Mad Manny Strikes Again!

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86 – October,2015

Dealing with a Problem Puppy

By Amy Fernandez

Anyone managing a multiple-dog household knows the standard Q&A when asked about their canine housemates. Initial shock is inevitably followed by commiseration about the amount of work it entails. That’s true in some respects – more nails to cut, more dishes to wash. Of course, our dogs repay this in countless intangible ways. A recent experience made me realize this fact, and understand that some of these benefits cease to register on our mental radar.

Like most of us, I regularly dispense dog advice to friends, relatives, puppy buyers, and total strangers. Usually it’s routine. Occasionally it gets interesting. But it rarely gets better than Midnight Manny. Craigslist, among other remarkable circumstances, landed this neonate Xolo pup in the lap of my good friend, Deirdre Gallagher. Weird, maladjusted dogs are Deirdre’s specialty– specifically puppy mill refugees. Over the years she’s shared her home with an ongoing pack of “jacked up dogs from terrible situations.” She says, “I just knew in my bones if I had the chance to raise a puppy, things would be glorious.  He would be so well-behaved and well adjusted.  After all, look what I had learned.”

After coping with legions of phobic, frantic adults, a warm, cuddly clean slate puppy seemed well-deserved. Admittedly, neither of us anticipated anything but smooth sailing. Moreover, possible complications were weeks away because Manny wasn’t even weaned when this saga commenced. “The minute I saw him I knew he was way too small and way too young to be taken away from his mother. He was so small it scared me,” she says. Momma dog was AWOL so Deirdre did the sensible thing. “I put a little leopard jacket on him and carried him around for three weeks.” Manny was coddled, nurtured and on his feet in no time staking out his territory. Only those who have raised Xolo pups can appreciate the true magnitude of that delightful development.

Generally, primitive breeds possess more pronounced basic survival drives. There’s a reason why this one has defied the odds and survived for thousands of years. It’s no canine hothouse flower. Their innate determination, resourcefulness, and curiosity might qualify them as adrenaline junkies. Couple that with incredible stamina, resilience, and good luck dissuading a Xolo from its intended mission.

Behaviorist Debbie Feliziani has over 30 years experience with quirky dogs, including this rare breed. From her perspective, Manny’s breed was a secondary issue. “Puppy raising is complicated and most people are unprepared for it. After a certain point nurturing isn’t all the puppy needs.” We know the drill. A puppy’s perceptions, motivations, and response levels are based on the emotional framework it develops during its first three months. “You need to provide a lot of enrichment and encouragement.” That part of the deal gets plenty of airplay. The rest of Debbie’s advice, not so much. “At the same time you need a no-nonsense approach.” That’s where many owners lose the plot. “People acquire puppies because they are nurturing and it can be hard for them to accept the idea of saying no and setting boundaries with an infant puppy.” Deirdre may be an Armageddon trial lawyer, but she wasn’t bringing that to this table, as this memorable morning illustrates. “First he ate my glasses, then I leaned on the dog gate and fell over. He had methodically unscrewed all the anchors.”

As Debbie notes, from a puppy’s perspective, everything is fair game. “Puppies live within a social system. But how much of that stems from opportunistic learning vs. human perceptions of this stuff as screwball dog behavior?” Manny’s cognitive exploration became a rap sheet of petit larceny, vandalism, and disorderly conduct.

Deirdre should have flagged some issues a bit sooner, but in fairness, weird, maladjusted rescues formed her baseline of canine behavior. “Mischief behavior is very inventive and good for the puppy. But what happens when you try to intervene?” And as Debbie points out, intervene you must.

Belated attempts to halt this crime spree simply broadened Manny’s skillset. He honed his techniques to reach countertops and open closets, and devised an ingenious ex-pen escape. After repeatedly coming home to find him snoozing on the couch after a day of demolition, she put a lid on his pen. Houdini’s routine continued for weeks until she caught him maneuvering it to the stairway and stepping underneath. Manny’s public appearances were equally colorful. Leash training was leveraged into a glorious festival of territorial display. His socialization/habituation field trips culminated in a truly unfortunate incident at a local shop. For undetermined reasons, his inquisitive nature prompted him to bite through the office power cables resulting in an unanticipated early closing time and Manny’s permanent banishment from the establishment. It sounds hilarious now, not so funny then.

“The hierarchical aspect is very important when raising these singletons,” Debbie says. She emphasizes that consistency is key to establishing and maintaining that critical leadership role. In a sense, this relationship was consistent. Deirdre talked, Manny ignored her. “The word ‘no’ was unrecognizable to him.  He would barely sit on command. When I picked him up, it was like holding a sea urchin,” she says. Along with other classic missteps, Deirdre ensured that Manny had no incentive to seek rewards– specifically, her approval. He was permanently ensconced in a luxury suite. In terms of love and attention, he was overdosed.

“Most puppies are desirous of independence anyway. If they don’t have to appease or ask for anything, you wind up with a dog that doesn’t take directions,” Debbie states. These homegrown canine delinquents make up her average workday. “When they get a little older and I see them in puppy kindergarten it’s obvious that these people have not set any parameters for their behavior. That’s a very bad thing. It’s especially bad when a singleton grows up with no parameters.” And ladies and gentleman, that is precisely what we were dealing with at that point.

Change was imperative, but where to start?

“It really is how the puppy presents and the person’s approach should be proactive not reactive.” Debbie’s advice sounds doable, until the tricky part. “A puppy’s response and reaction to various things will change as he gets older.” Along with vigilance and consistency, it requires constant fine tuning. Deirdre not only underestimated the pace and scope of Manny’s development, that line in the sand kept moving.

A puppy’s behavior is based on very specific needs at each stage of its development. As those needs change, internal factors like myelenzation of the brain, teething, and adolescent hormonal activation constantly revise it perceptions and responses. Conventional designations of these developmental stages are roughly accurate, but puppies aren’t equipped with timers and spreadsheets. As every breeder knows, even littermates can exhibit substantial variations during these transitions. “There’s a lot of give-and-take with puppies during that period” says Debbie. “Some messages won’t kick in until they are a few weeks older. And sometimes they don’t yet possess the external components to display certain behaviors like running away or exhibiting fear when confronting something potentially dangerous.”

It takes practice to effectively anticipate and respond to a pup’s evolving behavioral parameters. However, they are usually equipped with a basic package of social navigation tools to help us find common ground and establish communication, which didn’t interest Manny at all. “It became very obvious to me that in addition to his little brain not being developed enough to function in any way necessary, like holding his bladder or learning a command, that momma dog must serve a function that I didn’t,” Deirdre says. Maternal feedback seemed like the obvious missing component to explain this budding canine sociopath.

On the other hand, mothering skills run the gamut from fabulous to abysmal. Debbie considers it a variable influence. “Depending on the mother, you will get a range of limitations. Some mothers are not tolerant about being bitten; they stay away when puppies start getting teeth. Others don’t discourage pups from nursing, they will keep that going forever and the pups never get weaned. Some mothers teach no inhibition. They don’t get upset when puppies bite or scratch, or intervene when their puppies fight. I wonder if the mother is as much of a factor as the siblings? There is something about lying down next to your siblings.” This source of social feedback doesn’t get quite as much airplay simply because this usually happens as a package deal. Regardless of the dam’s contribution, littermates remain a constant presence, at least for awhile.

None of this factored into Manny’s reality, so Deirdre utilized the recommended compensation strategy. “After he grew a little bit, I was happy that he had the other dogs to play with.  I thought this would make him learn dog behavior,” Deirdre says. Dog/dog interaction is an increasing focus of training and behavior guidance but for understandable reasons Deirdre’s geriatric Chinese Cresteds had limited interest in working out issues with this big, bouncy, clueless puppy.

Even that option is off the table for most puppy owners. The standard one dog household has created an explosion of trendy alternatives to fulfill this role. Debbie calls them a simplistic and misdirected solution. “I question those TV pop trainers who present the idea that a pack will straighten out a dog’s behavior issues. I honestly don’t see the correlation between canine and human feedback,” she says. Conceding that these brief, variable encounters have some immediate impact, she explains the obvious philosophical gaps in this approach. I’ll skip the tech talk. Compare it to striking up a conversation with a stranger at a bar. You might end up with a lifelong friend or a trip to the ER.

“People love dog parks because they enjoy the social interaction. But many of them don’t understand what’s really going on when dogs play,” Debbie says. From her perspective, they [dog parks] are especially popular with owners of assertive dogs. “They know what they have, and to them it’s just fine. These dogs don’t care what is socially acceptable. Many of them are very rank-oriented and it’s all about status. They initiate rivalries, constantly incite situations to display dominance, and just disrupt everything.”

This may explain why half the American dog population is running off the rails and business is booming for behaviorists. It also brings me to the point of this meandering brain stroll. Although this problem affects most of the dog-owning public, we don’t give it second thought. Deirdre and Manny made me realize how much Puppy Ed 101 happens on autopilot in multiple dog households. Like all pups, mine challenge the household rules. They never get away with it. The moment that some clueless pup tears into the trash or starts going postal on the postman, some vigilant pack member steps in and stops it cold.

Once again, don’t read any altruistic motives into this helpful behavior. This is their territory, and they have zero tolerance for renegades. Admittedly, their interpretation of basic house rules doesn’t invariably jive with mine. Even so, their immediate, unmistakable feedback reinforces the puppy’s awareness of boundaries on so many levels. New recruits grow up in an existing system. So, next time you’re cornered with that dreaded conversation about the drawbacks of multiple dogs. Turn the table. Mention how little time you devote to perennial puppy raising challenges like housetraining, crate training, leash training, separation anxiety, food guarding, territorial display, etc.

And what’s become of Midnight Manny? Deirdre steeled herself for a long, hard rehab program. Then, like dog people everywhere, she did the thing that qualified as insane from any objective standpoint. She got another puppy. “About four months after Midnight Manny came to live here, my dog sitter directed to my house a seven month PIO that had been surrendered because he was unmanageable.  Oh good.  Let’s have two of them! Vinnie and Manny are now best friends.  They are nothing short of wild,” she says. So far, this unconventional solution works. It’s a perfect outlet for their puppy energy and the ongoing feedback has helped to moderate some of their extreme behavior. Contrary to his jailhouse profile, a little guidance and attention was all Vinnie needed. Manny is improving, but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

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Posted by ralbee on Oct 15 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.