Training Fu

So my training bible is 101 Dog Tricks, by Kyra Sundance and Chalcy (Chalcy is the weimaraner).

You might think that a book with a dog as a co-author -- and a book this orange -- would not be good, but it is. Sundance and Chalcy are accomplished professional performers, and Sundance breaks every trick down into clear, fully illustrated elements. She's very emphatic about the step-by-step, chained approach needed with dogs, as well as the patience and encouragement they need not to give up.

So far, I'm trying teach Fu to Find It! which he does pretty well with treats, once I make clear to him that he has to do it himself. He clearly finds the whole thing peculiar, since I have traditionally just ponied up the goods without his having to do anything but maybe nose the treat cupboard door. Why, for God's sake, am I now making him look for something whose location I clearly know, since I just put it there? He's right -- it makes no sense. It's just what I want him to do.

Speaking of trained dogs, what's not to love in White Knuckles , the latest OK Go video? They even give to the ASPCA.

Inside of a Dog

I just read this book about canine senses, cognition and behavior by a Columbia University cognitive scientist and dog lover. She covers what researchers know about the canine umwelt, and is reassuring about current research methods (and mercifully brief about those of the past). She's a lively writer and scatters little drawings of dogs throughout -- you don't find out until the end that they're her drawings of her dogs. It's a very thoughtful and lovable book.

Here's a passage, from page 181, about why dogs, due to flawed experimental design that attracts their attention to the experimenter, often "fail" intelligence tests that less intelligent species succeed at:

By standard intelligence tests, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast, that they have succeeded magnificently. The have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this -- and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. . . . In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can magically transport them to higher or lower heights as needed; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs that things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes. It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all.

I'm convinced that a significant part of Fu's thunder phobia (when we're around -- we have some evidence that he's calmer when we're not) is his conviction that we could make the noise stop if he only showed us his distress in just the right way.

Can I train my dog to sniff out bedbugs?

That is the question.

He's smart and, like all dogs, wants to please, has a great nose and inspects everything that comes through the door anyway. So shouldn't I be able to train him to sniff for something I specifically do not want entering my house?

Here's the Fu, short for Lai Fu (it means "lucky" in Chinese and is a standard Chinese dog name. He was named by my son's crazy Chinese ex-landlady in New York, back when my son, who was then in college in Manhattan, adopted him from the ASPCA. So, yes, he's a native New Yorker.)

I've been reading up on dogs and dog training (not something that really interested me before -- I'm hardly into obedience) and have in a couple of sessions gotten Fu pretty familiar with the idea of finding things for a reward and with the scent of bedbugs. Now I have to get him to connect the two. Interesting, trying to see into a dog's view of things.

In case you're wondering how he learned what bedbugs smell like, it's by sniffing the little bottle of bugs I have on my desk. (Yes, I'm thrilled to have bedbugs in my house -- a combination of words that perhaps has never been typed before on earth. . . .) Even Carl Olson, the entomologist at the University of Arizona who got them for me -- thanks again, Carl -- was a little creeped out by them. Prepare to be horrified:

As you will see, they're double ziplocked (Ziplock turns out to be making a killing off the bedbug problem), and I only open the bottle outside, on a piece of white paper so I can see exactly what I'm doing.

Here's a good photo, from a definitive article about the critters, by Michael Potter, Ph.D., the expert on the insects. He's an urban entomologist at the University of Kentucky (who trained at the U. of Arizona, btw). The adults are, as advertised about the size and shape of an apple seed (but considerably less wholesome). They do not, however, jump or move very fast, so I'm not worried about having them around, safe inside their plastic world.

Within a few months they'll need to eat, which will involve me buying condoms (!) and a steak (!). Good times.