Confessions of a Professional Dog Trainer: #1 - The Time I Taught Mia the Lab to Go to the Bathroom - Inside!

Confessions of a Professional Dog Trainer: #1 – The Time I Taught Mia the Lab to Go to the Bathroom – Inside!

OK, I admit it. I was bored. And Mia the Lab was bored, too.

MIa the Lab, worried about her
person disappearing behind the camera

I was dogsitting. In a two-bedroom condo. For five weeks. And this was only Week Two.

And I had run out of ideas about how to feed Mia the Lab.

You see, I believe in canine enrichment and that means throwing away the dog food bowl.

It’s more fun for the dog to have to find his food by smelling it out plus dinner lasts longer when it is in several different places. The dog has to think and find his meal parts which takes time!

For a couple of days I had hand-fed Mia the Lab her kibble (dry dog food) but that was slow - and slimy-yucky to boot.

So, for a few days I saved food containers – the ones yogurt comes in, and store-boughten egg salad for sammiches, and margarine. Then I put several pieces of kibble in each one and put them in the kitchen and in the bedroom and in the hallway and – you get the idea.

But by the time I had put one container down and walked a ways to put another one down, Mia the Lab was right behind me. She could run from kibble container to kibble container, being a 'small' dog (smaller than me), but this human combat veteran was too old and creaky to run from room to room ahead of a starving Lab.

So I decided to freeze her food.

I bought some plain fat-free yogurt and mixed in as much kibble as I could, then covered the bottom of all those containers from the previous days with the mixture, and put them in the freezer. (You can also use a bit of fat-free peanut butter as a flavoring agent.)

By the next meal, the kibble-yogurt concoction would be frozen stiff to both last longer and to also cool down a 'hot-dog' in our humid muggy Washington, DC, summer (Washington was actually built on a drained swamp so when the Pres says he is going to drain the swamp, he’s a little behind the curve. It’s already been done but he doesn’t know it – that would have taken a college course in US History.)

So for a few days, I managed to outrun Mia the Dog and place the ‘foody’ containers down in all the different rooms ahead of her (it takes longer to eat frozen kibble-yogurt than to scarf up room-temp kibble). This allowed me to sit back and watch her frantic enjoyment with eating. And giggle.

Then we, Mia the Lab and me, became bored again.

So, being the good little dog trainer that I am, I decided to train her.

Duh! Why didn’t I think of that before?

I wondered if I could train her to go to a room and stay there while I placed the kibble containers down in the other rooms.

Then she would have to smell out the kibble while I watched with fascination and rooted for her.

Of course, there was only the kitchen and the living room and the hallway and the first bedroom and the second bedroom and the bathroom – ah! The bathroom. Perfect! The smallest room.

So, I looked at Mia the Lab and said, “Mia, go to the bathroom.” She would grab a toy (after all, she is a retriever) and follow me down the hall. When we got to the bathroom, I turned around and shut the door on that poor little ol’ hang-dog look. The door didn’t close all the way because my client hangs his bath towels over the top of the door, allowing Mia the Lab to peek out or, later, when she got smarter, to open the door with her snout and come out for the kibble hunt.

That gave me time to get out the kibble concoctions from the freezer and place them strategically around the ‘house.’

Of course, I tried to vary the locations from meal to meal.

She would always check the place she thought I put down the final container. Or the last place she found some kibble – to no avail. Then she would finally trust her trusty ol’ sniffer-nose.

And sometimes we both would forget to count the locations, only to find one hours later – Mia the Lab’s surprise snack attack!

Mia is so good at this meal game that she can understand when I tell her to go to the bathroom.

And after I had hidden her complete meal, I could either call her (and thus practice the recall – but as soon as she found a dish, she would "forget" to come to me) or just say, “OK,” or even just clap my hands!

Eventually, I only had to tell her to go to the bathroom and she would grab a toy and go - all by herself like a big girl dog.

Voila! A dog who understands whole, complete sentences AND goes to the bathroom - indoors!

End of confession number one. Hope you enjoyed it!

Addendum: I love to watch Mia the Lab hunt for dinner and snarf it down. She is quite the entertainer, tail wagging wildly from side to side as she downs her dinner. Or breakfast. Or lunch.

PS – of course it helps if I only tell her to go to the bathroom when it is time to eat. And I haven’t tried this outside when she is on a potty break!

PPS - if you use peanut butter, be sure it has no Xylitol as an ingredient (poisonous to dogs)

PPPS - after Mia's person was PCS'd (transferred), I went to dogsit so her person could return home for the holidays. I found that in a different state, in a different apartment, Mia still understood "Mia, Go to the bathroom." What a smart cookie!

Book Review: Saving Mr. Terupt (7 7th graders, a minor minor character in Margo the dog)

Saving Mr. Terupt, by Rob Buyea (Delacorte Press, 2016, 372 pages, $16.99, juvenile fiction, ages 9-12, grades 4-7)

Seven Kids Entering Seventh Grade. . . .

Each incident segment (junior high crisis) is written by or continued by different kids: the reader quickly comes to know all four girls and three boys, “besties,” but each as different as night and day.

One has a single mom, one lives with parents and “grands” on a farm, one is incredibly smart, one is a budding fashion designer, one is a wordsmith and carries her journal everywhere, one is a photographer, one is an artist, two are wrestlers, one is bullied, one has a baby brother whose origin is hinted at and written about in a previous title*, one finds a father and one almost loses a mother.

And a wedding and a baby, too.

Through it all is Mr. Terupt, no longer their teacher but still the person who has the most influence over our gang of seven seventh graders.

I love how each chapter is titled Anna or Jessica or Peter or whoever’s voice is the narrator - and each title, each name, is set in a different type font that depicts their personality. The following chapter and author/kid continues the story from a different viewpoint and, a couple of times, we learn about the same subplot from more than one of the “gang” members.

Mr. Terupt, T, Teach, was their 5^th grade teacher and their 6^th grade teacher and is quite the inspiration. He gave each one a special gift – a journal, a special book, his old wrestling shoes and headgear, . . . .

The Gang of Seven

The gang promises Mr. Terupt to stay together in junior high but it is hard: junior high is big and busy. However, they manage to do so when they have a project to work on: a school election, a fair, the school district’s budget. The gang also manages to lead the entire 7^th grade (and even the entire the student body) but they are, after all, the stars we follow through their lives.

The reader will look forward to junior high or, if past that, will reminisce about the good old days, now that junior high is far behind.

The Trilogy

As 5^th graders in Because of Mr. Terupt and as 6^th graders in Mr. Terupt Falls Again and now as 7^th graders, the gang manages to stick together miraculously by the skin of their teeth, through all that happens to the group and its individuals.

Each contemplates far beyond what the normal 7^th grader normally does, using vocabulary that at times seems to mirror their future selves.

How such a diverse group manages to stick together and grow is somewhat manipulative but it works and works well. We come to love each of them.

I would recommend starting with the first book, Because of Mr. Terupt, (or the second, Mr. Terupt Falls Again, to fully understand the power of this teacher and the glue of the gang (starting with the third book whets one’s appetite to learn more about certain incidents that happen in the first two books, alluded to, and to have a need to find out about Mr. Terupt’s magic – it is spoken of but not lived through in book three – but will be experienced again in the sequel).

Wisdom** abounds (phenotype is genotype plus the environment) and not only from Mr. Terupt. One of the students starts a list of Seventh Grade Survival Tips that he adds to as the year progresses.

And the book is divided into months, starting with the end of summer and how some spent their summer vacation. The reader races through the year reading voraciously if even guessing correctly what will happen next.

The author tries so hard to give us seven very different characters (why?) but seven is a large number and the attempt to write in seven voices doesn’t quite succeed.

The Future

Saving Mr. Terupt would make an unforgettable movie or series of movies – full of drama and friendship and lessons (but not much school!)

*Because of Mr. Terupt and Mr. Terupt Falls Again are the first two titles in this trilogy so far. I suspect there will be sequels. In addition, BookPages has published the Kindle edition, 52 pages, of  Summary & Study Guide: Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. Sort of a Cliff’s Notes so you know this is a book to read.

**”. . . it’s not necessarily the biggest or fastest individuals that survive, but the ones most responsive to change.” (page 357) And each of the seven gives us their best lessons learned in the last two pages. Words to grow by.

Book Review: Chester and Gus (autistic boy, chocolate lab)

Chester and Gus: Best friends. . . in training, by Cammie McGovern (Harper Collins Childrens, 2017, 247 pages, $16.99, ages 8-12, grades 3-7)

Is it too early in the year to select a Book of the Year for 2017?

We here at DogEvals loved Chester and Gus. We want a sequel, too!

In a Nutshell

Chester doesn’t pass his certification test as a service dog because he is startled (panicked) by loud noises, so he tries to make a career change into a companion/therapy/’service’ dog for an autistic boy - but trying to convince the boy to bond with Chester is another story. (Patience, my boy, patience.)

Other themes, minor, concern convincing the school that Chester is needed (and loved) in the classroom as well as the complexities of Chester’s trainer who really, really wants to teach Chester to read. (At six months, Chester could understand 50 words.) (The storyline about the trainer could have been eliminated, perhaps.)

So much growing to do by so many. . . .

We hear Chester talking to himself and thinking things through and even communicating with Gus, though Gus prefers not to (and also doesn’t like movement or touch).

Caveat

The book is told from the point of view of Chester the dog: we here at DogEvals know that some readers are turned off by dogs talking in books but we love it when it is done well and author Cammie McGovern does it spectacularly well.

The Search

“Every dog has a weakness. . . . They’re perfect in many ways. . . The trick is to figure out your challenge as early as possible, then work on it a lot.” (p. 11)

“Wanting a job isn’t the same as being able to do it,” (p. 51) thinks Chester. He really really wanted to be a service dog and is searching for his life work and wondering if Gus is the person he was meant for, which may entail convincing Gus they were meant to be together as well as convincing the parents and school that he can really help Gus in a service dog capacity.

People Matching

When you find your person, you don’t have to talk. . . .

What We Didn’t Love

The author is mother to an autistic child so the scenarios with Gus seem plausible but McGovern is not a dog trainer: consequently she has the book trainer try to ‘cure’ Chester of his noise sensitivity by flooding. In other words, by exposing him to noises and hoping he will ‘get used to them rather than by systematic desensitization and counter conditioning (SD/CC*).

Gus’ mother also tries to pass Chester off as service-dog-in-training and eventually manages to do it the ethical way, thanks to her internet research.

The parents seem a bit slow on the uptake as far as their son Gus is concerned but having an autistic child is a learning experience. It's just that Chester is so much more tuned in to Gus. 

Chester and Gus is for. . . .

Kids, of course. And adults who may be in the wrong job. And anyone wanting or needing to learn more about autism (and a bit more about service dogs) and non-verbal kids, and siblings of autistic kids, and dog trainers, school teachers and administrators, and just plain dog lovers.

*not to worry about this new methodology - basically it is dog-friendly, unlike flooding.

OT Book Review: The Boys in the Boat (1936 Olympics, rowing)

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel Brown (Viking, 2013, 416 pages, $28.95) (Young Reader’s Edition, 2015, 240 pages, $17.99, grades 4 and up)

How to Describe The Boys in the Boat. . . .

Inspiring, historical, stirring, masterful, a great story told by a great story-teller, New York Times bestseller for over a year – so you know it’s got to be good! Twenty thousand reviews on Amazon, 82% of which are 5-star.

The Original Dream Team

Take nine college boys in the Pacific Northwest at the University of Washington devoting their energy in all sorts of weather (even snow) to a sport that originated in upper-class England and which in the eastern US draws the children of doctors and lawyers and politicians at Yale and Harvard and Cornell.

Our UW collegians are, instead, the sons of lumbermen and fishermen and construction workers and they, themselves, pay their tuition by working in the forests and on the waters and by building Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia.

Perhaps That is Their Secret

Their hard-working upbringing makes them thirsty to accomplish more while their working background gives them the strength to accomplish it. They are used to fighting for what they want.

Rowing?

Yes, rowing. Rowing a shell – a boat that glides on the water with the rowers rowing backward in perfect unison.

Starting with 175 freshmen who try out for the crew team, the coaches whittle down the field to eventually the nine who travel to Hitler’s Berlin in 1936 (along with Jim Thorpe) and come back against all odds to win the gold.

They don’t hear the starting gun (they have a notoriously slow start anyway). They have an ill teammate. They are in the outside position which adds about two boat lengths they must make up – just think what they could have accomplished if more had been in their favor – or at least equitable.

Spoiler Alert

By now you know the boys in the boat win the gold at the Olympics but the story centers around how they do it, primarily through the story of one of the boys, Joe Rantz, who had possibly the most difficult upbringing. These boys lived through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression and still learned to trust one another and come together as a team to work as one well-oiled machine.

They continued to meet a couple of times a year for life and to row together as a group every ten years.

Two Stories in One

One story is about poor college kids in Seattle who together become one, a team in the true sense of the word. The other story takes us through the life of one of those boys, the most challenged one. Both stories interweave through the pages, alternating chapters until they meet and then bring us to the Olympics.

Two More Things. . . .

Young Readers Adaptation

You may have come to realize that one goal of the reviewers here at DogEvals, besides telling you about great dog books, is to interest you in reading. So many adults simply don’t have time for a long adult-sized book. We want you to start easy – with children’s books, to reel you back into a world of fantasy and fun and easy education. (Read our week of reviews of dog books for kids that might appeal to Mr. Trump who admits he is not a reader.)

Besides the original adult-sized 419-page version, The Boys in the Boat also comes in a shorter version, the Young Reader’s Adaptation for teens but also for adults who simply don’t have much time for reading.

And, PBS has come out with a documentary, The Boys of ’36, also on Netflix!

Whichever version fits you best, you will not be disappointed. As a matter of fact, we bet you will then spend (too much) time online, researching more about this Dream Team of the 1930s!

And, secondly, if you just happen to be a transplanted Husky (the mascot of the University of Washington), The Boys in the Boat will bring back memories. I was lucky: for me, memories abound. The rower followed in the book is from my hometown. I am familiar with the names Coach Ulbrickson and boatbuilder Pocock and now I know why the Conibear Crewhouse (where I actually lived and ate for a while) is named the Conibear Crewhouse.

For those who are familiar with rowing on the East Coast, you will skim through this book like your oars skim through the water. And, finally, others will learn about a sport they may not have known much about: if they are young enough, they may even try out for crew when they get to college!