eating behaviour. The dog should be doing more behaviours other than the goal behaviour, eating.
What proportion of each food based game is the dog eating for? That should be as little as possible.
Doing the behaviours and the challenges are enriching for dogs. (McGowan et al, 2014)
But that might be frustrating for dogs, particularly novice dogs. That’s because these games or “enrichment” protocols are shaping/teaching exercises. They should be teaching dogs more behaviours that allow them to access reinforcers.
Helping the dog succeed, find the goal and access reinforcement, little and often is teaching them how to play the game. And win!
Don’t think of enrichment exercises as being measured in duration or in terms of the dog busying themselves.
The dog should be learning to apply their behaviours so they have new and numerous ways to access reinforcers (that’s true “choice”) and we must support them.
Helping them win often will encourage them to play more and with practice, your help will become less and less needed. Soon your dog is persisting with appetitive behaviours, with just a little bit of eating, and a whole lot of fun!
Of course, ‘enrichment’ is more than just food based challenges and you can always get lots of practice with 100 Days of Enrichment!
Our Safe Dog Handling & Interactions online course has become our foundation course, essential for all dog lovers.
Lucky for you, we have space on our last course of 2023!
For all the details and to book your spot go here.
All our interactions with dogs are welfare based and that’s what this course is about. When we are interacting and handling dogs with care, compassion and their comfort in mind, we will be safer too.
This course helps raise and establish your awareness of how dogs are experiencing interactions with you and adjustments you can make to maintain and improve their comfort.
This is the last run of this course this year and it’s well worth your while to join in. There are four meetings and lots of resources for your review. Your entire course can be downloaded and all meetings are recorded so you don’t need to worry about missing dates.
For all the details and to book your spot go here.
If you are volunteering/working with a rescue organisation, we will donate a place for you to participate.
Learn more about studying with us and why you should choose AniEd! If you feel you are experiencing any barriers to studying, talk to us and we will do our best to help you. Payment plans are available too.
It will be no surprise to any of you reading this that our dogs do not and cannot live long enough. As the saying goes, it’s their only fault.
I accept and acknowledge this. My mantra is that they’re here for a good time, not for a long time. So I want to make sure dogs have the goodest of times over every minute of their relatively short lives.
While I want to keep my dog safe, a safe and sedentary life is slowly killing many many pet dogs, assigning them to a long and often miserable life.
Yes we can keep them safe but they also need to live. Live a good dog life.
Decker has always been gung-ho and has been very hard on his body (and on mine). But he has been robustly healthy, and I didn’t make an insurance claim until he was about 8. Soon after turning nine, running at his usual torpedo speed, he got caught between some rocks and shredded his CCL. A good healthy and strong ligament but a few toes misplaced by centimetres resulted in a bit of a reckoning for me.
All the care I had put in at every step of the way, from before he was even conceived, and I couldn’t prevent this from happening. He didn’t have the predispositions most often associated with this injury and joint disease, and I thought I had done all the things to make sure this sort of thing didn’t happen. Shows what I know.
Since that he has experienced several other near-death incidents, largely associated with him living his best life as full on as possible. All of which, he has so far recovered from apparently unscathed.
While his behavioural resilience is solid and astounding, I can see each of these knocks are accumulating. His old body is not bouncing back as it once did. Every little knock, on top of all the other knocks, is taking some life from him.
At the same time, it’s knocking me. I can’t control incidents and accidents, I can’t prevent them. And I don’t want to restrict his living his life to the absolute fullest. This lack of control feeds my anxiety.
And my anticipatory grief.
He is old.
Decker is an almost 12 year old AmStaff. This is a dog who is typically very hard on their body and are not known for living on into their teens. When I say Decker is old, I mean he’s old for an AmStaff. Just recently, as I qualified this to another person, they interjected and agreed that he is old. For a dog.
But no matter our dogs’ age, we go into this pretty safe in the knowledge that they will likely be leaving before we do. Indeed, we may go through this many times over our long lives; I have loved and lost many many dogs. Every time, I go into it with the hope that we will have forever together, but the knowledge that we will have just a few short years.
I live with and love an old dog. And I have all sorts of conflicting feelings about that.
Anticipatory Grief is Real
Grieving relating to pet loss is certainly very real, but grief doesn’t just come after loss.
As our pets age, or if they experience chronic illness, we can start to grieve for the life and experiences we won’t have with them. We start to imagine what life might be like without them, and think about how we are going to cope with that. Anticipatory grief might even have us thinking about the practicalities of their loss and after their loss.
The strong emotional experiences associated with grieving loss can be paralysing. This can overwhelm in anticipation of loss too, and the concern may be that this impacts how we spend what time we have left together.
Our pets are unlikely to be aware of this, lucky for them. They probably don’t have awareness of their impending demise and are not thinking about the life they won’t get to live.
When we experience anticipatory grief our awareness and sensitivity may be heightened. It’s important that we can recognise it and its effects on us providing for their needs.
They still have life to live and they still need to live that life to the fullest. No matter how long.
Maybe anticipatory grief can be a bit of a gift too. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of crying and pain. But maybe, just maybe, anticipatory grief can help us start to prepare for loss and narrow our focus to concentrate on making sure every minute we have left together will be the best.
It can help us be in the moment with them, increase our awareness of each moment together, the sensory experiences of those moments.
The thoughts of what’s to come is overwhelming but in this moment, we are still together. Make it the best moment, and the same for the next moment, and the next.
Focus on those feelings and remember, they’re here for a good time, not for a long time.
I take photos. So many photos. Photos of our adventures together. I get to live it, remember it, and photograph it. He is living his best life and I’m just along for the ride.
Decker’s adventures can be followed here (@fwwhiskeyontherocks).
There are lots of ways to help a dog showing fear-related behaviours, but “facing their fear”, “socialising” them, exerting social pressure or coercion and/or attempting to lure them with food are generally not appropriate, safe, kind or effective.
The dog’s behaviour is information telling us what they need. When they display avoidance behaviour, distance and relief meet those needs.
Helping them feel safer is key, not attempting to be friends with them. That might come, but safety first!
Our approaching them, touching them, and even talking to them may not bring them comfort in those moments, when their brain is telling their body to get outta there!
Preventing new people coming in on top of them, giving them space from unfamiliar people, having them on lead, and their own human making sniffing for yummies happen are really important foundations for guest greeting protocols.
Think of establishing a new and predictable guest greeting routine and practice with familiar people first.
It might look something like this:
Alternatively, have your guests wait outside and bring your dog out on lead. Circle around behind your guests and have them enter the house and settle. Bring the dog in after and give them space and time for snuffling.
With that in place to establish more predictable guest greeting routines, we can start to teach the dog new skills.
This is a communication game and a great way to improve predictability and provide them with ways of controlling what happens to them.
At their safe distance (which they determine and we interpret via their responses), we teach the dog to control the situation:
1. Teach the dog to move away and eat tossed treats – food is tossed away from the Monster, into free space
2. Wait for them to learn to look toward the Monster before tossing & moving. Reinforce by tossing away. Two rewards: distance + yummies
3. When offered fluently, add a verbal cue, “Ready!”
Say “Ready!”, wait for them to look toward (eye contact not necessary and lifting their head might be sufficient), toss so they can move away.
4. At BIG distances, and after lots of practice establishing this exercise as part of a predictable guest greeting routine, cue “Ready!”, toss, Monster moves, toss again.
The Monster moves only when the dog can move away.
Practice guest greeting routines and this game with people with whom the dog is comfortable before introducing Monsters! Distance is always your friend, and is the function of fear related behaviours.
You are asking the dog if they are ready at each stage. Listen to the dog and give them what they need!
AniEd Ireland 