Having the opportunity to be on his show (with his current co-host Mike Catherwood) was an experience I can’t even begin to describe.  Both Dr. Drew and Mike are lifters themselves (into pushing heavy iron) and I tried to keep my drooling fanboyness to a minimum (only a few minutes) so that we could actually discuss stuff.   I probably could have gushed about Dr. Drew and how much I’ve learned from him for the entire hour given the chance.

We mainly just talked about some general stuff related to training and diet (with a brief touch on the anti-aging stuff; not my area of expertise) and I don’t know that regular readers will hear anything that they haven’t heard before.  It was still a great talk and I thank both Dr. Drew and Mike for the opportunity to be on the show.  They talked about having me back to, as Dr. Drew put it ‘get into the weeds’ about details and I can’t wait.

In any case, the podcast is now finally available for listen/download here.

It should also be available on Itunes in the podcast section but I don’t think I can link out to that.

I want to thank both Mike Catherwood and Dr. Drew for the opportunity to be on the show.   And, more generally I’d thank Dr. Drew for being a voice of reason and fact in a world beset by bullshit.  He’s out there making a difference, trying to help people by providing good information in a factual and understandable way.  Somehow, I can get behind that.

Enjoy!

However, after much deep soul searching and literally endless requests, I have finally decided to make my books available as e-books again.  The exception is Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports since I haven’t yet figured out the best way to handle the DVD/video portion of that product as a download.  However, all of my other books can now be purchased in e-book (PDF) format, hardcopy, or as a hardcopy/e-book bundle at a slightly higher price (you’ll receive the e-book download immediately and the book will be shipped soon thereafter).

The decision was based on many factors not the least of which being that overseas shipping is simply brutal right now, many purchasers are having to pay half the price of the book again just for shipping.  There is also the delay issue with it often taking up to 4 weeks for overseas products to arrive.  That sucks.

E-books avoid both of those problems since they can be downloaded immediately and don’t require shipping costs.  All of my e-books are printable, they don’t have DRM (I am of the strongly held opinion that anti-piracy measures only inconveniences the legal end-user; pirates will pirate and you can’t stop them) or password protection.  Do me a favor and don’t pirate them. Thanks.

As well, and it’s taken me some time to realize this, but there is rapidly a generation growing up that is used to/prefers to read books in digital formats (and yes I am looking into exporting my books to either the Kindle or Nook platform in the near future, but I can’t say when that will be.  Note that Second Generation Kindle’s can read PDF’s).  That I’m not one of them isn’t really relevant.

In any case, tell your family, tell your friends.  Or if you’ve been waiting to purchase one of my books but didn’t because you wanted an e-book well here’s your opportunity.  If you find anything broken in terms of links or downloads, please let me know.  I’m sure I missed something.

I would note that I often joked with other volunteers that I often came to the shelter to get a break from my two crazy dogs at home.  Because although there were lots of them and a lot of yellow dogs specifically at the shelter, there was the advantage that, after I worked with them, I could put them back.  Mine, I didn’t have that luxury.  Anyhow, this is probably as good a segue as I’m going to get to talk about yellow dogs in a bit more detail.

Yellow Dogs: Introduction
I briefly described yellow dogs in Part 6 of this series but want to go into more detail here both.  I think if there is a single word I’d use it would be ‘unpredictable’. Because while BB dogs can have multiple issues, they are pretty much consistent on a day to day and minute to minute basis. They have those behaviors and show them all the time. 

Sure, they can run quite the gamut (from being just above a blue dot dog all the way to sub-yellow) but they are fairly consistent across the board.  Simply, it’s rare for a BB dog to surprise you after you’ve walked them once or twice.  Usually, with regular training, if anything their bad behaviors go away and they get easier to handle.  Occasionally, BB dogs (especially at the sub-yellow level) will escalate or start worsening and get moved up.  But those are in the minority.

But this tends not to be the case for yellow dogs, especially when they first enter the shelter (our longer term residents are far more consistent).  Rather, yellow dogs can vary day to day, hour to hour and minute to minute.  A dog might be out of it’s mind (with pent up energy) on morning shift and show a host of bad behaviors and perfectly well behaved later in the day.  A dog you’re walking that feels like a blue dog might get a smell and lose it’s ever loving mind out of absolutely nowhere. Everything is fine then you’ll see it stiffen, hunch and start zooming. And this can happen really, really quickly.

And what this means, more than anything, is that you can’t let your attention flag for a second with yellow dogs. Because in that moment you zone out, they will lose it and it all goes wrong. That’s on top of having the training techniques to be able to manage/handle such dogs. That’s on top of hopefully being able to work with them to get the behavior under control.

A lot of it is learning to read dog body language and signals because it’s better if you can stop the behavior before it gets out of control than manage it afterwards. It means getting a lot more attuned to the dogs and, again, you have to pay absolute attention at all times as well as learning/being taught what you’re even looking for in the first place.  So what kinds of behaviors are we talking about?

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Yellow Dog Behavior: Part 1
Yellow dogs tend to come in two primary flavors.  The first are dogs who are shy, timid and terrified.  Sometimes this is just a response to the shelter environment per se, sometimes it’s more entrenched (probably as a function of past life experiences).  The others group are dogs that would have been called dominant in past times.    Since that word is currently out of vogue, I’ll describe them as pushy. 

They tend to push boundaries to see what they can get away with; kind of like really bratty children who’s parents let them run wild. Handlers or owners who don’t show strong leadership get overwhelmed by such dogs. You can usually get a feel for dogs who’s previous owners let it happen, those dogs are used to getting their way and often don’t respond well initially when you don’t let them get away with it anymore.  They can throw what I call dog tantrums or get frustrated and start doing all kinds of bad things because they aren’t getting their way.   Just like bratty children.

It’s important to note that those two categories of dogs require completely different approaches.  The same types of training approaches overall that work best with pushy dogs will backfire completely with the shy/scared dogs.  They will read almost anything of the sort almost aversively and retreat even further; even the mere use of a clicker may terrify them and too vigorous of a ‘yes’ may terrify them (any loud noise being scary to them).   By the same token, if you use the techniques with a pushy dog that you’d use with a timid dog, you’d get steamrollered.

With the timid/shy dogs you have to go very slowly, use a lot of soothing words, start with very easy games (when dogs learn that they have some control over their environment through operant conditioning, they start to become more confident overall), and even use different games (such as targeting or touching, teaching a dog that approaching things is better than retreating from them).  It can often take 15-30 minutes to even get them to come out of or go back to the kennel.  You have to make them feel comfortable and safe and reward even the slightest movements in the right direction.

In contrast, the pushy dogs require more of a NILIF (discussed in Because We Let Them) or I Hold the Resources/leadership type approach.  They have to learn that to get what they want (treats, toys, outside, playtime) they have to do what you want first.  This eventually teaches them that they don’t get to do what they want when they want and that being polite (or at least showing self control) brings good things and that being impolite gets them nothing.  They have to learn to keep control to get anything from you.

I’ll be honest that, in the last 9 months or so that I’ve been working at yellow, I’ve found that I am more comfortable/successful with the pushier dogs.  I think it’s a function of working so much with NORMAN along with my own temperament and I’m a little bit better at establishing strong boundaries and rules with the pushy dogs to get them to back off.  

Mind you, I can work with the shy ones, at least to some degree but my focus on efficiency tends to make me lose patience; there are too many other dogs to get out for me to spend 30 minutes getting a dog out of the cage or trying to build confidence.  At most I’ll walk them, try to reward even small movements of confidence or approach, and I tend to let them control the walk and the movement so they feel as if they have some control. 

But that’s about the extent of my involvement in general.  We have other volunteers who are just amazing with the more timid dogs.  They have the temperament and the feel and the motivation so I’d rather let them do the heavy lifting on that one.   I know my strengths, they know theirs and that’s why it’s good that we are all at the shelter.

But with the pushy dogs, I can get them out of their cage easily (making sure they aren’t freaking out before I leash them up) and work on impulse control the entire time from start to finish.  I make them settle down before running through every door (I make the really crazy ones give me a sit), I do NOT let them drag me down the hall and I’ve found that the first couple of minutes is where you establish who is in charge and if you let them drag you to the runs, the rest of the walk is awful; you have to establish who’s in control immediately. 

If you don’t, the dog takes over and I see other volunteers complaining about certain dogs pulling them across the field; dogs I never have a problem with.  Frankly, I would rather them pee on the floor then think they can drag me anywhere.  In the field, I’ll be a tree for as long as it takes until they come back to me, even if it means we only get 10 feet into the field before we turn around.   Eventually they figure out that being calm is the only way to move forward and it’s the only thing that works.

But because I’ve focused more on the pushier dogs, that’s what I’m going to describe next.

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Yellow Dog Behavior: Part 2
Yellow dogs are often ferocious leash pullers. They are used to getting their way which means going where they want when they want. Since many are on the larger size this can be a tough combination; some volunteers can’t physically handle such dogs for a lack of strength or sheer body mass. Even with the EZ-walk harnesses that we use yellow dogs can be tough to handle sometimes.

Some of them don’t interact with humans well, they are aloof or whatever and have to be taught how to bond, recognize or pay attention with humans. The same dogs may show a variety of other behaviors including leash biting, nipping at clothes (which can often turn into biting), lunging or height seeking (where they jump up at you with sort of a head pump to try to get you to move back and yield ground). A lot of it again is trying to establish who’s in charge. If they can get you to yield space to them or whatever, they win (apparently horses are doing the same thing when they lean into you). Often yellow dogs will get overaroused during play (or overarouse themselves) which can lead to leash biting, nipping or other default behaviors that have worked for them in the past.

Many of the yellow dogs are reactive (a term we prefer to aggressive). They will lock onto another dog (at distances ranging from a few to 100 feet) and lunge, bark and go nuts.  Sometimes this is aggression in terms of wanting to fight (oddly this often comes out of fear, scared dogs figure a good offense is the best defense and attack out of fear to drive the other dog off; ALFIE did this) sometimes it’s wanting to play but not knowing how to do it politely or appropriately (yes, there are good and bad dog manners).  It’s not uncommon for our yellow dogs to be otherwise completely well behaved but to be extremely reactive.

Our longest term resident, and my current favorite, Jack (formerly Captain Jack, due to his loss of an eye which makes him look like he has an eyepatch) is an example of this. He’s a total goofball, lovable as hell, walks pretty well on the leash, and rarely pulls; but he’s big and he’s extremely dog reactive. So he stays at yellow. 

He’s one of those dogs who is super consistent behaviorally because he’s been with us so long.  He won’t ever surprise you, he just has that one major behavior (and a list of restrictions including no small children, no dogs and no cats which is why we haven’t found him the perfect home) that keeps him at yellow.  But he’s also one of those dogs that is pretty well adjusted to the shelter.  He hangs out on his bed, we get him out consistently, he gets a lot of socialization and playing tug when we have time. 

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Arrrrf.

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Mind you, it’s not just dogs or cats or squirrels that set dogs off. Some dogs do this in response to cars, or bikes, or buses or men with hats or mustaches or whatever happens to be their personal trigger. So you’ll be walking a yellow dog in the field and someone will come riding down the sidewalk on a bike and suddenly you have 50+ lbs of muscular fury losing it’s shit completely out of nowhere.

Sometimes yellow dogs get what we call the zoomies. They smell or hear something (or just flip the crazy switch in their little brains), hunch over and start running in circles like they are out of their mind.  Sometimes this leads into other arousal behaviors, sometimes they just chill out of their own accord. The former more than the latter.  It would be sort of funny to watch except for the fact that you’re attached to the zooming beast by a 6 foot lead.

But sort of the point of what I’m getting at is that, to handle yellow dogs, you have to be prepared to deal with any and/or all of these behaviors.  Which is what I got in yellow class.  Which was good, again not only for the shelter but because, for the first 6+ or so months, NORMAN showed almost every behavior I listed above.  And before I come back to NORMAN, I might as well address a question that may be on your mind.

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Dogs Have Teeth and Claws which are Sharp
A question I get from time to time is whether or not I’ve gotten bitten during my time volunteering.  And up until I started walking Yellow dogs the answer was no.  As I’ve mentioned, the Austin Humane Shelter doesn’t work with dogs who show actual aggression towards humans; of course, accidents do happen.  And since moving to yellow I have gotten bitten or clawed three times where it had to be written up (any time skin is broken).

Frankly, on top of whatever ability I have working with pushy yellow dogs, I also seem to have a propensity for bringing out the worst in dogs.   I don’t know if it’s because I’m reckless, moving too fast or overconfident but I’ve managed to find problem behaviors in altogether too many dogs.  I’ve even joked that I want to know who holds the record for most dog bites so that I can break it; this is not found to be amusing for some reason.  And it’s actually not funny as any skin-breaking bite gets the dog sent into rabies quarantine for 7-10 days which is a huge stress for the dog.  It may be a minor issue for me but it’s bad for the dogs all around.

But in one two week span I swear that I got every potentially problematic dog to come after me.   One jumped up with an open mouth and caught my oblique on the way down, breaking skin.  Writeup, dog gets sent to rabies quarantine.  Another, a huge monster of a dog, decided to come through my torso to get her toy, clawing me.  No broken skin, no write up.  Another dog got my finger when I was dumb enough to try to get a sit holding a toy she wanted.  She lunged at the ball, caught my finger and broke skin.  You get the idea.

Mind you, it doesn’t bother me that much, I take it as the price for playing.  And someone is eventually going to find out if a dog has an issue; might as well be me.   That’s what happens when you work around what are ultimately wild animals (domesticated or not) in a high stress environment. I will say that that was one behavior that I did not have to deal with at home.  ALFIE was a bit touch sensitive and would snap very early on but he’s over that.  And he has very good bite inhibition.  NORMAN is mouthy as hell (and strong to boot) but also has good bite inhibition as well.  Which was the only way I could think of to bring the topic back to….

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NORMAN: Part 2
As I mentioned, had he stayed at the shelter NORMAN would have been a yellow dog. It was part his age, part his breed, part his temperament and assuredly part of his background. They had found him as a stray at 4 months old and he had probably not been well socialized (many dogs learn proper behavior from littermates and their moms).

And I was dealing with all of it. NORMAN was definitely on the pushy end of things, he’d height seek and did quite a bit of leash biting. He was also what I call ‘play reactive’, he’d lock onto a dog 50 or more feet away and just lose his mind, barking, whining and lunging. He didn’t want to fight (that was ALFIE) but wanted to play so badly that he’d lose control. He’d also throw what I refer to as tantrums. This was usually during training, I’d be working with him on something and he’d decide that he deserved a treat and if I didn’t get it for him he’d start jumping and barking at me to let me know of his displeasure.

He also got crazy cases of the zoomies both inside the house and out. We’d be out for a walk, he’d sniff a patch of dirt and just lose his shit. He’d start barking, and lunging at me or running in circles or trying to play/fight with ALFIE, and now I’d have 80 pounds of dogs on two leashes that were all tangled up and I’m trying to keep them from killing each other as ALFIE is snapping at NORMAN who is jumping at me.

Or we’d come across another dog and they’d both go nuts. NORMAN wanted to play and ALFIE wanted to fight and I’m trying to drag them away until they calmed down….And it was just exhausting. Even if NORMAN didn’t lose it, the leashes would get tangled (often kicking off an episode) as they went opposite directions and I was just exhausted. I thought about dropping the leashes a number of times, almost hoping they’d just run away. It was bad and it really took it out of me.

This was overlapping with the yellow class and, with new leash walking techniques in hand, I had to move to walking the dogs separately to get them under control.  I’d take them each out every morning for 30-45 minutes to work on loose leash walking, teach them when they could and couldn’t go sniff. And I was working on their reactivity around the neighborhood as best as I could.   I knew where the dogs were and could use them to play the click to calm game with both dogs.  About the only good thing was that the constant walking was at least keeping me lean.

But combined with some bad shoes, pounding the pavement was making my knees ache. This was also about when I was supposed to start the buildup for the next season of skating/cycling and, frankly, I just lost interest. If you’ve wondered why I haven’t obsessively described my preparation for skating or cycling this year it’s because I’m not doing either.  I haven’t skated in months nor ridden my bike and I’m apparently ‘retired’ again (just training for ‘health’ or whatever, not exactly sure).  At least for this year.  There may be more going on than that, I’m not entirely sure.

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Please Don’t Leave Me
Of course there was more than this. NORMAN had some separation anxiety and I had managed to poison his crate by using it incorrectly. So I’d leave the house not knowing what I’d come home to. He wasn’t completely house trained so it might be shit all over the house. Or he’d go nuts and destroy something.  

Both ALFIE and NORMAN are chew beasts and NORMAN can destroy just about anything.  But I’ve finally trained him to only chew appropriate toys.  ONe he loves are my old skate wheels.  They are soft enough to be chewy but resilient.  Still, this is what he does to them.  On the left is one of my inline skate wheels.  On the right a urethane skateboard wheel.

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This might explain my race results

Norman Gleamed the Shit out of This

One day, he dug a 6″ square hole in the carpet by the front door one day (dogs apparently try to dig their way out of the house to get back to their master) when he got stressed out.  One time both dogs managed to get into a bottle of yohimbine and they both went nuts.  The main room was covered with diarrhea and they had just gone ballistic.   I wish I had it on video.

Every time I left the house, I’d be afraid of what I’d be coming home too.  I felt almost trapped, I wouldn’t/couldn’t risk being away more than about 3 hours and about the only other place I went was the shelter (as I mentioned above, I joked that I came to the shelter to get away from my own crazy dog) and then go home to mine. But between the various disasters at the shelter and having moved up to yellow, it was a lot less fun than it had been.  I had high stress dogs at home and high stress dogs at the shelter and for several months I really wasn’t sure that moving up had been the right thing to do.

Even inside the house playtime would get out of control and every time I sat down to even try and get work done, the dogs would be tying it up or knocking shit over.  And it just didn’t seem to be improving and it was frustrating me.   Mind you, this was due to a misconception I had formed based on my work at the shelter. 

I’d often only see a given dog once a week or so and, in the interim, 20-30 other volunteers would work with them.  So I’d be seeing these big jumps in behavior every time I personally worked with the dog.  And this gave me unrealistic expectations about NORMAN and ALFIE (who I was training daily) until I realized the mistake I was making.

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On and On and On and On
And this went on with me for months and months.  Through the end of December and into 2012.  I wasn’t able to travel for Christmas since I wasn’t comfortable boarding the dogs; I’m not even sure that they are boardable given their behavioral issues.   Various people who had to listen to me bitch suggested that I rehome NORMAN.  And I did consider it, I wondered if I wasn’t in over my head and it just wasn’t fun.  Thing is, you sign a contract that says the dog goes back to the Austin Humane Shelter and I had two issues with this.

The first is that it felt like a copout; I had just moved up to yellow level at the shelter and supposedly knew how to train these beasts. And I couldn’t make headway with my own little monsters.  Giving up on NORMAN would have felt like too much of a failure.  Fine, maybe that’s the wrong reason to have not done it but it was my reason. 

The second issue was that I couldn’t have bared to see him at the shelter had I taken him back.  He would have been confused and scared seeing me and it would just have destroyed me.  This was really driven home to me earlier this year when our own Captain Jack had been adopted.  And I was there the day his family had to bring him back; and I was the first one to take him out to the field afterwards.

And the dog that I had only ever seen be pretty happy and contented spent the entire time in the field whining and crying and looking around confused.  He didn’t know where his owners were, or what was going on.  He’s fine now, mind you, but it was really tough to watch even acutely.   I just  It was the final straw that told me that, good or bad NORMAN was mine to keep.  I had taken him in with some understanding of my obligation and, damn it, I wasn’t going to let him down or give up.

Mind you, when it was time to move into the new house, I did think about shipping him off to outer Mongolia.

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I'll be good, I promise

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It Gets Better
And gradually, day by day and week by week, things settled down.  The disasters at the shelter finally resolved and they are actually making a concerted effort to keep the number of yellow and orange dog numbers manageable.  As I’ve gotten more experience and practice with the dogs the shelter isn’t nearly the stress that it was.  I haven’t even gotten bitten in a couple of months now so that’s good.

And NORMAN has finally come more under control.  Some of it is just getting older (he’s about 15-16 months, which is doggie teenagerdom) and some of it my relentless training with him.  He can still get overaroused from time to time but he’s learning to turn it off most of the time.  And leash walking is about 95% reliable with both of them. 

ALFIE walks at my left, NORMAN at my right and they almost never break position unless I tell them ‘free’ (which means that they can go sniff or do whatever).  They can still get wound up with other dogs, especially if we come across them without warning within about 10 feet.  But that’s manageable.  NORMAN will throw the very occasional freakout but they are few and far between now.    And he’ll settle himself down almost immediately if I ignore him or call ‘Red light’.

NORMAN hasn’t had an accident in the house in months and will reliably wait to potty and/or let me know when he has to go.  Thank god.  More interestingly, I’ve seen changes in ALFIE’s behavior. He’s also getting calmer overall, he’ll try to initiate play (bringing me a toy he likes) but if I don’t engage he’ll lay down on the floor or couch most of the time.     His time around NORMAN has made him more confident.  Around other dogs and overall.  And I think he’s been a calming influence on NORMAN; in fact I can use him as a teaching tool treating him for doing something calm and relaxed and letting NORMAN figure out that that’s the way to a treat himself.   

He’s even picked up behavior patterns that he never showed before.  For exmaple, he never so much as tried to jump up on me until he saw NORMAN do it and figured it looked like fun.  NORMAN also likes to burrow under the covers to sleep; ALFIE used to freak out if I threw a blanket over him.  Now they fight to get under there first.  My pack, finally, is normal; or at least as normal as it’s going to get.

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Heterosexual life partners

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I’ve even half thought about a third dog although I do know better.  NORMAN needs to be at least 2 years old and I need to be finished with both of their overall basic training before I even consider it.  Not that I don’t see dogs at the shelter that wouldn’t fit my goal of building an army of mildly mentally deficient white dogs.  Anyhow.

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May 2012

So it’s been a long way to get here but it’s all good.  The shelter is more or less back to normal function; frankly compared to last year I’m not sure anything could compare craziness wise.  We’ve had a few minor blips but nothing to match any of last year.  My dogs at home are under control, we’ve got a regular stream of new yellow dogs (and volunteer numbers are coming back up so we aren’t stretched so thin) and I’m back to having fun and helping the dogs again.  My own dogs keep me endlessly entertained and I get to help the other dogs too.   So I can’t complain.  Nor do I want to.

From Midnight Tonite (Thursday November 22nd) until Midnight Sunday (November 25th), you can get $10 off any book in my store.

Just enter coupon code ‘blackfriday’ to take advantage of holiday weekend savings.

This coupon CAN be combined with my standard $10 off any two-book order.

Don’t be surprised if this is a little bit all over the map as I’m jumping back and forth across topics. I wasn’t able to find any good flow for this part of the story; also my system ate what I had initially written so I had to start from scratch (because computers are evil).

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Back to Me
As I mentioned in Part 6, I had moved up to full blue BRATT in 2011 and never lacked for anything to do. I forget how many shifts I was doing at the time (currently I am at the shelter without fail three days per week and often do a fourth special event or 1:1 training or something). During the majority of the summer, I had just ground along day to day to day. Like I said earlier, I was a full blue BRATT and that meant focusing my time on the BB dogs which we had plenty and plenty of. Between that and other things to do, I was plenty busy. I was still training and racing (as detailed in other article series), it was pretty standard business.

Then the shit hit the fan starting with the Bastrop Hoarding event. I talked about showing up that Saturday not knowing what to expect and being overwhelmed by the sheer number of dogs and the fact that the shelter looked like a dog shanty town. But after that initial reaction, there was nothing to do but to just get it done. Honestly, I kind of like crisis situations, I have a bit of that ‘save the world’ mentality (common to many who pursue health related field or volunteering) and this triggered that.

And for all of the events that would occur where we would be fairly overwhelmed with dogs (and understaffed on volunteers), I was just a dog walking machine throughout the entire time. I was efficient and psychotically driven, I would do everything I could to get as many dogs as possible out during the situations where we were overfull. If there is one drawback it’s that I’ve had some trouble moving back to a more normal dog walking rhythm since the disasters have cleared up.

I still tend to just want to make sure everyone gets out to potty and get at least some time; putting in extra to socialize with them or do much in the way of training is just out of the question. At most, I tend to focus these days on basic leash walking; I’m of the opinion that this is one of the most important ones and it’s one I can do while I take the dogs out. I just haven’t had time to work on other stuff to any great degree. If I know that we will get everyone out in time, I’ll force myself to slow down and work on some basic training like attention or eye contact or whatever. Lately it seems like there just hasn’t been the time.

Anyhow, as a full blue BRATT, I could pull dogs for lower level volunteers (this was an immense help as it allowed us to take care of more than one dog or set of dogs at a time; the lower level BRATT’s can watch them in the runs while we walk) and I’d often be juggling 2-3 dogs in my head: the one I was walking, the first dog I’d left in the runs with one volunteer and the second dog I’d left with another volunteer. Just keeping track of who needed to go back, who I needed to bring a dog, who was going out next, what I needed to mark on the board for each dog to keep track.

I’ve got a good memory and organizational skills which helped and I’d just keep up this relentless pace getting dogs out all summer. My ethnic background lets me handle the heat pretty well, I don’t need a lot of fluid and I don’t dehydrate so I’d just hammer for 3 straight hours in the brutal Austin heat.

The only other parts of my life for the first half of the year were working with ALFIE at home and training so it was all good. Walk ALFIE, train, shelter, train, walk ALFIE. It was hot and it was tiring but I was still having fun and still helping the dogs.

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NORMAN: Part 1
Mind you, towards the end of this was when NORMAN would enter my life but I already told that story in detail elsewhere and won’t repeat it here. I had taken him home to foster in July, after the real craziness of the hoarding event had occurred but at least during the time that some of the other disasters I described were occurring.

He was a headache. He was still very much a puppy, his breed (a pitbull mix) gave him high energy, and he was wound a bit tight. He also wasn’t well socialized, they had found him up on Jollyville road with an injured back leg as a puppy and he’d probably been a stray prior to that.  He wasn’t potty trained and there were a lot of accidents (all my fault, make no mistake).

More seriously, he had some separation anxiety and would tear stuff up if I left the house for extended periods (he went through a lot of my socks, a couple of dog beds, killed a Playstation3 controller and TV remote and I’m probably forgetting some stuff).  He even dog a 6″ square hole in the carpet by the front door at one point, dogs apparently do this when they lose their shit, trying to dig their way out to find their human.   But I had taken him into the house understanding the responsibility so that’s what it was. And, mind you, he wasn’t always a monster and did have periods of calm.  Like when he was sleeping.

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Those ears are ridiculous

So in the same way that I’d adopted ALFIE when he was a color level above what I was trained to handle (he was BB when I was blue dog) I had managed to do the same with NORMAN (who would have been yellow when I was only BB).   Which also meant that, at a fundamental level, I didn’t have the training skills to really deal with him.  But that would soon change.

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Yer Yellow: Part 1
Because about two months into having NORMAN at home (so about September, while much of the mess at the shelter was still going on), I was approached by one of the Orange BRATTs about taking the Yellow class. Because while you can voluntarily take the blue dot or full blue classes, you have to be selected to move up further than that. 

Presumably this is based on reliability and consistency (which I had in spades) as well as having shown some ability to work with them (that I liked to think I had).  At the higher levels, not everybody is equipped or able to handle those dogs and that puts both the dogs and the handler at risk.  So not everyone is given the option to move up.

Of course, not everyone wants to move up in the first place. I’m not saying this as a negative or a criticism at all. The shelter needs volunteers at every color level and better to have someone stay at the level they are comfortable up than to move up and quit because they don’t like it.  I know of volunteers who have stayed at, for example, blue dot or full blue for extended periods. That’s simply where they are happy and that means they are there consistently and that’s what matters. Moving up isn’t expected or an obligation and I don’t want to make it sound like it is (or that not moving up is somehow bad).

In any case, I had apparently made the cut and been given the opportunity to move up to yellow level. On the one hand, it was quite the honor since it told me that I was doing a good job (which, my current laziness with this site notwithstanding, is important to me). On the other hand, I wasn’t sure, especially given what I was dealing with at home with NORMAN, if I wanted or could handle the extra stress and responsibility.

I had, at this point, had some exposure to Yellow dogs.  Often I had worked with dogs who were BB who were then moved up to Yellow so I had some idea of what to expect, or had gotten to walk a yellow dog when there wasn’t a high level volunteer and I was given permission.  And I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.

So I sat on the fence for a couple of weeks. I was getting some pressure from higher level volunteers (in the sense that they just kept asking me if I was going to take the class which at least suggested that they really wanted me to) and I went back and forth on it. I could always take the next class a few months later but I balanced that against wanting to help more dogs (and learn more about dog training and maybe get NORMAN under control) which I balanced against not being sure I wanted the responsibility…you get the idea.  

And to break up this dense block of text here’s a picture of NORMAN and ALFIE after they took over my couch.

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Occupy Lyle's Couch

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Of course, I finally decided to take it as I knew I would.  It’s weird, I do this sometimes, I know exactly what I’m going to do but play this game with myself where I pretend to debate it in my own head weighing the pros and cons. Then I do it anyhow. I know at the outset what I’m going to do but have to at least pretend to deliberate. So I decided to take the class.

Like the full blue class it was 5 weeks of classes over 6 weeks, they give you one week in the middle to practice and absorb the information. And it was almost overwhelming. We had weekly readings and copious notes and handouts along with being taught a huge number of new games and techniques to train the dogs.

Week 2, where we dealt with leash walking, nearly buried me.  It was just so many different techniques and so much information.   Of course we were also working hands on with the yellow dogs now to start getting experience with them.  So now I was walking a select set of yellow dogs (they usually assign the classes the relatively easier dogs of the new color level) along with my normal BB, etc. duties.

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Yer Yellow: Part 2
A big shift with the yellow class was moving into clicker training.  Prior classes had used a mark work (in this case a high-pitched ‘YES!) to mark behavior but now we were getting more technical and that meant clickers. The reason they wait is that there is a timing issue along with being able to wrangle your leash, the dog, treats and a clicker all at the same time.  It’s not that it’s that hard, but it does take some practice.  So they don’t teach it in the lower level classes.

And while there isn’t much of a fundamental difference between a mark word and a clicker, those in the know feel that the clicker is more consistent (always the same sound), may activate different neural pathways (noise vs. word) and simply works better; if nothing else it lets you pinpoint the behavior a lot more accurately when you get the timing down.  This isn’t as critical with the BB and blue dot dogs but, as I’d soon learn, can be with yellow level dogs (which I’ll discuss in more detail on Friday).

All of this would end up triggering my normal obsessive behavior patterns shortly thereafter as I’d throw myself into the science and practice of clicker training and everything related. I’d scour the web, read everything I could get my hands on, I still maintain that you could clicker train a human (amusingly there is a group using what they call TAGteach, Teaching with Acoustical Guidance, to work with gymnasts, using the clicker to mark body positions).  Mind you, that all of this happened to fit in with things I was researching (basically looking addiction, reward physiology, behavioral reinforcement and habit establishment/change) didn’t hurt.

So far as actual techniques, there was a lot of advanced leash walking, how to deal with leash biting, build relationship and calmness and a host of other stuff.  Most of it was pretty easy to understand conceptually (if not always easy to implement) with one exception and that is counter-conditioning for reactivity.  This is a game called click to calm and it just took me weeks to wrap my head around it (I’d send endless irritating emails to one of the Orange BRATTs who was teaching the class).  Here’s another dog picture with no relation to what I’m talking about because big blocks of dense text are irritating.

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Please let us come to the park, we'll be good

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But I needed to understand it as much for the shelter as the fact that I needed to use it with both of my dogs. It was full on dog training at this point and, if I’m honest, taking the class was as much about the shelter as it was giving me the tools to work with my own dogs. Like I said, NORMAN would have been yellow and taking the class gave me the tools to really work with him. Of course, those techniques work just fine with lower level dogs so I used it with ALFIE as well (especially the click to calm game to work on his reactivity).

We also had to learn a bit about breed characteristics (I’m still very bad at breed identification) because another requirement was that we start helping with adoption counseling. That is, working with the public to make sure that the dog they are interested in is a good fit for them, counseling them on the dog they may be interested in, etc.

This is a place where volunteers have an advantage over staff; since we spend most of the time with the dogs we often know them better in terms of their real world behavior (rather than what’s written in the folder).  And when the public is interested in yellow or orange dogs (remember: often big time behavioral issues), you need them to be fully aware of what they are going into (some dogs actually require counseling with a higher level BRATT before adoption).  And the yellow and orange volunteers have that information.

It’s something I actually really enjoy doing, it’s a more direct way to help dogs find forever homes.  I get to interact with the potential adopters and there’s something nice about doing the counseling (or dog introduction) for a dog I’ve been working with and to see them go home.  As well, folks who have worked with the dogs often want to know about who adopted them, when a volunteer does the counseling, we can share that information.

Finally, we were supposed to have done a module on playgroups. Although it hasn’t happened often in the last year (due to time), when possible we try to play dogs with each other in our auditorium both to let them get some energy out as well as to help with dog-dog socializing (and to identify potential problems).  I had helped out with them previously but you can get qualified to do them as a yellow BRATT on your own (or at least with established play groups). Unfortunately, the outbreak prevented us doing that since we couldn’t safely let dogs play together during that time period.

But it was an exhausting, overwhelming 6 weeks (ultimately worth it, of course).  I was now working with yellow dogs consistently at the shelter, along with applying those techniques at home.   Which ended up taking a lot out of me for quite some time.  The shelter wasn’t quite as fun once I moved up to yellow, and my home situation wasn’t helping with my overall attitude.

Read Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 10.

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September: Bastrop Burns
Yup, Bastrop again. Because between the drought and the heat and everything else, Austin can become a tinderbox and shit sometimes burst into flames. And there was a really horrible fire out in Bastrop. Like weeks of land burning and people losing their houses kinds of fires.

And there’s a lot of farms and country out in Bastrop. Which means lots and lots of animals. I heard stories of people just letting their horses and cows out of the barns and pastures, just turning them free so they could have a chance to escape. And it happened so fast that people were evacuating their houses with no time to grab anything but the essentials before trying to get away. It was just one of those kinds of things.

A lot of them didn’t have time to get their companion animals (or couldn’t find them). Or those that did couldn’t keep them and dropped them off at the Bastrop shelter. Dogs were found wandering among the fires, burned or with various injuries. And, once again, we took them all in. Something like 155 total animals with 90 or so dogs and the rest cats were rescued and we took in the bulk of them. You can see pictures of some of them here and this video shows some of the animals.

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The dogs were in various states of injury with burns and other damage, they were all scared and confused. Many of them were country or farm dogs. Some weren’t fixed (which can mean aggression issues in older males) or just had basic behavioral issues. So once again we were in disaster mode; the difference here being that a lot of the dogs were at the higher color levels on top of being bigger. The hoarding incident had been ameliorated by the dogs being so well behaved and small but now we had kennels full of very large, very time and energy demanding dogs.

Normally we have, at most a handful of yellow and orange dogs but I remember seeing a whole ton of both during this time. And those dogs can be exhausting (as I’d be finding out soon enough) to begin with; the yellow and orange BRATT’s were stretched thin by this point to begin with and this was just another crisis event to exhaust them. There are far fewer of the higher level BRATT’s (especially orange level) and the dogs take a lot more time and energy.

Now, we did everything we could to let folks know that their dogs were at the shelter. Radio spots, print ads and a Facebook page were put up with pictures of all the animals in an attempt to reunite them with their owners. I’m guessing about half of them were. There was something special about being at the shelter when someone came in and was reunited with the dog that they had thought lost or claimed by the fire.

At the same time, I was shocked when nobody had even checked on some of the dogs. We gave them weeks (before assuming that they were now ours and we tried to rehome them) and I can’t imagine someone not taking the time to call every shelter in the area to see if their dog had shown up.

Then again, the situation was insane. I can only imagine that people were having to leave Austin, go stay in hotels, stay with friends, who knows what? Maybe it was unrealistic to expect them to come after their animals. I don’t know and I’m in no position to judge.

But we took care of all of them, cleared the kennels again and it was back to normal at long last. Except that right as the Bastrop fire issue was getting taken care of, the next disaster would strike.

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September: OUTBREAK!
Because right as we were getting things under control from the Bastrop fire, there was a disease outbreak at the shelter. Now make no mistake, the nature of the shelter environment is that stuff sometimes moves through the shelter. Usually it’s minor stuff like kennel cough or the occasional gastrointestinal bug. We do our best to contain it when it happens, the clinic stays right on top of things (and we have a health board to track who’s got what) but that’s what happens with dozens of animals in a closed space. But previously it had always been minor stuff.

But this was different. I won’t specify what it was; sufficed to say we were hit with a disease that is contagious, virulent and ultimate fatal to dogs if they catch it. So now we were in super duper disaster mode trying to limit exposure and do damage control.

This was also the situation I mentioned on Friday when I talked about our dog euthanasia rate; this single event probably led to the most dogs being put down but only because there is zero chance of recovery for the dog. But since almost nobody had spent time or worked with these dogs (i.e. they hadn’t had time to get attached as with Alan or other dogs we’d lost), it just didn’t carry the same emotional weight.

Now, our normal setup is that we have the main kennel (called K-9) and the pre-adopt kennel (where dogs not ready for prime time go until they are temp and medical tested). That way any dogs that the public can get to are available for adoption and the ones not yet ready can’t be seen by anybody but staff and volunteers. It’s just less of a headache when the public can’t even get a glimpse of a dog that’s not available yet. So far as the general public is concerned, those dogs don’t exist.

That changed as the pre-adopt kennel was made into a quarantine area for sick or potentially sick dogs which meant that all dogs who weren’t sick (adoptable or not) were up in the main kennel. Nobody was allowed back there for months (the final dog would be cleared in February of 2012); only staff could handle those dogs and they had to take major precautions (gloves/gowns) while doing so.

So now all of our available dogs were up in K-9, which also cut down how many dogs we could have by about 20 (since the pre-adopt kennels were being used for other things). While not a major deal this does lead to some headaches as the public can now see dogs who aren’t yet ready for adoption and there is a whole discussion/explanation that you have to have to explain why. Usually you just send them to the front desk and let them deal with it.

More importantly, everyone at the shelter was paranoid because of the danger of this disease and the very real possibility of carrying it home. Many, if not most, volunteers have their own dogs and some will have separate shelter clothes that they change in and out of so that they don’t take anything home with them to their own dogs.

And that’s just for minor stuff. But this outbreak meant that many, especially those with older dogs (who are apparently more susceptible) simply didn’t come in at all. They weren’t willing to risk the death of their own dogs while the outbreak was going on. And, as I noted above, this went on for months.

So not only were we still overwhelmed with dogs (and we still seemed to have an unusually large number of higher color dogs) but we were understaffed on volunteers (especially at higher color levels). Between having lost a lot to simple attrition, stress and everything else, now we had folks who couldn’t come in to keep their own dogs safe. That left everyone else to pick up the slack. And what that usually means is shorting time with the dogs. You just have to get them in and out of the door, leash them, potty them, short walk, back to the kennels. No time for training, no time for socializing.

As I noted, it would be months before the outbreak would be resolved but it was the last major disaster that would occur.

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The High Point of 2011: Rags to Wags
Finally things would start to return to normal and, at least we could end the year on a high-note. Our major fundraiser, Rags to Wags would hit in December. It’s super silly with a dog fashion show (volunteers got to walk the dogs down the runway this year), a silent auction and $150/plate dinners. As a dog volunteer, our job is to keep the dogs calm for 6 hours for their 5 minute walk down the runway. But we get fed and it’s totally worth it. Mainly because we get to wear jeans and tennis shoes while everyone else is in formal wear.

The theme this year was super heroes, shelter dogs wore capes and owner dogs wore some pretty elaborate costumes (one set of dogs were done up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). I think this picture says it all.

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Errr....yeah

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But, silly as hell or not, after a long 2011 and everything that the shelter had survived, the event raised something stupid like $300k when all was said and done, got insane exposure for the Austin Humane Shelter, got some dogs adopted, etc. It was a much needed high point after a year of absolute craziness.

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Into 2012
Mind you, by comparison 2012 has been a breeze. Sure, the outbreak took until February or so to finally resolve but once we were in a rhythm with things, it was minor and it was only a small handful of dogs that had to be tested clear for things to return to normal. It kept the pre-adopt kennel tied up which was a bit problematic but overall the first of this year was no big deal.

We’ve had a couple of minor hoarding incidents (including a bunch of rabbits, of all things, a few months back) in the last couple of months but nothing to compare to the craziness of last year. For example, we took in 20+ something chiweenies (I still think they are some kind of daschunds mix) the other week; we also had 18 dogs come in off a farm when their owner got too sick or died and that’s left us with a lot of higher color dogs (all of whom are very scared) to contend with.

Still, compared to last year, this is nothing. We’d had lots of dogs coming and going, plenty of adoptions, only one or two long term residents who haven’t found the perfect home, did a Mega-adoption event with over 150 total adoptions (cats and dogs), etc.

But going into the end of 2012, things were as back to normal as they get, we were getting new volunteers and some of the higher level volunteers who had left were being replaced by those of us who were moving up in color level. Yes, I said us, meaning me. Which is the best segue to talk about what I was doing during this entire time other than not working on my book projects.

Read Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 9.

Early August: A Dog Gets Put Down
I mentioned in the original series that the Austin Humane Shelter is a no-kill shelter. That is, the shelter doesn’t put down dogs as a matter of course. In reality this means that dog euthanasia is kept to 10% or less; it’s also only done on a dog by dog basis. It’s never done for time (i.e. if a dog is at the shelter for too long) and it’s never done based on breed.

It generally only occurs when a dog is sick with no chance for recovery or has shown intractable behavior problems (usually aggression towards human) that make it unadoptable. If it can still be adopted, we will keep it until we find it a home. To put this in perspective, in the year and a half I’ve been at the Austin Humane Shelter, we’ve done several thousands of adoptions and in that time I can think of maybe a half dozen or so dogs that have been put down.

This number might be a bit higher due to something I’m going to talk about in the next part of this (bizarrely, as I write this, one of our long term residents, whose behavior had been worsening was put down) series. But it’s a rare enough event that I can remember most of them when they happen. Which probably puts the rate of euthanasia at around 1% or so. If that. I mean, a handful of dogs against thousands of adoptions.

But as part of the trauma of 2011 there was a specific situation worth mentioning. Earlier that year we had taken in three pit bulls rescued from a fighting ring. One was Xena who had been a breeding female. She was a beautiful dog who’s owners had botched her ear clipping and had ended up taking them off completely. Beyond that she was fairly well adjusted although the shelter wasn’t great for her. This is Xena and you can see the hatchet job her owners did with her ears.

Yes, I Can Hear You Now

She loved playing touch (where you teach the dog to target your hand and bop it with their nose to get a treat or a toy) and to cuddle in the field and get her tummy rubbed in the sun. She didn’t so much love going back to her kennel and had some issues with pottying in it (which made her feet sensitive since she walked around in the urine).

Between her ears and her pittbullness, finding an adopter for her was tough; finally, she ended up being saved by the wonderful folks at Love-A-Bull and eventually found her forever home through them. I have seen volunteers mention that they’ve seen her out walking with her family (she may actually just be in foster right now). She actually has her own Facebook page (and her name got changed a multitude of times which is why you’ll see her as Emma Rose, Xena, Tina and Peanut on her page) if you want to check her out.

But the other two pits, Alan and T-bird weren’t so lucky. They were males, bred for fighting and, when rescued, had lived their entire lives in a cage. This is Alan (left) and T-bird (right).

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'Sup

Bro!

They weren’t socialized at all and were, simply, behaviorally broken. Dogs, like humans, have a critical period in life (around weeks 4-8 of life) where their exposure (or not) to people and certain things can sort of ‘set them’ for life and these dogs had missed it.

It’s like when children have some huge experience early in life that just locks them into a certain behavior pattern. These dogs were like that. They were scared, didn’t relate to humans at all.  Their tails were constantly tucked and they didn’t even want to come out of their kennel or go outside; everything was just terrifying to them and it was really sad to see.

Yellow volunteers worked with them exhaustively to no avail, sitting with them for extended periods to try to get them used to people or to coax them out to the field. Behaviorists were called in and couldn’t make any progress. It was really frustrating to everyone involved. They were great dogs and everybody wanted to see them make progress but it just wasn’t happening.

This actually sort of tells you whether a dog’s behavior is just a function of being in the kennel or more ‘hardwired’. That is, dogs who come in to the shelter are often terrified, either in general or of people. But within the first week or two you start to see them making progress as they get used to the environment, interact with people who treat them nicely, etc. You can see it happening on a day to day basis as they get used to it and it means that, once in their forever home, they are likely to be completely wonderful once they settle in.

But with dogs who are more ‘hardwired’ in terms of their behavior things don’t improve in any reasonable time frame. That’s when there is a problem and while I’m not saying that no progress can be made, it can often be a multi-year process to make any headway at all. And the dog may never be truly ‘normal’ or ‘fixed’. And that’s a problem looking at adopting them as a companion animal.

In any case, due to the total inability to make any progress with them, a decision was made to have at least one of them (Alan) put down. And this caused a tremendous amount of outcry. This is a place where the volunteers and the staff are often at odds; we spend most of the time with the dogs (and get attached) but, at the end of the day, have no say in what ultimately happens to individual dogs or with the shelter as a whole.

And the staff decision to put Alan down was met by a lot of volunteer resentment (I’m honestly not sure what happened to T-bird). A few volunteers left the program because of it, they were so hurt by either the decision to put Alan down or how it was handled that they left (in a related vein, two volunteers would be asked to leave the program a few months later when another dog was put down, their emotions got the best of them, and they got nasty with some people on the mailing list).

Things got so heated on the mailing list that it was shut down briefly; emotions were running high and it was getting ugly. The year had been rough on everybody already and this was just a final kick in the pants that nobody needed. After it was all said and done, a number of BRATT’s held a tribute for Alan after things had cooled down. That’s what he meant to them. So far as I can tell, some of the folks who left still haven’t returned and they might not ever.

If you’re wondering how I felt about it, I’m not sure I had an opinion. I hadn’t worked with either dog to any great degree (if at all) so I didn’t have the emotional attachment that the others had. And, honestly, I can see both sides of the issue. Do I love the dogs? Yes. Do I wish they could all be saved? Yes. Do I recognize rationally/unemotionally that some can’t be? Yes. Would it have been different if it had been a dog I had been attached to or had worked with extensively? I just don’t know and hope I never have to find out.

It’s just one of those places where there probably isn’t a right answer. To be sure, Alan could have lived his life out as a dog but he probably wasn’t ever going to be functional or bond with a human family (and ultimately our goal is finding companion dogs loving homes). So I’m not sure what kind of life it would have been. I don’t know that he ever would have recovered or would have been adoptable; he was just too fundamentally broken. At the end of the day, the decision was made (and I know it’s never easy for the staff to make that call but that’s why they get the big bucks) and so it goes.

And while you’d have thought that the above was enough to fill out 2011, you’d be wrong. Because we were only halfway through the year and the shit was still hitting the fan.

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Late August: Austin Gets Hot
If there is a single thing I dislike about Austin (other than the hippies and the traffic) it’s that the summers are just brutal. And 2011 was no different. It didn’t help that the shift I usually covered was from 2-5pm, the hottest part of the day. I mean it was so hot that you’d take dogs to the doors and they would just stop.

These dogs live their lives in kennels and they would rather go back there then go out into the heat. That’s when it’s hot. And 2012 was nasty, we had a record number of triple digit days and the heat was just overwhelming. The drought was not helping.

And one Monday I rolled in for my shift to find the entire parking lot full and a line out the door. I’m usually pretty good at keeping up with adoption events and hadn’t seen anything about this. And once I got inside I found out why. Over that weekend our air conditioning had gone out. And the kennel areas are not well ventilated which meant that it was going to get deadly for the animals. And there’s nowhere else to house them.

And in order to clear the kennels until it could be fixed they had organized a free adoption day just to get the dogs out of the building. And, as the words ‘free’ tend to do, people turned out in droves but the day can be exhausting as a ton of people hit the shelter and we’re all running around trying to get everyone and everything taken care of.

And, once again we cleared the kennels completely and got the AC system fixed by some good folks here in Austin. So the next disaster had been handled, things settled back in for a few more weeks before the next hammer came down.

Read Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 8.

I’ll be mainly focusing on 2011 since, frankly, last year was crazy almost from start to finish.  Actually, it wasn’t crazy, it was pretty much a disaster.  Things started off quietly enough, the first couple of months were just normal times at the shelter.  I was deep into my winter training grind and volunteering regularly.  We pick up in Februrary, 2011.

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Working Blue
By the time I had been at the shelter for four months, I have moved from a newbie Green BRATT through Blue Dot and then had taken a special full blue BRATT class (that was put together for 5 of us who had forgotten to get into the main class).   It was five classes across 6 weeks and, at this point, we were into full on dog training. As a reminder (or for folks who didn’t or don’t want to read the original series), the Austin Humane Shelter dog volunteer program uses a color system to ‘rank’ the dogs. 

Similarly, dog walkers (called BRATT’s which stands for Behavioral Rehoming Assessment Training Team; a description of what we do) are ranked by color and you can only walk dogs at your color level and below.  There are are a number of reasons for this (ranging from safety to consistent training) but the color levels mainly rank the dogs on what type of general behaviors you can expect.  In order from easiest to hardest:

• Green dogs are the easiest, with zero behavioral problems; they can be walked by anyone.
• Blue dot dogs may have a single minor behavioral issue.  It may something as simple as they are difficult to get in or out of their kennel or something else.  Basically if they can’t be walked by anyone at the shelter but have no major issues, they will be blue dot.
• BB dogs (think of it as blue extreme) may have multiple minor behavioral issues or one or two larger issues.  This can be persistent pulling, dog reactivity, a lack of attention to handlers or a few others.     By the time you take the full blue class, you have undergone a good bit of basic dog training so that you can not only handle such dogs but are able to start training them (which makes them more adoptable).
• Yellow dogs can vary quite a bit, some may be shy as hell, others can get easily overaroused, leash bite, engage in a variety of dominance behaviors (such as height seeking), etc.  They are more unpredictable, running the gamut from perfect and easy to handle to just going nuts at the flip of a switch.
• Orange dogs are the most extreme in terms of behavior and may show a multitude of behavioral issues or one or two at an extreme level. Orange volunteers have undergone extensive training (including a full one year internship to move to Orange level) to be able to work with those dogs.
• I’d note that there are two other color markings which are purple (for puppies) and red (for sick or staff only dogs) but this has little to do with behavior.

So as a full blue BRATT, I was now working with the BB and lower dogs.  That generally meant focusing my time and energy on the BB dogs and only walking blue dot or green dogs when I had gotten all of the higher levels dogs taken care of or there were no lower level volunteers (as much as possible you try to leave lower level dogs for lower level volunteers so that they have something to do and can get experience with the animals).  I was also being exposed to other things such as doing walks around the block with a Yellow BRATT, or helping with the occasional playgroup. 

This was also when I started helping with 1:1 training for new volunteers.  This is expected of blue BRATTs and I was happy to do it.  My schedule is flexible as hell so I was always able to cover times that nobody else could when new volunteers had limited times or whatever to get trained.  And given what the shelter had given (and was still giving) to me, it was important to me that I pass it on to new volunteers to get them involved in our program.  The volunteer who originally trained me is still at the shelter; she can either be thanked or blamed for my nearly chronic presence at the shelter.

Frankly, I had tons to do since the majority of the dogs at the shelter tend to be blue dot or BB.  It was a rare day indeed that I wasn’t able to fill three full hours walking and training nothing but BB dogs with the normal shelter population.   I was also using what I had learned in class to train ALFIE (who had been a BB dog when I adopted him) so it was all good.  And this would go on for the first few months of the year; sadly, it was the quiet before the storm and shit was about to go nuts.

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May: Hoarders Dog Edition
As I mentioned in the original series, the Austin Humane Shelter volunteer program has it’s own Yahoo group and mailing list that sends out announcements about all kinds of stuff.  It keeps everyone in the loop, let’s us communicate about dog behavior, see special announcements, know when shifts need extra coverage, etc. 

And one weekend in the digest I saw a huge call for volunteers, something had happened and the shelter was about to take in a ton of dogs and they needed all hands on deck.  I had no idea but headed in that Saturday.  And the shelter looked like a disaster area. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So at some point, I’m guessing in 2009 or 2010, a woman in Bastrop (a boondock area outside of Austin), maybe it was earlier, had decided to start ‘saving’ dogs and cats.  And she just kept collecting them and collecting them.  Until the animals took over her house, started interbreeding and multiplying.  She had moved into the outside shed and just given them the run of it.  And while I’m a bit unclear on how this all went down, the Bastrop fire department went to her house, opened the door and this is what they saw.

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Heironymous Bosch Eat Your Heart Out

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Yeah, like the pit of hell.   There were one hundred some odd dogs and I don’t know how many cats, all living in their own food and filth in this woman’s house.  They had been inbreeding with one another (and a few of them were clearly mentally impaired or had physical defects) and, well…just look at the picture above.  And we took all of them in.  I mean every single dog and cat.  Now, normally the shelter dog population is maybe 50-60 dogs.  And when we are full it’s hard enough to get all the dogs taken care of in a single shift.

Now nearly quadruple that.  That’s what we were facing.  Every possible space was taken by dogs, dogs and more dogs.   Hell, rooms I’d never even been in before were being used to house animals.   We had makeshift kennels and crates everywhere and 2-3 dogs to each kennel.  It’s a really good thing that the grand majority of the dogs were small or I don’t see how we could have housed them.  But, it was simply nuts.

And none of these dogs had even been on a leash, or worn a collar.  Mind you, they were ridiculously well behaved given the circumstances but I guess when you have 170 dogs living in close quarters, that tends to breed politeness: any dog who acted out probably got his ass kicked.  I have to think, in hindsight, that if any had had behavioral issues we would have been totally overwhelmed.

And like I said they were all in just horrible condition.  Filthy matted fur, never groomed, covered in poop and piss.  Groomers were working overtime showering and cleaning and just shaving them down.  The transitions are shocking, here are two before and after pictures to give you some perspective on this; it doesn’t even look like the same dog.

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Rasta to preppie

Stoner to straightedge

And we had to take care of all of them.  But cleanup was just the start of the work.  Like I said, they had never been on collars or leashes and we had to teach them how to wear/walk on them and that took time.   That was on top of pottying them all and trying to socialize them somewhat.  So for weeks stretching into months, it was just this exhausting grind of taking 2-3 dogs (often just carrying an armful) to the runs to potty these dogs and try to get them used to being dogs.

Mind you, the volunteers came out in droves to help with grooming and cleaning and everything else.  So did the Austin population in general, a huge number of dogs were taken into foster just to clear up space in the kennels and get some of the dogs into a lower stress situation.

And this went on for months as we tried to deal with them, get them cleaned and basically trained, get them adopted.  It was exhausting, with little to no time to do anything but just run dogs to potty and back.  A lot of volunteers burned out and so far as I can tell a fair few left the program because they were just exhausted.  

This isn’t uncommon, folks who have that ‘caretaker’ type of personality profile often forget that their own health and well being is just as important.  They feel the need to save everyone and end up burning themselves out; then they are no good to anybody.

In any case, after the dogs had been cleaned and groomed and everything else we held a massive adoption event.  Apparently over 1000 people came out, standing in the hot Austin sun for up to 2 hours to get a chance at the dogs.  And we got most, if not all of them, adopted.  Snickers, a dog that had been clearly inbred (he was scruffy in just the right kind of way but wasn’t all there, if you get my drift) was one of the last to go.  I remember because I spent a lot of time with him for some reason.

Just the right amount of scruff

In any case, if you want to see more of what the whole mess looked like, here’s a four minute video.  You can see what the shelter looked like at about the 1 minute mark.

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And, finally, after what seemed like forever, things settled down.  And since the dogs never stop coming, it wasn’t as if everyone got to take a well deserved break after the months of craziness.  As soon as they are emptied, the kennels fill back up with dogs and it was back to a more or less ‘normal’ day to day volunteer existence.   And we had what I seem to recall was two to three weeks of relatively normalcy before the next disaster hit.

Read Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 7.

Abstract
Despite the vast public policy efforts to promote the consumption of healthy foods and the public’s growing concern with weight management, the proportion of overweight individuals continues to increase. An important factor contributing to this obesity trend is the misguided belief about the relationship between a meal’s healthiness and its impact on weight gain, whereby people erroneously believe that eating healthy foods in addition to unhealthy ones can decrease a meal’s calorie count. This research documents this misperception, showing that it is stronger among individuals most concerned with managing their weight—a striking result given that these individuals are more motivated to monitor their calorie intake. This finding has important public policy implications, suggesting that in addition to encouraging the adoption of a healthier lifestyle among overweight individuals, promoting the consumption of healthy foods might end up facilitating calorie overconsumption, leading to weight gain rather than weight loss.

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Background

In introducing today’s paper, I am reminded of an old joke/quip to the effect that “All that separates man from the animals is our ability to rationalize.”   I’d add “And accessorize” but that’s neither here nor there.  But the reality is that humans are able to do a wide variety of mental gymnastics in how they approach life.  Effectively, we appear to be slave to what psychologists call cognitive biases, ways in which we think about the present, past, future or ourselves that often lead us to make some fascinatingly bad choices.  This is a topic that many recent books has discussed in a variety of contexts.

And while I don’t know if I can say that it occurs to a greater degree in terms of eating and health behaviors, there is no doubt that people often engage in some exceedingly interesting mental gymnastics when it comes to those topics.  Some of this is conscious but much of it can be chalked up to either unconscious behaviors, misunderstandings (or a lack of information/education) or mishearing/misinterpreting the message.   And these types of things, as much as anything else, often derail many people’s attempts to eat healthy, lose weight or simply avoid weight gain.

In the realm of exercise for example, many people grossly overestimate the actual caloric expenditure from activity, as I discussed in Normal Weight Men and Women Overestimate Energy Expenditure – Research Review, and this leads them to either expect far more of an impact on weight loss than is realistic or to eat more calories than they actually need based on the assumption that they burned it off during activity.

In the arena of eating, this issue can show up in a myriad ways.  A classic example of a misunderstanding/garbling of the message occurred back in the 80′s during the low-fat eating craze.   While it’s hard to say where the blame lies, the general public sort of got the message that so long as they kept fat intake low, nothing else really mattered.  Caloric intake and portions went out the window. 

Food companies capitalized on this by rushing plenty of energy dense, high-calorie (but low-fat) foods to market and it all went wrong.  Studies routinely found that people ate more food when it was labelled ‘low-fat’ compared to one that was labelled as being higher in fat.  Either consciously or unconsciously, they gave themselves permission to eat more of it.  And often ended up consuming more calories than they would have otherwise.

Another example deals with artificial sweeteners where you often see a pattern where artificial sweetener (or diet soda) intake is associated with weight gain (or a lack of weight loss).  And while there is some speculation that artificial sweeteners do some odd things in the brain in terms of driving appetite, it’s probably more related to people rationalizing that they can eat more of something else because they are getting less calories by choosing diet soda or using artificial sweeteners.   That is, they figure that since they are ‘saving so many calories’ by making one choice, they end up compensating (or more than compensating) by choosing something unhealthy.  Call this the skim milk and chocolate cake or Diet Coke and cheeseburger approach to eating. 

I’d note before continuing that this much of the above rationalizing tends to be more for people who are only paying somewhat ‘superficial’ attention to ‘eating well’ (or some other fairly abstract goal).  That is, the type of thing I’m going to talk about doesn’t generally occur among folks who are diet obsessed and track macros or calories or what have you.  Rather it’s for folks who, while they may say that they are concerned with their diet or body weight or body fat, are focusing on the wrong things (a topic I addressed in more detail in Fundamental Principles vs. Minor Details).

Finally type of behavior seems to occur more prevalently in people who tend to divide foods into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories (a category that many popular diets and dietary approaches tend to promote).  ‘Good’ foods become equated with healthy and, altogether too often, can be eaten without consequence (i.e. weight gain).  Researchers call this the ‘health halo’ by which supposed ‘healthy foods’ have a halo of invincibility around them  In the same vein ‘bad’ foods are equated with being unhealthy and this categories are not only absolute but cause us to do some of those strange mental gymnastics when it comes to how we approach our food intake.

You can find examples of this all over the place where people assume that ‘healthy/good’ foods can be eaten in uncontrolled amounts whereas the tiniest amount of ‘unhealthy/bad foods’ mean that the diet has failed, the dieter is immoral and weak, and health will simply be destroyed (this is seen at the greatest extreme in a psychological condition called orthorexia whereby people see food as a moral choice judging not only themselves but others by the foods that they choose to eat).  You can see some good examples of this in the comments section of Straight Talk About High-Fructose Corn Syrup: What it is and What it Ain’t. – Research Review. 

Which basically segues into today’s paper which examines a behavior pattern that is often seen whereby folks tend to get fixated (or perhaps ‘blinded’ is a better word) by the concept of ‘healthy’ foods and end up missing the forest for the trees when it comes to their food and caloric intake.   There is also evidence that people who are (or at least state that they are) more ‘weight conscious’ are even more prone to make these kinds of mis-estimations which was a secondary aim of the study.

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The Paper

The study recruited 934 people, of whom the majority (74.2%) were female aged anywhere from under 20 to over 50.  Subjects were then shown 4 meals which either consisted of ‘unhealthy’ foods or those same unhealthy foods coupled with a healthy option.  The four meals, with the healthy addition shown in parentheses, were a hamburger (three celery sticks), bacon and cheese waffle sandwich (small organic apple), chili with beef (small salad without dressing) and meatball pepperoni cheesesteak (celery/carrot side dish).   So, for example, subjects were either shown a bacon and cheese waffle sandwich (which sounds amazing in so many ways) either by itself or side by side with a small organic apple.

Half the subjects were shown the unhealthy choice alone and the other half were shown the combination of the unhealthy choice with it’s healthy add-on and they were asked to estimate the caloric value of the meals.  I’d mention that this design is problematic because it’s not comparing how a given individual might rank each of the two meals; rather it’s comparing the average estimate of the caloric value of the different meals between people.  All subjects were also asked to rate how concerned they were with managing their weight on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being extremely concerned).

The study generated a total of 2750 total observations of the different meals and, on average, subjects estimated that the unhealthy meal alone contained 691 calories.  Now, logically it’s obvious that a food consisting of an unhealthy item PLUS a healthy item would have to have more calories than the unhealthy item alone.   Clearly two foods can’t have less calories than either food alone.

Yet, on average, subjects estimated the unhealthy plus healthy choice as having only 648 calories.  I’d mention that as a third part of the study, a separate group was asked if they believed that the healthy foods contained negative calories and this was not the case.  So it doesn’t appear to have been the case where subjects figured that the healthy addition was literally ‘reducing’ the caloric value of the food by containing negative calories.  Rather, the ‘health halo’ effect caused people to systematically underestimate the caloric value of the combination of an unhealthy and healthy food.

But it gets even odder.  When the estimates were ranked by how folks reported their concern with managing their weight, the values changed even more.  The most ‘weight conscious’ subjects estimated the unhealthy meal as containing 711 calories while the combination of the unhealthy and healthy choice was only 615 calories. In contrast, the non-weight conscious individuals estimates were only 684 for the unhealthy choice versus 658 for the combination and there was a direct relationship between how weight conscious the subjects were and their mis-estimate of the different meals.

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My Comments

I really don’t have a ton to add to the above, the paper goes into lot of discussion that I’ll spare you here since it’s a lot of detailed examination of the possible underlying mechanisms behind these types of odd cognitive biases.   One point that was made was that while one might expect more motivated/involved people to have less problems with these types of conceptual biases, this research found the opposite.  To whit:

The negative calorie bias is more pronounced for more involved/motivated individuals. Thus when evaluating vice/virtue combinations, greater motivation does not necessarily result in greater accuracy but instead can lead to more biased judgments.

I would add that I think really has more to do with what I mentioned in the background above, the issue isn’t with dietary motivation per se but rather with how people often conceptualize the process.  By focusing on things like good/bad foods, clean vs. unclean eating, meal frequency exclusively or organic vs. non, people lose sight of the issue of portions and calories which are what really matter when it comes down to it. They rely on estimates which are oh so often off.  And which appear to be colored heavily by the cognitive biases that many humans are so prone towards.

Make no mistake, certain types of eating patterns often automatically get people to reduce their intake, often by the outright removal of a so-called ‘bad’ food.  What is defined as good or bad depends on the diet in question and certainly these types of good/bad approaches to dieting can work in at least the short-term (and sometimes longer than that).  The problem is when people start focusing on the goodness/badness of the foods they are eating to the exclusion of everything else.  That’s when it often goes wrong; this is not helped by many dietary approaches telling folks that calories/portions don’t count and that focusing only on the aforementioned ‘good/healthy’ foods is all that matters.

In this vein, the paper’s author notes that:

In particular, the negative calorie illusion has been shown to be less pronounced when individuals pay attention to the quantity of the combined items, instead of focusing solely on the healthy/unhealthy aspects of the items.

In a related vein, the author points out that:

Another public issue raised by this research concerns the viability of promoting the very notion of stereotyping foods into vices and virtues.  Despite it’s intuitive appeal as a decision heuristic to simplify choice, vice/virtue categorizations focuses consumers’ attention only on one aspect of the meal [my note: whether the food is a 'vice' or a 'virtue'] and ignores other important aspects such as its overall quantity.

And I really think that that’s the big take home message of this rather odd paper: people often get so fixated and focused on the wrong things that they end up hamstringing their own attempts to reach their goals.  Because while it’s all well and good to focus on healthy/unhealthy, good/bad, clean/unclean or whatever, at the end of the day quantities always count.  When people lose sight of that and focus on the wrong aspects exclusively, they often end up hurting their own progress.  This paper just points out one way that this happens. 

I’ll finish by pointing interested readers to a book by the paper’s author titled  The Dieter’s Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat that addresses not only this research but a great deal of other research looking at similar issues.  How humans tend to categorize foods into good and bad and how it can lead them to make a lot of really weird assumptions about what they are actually eating.  It was a pretty fascinating read and shows how many different ways we can end up screwing our own progress by relying on our (often incorrect) intuition, primarily by focusing on the wrong factors that are relevant to what we are eating.

Answer: As always, the short answer is that it depends.  Mainly on how they are done and the person doing them.  Frankly, this is truly the only way to analyze if a given exercise is ‘safe’ or not, any exercise can be relatively more safe or unsafe for a given individual for a given set of circumstances.  That said, the upright row does tend to be surrounded by it’s share of ‘unsafe exercise’ beliefs so let’s look at why.

I think the first place I saw it asserted that upright rows were categorically unsafe was in the old 7-Minute Rotator Cuff Solution from Health for Life (a now defunct company that put out a variety of different manuals).  And this was based on the mechanics of the movement.  Specifically, upright rows put the shoulder in an internally rotated and horizontally abducted position.  And this is a potential problem because it puts the shoulder/rotator cuff at risk for impingement.  Hence, to avoid shoulder problems, upright rows became one of the big no-no exercises.

But is this strictly true?  In my opinion, no and much of it has to do with how the exercise is performed.  Certainly, the traditional bodybuilder method of performing the exercise is pretty high risk.  I’ve shown the typical form below.

High Ouchie Potential

As you can see, the elbows are being brought very high (often the goal is to get them to the ears) and certainly that tends to put the rotator cuff in a high risk position even with excellent shoulder control.  As well, you don’t really get a whole lot more involvement of the deltoids in the first place by pulling the bar this high.  So you increase the risk without really impacting on the movement’s benefit as a shoulder movement.

So for those reasons, I certainly wouldn’t recommend folks do upright rows using that technique.  The risk is high and the benefit relatively low.  This is especially true given that it’s easy to modify the movement into one that is not only safer for the shoulder but targets the deltoids just as effectively.  And that is to do the movement where you stop with the elbows only going as high as the shoulders themselves (this typically put the weight/bar/dumbbell about sternum level) as shown below.

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Less Ouchie Potential

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The above has far less potential for impingement issues, simply by limiting the range of motion.  Yet it still provides full stimulation for the medial deltoid. I’d mention that it does still require some ability to control the scapula (in terms of setting the shoulder down and not letting it elevate) so someone with a previous rotator cuff injury might still have problems with it.  But for someone with good scapular control and no other shoulder issues, I see no problem with doing upright rows in this fashion.

As a final note, I would suggest doing the movement either with a rope handle (off a cable stack) or with dumbbells.  The wrists tend to get a bit cocked using a barbell so even if the movement doesn’t bug your shoulder, it can jack up your wrists.  And, of course, if doing upright rows even in the above fashion still bugs your shoulders, drop the movement.  As I said up above, movements can only generally be rated as safe or unsafe for a given individual under a given set of circumstances.  If a movement causes pain, it’s not a good one for you.

Hope that clears things up.