Post by oksaradt on Jan 25, 2010 15:01:26 GMT -5
Unlike the last puppy, I've been pretty low key about my new find. This one's name is Thorpe. He has lots of champions in his line and hunting stock both. His maternal side has had hips tested for two generations. All well and good. This will be my first Airedale that conformation breeders won't go tsk tsk at when I describe his size. They'll still go tsk tsk because except for the hips, none of the other means a hill of beans to me.
That Thorpe has ball drive out the wazooo at six weeks of age and still after I got him (now nine weeks)....that means a lot.
That Thorpe loves ....LOVES the scent of human remains....that means a lot.
That Thorpe explores everything and anything on his own, that means a lot.
That Thorpe races at my agility tunnel to fly through no matter where I put it. That Thorpe thinks these new cat cubes are hilarious to go through, jump on, sleep in upside down...that means a lot.
That Thorpe has high food drive, that means a lot.
In fact the only thing Thorpe was on the edge of my criteria on is he's a tad noise sensitive. He comes back which kept him in the running. That Murphy bellowing a bark in the dark out of frustration that I'm with the new pup and not him....well, this causes Thorpe to run right now, but again, he comes back. ...Murphy...well, he loves this affect on Thorpe. If I put Thorpe all on his own in an adjacent enclosure with Murphy racing past, bellowing at dogs trying to own Murphy's air time...that doesn't phase Thorpe at all, he can see the source of the noise. So, something to work on and I knew it from the get go.
Why I decided to make another post about Temperment Testing and Search Auditions is several revelations I was given this go round. Mind you, I was lucky this time, only three litters had to be tested to find Thorpe compared to nine when looking for Murphy. Perhaps this time it was because I was trying to give the standard breeders more of a chance instead of going immediately to the farm/ranch/backwoods breeders. I think part of it is that I now realize that beginning environment can affect the outcome of the testing simply by limiting the amount of stimulus the puppy gets in its first six weeks. I think the more protective the breeder is with their warm four walls, the less chance the puppy has to ready itself for dealing with the hard cruel world during a period where it's temperment is set.
One breeder went out their way to stimulate the litter. An obstacle course was set up in various locations, but all within the home. When the puppies were tested in the backyard, it was really their first time to see it ON THEIR OWN. In fact in this case, the puppies had only two brief visits outdoors before the testing with the mother and litter. What was touted to be a great litter, turned out the typical spread of a few good working pups, a few good pets, and the middle pack.
I've stated elsewhere that I think one reason there are so many mediocre SAR dogs is that people snap up puppies from a touted breeding of two certified SAR dogs. While this will be my fourth working dog, I've tested somewhere over 40 litters of various breeds for working dogs. Invariably, there will be one or two that might come close and the rest quickly fall to the side regardless of the breeding. I'm fairly certain this statistical result follows some sort of bell curve with the duds (couch warmers) on one end and the stars at the other end. There is a place for the couch warmers as the stars will drive most regular owners bonkers.
Case in point, every night thus far before Thorpe is going to crash and burn, he will go into what I call the "run amock state". Much like a two year old human on pepsi and snickers bars, he bounces off of everything. My solution is to start off the session with some scent imprinting then swap out his reward with an empty two-litre plastic pop bottle that he chases, attacks, carries, thwaps, etc until he is close to exhaustion. Then I carry him to my office (until he's too big for the hawks and owls to carry off) where he goes into a dead sleep for six hours. I carry him out around 0300 am to urinate with him still half-asleep then put him back and we both get to crash for another three to four hours. When he wakes up, he demands activity, so we get more scent imprinting and go explore on walks. Every day I try to take him to a new environment so that it becomes just another notch in his collar.
So, first revelation is that probably why my previous three dogs ended up from farm/ranch breeders is the litters were whelped pretty much outside. One was in east Texas in August. Two were in the Colorado Rockies, the second dog tested in 20F weather right after a blizzard hit the area.
Thorpe's litter was mostly in a grooming shop with a door that slammed with the wind that nearly scared the pee out of me, but the puppies were used to it; Thus, lots of activity to stimulate his exponentially growing brain at the early weeks.
A malinois puppy I selected was whelped outside in Oklahoma in the early spring.
All of these puppies are going to be expected to go work in (what can be) the area's worst weather. It should come to no surprise that the ones that do well at it are born into the outdoors. That some breeders forget that their little charges came up from creatures that survived quite well in the worst that nature could throw at them is simply stunting those dogs when they are deprived of such joy.
(ok ok, I know that my liking to dance jigs in the middle of thunderstorms, crawl down in culverts to hide from dog teams, and burying myself in snow makes me a bit outside the civilized human norm...but hey, that's probably why I do well at search, aye? Why should the dogs be different? My wife never threatens me with sleeping in the dog house because she knows I like doing that as well no matter what the weather is.....I was so proud when I sat in one of my dog enclosures and it didn't budge an inch in 95 mph winds. Having my five dogs all around me at the time made it just that much cooler. The wife yelling outside that I must be crazy.....well that brought a smile to my face. She was outside the enclosure and she calls me crazy.)
My point is that many well-intentioned breeders are stunting their puppies with being over-protective; thus while their puppies may be the tarzan of the couch set, it won't do squat for you out in the amazon rain forest. - Revelation 1
Revelation TWO - If the very articulate, dog-savy breeder tells you that they have already temperment tested their puppies, ask them to describe (in detail) the process.
If you are wanting a search dog, the temperment tests come in very handy for you to determine how the puppy does 1) on it's own in a new environment, 2) with a stranger doing the testing, 3) with no comfortable scents in the area including the puppy's mother, breeder, family, or the helpful neighbor that fed them when the breeder went shopping, 4)in a totally new location.
I accomodated Thorpe's breeder because the temperatures were in the single digits the day of the testing. The breeder had gone out of their way to locate a warehouse for us to test in. The puppies were kept outside in a running semi-warm vehicle and then brought into the warehouse one at a time by my assistant (stranger) to the TESTING AREA. My testing takes up about....oh, around 500 sq feet with everything placed out. I like larger than that as I want the puppy to BE ABLE TO ESCAPE.
The area worked out well as we were able to place the breeder in a *grin* Cone of Silence and No-scent. The breeder got to observe all the testing without affecting it. The breeder was allowed to give input on each puppy as to whether it was probably going to be fearful of a specific stimulus so that I could build the stimulus slowly. Not surprising, one expected "scaredy pants" didn't turn out to be so scared as her litter wasn't there to affect her and she could respond honestly. Some others didn't do so good, but that's what the testing is for.
Some of the puppies (without comparing notes) decided an A-shaped stool/apparatus made a very handy cave to hide in against the wall. That's ok because they felt better and we got an honest reaction from the dog to a stimulus.
Revelation TWO means the puppy must have room TO ESCAPE a stimulus whether that be you, noise, an umbrella, scent, whatever. If the puppy can't escape, it's fear response gets internalized and you don't get to observe it. Please realize that any fear response observed got dealt with such that the puppy go to work through it's fear before the first fear episode ever came along. I never want to leave a litter worse than when I found it. My intention is to perhaps show what needs to be tweaked in the next couple of weeks before the puppies go to homes.
Revelation Two means the tester has to understand that the testing environment must be foreign new landscape. Revelation Two means the testing area needs to be spread out enough that the puppy can just migrate from test to test in a flowing migration rather than stop, set up for next, test, stop, set up for next, etc.
Revelation Three - The bulk of breeders judge their puppies by how the puppies respond to the breeder.....the person that feeds them and cleans up their poo, the person their mother trusts implicitly with her puppies........and to how the puppies respond to the breeder in a litter environment. Some puppies act differently when by themselves than they do when they are with the pack. You have to know how the puppy is going to respond on it's own in the "wild" with a stranger because that's pretty much the SAR environment in most situations. For a puppy, the "wild" can be 300 feet down the block in someone else's yard.....preferably a yard without other dogs' poo, pee, toys, etc.
Best case is you test to find out how the puppy responds to YOU because your communication style is what the puppy is going to have to be dealing with. Another example, when I go to work right now, Thorpe is in a crate on my desk for naps. When he wakes up and wants out, he can only get out if he is willing to leap (now) 18 inches out over my legs (a foot below the desk top) and land on my chest. The first time took him 10 minutes to accomplish. Now, I can't open the crate fast enough before he's flying. Why do I torture him this way? Because he'll be getting into situations where he must feel comfortable jumping over a drop either onto another surface or, indeed, into my arms. I've searched mesas where the dog couldn't go down any further, so I climbed below and the dog jumped into my arms so that we could continue. Of course, the dog was normally in front and showing me the best way down and if there was any scent.
Am I cruel? This is a puppy that if I stare him down in the crate, he'll finally leap forward at me. If the door is closed, I see teeth. If the door is open, I get licked. To me, both are just in good fun. My nose has not been bitten once. He did get a bit too carried away on my ear and found out how loud I can bellow. His response to this was to immediately freeze his teeth in place, back off a bit, lick my ear, and then lick it more when I responded with "good Thorpe".
Finally, Revelation Four comes from my helpful assistant. Two of the litter testing/auditions had one of my students as an assistant. We've talked about testing litters since before Murphy. She knows my attitudes on the subject. After the second litter, she came to me and said, "I get it. You eliminate all the cute and fuzzy and go entirely on the merit of the dog." She said this as she'd brought several puppies to me and said, "this is going to be the one." to watch it fail dismally. She even cursed one (and I feel a bit ashamed by this) by saying, "oh, this could be the next Dax." Like a coach of a star athlete, I responded by my mind suddenly synced to Dax's test. I compared this poor puppy to Dax when she was that age. It wasn't fair. To my credit, the way I set up the test eliminated any influence I could have though. The puppy does what the puppy does. Emotionally though, that puppy never had a chance. If it had come up all 1's then I'd have had to come to the revelation that every puppy should sell you on their own merits, not my emotional image of what they should be.
And, that's the true Revelation Four. I looked at the other working dogs' tests. All had high scores (or 1's or close on all aspects), but each one became a unique canine partner with their own ways of working. If you go looking for another dog that emotionally is identical to the last, you will never find it because no puppy can compete against a memory. This truly should be an audition where the puppy shows you that it has all you asked of it to qualify to train with you to fit with your needs. After that, as with any working partner relationship, you both negotiate and compromise on how the job will get done till the team becomes greater than either of you separately.
I'd love to have another Dax because I frankly need a female that will kick the ass of all the males in my pack. It turns out that Thorpe is all boy and while he has a wild irish air about him, he's not an ass-kicker. He has the right stuff, so now we are in negotiations.
So, hope that entertained as well as informed. Getting a canine working partner is truly a "buyer beware" atmosphere. It's that way not because any one is out to cheat you. It's that way because we humans too often let emotions get in the way finding the right canine for the right person and vocation.
I was very lucky this time out that all the breeders that I tested with had a great attitude about what I was doing and utilized the information we both gathered to find the right homes for their puppies.
Jim
That Thorpe has ball drive out the wazooo at six weeks of age and still after I got him (now nine weeks)....that means a lot.
That Thorpe loves ....LOVES the scent of human remains....that means a lot.
That Thorpe explores everything and anything on his own, that means a lot.
That Thorpe races at my agility tunnel to fly through no matter where I put it. That Thorpe thinks these new cat cubes are hilarious to go through, jump on, sleep in upside down...that means a lot.
That Thorpe has high food drive, that means a lot.
In fact the only thing Thorpe was on the edge of my criteria on is he's a tad noise sensitive. He comes back which kept him in the running. That Murphy bellowing a bark in the dark out of frustration that I'm with the new pup and not him....well, this causes Thorpe to run right now, but again, he comes back. ...Murphy...well, he loves this affect on Thorpe. If I put Thorpe all on his own in an adjacent enclosure with Murphy racing past, bellowing at dogs trying to own Murphy's air time...that doesn't phase Thorpe at all, he can see the source of the noise. So, something to work on and I knew it from the get go.
Why I decided to make another post about Temperment Testing and Search Auditions is several revelations I was given this go round. Mind you, I was lucky this time, only three litters had to be tested to find Thorpe compared to nine when looking for Murphy. Perhaps this time it was because I was trying to give the standard breeders more of a chance instead of going immediately to the farm/ranch/backwoods breeders. I think part of it is that I now realize that beginning environment can affect the outcome of the testing simply by limiting the amount of stimulus the puppy gets in its first six weeks. I think the more protective the breeder is with their warm four walls, the less chance the puppy has to ready itself for dealing with the hard cruel world during a period where it's temperment is set.
One breeder went out their way to stimulate the litter. An obstacle course was set up in various locations, but all within the home. When the puppies were tested in the backyard, it was really their first time to see it ON THEIR OWN. In fact in this case, the puppies had only two brief visits outdoors before the testing with the mother and litter. What was touted to be a great litter, turned out the typical spread of a few good working pups, a few good pets, and the middle pack.
I've stated elsewhere that I think one reason there are so many mediocre SAR dogs is that people snap up puppies from a touted breeding of two certified SAR dogs. While this will be my fourth working dog, I've tested somewhere over 40 litters of various breeds for working dogs. Invariably, there will be one or two that might come close and the rest quickly fall to the side regardless of the breeding. I'm fairly certain this statistical result follows some sort of bell curve with the duds (couch warmers) on one end and the stars at the other end. There is a place for the couch warmers as the stars will drive most regular owners bonkers.
Case in point, every night thus far before Thorpe is going to crash and burn, he will go into what I call the "run amock state". Much like a two year old human on pepsi and snickers bars, he bounces off of everything. My solution is to start off the session with some scent imprinting then swap out his reward with an empty two-litre plastic pop bottle that he chases, attacks, carries, thwaps, etc until he is close to exhaustion. Then I carry him to my office (until he's too big for the hawks and owls to carry off) where he goes into a dead sleep for six hours. I carry him out around 0300 am to urinate with him still half-asleep then put him back and we both get to crash for another three to four hours. When he wakes up, he demands activity, so we get more scent imprinting and go explore on walks. Every day I try to take him to a new environment so that it becomes just another notch in his collar.
So, first revelation is that probably why my previous three dogs ended up from farm/ranch breeders is the litters were whelped pretty much outside. One was in east Texas in August. Two were in the Colorado Rockies, the second dog tested in 20F weather right after a blizzard hit the area.
Thorpe's litter was mostly in a grooming shop with a door that slammed with the wind that nearly scared the pee out of me, but the puppies were used to it; Thus, lots of activity to stimulate his exponentially growing brain at the early weeks.
A malinois puppy I selected was whelped outside in Oklahoma in the early spring.
All of these puppies are going to be expected to go work in (what can be) the area's worst weather. It should come to no surprise that the ones that do well at it are born into the outdoors. That some breeders forget that their little charges came up from creatures that survived quite well in the worst that nature could throw at them is simply stunting those dogs when they are deprived of such joy.
(ok ok, I know that my liking to dance jigs in the middle of thunderstorms, crawl down in culverts to hide from dog teams, and burying myself in snow makes me a bit outside the civilized human norm...but hey, that's probably why I do well at search, aye? Why should the dogs be different? My wife never threatens me with sleeping in the dog house because she knows I like doing that as well no matter what the weather is.....I was so proud when I sat in one of my dog enclosures and it didn't budge an inch in 95 mph winds. Having my five dogs all around me at the time made it just that much cooler. The wife yelling outside that I must be crazy.....well that brought a smile to my face. She was outside the enclosure and she calls me crazy.)
My point is that many well-intentioned breeders are stunting their puppies with being over-protective; thus while their puppies may be the tarzan of the couch set, it won't do squat for you out in the amazon rain forest. - Revelation 1
Revelation TWO - If the very articulate, dog-savy breeder tells you that they have already temperment tested their puppies, ask them to describe (in detail) the process.
If you are wanting a search dog, the temperment tests come in very handy for you to determine how the puppy does 1) on it's own in a new environment, 2) with a stranger doing the testing, 3) with no comfortable scents in the area including the puppy's mother, breeder, family, or the helpful neighbor that fed them when the breeder went shopping, 4)in a totally new location.
I accomodated Thorpe's breeder because the temperatures were in the single digits the day of the testing. The breeder had gone out of their way to locate a warehouse for us to test in. The puppies were kept outside in a running semi-warm vehicle and then brought into the warehouse one at a time by my assistant (stranger) to the TESTING AREA. My testing takes up about....oh, around 500 sq feet with everything placed out. I like larger than that as I want the puppy to BE ABLE TO ESCAPE.
The area worked out well as we were able to place the breeder in a *grin* Cone of Silence and No-scent. The breeder got to observe all the testing without affecting it. The breeder was allowed to give input on each puppy as to whether it was probably going to be fearful of a specific stimulus so that I could build the stimulus slowly. Not surprising, one expected "scaredy pants" didn't turn out to be so scared as her litter wasn't there to affect her and she could respond honestly. Some others didn't do so good, but that's what the testing is for.
Some of the puppies (without comparing notes) decided an A-shaped stool/apparatus made a very handy cave to hide in against the wall. That's ok because they felt better and we got an honest reaction from the dog to a stimulus.
Revelation TWO means the puppy must have room TO ESCAPE a stimulus whether that be you, noise, an umbrella, scent, whatever. If the puppy can't escape, it's fear response gets internalized and you don't get to observe it. Please realize that any fear response observed got dealt with such that the puppy go to work through it's fear before the first fear episode ever came along. I never want to leave a litter worse than when I found it. My intention is to perhaps show what needs to be tweaked in the next couple of weeks before the puppies go to homes.
Revelation Two means the tester has to understand that the testing environment must be foreign new landscape. Revelation Two means the testing area needs to be spread out enough that the puppy can just migrate from test to test in a flowing migration rather than stop, set up for next, test, stop, set up for next, etc.
Revelation Three - The bulk of breeders judge their puppies by how the puppies respond to the breeder.....the person that feeds them and cleans up their poo, the person their mother trusts implicitly with her puppies........and to how the puppies respond to the breeder in a litter environment. Some puppies act differently when by themselves than they do when they are with the pack. You have to know how the puppy is going to respond on it's own in the "wild" with a stranger because that's pretty much the SAR environment in most situations. For a puppy, the "wild" can be 300 feet down the block in someone else's yard.....preferably a yard without other dogs' poo, pee, toys, etc.
Best case is you test to find out how the puppy responds to YOU because your communication style is what the puppy is going to have to be dealing with. Another example, when I go to work right now, Thorpe is in a crate on my desk for naps. When he wakes up and wants out, he can only get out if he is willing to leap (now) 18 inches out over my legs (a foot below the desk top) and land on my chest. The first time took him 10 minutes to accomplish. Now, I can't open the crate fast enough before he's flying. Why do I torture him this way? Because he'll be getting into situations where he must feel comfortable jumping over a drop either onto another surface or, indeed, into my arms. I've searched mesas where the dog couldn't go down any further, so I climbed below and the dog jumped into my arms so that we could continue. Of course, the dog was normally in front and showing me the best way down and if there was any scent.
Am I cruel? This is a puppy that if I stare him down in the crate, he'll finally leap forward at me. If the door is closed, I see teeth. If the door is open, I get licked. To me, both are just in good fun. My nose has not been bitten once. He did get a bit too carried away on my ear and found out how loud I can bellow. His response to this was to immediately freeze his teeth in place, back off a bit, lick my ear, and then lick it more when I responded with "good Thorpe".
Finally, Revelation Four comes from my helpful assistant. Two of the litter testing/auditions had one of my students as an assistant. We've talked about testing litters since before Murphy. She knows my attitudes on the subject. After the second litter, she came to me and said, "I get it. You eliminate all the cute and fuzzy and go entirely on the merit of the dog." She said this as she'd brought several puppies to me and said, "this is going to be the one." to watch it fail dismally. She even cursed one (and I feel a bit ashamed by this) by saying, "oh, this could be the next Dax." Like a coach of a star athlete, I responded by my mind suddenly synced to Dax's test. I compared this poor puppy to Dax when she was that age. It wasn't fair. To my credit, the way I set up the test eliminated any influence I could have though. The puppy does what the puppy does. Emotionally though, that puppy never had a chance. If it had come up all 1's then I'd have had to come to the revelation that every puppy should sell you on their own merits, not my emotional image of what they should be.
And, that's the true Revelation Four. I looked at the other working dogs' tests. All had high scores (or 1's or close on all aspects), but each one became a unique canine partner with their own ways of working. If you go looking for another dog that emotionally is identical to the last, you will never find it because no puppy can compete against a memory. This truly should be an audition where the puppy shows you that it has all you asked of it to qualify to train with you to fit with your needs. After that, as with any working partner relationship, you both negotiate and compromise on how the job will get done till the team becomes greater than either of you separately.
I'd love to have another Dax because I frankly need a female that will kick the ass of all the males in my pack. It turns out that Thorpe is all boy and while he has a wild irish air about him, he's not an ass-kicker. He has the right stuff, so now we are in negotiations.
So, hope that entertained as well as informed. Getting a canine working partner is truly a "buyer beware" atmosphere. It's that way not because any one is out to cheat you. It's that way because we humans too often let emotions get in the way finding the right canine for the right person and vocation.
I was very lucky this time out that all the breeders that I tested with had a great attitude about what I was doing and utilized the information we both gathered to find the right homes for their puppies.
Jim