Intro
	17 Aug '03 18 Aug '03 15 Oct '03

Intro - 12 Aug '03

Justice is an intact 2 year old male Belgian Malinois whose owner thought he was a MalaMUTE! He came to the attention of Malamute rescue when someone checked out the ad in the paper and learned that the owner was going to shoot him later that day since he'd had no takers on the ad. Imagine the MalaMUTE person's surprise when they discovered he was a Belgian MaliNOIS!

Justice came to me for fostering. He's allegedly trained in French but even with the assistance of Mark Plonsky's excellent site (which has soundfiles of the French commands), I get no response. My theory is that Justice probably never really knew anything.

I brought out a Schutzhund trial sleeve and he was actively afraid of it--it noticeably upped his tension level.

He's very sweet but very frightened of lots of things. The good news is that he bounces back after being startled very quickly.

I want to get him trained to walk on a loose lead, recall, sit, down, stand, stay, retrieve and a few tricks. Plus teach him that the sleeve just means that he can snuggle up for hugs and cookies.

When he's on lead near me, he lies down for awhile and shyly makes sure he's snuggled against my foot or leg. Every time I shift positions, he shifts as well to maintain contact. After about twenty minutes of this, he goes on overload, paces or weaves and cries. He needs to go back in his crate to re-group and rest. Every single time I've done this, he has slept heavily for 2-4 hours afterwards.

Right now, he's too frightened to eat food from my hands. If I offer him food when he's loose in the building, he takes off like I was holding out a snake. If I offer him food from my hand in his crate, he crams himself into the farthest corner of the crate and looks terrified.

So all I did today was leave him in the crate, which is positioned by my computer, and periodically say his name and toss in a handful of cookies.

The cats have been extremely helpful with this--at first, he was too afraid to eat the cookies but after watching the cats fish the treats out through the bars of his crate, he decided to eat them himself. Sibling rivalry is a powerful force!

He's starting to get an eager, happy look when I open the cookie jar (which is full of homemade dog treats, recipes posted soon).

Later he'll get a chance to play loose with my dogs in the building.

At dinnertime, I'm going to see if I can get him to eat out of a long spoon held in my hand or maybe out of a bowl held in my hand.

My plan for tomorrow: give Hunter a few short training sessions right in front of Justice, to get him used to the sound of the clicker and pique his interest in what's happening. I used to use Bidge this way, to give a fearful foster a role model and it worked quite well, It's hard to believe that "baby Hunter" is old and mature enough now to be the role model!

17 Aug '03

It's been a week of two steps forward and one step back. I have to keep reminding myself that learning is always peaks and valleys.

No formal training yet, he's still too fearful to take food from me or within two feet of me most of the time.

I've been working on saying his name then dropping a handful of treats into his crate.

After he came back from his little adventure he went through a period where he submissively pee'd whenever Jim was near him. Sometimes when Jim was simply watching him. For several days I made a point out of getting him out of the crate or ex-pen myself and then handing him over to keep this from becoming a cycle. This seems to have worked because he hasn't submissively pee'd in several days.

He's gotten to the point where I no longer have to reach into his crate or go into the ex-pen to get him, he comes forward to meet me. This is a huge relief because reaching into a frightened dog's enclosure is one good way to get bitten. With a normal dog, we work on waiting for permission to come out first but he's so scared I want to reinforce coming forward to meet humans before I start on self control.

Yesterday I had a lesson all afternoon. He handled the first few hours fine, then got overstimulated and basically had a meltdown. Stood in his crate growling and posturing for about twenty minutes. Poor guy is so tense, he just doesn't know how to turn off and relax. And if he can't turn off without total peace and quiet, then he gets overwhelmed and that leads to more stress and it's a difficult cycle to break.

An interesting thing I've noticed is that he's just about the same size as Hunter. During part of the lesson yesterday Justice was outside with Jim and Hunter indicated he wanted in the crate (to scarf up stray treats and in hopes of being reinforced by me for staying in the crate with the door open). When Hunter lies in the crate, he comfortably fills it. Justice only takes up about one eighth of the room available when he's frightened and the crate looks ridiculously large for him.

How much room he takes up in the crate is a very reliable indicator of his emotional comfort level. Right now, it's late at night, everything is quiet and he's taking up maybe half to two thirds of the crate.

He's got a long ways to go before he fills it up comfortably.

He's only pooped once on lead--the other times he's pooped has been when he's loose in the building or in his crate or in the ex-pen. He pees on lead really predictably for me but rarely for Jim. Jim is a lot more patient than I am, which is good because Justice is clearly very frightened by men.

One weird thing to me is that when Justice is tense about something outside, he pees on his front leg without seeming to notice. I've never had a Belgian boy who pee'd on himself more than once or twice, they were always icked out by it (as am I). He'll have to have another bath soon. He is getting to the point where he doesn't mind my picking at the loose hair on him. Haven't tried real grooming implements yet.

Tomorrow he goes to the vet. I suspect he's probably full of worms and so far as I know has never had a heartworm test (lived at an altitude in Colorado where it wasn't necessary for the last year; don't know about his first year of life). I plan on muzzling him right away. My vet is male and is really sweet with the dogs, very patient and very loving. I like him a lot, which is why I don't want Justice to puncture him.

Another sign of progress is that if we're in sight, Justice pants, paces and makes little whining sounds when he needs to pee or wants a drink of water (I don't leave water in his crate because I want him to associate being near humans with everything good in life). If we're in the apartment, he makes an eerie wail. It's not exactly a howl and our dogs don't react to it but it is a very strange sound indeed.

I'm not a real fan of only letting dogs out when they ask, I'd rather let them out as part of my daily routine. But I'm very happy that Justice is starting to communicate his needs to us!

18 Aug '03

Justice had his first vet visit today. His former owner claimed he was up to date on his shots but hasn't sent the documents and I can't wait any longer (since I'm classified as a kennel, I could be inspected at any time and every dog that sets foot on the property has to have rabies and distemper vaccinations). Since I won't do more than one vaccination at a time, I opted for rabies since it is the most important from a public health standpoint.

We went in and he was both frightened of and fascinated by the two people in the reception area. They both thought he was remarkably handsome and one of them came out with my file in her hand to pet him and say hello.

BIG PROGRESS! Even though she was holding a large object in her hand, he went forward to greet her.

I had her get a muzzle as soon as we were in the examining room because I just don't trust him yet. I like my vet and I don't want to be the one who gets him punctured. I also wanted to get him muzzled before the vet was in the room, hoping he won't associate the vet with being muzzled.

Justice accepted the muzzle quietly again. He's really a very cooperative boy.

KC Cornish (my vet) came in, checked him over and gave him the rabies shot. Justice was quiet throughout. Then KC drew blood for the heartworm test and Justice stood quietly throughout the entire procedure, watching carefully. I had hold of his collar but he made no attempt to pull away--such a good boy!

When all that was over, I decided Justice was being so cooperative and really very calm, so I took off the muzzle so KC could check his teeth. Practically the only clean thing on his body when I got him must have been those teeth! Pearly white, very nice.

At the end, he leaned against KC a bit and I could see Justice thinking "this is not so bad."

He was wiped out afterwards though--went sound asleep and stayed that way for over six hours. It was very obvious just how stressful he finds all these experiences. Really awes me because he obviously has a lot of courage.

Tonight, knucklebones. Great big giant raw beef parts with fat and stuff still on them. It's been so hot that none of the dogs has had enough exercise and they're all getting bored and making it known--politely--that it would be nice if we could magically make it about 25 degrees F outside. I wish I had a pool, the dogs would love it.

Justice turned out to have just about every parasite known to man (hooks, rounds, whips, tapes YUCK!) which may account for some of his gas. The odor is somewhat better since he cleared his system of whatever he was fed before but it's still pretty awful stuff. Lactobacillus capsules on his meals are helping but it can't happen fast enough! The knucklebone will probably make his gas worse but every dog deserves a treat.

I'll just make sure there's a fan that places him downwind of me!

15 Oct '03

Well, things go both slowly and amazingly quickly!

Justice's fear of men was so extreme I felt that it just had to be addressed first. I can't nuke all the men off the face of the planet for him, no matter how tempted I am at times. So I had Jim spend a month handling him and kept my involvement with him at a minimum.

And it worked fairly well. Justice went from involuntarily peeing and pooping if Jim looked at him and moved (even twitched an eyebrow) to being able to handle Jim's presence fairly well. He still has times when he involuntarily pees when Jim does something; the most recent incident was when Orion stole the little bone from a slice of ham and Jim hollered at him to "drop it!" It was an urgent exclamation, not a nasty scream but Justice still peed anyway.

A couple days ago I had someone here for a lesson (with an absolutely amazing dog!). She had explained that this was her first dog, so I wanted to show her how a truly terrified dog acts. When her dog needed a nap, I got Justice out and she petted him and interacted with him a bit. I think she may have fallen in love with him a bit--those honest brown eyes are incredibly appealing!

Then her dog needed to pee, so she took him out and I was waiting. There was Justice, there was my clicker, there were my treats... why not? So I started conditioning the clicker (I usually don't but I'd noticed over the last two months that he flinches when he hears a clicker from fifteen feet away). He flinched back for the first fifteen clicks or so but came right back each time. Particularly when he'd gotten up the courage to try my treat: strained babyfood meat! He tasted that and it was clear what he was thinking! "Gee, we never had anything like this in Colorado!"

Once he got over flinching at each click, I started shaping him to touch my finger. It was hard to tell if he was getting it because when he gets overwhelmed he wants to pace. And he gets particularly overwhelmed when there's something happening that he really enjoys! Back in the beginning, he'd get scritches and then get totally overwhelmed and need to go circle for awhile to deal with his excitement level. I decided to see what would happen if I gently prevented him from moving away. And he dealt with it!

When my student came back, she wanted to try it out as well. She held out her finger and he immediately bumped it! YAAAAY! She did targeting for awhile, then decided to see if she could get him to walk with her off lead. He caught on right away and in fact has two new behaviours in his repertoire: nose bumping and following like a shadow.

Now he's starting to experiment with using those behaviours to ask for attention. And he's soooo amazed when it works! He really is a very adorable dog and his adoptive mother will be very happy I think (he isn't leaving me for awhile yet).

Then yesterday the big moment came. My dogs have toys lying all over the building. Chamois in particular leaves toys stationed so she can grab one whenever she wants attention, wants to rub in her absolute superiority over the boys or just wants something to bite. One of the favourite toys is this big ball of sort of shredded plastic strands glued into a core with a loop of heavy polypropylene rope attached. It was lying out in the ring and Justice approached it, nosed it and then PICKED IT UP! Then he killed it, threw it around and ended up by trotting circles with it in his mouth.

Pretty amazing stuff!

Now I've got to either find another of those shredded plastic floss balls (and they aren't easy to find) or traumatize my dogs by sending this one with Justice when he goes. I've noticed that rescues often retain a special affection for the first toy they learned to play with, so I want him to have it in his new home. But it's one of the Belgians' favourite toys. <sigh>