Strategies

On this particular morning I am busy with feeding the dogs. I give Deuce his pin-toy filled with kibble while Rio is following me around waiting to see what will happen with her this AM.

Deuce is an awesome happy-go-lucky dog, but he ain’t sharing his food-dispensing toys with Rio so I have to make sure that when I use this, Deuce and Rio are separated.

Sure, I can teach him to “share” with Rio but this is one occasion in which management works great.

Rio and I are now doing a mini-training session in the LR. I am teaching her to get behind me when I say: go hide. This is a really cool behavior to teach any dog. You can have your dog go behind you in the event that a dog is approaching you from the front. Your dog being behind you will really lower the chances of an altercation.

With Rio, I want her to have this behavior down pat because sometimes she feels concerned (I think she feels this based on my observation of her body language) when meeting new people.

After a few reps, I bring with me the rest of her morning kibble and I ask her to follow me out back. She is excited, as she has learned this routine… I toss her kibble far and wide and tell her to go “find it”. In other words: Entertain yourself and use your beagle nose Rio and find every morsel of food!

Now this is the cool thing I noticed this morning as I am ready to launch her food: Rio and I are standing on the deck above the back area where her food is going to land.

Your “average” dog would begin running down the steps in order to begin eating but not Rio! Okay, okay, I know, I sound like the typical “mom” thinking that her “child” is “gifted”. But you decide… instead of making a blind-dash, Rio is looking at my hand just before launching the kibble and waits to see where the food lands before she runs down the steps to eat!!! Talk about being strategic AND brilliant :O)

I have seen her using this same strategy when we are playing “whippet”. She focuses on the movement of the hand holding the whippet toy so that she can anticipate where the whippet will move & land… If the first anecdote above did not convince you of her “brilliance” perhaps the whippet one will - ha!

So, what might be behind Rio’s decision to first look at the movement of the hand in both of these cases? The truth is I don’t know, but I am going to take a stab at it.

1. Dogs are brilliant at flow-charts: when “A” takes place “B” follows under these and these circumstances… so she has learned that when I have the measuring cup with kibble and I am standing with it on the back porch most likely I will be launching the food followed by the “find it” cue. And she has figured it out that if she pays attention and she sees first where the food lands the easier it will be for her to find it.
2. Dogs are keen on movement: In both of these examples, it is the particular movement of my wrist that precedes the launching of the food and the whippet toy. So again, if she observes the movement of my hand as I hold the toy she can best determine where the toy will land which will allow her to catch it.

I am terribly amused when I discover things like this be it in my own dogs or my client’s. Besides the amusement part, I love these kinds of “revelations” because they shed some light onto how their brains “work”. Ahh, our dogs… perpetual learners of our habits even when we are so clueless about them.