I have held back from posting anything for a while because, if your online feeds are anything like mine, they are absolutely crammed with advice for surviving the current situation with your dog, and I have felt like I would be likely to do no more than parrot what someone else has said better than I would.
Today is a special day in the Blue Merle Minion household though, and so today I have to post. 3 years ago, a small bundle of blue merle patterned fluff made the journey from Wales right across to the south east corner of England. He snoozed the entire way across on my lap, waking up from time to time to watch the big trucks on the motorway that he seemed to like. He walked into the house as if he had been here his whole life, and spent the rest of that day and evening either sleeping against my hip on the sofa or sleeping on my feet. The quiet didn't last and the true chaos that we had introduced into our family soon made itself known!
This dog set me on my studies, and therefore is responsible for my new career as well. Life with him has not been easy, and it will never be truly relaxing out in the world with him (or for him, with his fear and anxiety that will be a work in progress for his entire life I suspect) but he gives the very best kisses and sofa cuddles, he trusts us to do absolutely anything at home, and I wouldn't trade him for the world.
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| Happy 3rd Gotcha Day, Finn 😍 |
As I said earlier, there have been a lot of articles and blogs doing the rounds giving great advice on how to survive the restrictions on leaving the house. To give some context, I am in the UK and currently we are allowed to leave the house once a day for exercise, which includes walking dogs. This is not so bad for those dogs who are happy to see other people or dogs as close as 2 metres (a little over 6 feet, the advised social distancing gap we must all maintain from people we do not share a house with) and live in homes with multiple people, so that they can be walked multiple times if happy and healthy to do so.
For those like Finn, this is not the case. There are so many more people walking at the moment. I live on a little road in a village. It has got a lot busier in the last couple of years with a housing estate built behind us but, with careful timing, we could manage to avoid at least other people walking dogs. Not so now, as there permanently seem to be people with dogs on our street. My husband is furloughed from work, and is a confirmed early riser, so he takes Finn out before just about anyone else is up for a walk, After that, we are onto entertaining him at home.
There are blogs and groups dedicated to the promotion of canine enrichment, ideas to keep dogs entertained and exercise their minds in a healthy way in the home and garden. Many of these enrichment ideas include various ways to feed treats or entire meals to take time and allow the dog's brain to work while he is getting his food. It was a comment on a post on one of these groups that has been pricking at my brain ever since I saw it.
Paraphrased, it said something like 'I don't agree with making dogs work for food. You wouldn't make a child work for their meal, why should a dog?'
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| Fun and frugal! Boxes and toilet paper tubes recycled to hide treats or kibble |
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| All kinds of things are available to stuff with treats or their meal |
I cannot put it any more plain than this. Dogs are not children! Although many (me included) use the comparison of canine intelligence to that of a toddler to help people understand how dogs learn and how much they can learn, that does not mean that dogs and children think alike.
To put it in a scientific, biological perspective, dogs have evolved for thousands of years to be scavengers. They have literally evolved into a form that is perfectly designed to work for their food, to have to hunt it out and consume mouthful by mouthful. In ages past, just how often would a dog have happened across an entire meal in one place? Even by the time they were living comfortably alongside humans in the start of our domestic relationship, they were still picking through our leavings, which would take time and effort, meaning that a large proportion of their day was spent in the process of finding and eating enough food for the day.
No wonder then that in a number of homes, Fido eats his twice daily bowl of kibble from a simple bowl in thirty seconds flat and then goes in search of something else to do. Many of those 'bad behaviours' that guardians can despair of come from boredom and natural impulses not being satisfied. One of the major natural behaviours and impulses not satisfied by the twice a day bowl of food inhaled in a couple of minutes is chewing. Dogs have evolved to chew things. Even when those thousands of years ago, they managed to find a carcass to eat, it wasn't neatly trimmed meat. Bones, tendons and skin would all be chewed and consumed, to take the maximum nutrition available before the next scavenging session. By giving dogs problems to solve and making them chew and lick, and use their paws to get to their food, we are encouraging and giving them an outlet to display natural behaviours. This is one of the Five Freedoms of animal welfare, the freedom to exhibit natural behaviour, something all of those with responsibility for the care of animals should be aware of and ensure they structure the animal's life to facilitate.
Get your dog to work for their food. Find a slow feeder bowl if nothing else, to make them take a little longer over their food. Better yet, join the enrichment groups, read the enrichment pages and blogs, and find as many ways as you can for your dog to work for their food. Trust me, they will enjoy themselves and you will enjoy watching them as they grow in confidence. The only real limits are your imagination and what your dog is happy to do!
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In other news: I have been spending a lot of time recently researching the subject of impostor syndrome. I am very proud to say that this has resulted in a one hour workshop that I have produced. It is exclusively available in the Canine Principles Skills Hub. This subscription service costs £20/month, and is amazing value, as the hub contains a number of courses and workshops along with mine. I will be producing another workshop for the Hub soon, on my favourite subject! To join the Hub, go to the Canine Principles site and click on the 'Membership' link.
Further to the Impostor Syndrome workshop, I am also well into the process of writing a book on combatting impostor syndrome. It is written with a slight bent towards the canine professional world, but the subject matter applies to anyone struggling with this awful issue, and the example problems used are mostly phrased around the sort of things canine professionals may be facing as tasks or challenges. The book goes into more detail and contains more information on what impostor syndrome is, and more management techniques than the workshop, because I simply could not fit them all in to the video!
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