Michael Vick: Reforming? or just kissing up?

Humane Society open to working with Michael Vick
USA Today, 5/20/09

The humane thing to do:  Give Vick a second chance
by Tom Tryon, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 5/24/09

Campaign against dogfighting comes to Atlanta
Event comes on eve of Michael Vick’s release from prison
By Alexis Stevens, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5/19/09

Does Michael Vick really mean it when he says he’s sorry?  He hasn’t apologized to the dogs.   Is he just claiming remorse so he can get on the good side of a new football team and get his game back?  Or will he demonstrate that he’s changed not only his attitude but his behavior as well?

The latter is certainly to be preferred.  I’ve thought from the beginning that a constructive approach would be more effective for helping him change direction than a rigidly punitive approach — see my Web of Life blog right around the time of his sentencing hearing for a bit of historical context.

Think about it:  If you accept the logical premise that any animal can be trained to be either calm or vicious, or deliberately provoked to the point of becoming aggressive, then you may be receptive to the main idea behind positive training.  In essence, this kind of training rewards the desired behavior.  When an animal performs an undesirable behavior, that is simply not rewarded.

There are plenty of variations on that theme — counter-conditioning, desensitization, negative reinforcement, and others.  You can teach an animal what you want by trading an undesirable behavior (aggression) for an acceptable behavior (sit politely, the equivalent of saying please before granting something of higher value, also known as “no free lunch”).

And I suggest that you can use these same principles on people, to direct their behavior as well.  Works with kids, works with college students.  Perhaps even with tough guys, too.  It’s not for counselors or rehabbers who want a quick fix for their clients, but rather, for those who are willing to invest in the long haul.  With dogs, the difference between positive training (think Victoria Stilwell) and dominance (think Cesar Milan) is that with positive, the dog learns to give the behavior because he wants to.  In contrast, with dominance, the dog gives the behavior out of fear of what will happen if she doesn’t.  Make the reward for good behavior so attractive that it effectively becomes the only choice.

So yes, maybe getting to play football again is such an attractive reward for Michael Vick that doing good with The Humane Society of the United States becomes a behavior he would actually be eager to demonstrate.  If that comes to pass, the practical result would make him an ambassador for both humane education, reform, and sport.

Breeds that mislead
Cary Smith, DC Pets Examiner, 5/20/09

What’s next for Michael Vick?
Wayne Pacelle blog, The Humane Society of the United States, 5/20/09

If anyone was ever in need of an extreme makeover, it’s Michael Vick
Published by Tim Collette on SeahawkNationBlog.com, 5/13/09
(Note — Collette suggests a good list of “rehab” community service projects for Vick)

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Is Michael Vick genuinely sorry for what he did?

Can he be effective in helping HSUS combat dog fighting?

Can he be an effective role model for disadvantaged kids, as Wayne Pacelle suggests?

Take Our Poll

 

“no kill” offers useful strategies

I am deliberately writing “no kill” in lower case letters because that’s largely what I heard at last weekend’s conference in DC, organized by Nathan Winograd and the Animal Law Project at George Washington University.  Perhaps some of the sessions I didn’t make it to were more “political,” but the ones I did hear would have been useful in a fairly wide variety of settings.

Controversial or not, there’s no denying a bunch of techniques and strategies animal welfare folks can implement that will change from outcomes that create or sustain suffering for animals to outcomes that improve their quality of life.  These strategies ultimately end up saving their lives.  In a nutshell, that’s what shelters are supposed to do in the first place.

Some people are  adamantly opposed to no-kill.  Not all of the techniques presented and discussed during this conference are right or adaptable for all shelters.  But that doesn’t mean the movement is all wrong.

What others are saying:

See Kim Thornton & Christie Keith blogging at PetConnection

Archives:

• Shelter Track documents — click here
• Legal Track documents — click here

 

 

Champ is Biden his time…

Puppy Love at the Veep’s House

by Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
The Reliable Source
Washington Post
Wed., March 18, 2009

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2009/03/rs-champ18.html

Kudos to the Veep for planning to get 3-month-old Champ an adopted companion instead of one from a breeder.  (No, I know that not all breeders are bad, but with all the animals discarded by society who land in shelters, those are clearly the #1 kinds of places to look first!)

Glad to hear Champ is learning his ABCs.  I looked up trainer Mark Tobin’s K-9 Camp Dog Obedience School, where Champ is enrolled, and while it’s good to see the claim to using “only positive training methods designed to be non-confrontational,” I have to question why choker and pinch collars are considered acceptable.  If I’m not mistaken, the world’s top trainers and behaviorists — folks like Ian Dunbar, Jean Donaldson, Karen Pryor, Patricia McConnell, Pat Miller, Turid Rugaas and others — all oppose these types of collars.  Head collars and Martingales are much more preferred.

There are plenty of interesting comments on The Ultimate Dog Blog.  Here’s one that I think responds to the issue in a well-reasoned manner:

Byron says:

OCTOBER 7TH, 2008 AT 5:24 PM

Choke collars, prong collars, and e-collars can all be highly effective training tools, but they are easy to misuse or abuse. It always comes back to one thing, the competence of the trainer. If the trainer is incompetent, the only question is the cost of failure to the dog. First, do no harm. Some people are simply unable to maintain the level of focus, attentiveness, emotional control, patience, and consistency it takes to train a dog. They may be fine folks in other respects, but dog training is just something they are not mentally or emotionally equipped to do. The advantage of positive reinforcement techniques over the various control collars is that when the incompetent trainer finally throws in the towel and gives up, he only leaves behind a dog that is untrained, not one that has been physically injured or made vicious.

Other trainers?  Your two-cents’-worth?

 

If dogs could read…

So many dog-mags, so little time to read them all!

In my “spare” time that is what I do — read dog magazines.  #1 on my list for “culture” (since 1997; I have an almost complete collection!) has always been The Bark (taglines “Dog is my co-pilot” and “the New Yorker for dog lovers”; lots of content available free online).  More recently, there’s a slew of new and not-so-new pubs on the market:  American Dog (target market predecessors:  Colorado Dog and Chicago Dog), Baltimore Dog (not related to American Dog or its affiliates), and NovaDog (not that much local content to start out other than the calendar; focus is almost 100% on Northern Virginia and the District, little or nothing on suburban Maryland).  Older dog lifestyle pubs include Modern Dog (since 2003), and Fido Friendly (also since 2003; for travels with your pooch).  These are all supported by advertising and take a hip, upscale approach to “life with dog.” 

For health and behavior, my #1 choice is the Whole Dog Journal (selected content available free online; other online content for paid subscribers only).  Other faves for health are two newsletters from vet schools — DogWatch from Cornell, and Your Dog from Tufts (index and selected articles archived online).  While there’s often some repetition as assorted stories take prominence depending on research announcements and breaking news, I like getting the reinforcement of content from multiple sources.  All three of these are independent to one degree or another, i.e., not supported by advertising.  The two vet school publishers naturally highlight their own vets; the good news is that the writing is consumer-friendly and informative rather than forcing you to take their word as gospel.  WDJ is completely independent, giving their writers 100% free range to be critical thinkers.  All three are more than favorably disposed toward positive training, especially WDJ.

If you’re in the (companion) animal welfare world, there’s Animal Sheltering Magazine (lots of content available free online), published by The Humane Society of the US.  If you’re in that world, you already understand that shelters and rescue organizations around the country are not connected to HSUS in any kind of parent-organization-and-chapters structure.  HSUS does provide support and guidance, and AS often does so through thoughtful, in-depth feature discussions.  You may not always agree with their conclusions; regardless, the discussion is plentiful to prompt your own thinking even more.  If you’re not already a staffer or volunteer with an animal organization, AS will give you some keen insights into the joys and challenges of this type of work.

I would love to hear from editors, publishers and readers around the country about other magazines and significant newsletters in your geographic areas.  Is anyone holding local animal care organizations (think shelters, rescues, animal control, nonprofits, etc.) up for scrutiny?  I’m not talking about coverage in your local media such as newspapers, TV and online.  I’m talking about hard copy magazines whose content focus is dogs.  I want to know who’s being looked at under the magnifying glass, why, and how the outcome of such investigation is evolving.  Not just the fun lifestyle stuff, but things like shelter management, how the animals are being treated (or not), community success (or failure) in finding a good balance between animal and human populations.  In other words, who cares enough to identify local problems and report on them regularly through specialty publications?  Is there a market for that kind of content anywhere?

 

Pound the streets for this hotel

I finally got to see Hotel for Dogs.  After helping to staff a table for the Montgomery County Humane Society at three area theaters when the film first opened, at last it was my turn to actually see the picture.  And it was a lot of fun!

As with Marley, there are a few flaws in the concept, but overall it’s a family-friendly “tail” of entertainment that ends on a clever note.  In this case, the flaw is the way the local “pound” is depicted — run by men who are uncaring, and focusing simply on getting unwanted dogs off the streets and out of people’s way as fast as possible, rather than on compassion and giving strays a chance at being matched with a new, loving family.  There’s a reference as the plot builds to a “no kill” shelter just across the county line, but no explanation that not all pounds are shelters, and vice versa, let alone that there’s even such a thing as an open admission shelter that can be no kill.  But I understand that omission — that’s a discussion that is truthfully beyond the scope of this kid pic and one I hope to take up later in this blog.

So the discerning viewer should consider these two aspects:  Entertainment value (high for its target audience), and bottom line — whether the human characters do right by the canines (ultimately, yes).  What’s not to love about a cast of dozens of multicultural dogs who’ve been so perfectly trained to behave as a team?  They not only sit, bark, and high five on cue, they also take care of bidness together.  The Hotel ultimately gets converted into a high end adoption center, boarding facility, and retail pet supply shop all in one, and even the kids (Emma Roberts, Jake Austin) get a happy ending when their social worker (Don Cheadle) and his wife adopt them.

There’s also an abundance of product placement advertising for Pedigree dog food, which made me wonder a couple of times if I was watching a feature-length commercial that happened to have a story wrapped around it.  Nevertheless, Pedigree is to be commended for its campaign to promote pet adoptions from shelters — a theme reflected in the commercials developed for Super Bowl.

In a nuanced way, Hotel offers up a critique not only of those animal facilities that are inhumane, but also of the foster child system in the U.S.  If we can learn that animals’ lives are not to throw away, then surely we can act on the underlying theme that children’s lives also are to to throw away.  We still have a lot to learn about the human-animal bond, how to foster and protect it.

Our rating:  8.7 kongs

 

Movies and mayhem

<Note:  The following assumes you’ve seen the movie or read the book!>

Launching at last!  With the spate of flicks about dogs, this is the opportune time to let the pups loose.  Starting with Marley and Me, I love all the attention canines are commanding this season, especially the emphasis from the producers and theaters on promoting adoption.  

OK, so John Grogan didn’t adopt Marley the ideal way.  His journalist colleague was clueless about everything that caring for an animal involves.  The breeder wasn’t what I’d call responsible, i.e., she didn’t screen the Grogans as prospective owners in terms of their knowledge of the breed’s characteristics, the extra work raising a puppy entails, and the couple’s capability to adapt their lifestyle while getting the right kind of training for that particular doggone-ality.

And the Grogans completely missed that training boat.  Let this be a lesson to all you first-time dog owners!  Want to know a secret?  Positive is the magic word!  Positive trainers show you how to get your furry friend to do what you want because the animal wants to, not because of fear of what might happen otherwise.  Don’t be misled by TV program wizards who are more about entertainment and short-term results.  If you want a pet you can live with for the animal’s entire life — and this is what is meant by responsible animal caregiving — plan to put in a little extra time, love and affection to get optimal results.  Your pet will thank you, and you’ll thank yourself for making that kind of commitment!

Despite these flaws, Marley is a fun flick for all ages.  The best thing is that we get to experience the family’s emotional growth and intuitively rewarding the human-animal bond.  In the end, they do the right things for Marley for the right reasons, love chief among them.  World’s worst dog?  Not this guy.

Our rating:  8.5 kongs

Tie-ins with the American Humane Association to promote adoption!  Yessss!

Check out these other must-know resources for info on positive training and animal behavior:

• Animal Behavior Resources Institute
• Association of Pet Dog Trainers
• (In Montgomery County, MD) Your Dog’s Friend

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Next up:  Hotel for Dogs, opening soon!