GM News - July 2022

Now that the shortest day is past, we can look forward to progressively more daylight for our dogs' exercise - yay!

Stay safe,
Amanda, David, Rodna & Ruth
Gentle Modern School of Dog Training

Excerpt from The Way of Dog by Zana Fraillon
"Training
It’s hard to train Manpup whose brain isn’t
wired like ours. Sometimes he just doesn’t listen.
But I am an excellent teacher and so
that Manpup is slowly learning to know
what I mean when I show him
just what I’m wanting.
It has only taken
a few days of training.
Meat! I say and sit down and don’t move
. . .
“Sit! Good boy! Here’s a treat!” And he gives me meat!
And he knows it is a sign
to say that meat is mine
when I Sit! and Come! and Lie!
and it works every time.
I think I chose him wisely.
I train him to
pat me and hold me and fold me in his body
so we can just be
us three
Meat, Manpup and Me."

The Way of Dog is heart warming story of a dog finding its way in life. Scruffity starts his story in a litter of pups as they are taken from their mum on a puppy farm and put in a concrete and metal cage. Without his mother, Scruffity sets about trying to understand The Way of Dog and live the best doggy life he can. He talks with and learns from other dogs in nearby cages and various other animals that he comes into contact with on the puppy farm. Later he gets to know a young boy who works on the puppy farm, and a friendship develops. Scruffity’s education continues in the outside world as he meets all sorts of people and animals. Many are good experiences, but even the bad ones he approaches with a positive attitude to learn what he can and do better next time.

The story is told entirely in Scruffity’s voice. But it doesn’t feel like gross anthropomorphism. The style is clearly informed by a 21st-century understanding of human-animal relationships and turns around things that one can believe are salient to a dog in their day-to-day experience of life in our man-made world. Much of the story is about his relationships with the characters he meets, especially about ‘training’ (from Scruffity’s perspective). It is a lovely story, with a really good ending, but it also offers an interesting perspective on how we treat and train our canine friends.

The Way of Dog by Zana Fraillon is written in verse with gorgeous illustrations by Sean Buckingham. It was first published in 2022 by Queensland University Press. Scruffity tells his story with courage and humility and as much objectivity as he can. I found it both pleasurable and compelling to read.

David

Top Tip

Here's a tip everybody can get behind: Shorter training. Fear Free Happy Homes reckons three minutes is a long enough training session for most dogs. Training is hard mental and (sometimes) physical work and you want training to be always fun and not drudgery. Shorter is smarter. Plus it's easier to find, say, three 3 minute blocks of time in the day than a block of 15 minutes.

Dogs in the news

Family pet or furry human by Fenella Souter, The Age Good Weekend Magazine 10 July 2022: "Without meaning to do wrong, we’ve become both their protectors and their kindly jailers. 'Dogs don’t have any other life outside what they’re given,' says Pierce [Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist attached to the University of Colorado, author of books about the ethics of keeping pets]. 'It’s a sort of ‘intensive captivity’ where often their only friend is their human. We’ve got a whole social network. We go out of the house when we want. Dogs are often denied that.'
Pierce would like to see people trying to think more about life from the dog’s perspective. It might be something as simple as letting the dog choose the walking route or how long it sniffs at a scent, or putting some of its food in a puzzle toy so it gets to use its foraging mind."
And
Mr. Happy Face is 2022's “world’s ugliest dog”.
And
Not strictly speaking "news" but definitely worth promoting: check out this dog and his 'Mission Impossible' obstacle course - I guarantee your eyes will widen and you might even gasp! Inspiration for a Play+Train session I reckon ;-)

Stress-induced Colitis

Similar to us, a pet’s immune system can be weakened by stress. Inflammation may occur throughout the body with an overgrowth of harmful intestinal bacteria. The resulting diarrhea is typically loose, runny, may be discoloured, and may show mucous or fresh (bright red) blood. Dogs (and cats) with stress colitis may have increased urgency to toilet and may not make it outside.
Sandy Robins provides more info on potential triggers and treatment.