Clones of 9/11 hero dog unveiled in Los Angeles

A former Canadian police officer’s dog named Trakr won a competition to find the World’s most cloneworthy dog.  It was called the “Golden Clone Giveaway”.   Trakr died in  April of this year, but his lineage lives on in these 5 pups.

Clones Unveiled

I find it interesting though, that only one of them is the exact replica of Trakr.  I’m no scientist, but wouldn’t they all be exact replicas, physically anyway?  There is much more to personality than genetics so there is no guarantee any of them will behave as Trakr did and turn into the wonderful dog Trakr was.  For he was a true hero, there’s no denying that.

Personally, I’m not so sure about this cloning thing.  I love all of my dogs dearly, and would do anything to have them live as long as I do.  Would I want a clone of any of them?  Not sure.  The concern is the expectation of who the dog will be, how he will behave, etc….  If the dog isn’t “exactly” like the first one, would I have regrets?  Would I do a lot of comparing, and would there be any disappointment if they weren’t identical?  I’d rather have the original I think.

Where do you stand on this?

Just over 3 weeks ago I found my neighbor trying to catch a loose dog in our culdesac.  The dog was a Terrier mix, about 25#, had no collar and was limping.  After about 20 minutes of almost catching him and trying our best to prevent him from leaving the culdesac, using another dog to lure him into my garage and tossing treats, we finally managed to get a slip lead over his head.  I held on for dear life, double checking the lead a few times as we walked across the street since, by the way he was bucking and throwing his head around, the dog seemed convinced he could escape.  Once back to my house my neighbor said “well, gotta go”, and off he went!  So, I guess that meant I was stuck figuring out what to do with the dog.

Due to the economy, the euthanasia rate in Los Angeles shelters has increased 31%.  People are losing their homes and having no place for their pets, so shelter populations have risen. There are fewer people adopting pets so more of them are being euthanized to make space for more to enter the system.  It’s a vicious, sad cycle.

His first 2 days here he never looked me in the eye, continued to limp, though less, and just behaved in a way that wouldn’t show well in a shelter environment.  I was fairly certain that had I taken him in and no one claimed him he would have been one of the statistics.  So, I had him scanned for a microchip with 2 different scanners, put up flyers, faxed it to vets in the area to see if anyone recognized him, took one to the shelter and placed an ad in the paper.  While putting up flyers the produce guy around the corner said he tried for 3 hours to catch this pup a couple nights before.  He got a slip lead on him 3 times but the dog got out each time.  Which, of course, explains why the dog was so convinced he could escape from my lead.  The dog wasn’t in bad shape.  He was well fed and not very dirty, though he had fleas and his nails were extremely long.  He was also intact, and the best guess at his age was 3-5 years, even though his front teeth were extremely worn and there was a lot of tartar build up.  But I thought certainly someone must be looking for this little guy.

After a few days when no one claimed him I sent out an email with his photo.  I didn’t send it to everyone I know, just some dog people and a handful of clients.  A rescue person contacted me to help with an adoption application and contract for any potential adoptee.  Plus she gave me some info on low cost spay/neuter places.  I contacted my vet clinic, who are the most wonderful people in the world.  They said they would give me a great price for neutering him, which I couldn’t pass up because I trust them.  Just because he wasn’t my dog, I didn’t want to just take him to a chop shop to have him altered.  I was now responsible for him and his safety.

During all of this I began working with him.  I figured that to increase his chances of staying in a new home he should at least know some basic behaviors.  But first, I had to gain his trust.  So here we are, me & this little dog who won’t even look me in the eye.  We started with just petting for any attention on his part.  And I mean very happy petting, a lot of body rubbing, especially since he had a few collar issues.  If I reached for him with both hands he was fine; if I tried reaching with only one hand he backed away.

Within days he was wagging his tail when he saw me, came looking for me to make eye contact, and just plain old coming out of his shell.  He looked and acted very much like the first dog I had as an adult, plus he was great with the other dogs.  This little guy was quickly working his way into my heart, which is not a good thing.  There was no way we could keep this little guy.  I promised my husband over a year ago that we wouldn’t add any more dogs for a while, and this time he was going to hold me to it.  I’ve never gone looking for a dog in my life.  All of our dogs have been strays, dumped on us, or just shown up one way or another.  Sometimes it can be difficult to tell if they are meant to stay or if they belong with someone else, but the ones that didn’t fit in have gone to great homes and we are still in touch with them all.

Back to the dog part of this story.  Over a year ago I worked with an extremely nice retired couple who had recently adopted a nice little female Chow mix, as well as an older large dog.  It turned out the larger dog liked to bite people.  Though it pained them to give him back to the rescue, they felt they had to do so.  This happened shortly after we met.  Well, remember earlier when I said I sent an email picture of this little dog out to dog friends an a handful of clients?  This couple was one of the handful.  I don’t know why.  I hadn’t spoken to them in over a year and had no idea if they were looking for another dog.  For some reason I put them on my email list & they saw this picture of this cute little Terrier.

It turned out they were in Italy at the time.  Not only did she email me about this little guy but she also called me, and let me repeat, from Italy!!  They had been looking for a little male Terrier to be a friend for their dog.  They saw the picture I sent an knew immediately he was the dog they’d been looking for.  They had been gone for 2 weeks and originally planned to be on vacation for another 4 weeks.  They said if he was available when they returned they would love to have him.  Needless to say, I was thrilled beyond belief.  They are such nice people and their dogs are so well taken care of  he couldn’t ask for a better home.  They named him Sunny.

So Sunny was neutered, had his teeth cleaned and we all agreed (vets, dental hygienist, myself) that he is somewhere between 3-5 years old.  His training was coming along nicely and I was keeping his new family updated on his progress.  All the while he was coming more and more out of his shell, trusting people, letting me grab his collar, sitting in front of the door, etc… And though it appeared he hadn’t had any previous training, not even a default sit, which is unusual for a small breed dog, he took to it quickly.  At times he wouldn’t eat unless he worked for his food.  Sunny was looking for interaction and finding it very reinforcing.

Then I got an email from the couple in Italy.  The subject line said “news”.  Ugh, I can’t tell you how nervous I was to open it.  Were they having second thoughts?  Did something I wrote in an email make them think twice about him?  Happily it was quite the contrary.  They decided to come home  a week early becasue they couldn’t wait to meet him!  She had a difficult time talking her husband into staying as long as they did because he wanted to come hom as soon as he saw Sunny’s picture.  He just knew this was their dog and didn’t want to wait another day.  And when he saw him yesterday the first words he said were “he is exactly what I was hoping for”.

So, yesterday morning, as I drove to their home with Sunny in the back I began to cry.  I cried because I knew he would have a fabulous home.  I cried because I knew I would be able to see him again whenever I wanted to.  I cried because this dog, the one who looks so much like my first dog, and was so timid like my first dog, would not be staying with me.

Over the past 20 years many dogs have come and gone from our lives.  Some of them I have been certain were sent here by previous dogs we’ve loved and lost.  Sunny was the most difficult to rehome because although I know we can’t keep him, I’m not certain he wasn’t sent to us.

That’s why I cried yesterday.

As a dog trainer I deal with many behavior problems. Aggression is one of the most common
reasons I get called to someone’s home, whether it is aggression directed towards a person
or another animal (usually other dogs). In my 20 years experience as a dog trainer I have
found that the aggression is usually caused by one or more of a few things:
1) under-socialization/fear
2) a traumatic experience when the dog had little to no “padding” of good experiences
3) mishandling of the situation by the owner
4) genetics

Unless a dog is poorly bred, has a neuro/organic disorder, or is bred specifically for its
aggressive tendencies, the most likely cause of its aggression is fear. The old-school
way of dealing with aggression of any kind was to try to punish it out of the dog.
The problem with this concept is that it usually only made matters worse. Yes, a
well-timed choke chain correction or shock from a collar may have suppressed
the behavior temporarily but, if in the future, the dog is ever put in a situation where
it knows the correction is not immediately forthcoming, its reaction will be worse than
it would have been to begin with.

Let me put it this way. Lets say you are deathly afraid of snakes, so much so that you
react violently when you see one. One day I come along & beat you over the head
while you are reacting to this thing you are so afraid of. Now how do you feel
about snakes? You would probably be more afraid of them & more anxious because
not only do you have the original fear, but snakes have come to predict me beating
you over the head. So, the next time you see a snake you would react even more
violently in an attempt to make it go away before you get another beating.

This said, the best way to deal with any aggression problem is not through positive
punishment. The most effective options are Classical (also called Pavlovian
or Respondent) Conditioning, and the positive reinforcement & negative
punishment aspects of Operant Conditioning. Classical conditioning is the
typical Pavlov’s dog scenario: bell rings = dog salivates.

Operant conditioning is based on B.F. Skinner’s work where the animal’s behavior
predicts whether or not it is rewarded or punished.

The solution through Classical Conditioning is get the dog to understand that
the presence of something it doesn’t like predicts a reward. The reward has to
be something the dog finds rewarding, not what we think the dog should find
rewarding. It could be prime rib, a ride in the car, going for a walk, or even a
thrown tennis ball. It doesn’t matter, as long as the dog only receives this
special reward in these situations and at no other time. Basically you are
trying to change the dog’s internal emotional state about whatever it is he
doesn’t like.

The process for classical conditioning goes something like this:
the stimulus (person/dog) appears, the dog gets a reward – REGARDLESS of his
behavior! Preferably he is not in full blown attack mode at this point, but it
doesn’t matter. Every time this stimulus appears the dog gets a reward.
Sometimes he may be growling, sometimes he may be sniffing the ground,
sometimes he may be sitting. It really doesn’t matter because the common
denominator here is the presence of what he doesn’t like.  Pretty soon the dog
will be begging for this situation to happen because it means he gets his favorite
reward. We have changed his way of thinking.  This is called a Conditioned Emotional
Response, or CER for short.

Now, for the solution to this problem using the positive reinforcement and negative
punishment parts of Operant conditioning. The stimulus that your dog doesn’t like
comes into view. Hopefully, being the good owner you are, you know the threshold
for your dog in this situation – lets say 15′. You want to begin reinforcing your dog
for his good behavior when the stimulus is more than 15′ away. He gets reinforced
based on his behavior. This means he really has to concentrate on how he is acting
in the presence of this thing he doesn’t like. Once your dog is really comfortable at
this distance you gradually decrease the distance. You do not want to get so close as
to cause him to react. You want him to remain calm and relaxed. Decreasing the
distance down to nothing may happen in one session, or it may take many sessions
depending on the severity of your dog’s problem. The key here is not to push it. If you
push your dog too far too fast then you will cause anxiety. You will not have a stable
foundation on which to build and your dog will not be reliable. If your dog reacts then
do not punish him because it was your mistake by getting too close & not reading your
dog properly. The best thing to do is to remove the reinforcer (negative punishment)
and distract him while you increase the distance and begin again.

Obviously there is more to this than I can possibly cover here, but hopefully this gives
you an idea of the process. There are benefits and drawbacks to each of these methods,
but either way they are much more effective than positive punishment.

Copyright 2010  Laura Bourhenne

Posted By Los Angeles Dog Trainer

Today I spent my first appointment walking with a client’s dog and dog walker.  The dog
is a 7 mo. old, male Australian Shepherd.  The dog walker has been having trouble with
him jumping up & nipping at her for the first 1/2 hr of the walk, the second half he is better.
We began walking him and within the first few minutes it became very obvious why he was
doing this behavior.  She is a very good dog walker who has good instincts and asks a lot of
great questions, so had she seen the behavior from my point of view, she would have realized
the situation immediately.

First off, she was walking him on her right side. Though we haven’t worked much with his
walking, when we have it has always been on the left side, so he was obviously a little confused
about where he should be.  But the main thing I noticed was that although she was walking
briskly to tire him out, she wasn’t giving him any feedback.  There was very little interaction happening between them. The dog was going to her left side, jumping up at her, and it was as
if he had a big bubble over his head saying “look at me, look at me, look at me!!”

The answer, of course, is he needs more mental stimulation.  This is an extremely intelligent
breed that needs as much, if not more, mental exercise than physical.  Please don’t
misunderstand, I’m all for physical exercise.  However, if that’s all you do  you end up with
a stupid marathon runner.  A well-exercised dog with great stamina and endurance,
yet he still doesn’t know anything.  So if the physical exercise now takes 1 hour to tire him
out, in 6 months you will need 1.5 hrs to tire him out and it will keep increasing from there.
If you think about it, what makes you want to take a nap more?  An hour on the treadmill
or an hour of calculus or physics?  Personally, an hour on the treadmill gets me energized,
but use my brain like that for an hour & I want to take a nap.

All this stuff about people thinking they can just run the dog or put a heavy back pack
on them (without knowing if the dog is physically fit enough to handle it), and thinking
that will cure all their problems is ridiculous.  Mental exercise, of which training is the
most important part, is what tires a dog out the fastest.  And at the end of it all the dog will
know what you want/need him to know.  At the very end of it all you have built a great
relationship with your dog.  And the relationship is what it’s all about isn’t it?

So, you know it occurred to me that I didn’t mention what we did to help resolve this pup’s
boredom during walks.  We are going to teach him to touch things with his nose & paw.
That way when they see a construction cone, lawn jockey, or other interesting thing on the
walk she can ask him to touch it with either or both, his nose or paw.  When he wants to sniff
a bush we ask him to sit, shake, spin, lie down, something/anything.  Then he gets to run over
& sniff the area.  We tossed a few treats into a grassy area and told him to find it, so he gets to
use his nose.  On our walk we found a big palm frond he wanted to play with. So we picked it
up, asked for a sit and played a quick game of tug o’ war.  Asked for a “drop”, then another quick
down, spin, shake, and tug again.  He had a blast and it really broke up the monotony for both
the dog & walker.  The walk was much more enjoyable and he was thoroughly exhausted at the
end of it!

Laura Bourhenne

AAU

copyright 2010