A few days ago, I heard some sounds coming from the attic and began to suspect that a rodent had decided that our home would be a nice cozy place to spend the winter.
I live out in the middle of the woods, and cannot be too surprised if occasionally wild animals decide that the warm comfort of my home might be preferable to the challenges of the wilderness, but I am not very hospitable to rodents. They are too dangerous as potential disease and parasite vectors to my animals, not to mention the fact that each year they manage to do thousands of dollars of damage to the hoses and wires in our vehicles.
My first thought was, “Seriously?” There are more than a few rodent-eating predators in my house. It just does not seem like a wise place to set up shop if you are near the bottom of the food chain…
For several days I engaged in a primordial battle—man against rodent… Intellect against instinct. Knowledge against cunning. And for several days I lost.
Finally, I determined that he was, for reasons not entirely clear to me, going into my bathroom each night, so I left the door open only a few inches and rigged a live trap so that as soon as he ran through the opening he would be in the trap. I put a delectable combination of apple, peanut butter, and dog food in the trap. At around 2am I heard the trap spring, and went to check, and sure enough had caught the largest bushy-tailed woodrat ever. I decided to leave him in the trap overnight. I dubbed him “Bright-Eyes,” and headed off to bed, smug in my evolutionary superiority.
This morning, I loaded him into the truck and headed out deep into the woods to release him.
I took the cage out of the back of the truck and walked into the woods and opened the trap (I always wonder why they do not design have-a-heart traps with a release mechanism that does not require you to stay there holding the cage open while the angry animal comes out…) He shot out of the cage, took one look at me, and sprinted as fast as he possibly could around me and towards the truck, where he instantly leapt onto the axle and climbed up into the engine bay where he remained hidden despite my best efforts to find him…
So, to recap, I gave him dinner, took him for a nice drive in the country, and then brought him home. I now feel considerably less confident in my evolutionary superiority.
The Story of Making of the Greatest Music Video Ever from the Talented Animals Perspective
A few years ago I was in a meeting about an upcoming television show when the director took me aside and said to me, “My brother is in a band, and I have an idea for a great video that would need animals, could we get together and talk about this sometime?” I grinned and said sure, knowing that everybody in Los Angeles has a relative in a band, and the odds of anything ever coming of that conversation were slim…
It was over a year later that Trish called and suggested that they were getting close and would like to set up a meeting to brainstorm ideas. She casually mentioned that her brother Damian was the lead singer in the band OK Go, the most downloaded band in history, and I ‘might’ have seen a few of their previous videos like the ubiquitous treadmill dance…
Damian explained that they had been dreaming of this video for years, but that so far they had been unable to find an animal trainer with the right combination of skills, experience, and unfettered creativity to help them succeed. “We want to make a video in which the dogs are the stars, Damian said. “We want the band members to support the dogs and dance with the dogs, and we want it to be magical and charming and something that has never been done before. No canine ‘agility’, ‘freestyle,’ or ‘obedience.’ And no cutsey tricks or circus acts. Something new.
“No problem,” said I. “The trainers and animals at Talented Animals are the best in the world, and if it is physically possible, we can do it.”
For the next several hours we all sat around throwing out ideas and getting more and more excited: we had come up with some really great ideas that seemed achievable in a short of amount of time and we all thought would make a great video. Then Damian said something that sent a chill up my spine: “Oh, by the way, this will be done in one take, with no cuts…” Now for those of you who have never worked an animal on film, we use cuts and optimal camera angles for everything. They are the tools that let us succeed. Without cuts, the animals would have to all work at the same time with their trainers far away, and we would need to get each dog and trainer and bandmember and crewmember to nail every single behavior all in the same take. Not bloody likely.
For the next several hours I patiently explained why we needed cuts in this video. That we could do many more things with cuts than without, that we could nail the video in a few days because each dog would do their behavior in isolation and would only have to be perfect for 10 seconds at a time, but that 12 dogs and a goat could not all work together without a mistake for over three minutes straight. And Damian patiently explained that one of the things that defined this video was that it was not going to rely on cuts or tricks or camera magic—it was going to be a continuous dance without cuts and we would have to work within that constraint…
Over a year passed and we were together again for two intense weeks of choreography and planning. Three dogs and two trainers sat in a small warehouse in downtown LA with the band, and Trish the choreographer, for two weeks of nonstop, delightful brainstorming.
Another year passed as we all worked to get schedules and finances and everything else to come together, and finally in the spring of 2010 we were ready to get started.
We developed an almost entirely new language for this video. Each of the 21 “sections” of the video had a name. Each prop had a name, and most of the animal behaviors had names. We would spend much of the day saying things like, “Can Sequel other foot Tim before he chung chungs over the popcorn wangs?”
Then we needed to select ideal dogs, find a location, and so much more… After looking at several options, we decided Oregon was the best place to film this video: beautiful, no sales tax, excellent production resources, inexpensive housing, perfect summer weather, less bureaucracy, and of course Talented Animals has one of its main facilities in Oregon.
The Oregon Film Office was extremely helpful in finding housing for the band, recommending skilled and flexible crewmembers, and best of all securing an amazing location to film the video!
We had only four weeks total to make the video from beginning to end: two weeks to train the dogs, one week to rehearse with the band, and one week to film it. Or so we thought! Once we started, we discovered that much of the first two weeks needed to be spent figuring out the trainer choreography! We had 12 trainers, two furniture movers, 12 dogs, one goat, 38 buckets, and a bunch of furniture, all of which needed to move around and be in the right place at the right time without anyone stepping in front of camera. We ended up with stuffed animals, spreadsheets, flow-charts, and recorded audio instructions, and for many hours we tried various configurations until we finally found one that worked. And then we practiced and practiced.
Of course, at the same time we were training the dogs. Most of the behaviors were not that challenging to teach, it was the transitions and the positioning that were complicated. And it was essential that the dogs were at all times having a truly joyous experience, so there were lots of breaks to go run in the field, take a nap, or splash in the pool.
Then Damian, Tim, Andy, Dan, and Trish arrived… Since we had been rehearsing without them we needed to learn how to work with band actually dancing their parts, and they needed to learn to work with the dogs. The band and Trish are about the most wonderful team to work with that you could ever imagine. They are creative, collaborative, generous, imaginative, kind, and just all around fun. They are also serious and consummate professionals. I hate to tarnish the “slacker-rockstar” trope, but these guys work harder than you can imagine, and bust their asses to make their videos perfect, and we had no intention of letting them down! We ran through the whole routine a couple of times for them with stuffed animals and then showed them the pieces with dogs, and while they loved 80% of it, there were several parts that were not quite as magical in execution as they had seemed in concept. So we began tweaking those parts. The challenge was that each person had a specific place to be at every moment, so each time we made a slight change there was a ripple effect. Suddenly people were on the wrong side of the stage, or could not get to where they needed to be to perform their next behavior, or were crashing into one another. It was chaos again! As the days ticked by, we kept making changes and the routine kept getting better and better. But we were running out of time, and while each behavior was solid, we could no longer string them all together. Finally we put them together, but at half speed, and then we began steadily increasing the speed.
With four days left, we got out the slate and tried our first official take at full speed and with everything in place. We made it about half way before a mistake. Then again, and again, and again. Many times we were virtually perfect, but we just got too far off the beat. Or we would get to the end and the dogs would be out of sync with each other. Or a dog would not have time to make it to his next position.
Take 49 was our first true success. It was not perfect, but we made it to the end without any real mistakes and still in sync with the song. “OH MY GOD,” Trish whispered breathlessly, “We did it…” And every person in the room finally exhaled!
After Take 49 we got better and better. Sure, we still all made mistakes, and there were more than a few dropped buckets, chair collisions, and the like.
At around Take 60, a new challenge arose. The dogs all knew the pattern perfectly, and absolutely loved doing it, and they started going too fast. They would rush ahead of the routine and run to their next behavior, and instead of getting behind the beat we were now starting to get ahead of it, or have dogs running onto the stage before it was their turn. Every few takes we would have to stop and do one at half speed to remind the dogs that they had to wait for the right moment before they could perform.
First thing on the morning of the third day, we began Take 72, and by about the midpoint, we could all feel that it was going really, really well. Each piece had been solid, and the rhythm and timing felt great. Everyone was fresh and looked good. This might be it….. As we ticked off each challenging moment it felt more and more like this might be it, and by the final scene when all the dogs were lying on tables next to the band, there was a silent vibration in the room. None of us were moving, or breathing, as Damian finally lifted his head and said, “We got it!” We had all agreed early on that no matter what happened, we would not erupt into a loud cheer as we did not want the energy of that to startle or alarm any of the dogs, and everyone honored that agreement, but it may have been the loudest silent cheer ever! And the dogs absolutely participated. We were all hugging, laughing, quietly jumping up and down, high-fiving, and hugging our dogs in absolute gratitude! They had done it, and we all knew it!
One of the biggest challenges of having no cuts in a video comes at the end when you have to pick! By the end, we had filmed for three and a half days and 124 takes. We had 30 complete takes, of which 10 were deemed excellent. And in each of these takes there were magical moments, but we could not concatenate them into one ideal, we had to discard every take except one, even knowing that in some of the discards were some of our very best work. That is painful! For a brief moment I thought about going to Damian one more time and trying to persuade him to cut them together into one supertake with all the best moments. But then I watched Take 72 again, and I saw exactly what Damian had imagined years earlier—one uninterrupted dance between OK Go and 12 amazing dogs. There was something so special about NOT having “cheated.” Somehow it came across on screen that this was real and had integrity. This three-and-a-half minutes of unedited truth allows the viewer to connect with the band and the dogs and essentially experience the dance exactly as it was, and that is far more genuine and touching than any perfectly-polished and cut-together special effects extravaganza.
We have been fortunate enough to work on many wonderful projects: independent art films, $100M blockbuster movies, and just about everything in between. We have worked with some of the great directors and actors in the world, and the most amazing animals. But I cannot think of any project we have enjoyed more than this one, nor any project of which we are more proud. I hope from the bottom of my heart that watching it brings you as much joy as it has brought all of us who worked together to create it!
Note: It is very difficult for music videos to generate any revenue. Making a video like this takes considerable resources: there are a lot of people and animals and equipment and props, travel, lodging, etc., and this comes directly out of the pockets of the bandmembers. So please, if you enjoyed this song, video, and dogs, purchase the album or go see Ok Go in concert.
For those who met Titan while he was staying with us, or watched his videos on this blog, here is a picture of him in his new home. He is doing great and has remained the sweetest and happiest tiger imaginable. He has a nice enclosure and a great pond, but nothing beats a nice swim in the pool on a warm summer day:
It is difficult to believe that ten years have passed since we raised the “Litter of the Law.”
We put together video and photos of a few highlights of their lives so far, and thought some of you might enjoy seeing it. It is simultaneously too long and too short, as it is difficult to capture ten years of the lives of eleven puppies without making a very, very long movie…
We have been caring for a young Bengal tiger named Titan. He was 8 weeks old and 15 pounds when he arrived, and around 22 pounds eight days later. He has around 500 pounds still to gain. He is on his way to a new and exciting life, and is here for some additional socialization. We are quite fortunate to have some wonderful colleagues who sometimes send animals here which allows us to keep learning and experiencing new individuals, and benefits the animals by exposing them to new experiences with trainers who are good at showing them that the world is a wonderful place. While with us, Titan will get to meet a wide variety of “other” animals and have different experiences. One aspect of training animals for film is that a wide variety of animals either live here or have visited, so all of our animals are quite welcoming towards visiting creatures. Last summer we had a baby camel in the kitchen and I opened the door to let the dogs say hello, and they walked right past her as though a camel in the kitchen was utterly expected…
I thought it might be interesting to share a few observations and images of his stay. Of course, this post will be mostly video since I am pretty sure most people would rather watch a tiger than read my observations!
Anytime you are raising an animal that will grow up to be easily capable of killing a human, the question of bite inhibition and boundaries becomes critical. If you raise a dog or cat that mouths too hard, jumps up, or is a little headstrong, it is not the end of the world. A lion, tiger, or grizzly that has those traits is very different. Not only is it dangerous, but it ends up having a much less rich life than it could have because it cannot be safely handled. At the same time, the process is slightly complicated because they are not domestic and are far less eager to please or willing to concede leadership. This makes for an interesting balance: you want to avoid conflict but at the same time you need situations to reinforce that you are the leader. I find that some people are far too permissive, and the animal learns that they can do whatever they want, and other people are far too proscriptive and the animal is essentially being told “no” all the time. I really try to set situations up where there are many obvious paths to success, so there are few rules, but then be absolutely clear about those rules. I also start right away by teaching a fun and positive game that is easy and gets a reward—usually put your feet on a mark. I make this a super fun game, so anytime the animal wants to do something I do not want I can tell him to go to the mark and suddenly he has a clear path to success.
Titan is an absolute gentleman about his bottle. He is good about keeping his feet on the ground, and if he does put a paw on you he is very gentle and keeps his claws retracted. At this point he is consuming both milk in a bottle and meat in a bowl. If anyone is curious, the milk is a combination of goats’ milk, Esbilac, vitamins, amino acids, probiotics, etc. And the meat is primarily turkey for now, along with some liver and other organ meats.
It is winter so we did not get to play in the pond, which is too bad since tigers are one of the few cats that enjoy water, and I would really like to play with him in the water… We did play in the bathtub a few times. (Of course the raccoon likes to bob for mussels and carrots in that bathtub, and was not sure a tiger was the best partner for that activity!) We did get a little time outdoors when the weather was reasonably nice:
At first blush, Titan was NOT impressed with the idea of a canine buddy. He had surprisingly strong prey drive for his age (even for a tiger!), so I decided to start by introducing him to a calm but large dog whom he could not possibly perceive as a snack. First I played with Titan for a good while so he was not too rambunctious, then I fed him a meal so he was not too hungry or cranky, and then I brought Ansel into the room while Titan was in his crate, and let them sniff for a little while before I opened the crate door. Titan came out, looked at Ansel, and hissed loudly. He then lay on his back, but let out a loud staccato roar. Ansel was impressed and left the room… I will not bore you with all the details, but I worked on this for the next couple of days, and now Titan loves all the dogs, including Ansel, and spends several hours a day wrestling and playing with them:
Because it was drizzly outdoors, we spent most of our time indoors, playing, training, eating, napping, working on agility, generally suffering the misery of captivity. We took Titan as one of the demo animals for a seminar on craniosacral osteopathy which is a great opportunity for socializing, and he played with lots of people and animals:
Titan is on his way now to a new home. He is a wonderful tiger, and we will miss him greatly.
Our Flint turned 16 a few weeks ago, and we cut together a quick video of some of the many great moments we shared with Flint which you might enjoy. Flint is a fabulous dog, half Malinois, half border collie, and has been one of the great gifts of our lives.
Many, many years ago, my young Newfoundland Tillie and I were hiking down the Rio Grande near Santa Fe, several miles from the nearest road. It was one of those perfect days where the sun seems to warm every inch of your body while a gentle breeze keeps you cool, and the concerns of life seem far away indeed. Tillie was trotting a few yards ahead of me, off-leash, when my reverie was shattered…
Have you ever heard the screech of tires coming toward you? The sound of failing metal brakes struggling to stop a freight train about to impact your car? The sound of millions of voices crying out in terror and suddenly silenced? A high power electrical transformer exploding? The clattering chain dragging your roller-coaster car towards the looming brink? Imagine them all combined into one piercing-deafening-heart-stopping-shriek-of-a-rattle. Even if you have never heard that sound, there is an ancestral memory woven deep in your genes that tells every fiber in your body and soul to contract. I froze and called Tillie to me, and she happily trotted over, apparently unconcerned by the deathly sound. Inches from where she had been I saw the largest, angriest rattlesnake that has ever lived. Normally I love snakes, and gently remind people that they are an integral part of nature that will not hurt us if we leave them alone, but standing there, feeling how close Tillie had been to death, I was less benevolent and rather more terrified. I could almost see the poison dripping from his fangs and eyes, as I returned his icy stare. Tillie and I retreated a few feet, and I held her closely as she licked me with an “I have no idea why you are suddenly hugging me, but okay…” look on her face…
After a few minutes I was calm and began trying to figure out a way around the giant serpent who filled the only available trail. I tried various methods to encourage him to depart, all to no avail. Finally, anxious to get to our favorite swimming spot, I hatched a plan. (Have you noticed that plans that are “hatched” almost always end badly…) I put Tillie in a down-stay and found a long, hefty stick with a sort of a “Y” on the end, and I cautiously but swiftly scooped the snake with the stick and flung him into the river.
Of course, what Tillie saw was me carefully selecting a lovely fetching stick, as I had done many times, and flinging THAT into the river. And so, before I could utter a word, she was up, into the river and swimming powerfully towards the western-diamondback-stick which was swimming towards me with astonishing rapidity. For the second time in 5 minutes my heart leapt into my mouth and I tried to call her back but she either could not hear over the river or perhaps figured she would come just as soon as she had the stick in her mouth. Fortunately, I still had the real stick in my hand, and in a moment of clarity decided to fling it between Tillie and the snake. She grabbed the closer stick, turned, and came back to me… Ever since then I have proofed stays and recalls rather more creatively and diligently!
Sometimes in training we seek not only to teach a new behavior, but also to modify an animal’s mental state. Often this can be achieved simply by choosing to reward the animal only when it is in the desired state–reward when the dog is working calmly, or when the dog is happy and enthusiastic. This is one significant difference between advanced dog training and novice dog training: beginners think in terms of teaching a behavior, advanced trainers think in terms of shaping attitudes. It is straightforward to train a dog to walk at your left side, the elegance lies in training a dog to do so with enthusiasm and joy.
I still remember how badly I messed this up with my first trained dog, many years ago-Tillie was an exuberant Newfoundland, and I was an easily embarrassed teenager. On our first night in obedience class, Tillie seemed to me to be the least-well-behaved puppy there, barking and dragging me around, and I resolved not to look like a fool the next week. So before the next class I took her on a huge hike: we climbed mountains and swam rivers and ran in sand and chased balls, and by the time we went to class she was happily exhausted. She calmly walked behind me at a glacial pace, and I felt that we had made great progress. For the next 10 weeks, every Thursday I repeated this routine, and never again was Tillie hyper in obedience class… A year later I decided it was time to try our hands at competition obedience, so I entered another class, and discovered that my bright, energetic, happy dog turned into a slug the moment I started doing obedience. She lagged behind, and did everything slowly and without any enthusiasm. It took me a while to realize that I had trained her to be that way… I had actually conditioned her psyche to enter into a particular state whenever certain cues were presented.
One particular situation where training mental state can be extremely beneficial is with a dog who gets too stimulated. Whether it is when another dog approaches, or during play, or when the doorbell rings-if your dog reacts with excess energy, you face the challenge of not only modifying the behavior, but also modifying the underlying excitation. One of the best techniques for this is training your dog to “cap” its own emotional response with an incompatible behavior before an undesired outcome. This morning, one of my dogs did a lovely job of illustrating that principle, and I thought I would share it:
Sequel is a young border collie rescue. He is very intelligent, but even more than most border collies, he has some behavioral quirks. Primarily they all center on a tendency to become over-stimulated rather easily. That tendency is present in his littermates, and is quite extreme, despite considerable work on reducing both the underlying causes and the specific manifestations. He sleeps right next to me in bed, and while he is an excellent sleeper, he tends to wake with much exuberance when the alarm goes off, which leads to his jumping on my head and then escalating frantic and annoying behaviors until I get up and take him outside to play. (I on the other hand wake grudgingly, and try desperately to hide under the covers.)
Knowing that one day while half asleep I might fling Sequel out the window, I decided that I should find a remedy. Given that I would be largely asleep, the solution needed to be fairly simple. So I put a large fabric crate in the room with the door permanently open and a comfy bed inside, and every morning when he jumped on my head I sent him into the crate and told him to wait there. I then waited for him to settle back down, and once he was relaxed I got up and took him outside.
He easily and effectively learned this, and for 6 months we had this routine-he sleeps soundly until the first noise, then wakes, gets excited, gets sent to lie in his crate, we both snooze for 10 minutes, then we get up.
Today, the phone rang early, and Sequel stood up, looked at me, stretched, hopped off the bed, went into the crate, and lay down and immediately went back to sleep while I talked on the phone.
On first blush this seems trivial-big deal, the dog learned to go into a crate. But look more closely. What is interesting about this is not that Sequel learned to go into a crate-he learned that perfectly within a day or two and did it reliably every morning. It is not even that he learned to go into the crate without my telling him. What changed this morning was that he stretched, did the behavior, and went back to sleep. He never got excited! An autonomic response changed. He would normally have had a surge of endorphins at that point, and would have sprinted into his crate and obediently waited. What was different was not that he did what I wanted, he always did what I wanted, it was that his nervous system actually skipped the excitation phase of the process. The crate behavior was an operantly conditioned, trained, behavior, but through enough repetitions, Sequel became classically conditioned to have a different emotional response.
We got a call for a project that needed an antelope lifting his head suddenly on cue. Easy enough…
But they had previously hired another company who had failed because getting to the studio required riding in an elevator and the antelope would not get on the elevator. According to the producer who called us, they had tried to push and pull their antelope onto the elevator, and he had bucked, kicked, flailed, and generally had a frightening fit! The producer was understandably very concerned that the same thing not happen again because they had wasted a LOT of money that day having the entire crew waiting…
I said, “No worries, we need a week to train.” He argued that it was a really easy scene, and I explained that the week was to train him to enjoy the elevator, and that I would not take the job with less.
I got the job, and for the next five days we took our antelope to town to play on elevators. For the entire first day we never asked him to get on an elevator, but he got treats and praise for approaching the elevator and had a great time, and we practiced walking him over a piece of carpeting in a doorway. We moved his feet all over and around the elevator entrance and released pressure whenever he got near to the elevator. The second day he learned to trot into the elevator over the same piece of carpet and right back out. The third day the door closed and then opened right away, etc… By the end of the week he was leading perfectly onto several different elevators and happily riding up and down, and a lot of people thought we were crazy…
We went to the soundstage the next week, where we met with the producer and went up to the studio. Of course, Gamble led onto the elevator and rode perfectly and walked into the studio and nailed the shot. The man smirked at me and said, “I can’t believe you charged me for a week of training when obviously your antelope has no problem riding the elevator.”
I tried and tried to explain to him that IF I had shown up the week before and attempted to force Gamble onto the elevator he would have behaved exactly as the other animal did, but no amount of arguing would convince him. I had taken some video of the prep, so I could have shown him the hours of work, but at no point during the prep did we try to force Gamble, so there was never a confrontation, never a moment that looked like there was a problem, never a moment in which Gamble was not having a good time. Because, as in most animal training, the best path to success was for me to be smart enough to manipulate the situation so that Gamble was able to succeed without ever really knowing that there was even an issue.
If we do our jobs well as animal trainers, it creates the absolutely untrue illusion that we are doing nothing–animal trainers generally only look like heroes when they have allowed something to fail and then appear to be saving the day…
Lauren and I took several dogs for a hike to the waterfall and a lovely picnic.Saga had a scene to film the next day, and we did not want him to get too tired on the long hike, so we left him home, but promised to take him for a walk when we got back.It was one of those perfect spring days where time seems to slow down, and we lounged in the sun, ate sandwiches, and threw sticks into the swimming hole for Flint. A few hours later we trekked home.
We were at the top of the hill, about a thousand feet from our house, when we began to hear a strange noise. An airplane? No.A car?No.We started walking a little more quickly, and with each step the sound grew louder. We could not identify it, but we knew it was wrong, and we knew it was coming from the house.We were running now, breathless.We burst out of the woods and stopped short.What we saw did not make any more sense than what we had heard—something was pouring out of the cracks between the siding on the second story of our house, crashing to the earth.Water??We ran to the front door and jerked it open.
Saga is field-bred Golden Retriever—he has swum in squalls in the Pacific, across the Willamette, and the Columbia.He lives to swim! But there, in our living room, he perched on top of our couch as the surrounding waters quickly rose. The ceiling was raining, hard, a river flowed down the stairs, and out of the corner of my eye I am certain I saw several broomsticks carrying buckets…
I sloshed upstairs and found that the water supply to one of the toilets had been ripped loose and had apparently been filling the house for hours.As best we can tell, a tennis ball rolled behind the toilet, and Saga had to get it, and his collar caught on the pipe and when he jerked to get loose the pipe snapped.
That is the last time we ever left Saga home when we took the others swimming…
We have been caring for a young Bengal tiger named Titan. He was 8 weeks old and 15 pounds when he arrived, and around 22 pounds eight days later. He has around 500 pounds still to gain. He is on his way to a new and exciting life, and is here for some additional socialization. We are quite fortunate to have some wonderful colleagues who sometimes send animals here which allows us to keep learning and experiencing new individuals, and benefits the animals by exposing them to new experiences with trainers who are good at showing them that the world is a wonderful place. While with us, Titan will get to meet a wide variety of “other” animals and have different experiences. One aspect of training animals for film is that a wide variety of animals either live here or have visited, so all of our animals are quite welcoming towards visiting creatures. Last summer we had a baby camel in the kitchen and I opened the door to let the dogs say hello, and they walked right past her as though a camel in the kitchen was utterly expected…
reinforce that you are the leader. I find that some people are far too permissive, and the animal learns that they can do whatever they want, and other people are far too proscriptive and the animal is essentially being told “no” all the time. I really try to set situations up where there are many obvious paths to success, so there are few rules, but then be absolutely clear about those rules. I also start right away by teaching a fun and positive game that is easy and gets a reward—usually put your feet on a mark. I make this a super fun game, so anytime the animal wants to do something I do not want I can tell him to go to the mark and suddenly he has a clear path to success.
to train a dog to walk at your left side, the elegance lies in training a dog to do so with enthusiasm and joy.
