While murdering your Shiba will allow you to put it in any position you like, it is not recommended for the sake of the health of your future relationship.

One school of thought on discipline is that if your Shiba is getting all uppity, a good way to show him his place is to flip him on his back and pin him there.  While this may seem good in theory – put the dog off-balance, forcibly remind him that you’re the boss, dammit and don’t you forget it – there are many problems with this approach, especially with dominant or fearful dogs.  Many “Alpha roll” advocates also sport decorative scars on their arms and hands.

The Alpha roll is a controversial training technique that has been panned by many, including the Monks of New Skete, who at first advocated it.  They removed it from subsequent editions of their famous dog training book How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend, citing that it was too easily abused.

There are studies that indicate that the Alpha roll is more of a ritualistic behaviour and it is initiated by the submissive dog rather than being forced by the dominant dog.  It is also theorized that the only reason that an alpha animal would forcibly flip and pin a subordinate was if it was planning to kill it.  (Now all those scars seem to make sense… it would be if a parent lunged at their child, flipped Junior on his back and brandished a dagger aimed at his throat.  I’d bite someone doing that, too.)

The Alpha roll, like many other training techniques, has its place in modifying your dog’s behaviour.  However, an Alpha roll that works has more to do with Nothing in Life is Free than with immediate discipline.  Don’t use an Alpha roll for discipline and you and your puppy will be a lot happier and can skip into the sunset together.

The Alpha roll that works is the one you start as soon as your puppy enters the home.  When you introduce submissive postures as part of daily life, there is a lot less resistance to them.  Your puppy should be accustomed to being put into all sorts of positions and the handling of all body parts.  By getting your puppy to voluntarily assume a submissive position, you are setting the groundwork for taking the Alpha position in his life with him barely knowing you’re doing it.

How do you get your Shiba started on Alpha roll work?  BRIBES! Cheese! Sausage! Treats! Stuff that puppy’s gob full of hamburger.  Shibas are small enough that you can flip him on his back without too much effort.  Before he erupts into outrage, fill his face with something he thinks is awesome.  Try this around dinner time, when your puppy is already hungry.

Other strategies:

• Make teaching the Down command a priority.
• Randomly approach your puppy when he is lying quietly and pop a treat in his mouth.
• Once your puppy starts associating food with a submissive posture, start doing it randomly with food.
• Teach a command to go with the submissive posture.
• NEVER associate the Alpha roll with discipline.  It should always be a FUN activity.
• Be VERY careful when dealing with a rescue or a dog that you don’t know well – you don’t know what’s going on in that furry little head.
• If your dog initiates the Alpha roll with you, throw him a PARTY.  Break out the filet mignon.

What I did with Tierce was feed him as many meals as possible kibble by kibble while he was cradled in my arms on his back.  Pretty soon, being rolled on his back meant dinnertime.  For Tierce, food trumps dignity every time.  More importantly, his protests at being put in a submissive position gradually faded away AND his overall attitude got better.

The Alpha roll is not a disciplinary technique.  It is a lifestyle technique; one that should be practiced in non disciplinary circumstances in order to accustom your puppy to the submissive position in a positive way.

The poster at right is one of the entries (not mine!) in the Love, Hate, Propaganda Contest at CBC.ca

From the website:

The contest is open to secondary & post-secondary students in the following age groups:

14-17 years of age.
Poster or video category.
18 years of age & over.
Poster or video category.

Your poster or video can include a slogan or a catchy phrase but it does not necessarily have to. The important thing is that it conveys a message. You can use photos, moving images, graphics, illustrations, sounds, and music to support your message but only if you have created them.

Participants must reside in Canada and be at least 14 years of age before the closing date of the contest on March 12, 2010. Employees of CBC and their immediate family (father/mother, brother/sister, son/daughter) or persons living under the same roof are not eligible to enter this contest.

This is a great project for young animal lovers to promote animal welfare with a poster or a video. Find out more here.

Tsuki from http://janaki.tumblr.com/tagged/shiba_inu

Say it with me… AWWWW.  Click the picture for more cute pictures of Shibas from:

janaki loves jellybeans

Despite regular exposure to children, Tierce is still nervous around the smaller ones.  He’s okay around kids that are 10 or so and the children he was regularly exposed to over the years, but he is nervous around smaller, running, screaming children.

It’s not that Tierce tries to snap or bite, but he does shy away and bark, which always makes me want to say defensively, “I did socialize him with children!  I did!  I did!”  I usually settle for a sharp, “No!” and a leash correction, but this doesn’t seem to solve much.

I get the kids around Tierce to feed him treats as often as possible and interact with him, but this only serves to make him feel more kindly towards *them*, not kids in general.

Shassi, as I mentioned before, was fine with kids of all ages and she didn’t have a huge amount of exposure to toddlers.

While Tierce’s attitude is not a danger to himself or other people, as he’s never offered to snap at or bite children, I don’t like it very much.  Suggestions?

Here are a couple of stills I captured:

Continued from last Friday:

Yeah, this is all about me. And why shouldn't it be?

I still have to keep from automatically launching into my spiel when people say that they want a dog like Tierce.  Because I don’t think I’m normal and maybe Tierce is the ideal dog for my circumstances because I shaped him that way and was aware of his needs.  As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, via Sherlock Holmes:

“My line of thoughts about dogs is analogous. A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others.”

The problem of putting this all at my door, or at Susan’s, is that I have adapted to owning Shibas just as much as Tierce has adapted to me.  For me, it’s second nature to waggle my leg in front of an opening door to confuzzle a Shiba hoping to escape.  Dominance is automatically met with the appropriate equivalent of You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”.  He gets out for several walks a day and I take him running and geocaching and to the dog park for heartier exercise.  I accept that I may never be able to let him off leash without doing a complex algorhythm in my mind, calculating the likelihood of other dogs or prey animals being nearby.

This is why I temper my raving about how awesome he is around the artlessly enthusiastic.  I know that without the complicated calculation that is great breeders, preparation, education, financial stability, the right attitude needed to effect change without breaking the dog’s spirit, time and the help of friends and family, Tierce would not be the awesome dog that he is.

For Shibas everywhere, that scares me, simply because I know the fickleness of the general population when it comes to dogs.  They don’t often look beyond the surface of a dog attack or breeds considered “snappy”, “fear-biters”, “bad with kids”, “horrible at the vets”, etc.  Thus, when people breed and raise Shibas irresponsibly, there’s the risk of people shrugging off unusual aggression or fear in a Shiba as ‘oh, that’s just how they are’.  No, we need people to say to themselves, “Well all the Shibas I know are great little dogs.  What’s wrong with that one?”

Understanding that dogs are individuals, affected by heredity and environment just as people are is, to my mind, one of the first steps to approaching dog ownership as a human responsibility, rather than something that can be determined or regulated by a dog’s breed or physical appearance.

All the benches are showing tightly placed planks and a new coat of paint!  Thanks, Nanaimo Parks & Rec!

Dear Richard and Jeff,

Tierce and I visited the dog park today and found that the benches had been fixed and are even sporting a new coat of paint!  I am very impressed with the celerity with which you addressed my concerns about the benches.  By the way, Tierce is fully recovered from his accident. Thank you both again.

Julie MacTire

************

Wow great photo and thank you emailing us back.

It is a great help to us when we know of issues and users of facilities let us know plus ideas on how to make things better. Many times we just don’t know something has happened or that something is a problem so thank you for letting us know in a constructive and positive way. Our Parks crews take great pride in our facilities and if they know something act very fast.

What a great day to be out in the parks!

Richard.

Look! A random cartoonized picture of Shassi I did in Photoshop and put on this blog for no other reason than that you should see it! To connect it with this post, I will say now that Shassi was NOT an easy dog to own. Not at first.

I have a confession to make.  Tierce is really the easiest dog to own ever.  He’s miles ahead of Shassi in that respect.  Actually, the difference between him and Shassi is more like the difference between a sociopath and the average jock.

For a Shiba, Tierce is a good size.  Solid.  He’s gregarious, especially with people he knows.  He (now) doesn’t have a problem with most dogs.  He comes when he’s called and the odds that he’ll do it when distractions are present is steadily increasing (still dependent on the tangible laden threat in my voice).

As I’ve said before (or intimated), Shassi had a brain she used for evil.  I’ve enumerated the many ways she would manage to get out of the house, teach me to take nothing for granted, etc.  She is the dog that made me believe that, if there was a god, Shibas were the manifestation of the phrase, “Hubris is a sin!”.  She is also the dog that spawned TMS, because so many people would not believe that owning a Shiba was a serious exercise in humility.

But let’s compare the two:

***

Shassi:  Wailed for three nights straight until I gave up and let her sleep on the bed with me.

Tierce:  Went to sleep in his crate the first night and every night with no lonesome wails at all.

***

Shassi:  Took off at every opportunity

Tierce:  Can be bargained with.  Usually.

***

Shassi:  Separation anxiety when not in ‘her’ home, ‘her’ car, ‘her’ territory.

Tierce:  Could be happily plunked just about anywhere.  Does not flinch at loud sounds (like SCA heavy fighting), does not care where he is as long as he’s fed, walked and paid attention to when he wants.

***

Shassi:  Hated every dog she met outside of puppyhood, with very few exceptions (usually dogs she had repeated exposure to over a number of months).  Spaying did not fix this.

Tierce:  Was a macho pain in the ass until I had him neutered.  Now he is a regular at the dog park and I don’t act all squirrelly if another dog runs up to him (although on principle I want to throttle the owners who blithely call, “He’s friendly!”).

***

Shassi:  The number of times she would return at my call could be numbered on one of my hands, even if I should by accident lose two of my fingers.

Tierce:  Recalls are good.  Other dogs or prey animals blunt this to a great degree, but there’s hope there.

***

Shassi:  Never aggressive towards people.  Flashed teeth once, maybe, and a good scruff shake cured her of that.

Tierce:  Required a complete overhaul of his schedule to deal with his dominance aggression.  After the age of a year (and NILIF, a series of obedience classes and the intelligence that if he ever flashed his teeth at me or anyone else again, he could expect to spend the rest of his life hunting for them – one of the many reasons that I advocate positive training most of the time; it makes even mild negative reinforcement much more impressive and required much less often) he has never shown unprovoked aggression towards another person.  Even when he got his leg caught in the park bench, he allowed complete strangers to extricate him, even though he was in pain and scared.

***

Shassi:  Extremely good with children.  This, I attribute to early socialization and frequent trips to the playground at the end of the street.

Tierce:  Somewhat nervous around smaller children who don’t show complete confidence around him and will sometimes bark at them, despite frequent trips to the nearby elementary school.  Likes my friends’ kids/grandkids who he was raised with.

***

Tierce: 5 points in his favour

Shassi: 2 points in her favour

Now I know that a lot of Tierce’s virtues can be laid at Susan’s door (Tierce technically has a different breeder, but Susan bred his line), because she has taken pains to breed Shibas that are a little more in touch with the human world.  (When I was hunting for a male Shiba puppy we visited her to chat and my jaw dropped open when more than one Shiba came to the fence and wagged its tail.)  And, yes, Mischa and I have a LOT to do with how Tierce acts.  I am childfree and my job allows me a lot of freedom to spend time with him.  Mischa works at home now, so Tierce rarely needs a dog walker.  We spoil Tierce, but he knows where the line is and that crossing it is B-A-D.

But he’s so easy to live with – he can be warned away from the door when it opens, he is great in other people’s homes, he is a great companion when I go walking or running, he is reasonably friendly with people and other dogs – in short, he’s as close to ideal as I think a Shiba can ever come.

Continued next week.

Something that was mentioned on SHIBA-L recently was this Secret Powers prong collar by Lola Limited. Its advantages are that it looks prettier than a regular prong and also it is less likely to draw the ire of those opposed to the use of such things.  This brought up a few thoughts on the whole prong collar debate for me.

One of my tools is an ordinary prong collar, as Tierce has neck like bull and every so often requires a reminder that, hello, no, you’re not in the fucking Iditarod, thank you very much and I would like my shoulder back.

I don’t mind prancing Tierce out high, wide and handsome with his collar gleaming around his neck.  I’ve been accosted by do-gooders who haven’t been able to answer the question of how do you control a Shiba who pulls on his leash during walks as if he was Buck moving the thousand-pound sled for John Thornton so that you can have a reasonably pleasant walk uninterrupted by yelling, strained tendons or yanking the dog around.

Tierce is actually pretty good and the prong collar comes out only on special occasions now that he is almost 3.  However, when you’re dealing with an adolescent Shiba, I think there isn’t anything that beats a prong collar for quick control.

There are people who think the prong collar is cruel. I don’t entirely disagree.

“Cruel” refers to “willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to others”.  When you’re physically interfering with a dog so as to cause it discomfort, one can argue that you are willfully causing it distress.  (Let’s ignore the fact that Tierce considers us not sharing the toppings of pizza to be “distress” here)

The prong collar controls by causing the dog discomfort if he puts pressure against it.  I’ve put a prong collar around my arm and given it a tug and, damn, it doesn’t tickle.  Dogs’ necks are a lot tougher than human skin, but I’m willing to bet that it doesn’t feel that great to Tierce.

Yeah you're damn right she's cruel. Put this collar on me and didn't even take me for a walk!

Here’s the part that people who will condemn me for using a ‘torture device’ will copy and paste:  I don’t mind causing discomfort and even mild amounts of pain to Tierce if I think it’s the fastest way to stop problem behaviour.  If Tierce is lunging all over the place and the normal collar correction doesn’t work, it’s on with the prong collar and miraculously, a lot of the pulling and yanking and the fuck-you-I’m-going-over-here-except-I-weigh-25-pounds-and-you-weigh-mores stop.

Worse, I don’t even feel BAD about it.  Apparently if you get to the point where you use a prong collar, you’re supposed to wallow in excessive amounts of guilt and bewail the necessity of it all.  I don’t.

If Tierce walks nicely and doesn’t hurl himself against the collar in an attempt to get one… inch… closer!  to that maple leaf frisking in the middle of the road, he doesn’t get pinched.  It’s kind of like dog collar Aikido: the amount of energy the dog puts into pulling against the lead is the amount of discomfort the dog endures.  Tierce, being a sensible creature, does not endure a lot of discomfort gladly.  So he walks nicely.

I take into account MY feelings and tolerances and I’ve found that I’m a lot more patient with Tierce when I have something I know will get his attention and control him.  There’s few things more frustrating for me than a dog who just doesn’t give a shit because he knows he can handle the amount of discomfort he gets from jerking against his buckle collar.  Now that I’ve taken that away from him, he’s willing to listen to me and I can get my point across without reefing on whatever collar he’s wearing and constant warnings.

Now I’m sure that someone will bring up the head halters/choke chains/special harnesses that I could use.  Well, I’ve tried a lot of them.  Head halters would have me jerking Tierce’s head up on an angle to correct him and I just… no.  Choke chains choke.  They put pressure on the trachea, even when used properly.  Harnesses just reinforce Tierce’s image of himself as a sled dog in the Yukon Quest.

Prong collars work for me and I won’t apologize for using them.

However, there are people who have found that these collars don’t work for them (read this if only for an awesome overview of Cesar Millan’s training techniques and how Mei Chuah of the Shiba Shake blog found they worked on her dogs Sephy and Shania).  Not all dogs are created equal.  What works for Tierce, who thrives on serious Schutzhund training techniques, does NOT necessarily work on another dog or even on another Shiba.  There are some Shibas, especially some abused/neglected Shibas, who will respond to this training tool with shrieks and panic.

You can’t depend on anything to miraculously “fix” your dog’s behaviour issues.  Prong collars are a tool; they are not a cure-all for a dog’s bad habits.  So it’s up to you to determine whether the prong collar is a good fit for your dog.  It is entirely possible that after shopping, fitting and buying, a prong collar will end up not being the most effective tool for your dog.  So what you do is put the prong away and find a tool/technique that the dog does respond to.

As for the Secret Power collar above, I’ve got nothing against it, mainly because the collars are pretty and anything that makes my dog look more aesthetically pleasing is good in my book.  And, hey, if it makes people feel better about using prong collars and therefore having better control over their dog, then fine.  I’m just not ashamed of using one and letting people know that I use it.  For me and for Tierce, it works.

… in the Dogs in Canada 2011 Nikon Photo Contest

Entries close on June 15, 2011.