I can't help it. It's definitely not something I brag about. It certainly doesn't come up during lunch conversations. But there it is...and over there. And right here, too. And....LOOK OUT! You almost stepped in it!

I clean up after my own dogs after they've "done their business," and I clean up after yours, too. What?! A community canine cupcake custodian? Not necessarily by choice but yeah, I guess you could call me that. I was taught to "pack it in/pack it out". I take to heart the statement, "Leave nothing behind but footprints." Then why is it that most public places frequented by both on- or off-leash dogs and their ambivalent guardians look like a freakin' feces freeway? Not cleaning up after your dog makes me cRaZy!

Just because your sweet little Shih Tzu (pun intended) proficiently produces perfectly petite pooplettes, doesn't mean that they do not over time, contribute to the defecation decimation of public natural environments. They add up. Not to mention the health hazards that are attributed to not cleaning up after your dog. 

As Kathy Diamond Davis states in her article, Poop! Cleaning Up After Your Dog for veterinarypartners.com, "Dog waste contaminates the ground and becomes a means of passing intestinal parasites and infections to dogs and people. Your own dog can be repeatedly re-infested by parasites in this way. Picking up feces prevents a great deal of the contamination, especially if diarrhea is not involved. Cleanup can reduce veterinary expenses and might even save on human doctor bills. Because of contamination as well as smell and mess, dog waste is highly offensive to many people in the community. It often becomes a reason to ban dogs from areas. Of course the dogs can't clean up after themselves, so this is a people problem rather than a dog problem. It's easy to enact "no dogs allowed" rules, and then the people who clean up suffer right along with the ones who don't."

I was beginning to worry that the inevitable "no dogs allowed"or "dogs must be on leash at all times" rules may well be enacted after a recent visit with my two dogs to a nearby multi-thousand acre preserve. The mountains! The blue skies! The vistas! The famed New Mexico light! The trails! The poop....everywhere. I really had never seen anything quite like it. The disregard... And this coming from a former animal shelter volunteer where a plethora of poop piles are picked up and properly disposed of on a daily basis by dedicated dog walkers extraordinaire. So what gives? What makes a local dog park or a hiking trail in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains any different? Access to and use of this beautiful aforementioned preserve does not give anyone a free bathroom pass for their dog. Yes, of course your dog may shoot off into the chamisa ahead of you to "do the doo" while out of your eyesight. I've observed people glancing over their shoulder while their dog deposits their doo-doo on the side of the trail. Upon completion, the guardian enthusiastically calls to their dog, "Good boy! Let's go, Buddy!" I've been known to follow in pursuit while waving a friendly, forest green biodegradable poop bag. "Wait a minute! You forgot something! "

Chances are that you have a gazillion yellow plastic sleeves just perfect for picking up poop if you subscribe to home delivery of the local newspaper. Don't use a cloth bag at the grocery store? (In this day and age, why not? But that's another story...) Inevitably, you will be asked, "Paper or plastic?" While not a first choice for doggie doo-doo disposal, plastic bags are everywhere and sadly, they are practically a species all their own. Relatively inexpensive biodegradable corn starch pet waste bags are available at most big box and local pet supply stores. Really, there's no excuse for indifference...

Freaked out that your hand has to touch the mud bunny on the side of the trail? Get over it. It's part of being a responsible pet guardian. Stick your hand in the bag, turn it inside out after claiming your prize, and tie the ends together. Drop it in a trash receptacle on your way out of the dog park/hiking trail, or bring it home and put it in the trash bin. Be respectful. Be courteous. Take pride in your surroundings. And bring poop bags with you wherever you go. Make a habit of it. After a while, you won't have to withstand the passerby's accusatory, laser-like stare at your dog's purposeful hunched posture while you sheepishly mumble, "I forgot my poop bags..." Poop happens. Be prepared.

While we don't live adjacent to an ocean here in New Mexico, animal waste is definitely hazardous to our water sources. Katherine Noyes describes this non-point source pollution in an article for VolunteerGuide.org as what happens when snow melt or rain carries the pollutants that are on the ground into rivers, lakes, groundwater, wetlands and coastal waters. A superbly funny, yet to-the-point public service announcement was produced by Puget Sound Starts Here. They teamed up with musician Martin Luther, to bring awareness to the effects of pet waste on the Puget Sound. Remember the saying, "I don't swim in your toilet, so don't pee in my pool?" Check out this marketing masterpiece on YouTube titled Dog Doogity. You may just find yourself happily humming this tune while scooping your dog's poop!

Clicker Expo 2013 made my head almost explode with thinking, re-thinking, awe, excitement, affirmation, networking, and yes, gratitude.
 
I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from some of the industry's leading pioneers and cutting-edge trainers, behaviorists, and research scientists.

Karen Pryor. Alexandra Kurland. Ken Ramirez. Susan Friedman. Kay Laurence. Cecilie Køste. Kathy Sdao. Debbie Martin. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz. Emma Parsons. Alexandra Horowitz. Emilie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson. Michele Pouliot. Helix Fairweather. And more! WOW! Is this an amazing line-up, or what! One of many aspects that makes Clicker Expo a "gotta-go-to" conference, is the openness and approachability of the presenters throughout the three-day conference. Unlike larger venues, Clicker Expo (in it's 10th year) keeps the registrations to a manageable number, for both the attendees, Karen Pryor Academy faculty, the presenters, and the conference staff. Way to go, Clicker Expo! 

The dilemma of attending an intimate conference, is that you want to participate in every session! Obviously you can't be in two places at one time, but that's where video streaming comes in handy. I'm looking forward to watching some of the learning labs that I was unable to go to. Yay technology! Another way to reap the benefits of the information-packed sessions, is to pick the brains of someone else who attended the conference. A shout-out to colleague Almudena Ortiz Cué; a transplant from the Bay Area now living in Santa Fe and the owner of CHACO Dog Training & Behavior Consulting, LLC., and Drea Harris; a past student of mine and a recent graduate from Animal Behavior College, who is the manager/head groomer/trainer at Black Mesa Kennels in La Mesilla. Thank you ladies, for sharing your Expo experience with me!

I was thinking about a session titled, Reward Ends,Then What? and how Swedish trainers Emilie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson question what happens right after a reward is delivered and how that pause; that lapse in time before the next cue; can itself function as a cue for some behavior. Who knew?! It's one of those details that can get lost in translation, so to speak. We teach our students about rate of reinforcement/timing/delivery, yet neglect to capture (pun intended!) those behaviors after the reinforcement. With this awareness of stimulus control, we can reinforce the behaviors we're looking for and not inadvertently affix undesired behaviors into the learning session. So the ending reward becomes an antecedent for the next behavior:

A → B → C → B → C → B → C  (Antecedent → Behavior → Consequence)
                 ↓          ↓
                 A↗        A↗
¡Bravo! Emilie and Eva!  More musings and gratitude abound on my Clicker Expo experience in upcoming posts . 

“A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ...

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .” - Mary Oliver

Can we ever fully know what a dog is thinking? Some say that they can. "I know dogs," the woman emphatically states as she clutches her wide-eyed, panting Chiweenie closer to her chest. "If you let Coco sniff your hand, she'll know whether or not to trust you." I do not offer the obligatory hand for investigation; knowing that if I were Coco, I might just nip that opposable thumb headed my way. But the doting, protective guardian is by and large, on to something. 

Dogs do take in tremendous amounts of information through their nose. A dog’s sense of smell is said to be a thousand times more sensitive than that of humans. In fact, a dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose, while humans have only 5 million. In an excerpt from her book, Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz readily points out that we humans are, well, pretty inept when it comes to using our schnoz....

"We humans tend not to spend a lot of time thinking about smelling. Smells are minor blips in our sensory day compared to the reams of visual information that we take in and obsess over in every moment. The room I'm in right now is a phantasmagoric mix of colors and surfaces and densities, of small movements and shadows and lights. Oh, and if I really call my attention to it I can smell the coffee on the table next to me, and maybe the fresh scent of the book cracked open--but only if I dig my nose into its pages." (Excerpt from Chapter 3: Sniff)

Read more here about your dog's olfactory senses and what it could possibly be like if you were inside a dog. Alexandra Horowitz teaches psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University. She earned her PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego, and has studied the cognition of humans, rhinoceros, bonobos, and dogs. For seventeen years, she has shared her home with an unwitting research subject, Pumpernickel, a wonderful mixed breed. 

Nose work classes? The Find It game? Tracking? Lure coursing? Hide and Seek? How does your dog connect to her/his world? What do you do to encourage that connection?