i know it’s been nearly a year since i’ve really written much… my life has been quite the whirlwind, getting used to austin, and finding a full time job to support my dog training habit that being said, i never stop working with the dogs around me, including my own.

last nite, i dreamed about natural balance raw dog food. strangely enough, it made sense, so i bought some today, along with a better pair of large dog nail clippers. not only is clipping a dog’s nails most likely uncomfortable for him or her, but often pet owner use the wrong size. i used a larger one to accommodate her super sensitivity.

before lucid knew what was going on, i made a big show of cutting up 1/2 inch squares of natural balance dog food in the rolls {lamb flavor}. she salivated the entire time, ready for whatever i asked of her. *note – she had not eaten any of this for months, so this was a HUGE, high value treat!

next, i put the pieces into a bowl and told her “Down.” she lay down, and situated her so that her head was in my lap, and my legs {stuck out in front of me} supported the rest of her body. in this position, i had great access to her front paws, and after rubbing her belly and asking to her to please trust me in a calm and soothing voice, i clipped the first nail. she jumped a little, but i firmly held her belly down and stopped the squirming right away. as she relaxed, i gave her 3 pieces of natural balance, one at a time, each less than a second from each other. *remember, when training dogs, the reward must come within 1.3 seconds of the appropriate behavior.

the second nail was easier, and she didn’t squirm as much. in fact, while i held her belly firmly, i said the word, “stay” and gave her FIVE treats {one at a time}! the third nail was even easier, and as i said the word stay, she didn’t even squirm.

not every nail was that easy, but i stayed calm throughout the whole process. for the back nails, i moved her onto her side with her head down.

every dog is different. i’ve worked at several kennels in the past 5 years, and clipped many dogs’ nails, but my own dog has been the MOST difficult one. one year ago, no one in the right mind would have come close, and any normal pet owner would have paid enormous amounts to have this dog put under at the vet for a nail trim. but i’m stubborn, and maybe it’s taken a few months, but she’s just about putty in my hands. in the span of a 15-year life, taking 6 months to change an aggressive behavior to a docile one is time well spent.

{please beware… you’re about to experience the way i tell stories.  it’s abstract.  but trust me, it comes together in the end}

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lu⋅cid [adjective]

1. easily understood; completely intelligible or comprehensive: a lucid explanation.

2. characterized by a clear perception or understanding; rational or sane: a lucid moment in his madness.

3. shining or bright.

4. clear; pellucid; transparent.

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When I was about 13 or 14, I started writing bits of poetry and random things.  I’d sit at my computer every day, and start typing before I even knew I had sat down.  This keyboard flight lasted seconds, minutes, and sometimes hours.  I read about two books a day, and thought vocabulary was cool. My inspiring English/Language Arts teacher assigned us unique words to draw and present to the class.  This began my love of words.

The first time I came across the word “lucid” was in a thesaurus around age 15 or 16.  I wrote a stream-of-consciousness piece, and I couldn’t think of a beautiful-sounding, more accurate representation for the word “clear”.  This word was to describe 2 things: water I waded in, and more deeply, my state of mind.

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At age 17, for my senior year of high school, I boarded on tallship, and sailed to and around the Baltic countries of Europe, over to Scotland, down and around to Africa and the Spanish islands of Gran Canaria and the Portuguese island Madeira, across the Atlantic to Trinidad and Tobago, the Guadeloupe island of Les Saintes, over to French Guiana, and finally, Puerto Rico.  Wow that was exhausting and amazing!  I wrote a ton, took lots of photos, and had lots of dreams.

Thus I fell in love with travel, photography, and personal journalism.  I had studied college-level fine arts and graphic design as my electives in high school, and wanted to take my artistry to a new level.  But what level?  After high school, I went to a trade school for advertising and design in Miami, and sponge-soaked up the design software, workflow, and brainstorming techniques.  Art direction, copyrighting, graphic design… I fell in love with the concept, but not with the fast-paced, money-centered world.

I then worked with dogs in Texas at a kennel, where I studied, photographed, and fantasized about training them. I didn’t know schools existed for dog training.  I eventually went back to school for photojournalism, in Victoria, British Columbia.  What I learned was very valuable: I’d rather not work for a newspaper or magazine, also both very fast-paced, sterile environments.  I needed freedom to feel, think and breathe simultaneously.  However, my past flirtation with writing and photography now fledged into a full affair, and both of those skills took off in a rocket ship.

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The first time I remembered a dream, I was 6 years old, and I woke up without an ice cream cone in my hand.  I was so disappointed, I taught myself how to control them.  I wanted to fly.  So fly I did, and fly I do!  Over the years, I have learned how to Lucid Dream.

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After photojournalism school, while pondering life, the opportunity to buy a dog fell into my lap.  I’d been dreaming of this moment since childhood.  I was planning on buying the white male, but the first day I could hold him, he jumped off my lap to explore the room. I put him away because I wanted the one.  I knew that I would spend a lot of time with this friend, and I wanted to start the relationship out right.  ”The brindle one,” suggested the breeder, “pick up that runt.”  I did, and she fell asleep on my chest, my finger in her mouth.  Aaah, the one.  We were both lucid.  We were one.  She was lucid.  And that was that.  I spent 4 weeks visiting her.  From the age of 2 weeks, she knew me, and we simply melted into each others’ existences.

The day I first picked up the brindle runt, her mother, Karma was an anxious mess, checking on her scattered puppies.  Karma jumped on the couch to smell the puppy in my lap. I felt calm and blissful, and looked at the mother with love and admiration, for dogs are such wonderfully simple creatures.  I thought, “I’d like to raise and teach this puppy as my best friend, but I want you to be ok with that.”  I didn’t say anything out loud.  Karma looked into my eyes, licked the puppy in my lap, licked me, looked at me one last time, jumped off the couch, and never came back to check on this puppy for the next 4 weeks.  And Lucid, my dream, my gentle beast, my wild, deeply knowing best friend, never cried or looked for Karma, either.  And it was karma.  Everything I’d ever wanted in a relationship with an animal friend, I now had.  We were one.

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Life has come around full circle since then.  After raising adolescent Lucid while attending a semester of art school, I realized my calling.  I love animals, people, communication, energy, emotions, and of course, art. Therefore, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.  Now I understand, I was meant to communicate with dogs and their owners, mediating the relationship between the two.  And when I’m not working with them, I delve into my little art world.  This world is my shiny, rainbow clamshell.

Miabella & Lucid

Up until right now, my dog, Lucid and I have shared a bed.  This morning, I told her it’s time to sleep on the floor, and something bewildering happened between us.  This event brought forth the desire to write about a series of conceptually psychological ideas I have on the emotional aspect of human nature and its positive and negative effects in our relationship with animals.

My dog has always slept in my bed.  I only planned to cuddle with her for the first 3 days of our existence together; those Canadian nites were cold.  I knew it would become difficult if I didn’t cut her off then, but I didn’t do anything about it.  As the months and Lucid matured, something happened… my single air mattress bed deflated.

Upon moving to a different, colder house, with a big queen bed, and bigger windows, I convinced myself that cuddling was good for both of us.  Then, I made a superquick {literally} overnight decision to leave Canada and move back to Texas for dog training school.  Texas was darn cold, too.

Now it’s fall, and I haven’t been sleeping well.  I’m visiting my sister in Dallas, it’s warm, and I can’t get comfortable.  I definitely can’t sleep.  {Mica, sweet sister, it’s not you or your comfy guest bed!} I’ve tossed and turned, to wake up at 5 AM and find 50 pounds of sprawling dog body, emanating heat where I’m already hot… It’s no wonder I’m uncomfortable – Lucid takes up the whole bed!

I gently pull the covers off of her, and watch until she opens her eyes and looks up at me.  I don’t move as I simply state in a quiet voice, ”Lucid, it’s been a long time coming, and I love you so much,” then reach out and pet her once, slowly from the tip of her nose to her tail, ”I’m so sorry, but you’re gonna have to sleep on the floor from now on.”

I don’t expect what happens next.  She sighs one deep, giant sigh, eyes still on mine, and slowly stretches, steps over me, and jumps right off the bed, onto her own fuzzy bed.  I had not pointed, used a commanding voice, broken eye contact, or said a single word that she associates as a command, such as “off”, “down”, or “move”.  I simply talked, and she understood the message.  This is remarkable!

Whoever said that dogs can’t understand our words may be right.  It’s not like they know our language.  They make simple associations to words repeated over time, and by consequence/reward history, but there is no scientive evidence which suggests they understand complete sentences.

However, I believe that everything, including what we do/say, is made up of tiny atoms of energy.  If you’ve ever seen the experiment, where they tape a word to water and freeze it, and the ice crystals take on patterns, you know what I’m talking about.  In that experiment, the ice crystals of words with positive associations are beautiful, symmetrical, snowflake-like creations.  The crystals of negatively-associated words are non-symmetrical, and some are quite ugly.

All this to say, I believe that our true intention radiates energetically through whatever message we TRY to convey. I’ll explain.  Prepare yourself, I’m about to get deep.  {and please remember, I’m no scientist, just an observer, and this is my own hypotheses.}

If we are not honest about our true intentions through our communication with friends and family, acquaintances, ourselves, or even animals, it can be felt by the other party.

With humans, it may not be immediately obvious, and we often get a weird gut-feelings that something is wrong. If that feeling isn’t placed immediately, that thought {and the emotional energy of that thought}, sinks deep into the subconscious, where it may or may not reside forever.  Usually it resurfaces, but sometimes we don’t remember the specific moment when we had that negative gut-feeling, so we may misunderstand our own emotional reaction to it’s resurfacing.  If this emotional energy does not resurface, it will stay inside us, taking up space within our being.  It will not disappear, and it will show up at {seemingly} random times in our lifetime.

I say this about humans because we are complicated, physically and mentally.  We oftentimes have overwhelming emotions, and we possess incredibly complex intellect and the ability to reason.  We feel a lot, we think a lot, and we reason with our feelings and thoughts.  Our emotions are: Anger, Fear, Sadness, Humiliation, and Happiness {which I tend to refer to as “glee”, as I don’t believe in true happiness – it is fleeting}.  By nature, unless we seek to teach ourselves, humans spend more time brewing about the past, and contemplating the future, than purely enjoying the present moment.

Dogs, on the other hand, are instinctive, natural beings.  Sure, ours are domesticated, but that only means that they learn our social structure, rather than their natural one.  Their core being at puppyhood is pure, and they spend their time in the present.  I imagine {sadly} that their understanding of human nature must be so difficult at times, because humans are, arguably, the most emotional of all species.  Wild canines interact with other animals with simpler emotions.  Dogs in our homes deal with our anger/rage, sadness/depression, frustration/anxiety, fear {a HUGE trigger for dogs}, humiliation, and every now and then, glee.

Healthy dogs don’t get angry for no reason.  In the wild, they are territorial and competitive, but it’s natural selection: eat or be eaten.  I believe that the inner complexities of an emotional human being is felt purely by the dog.  It does not matter how well we think we hide or  mask what we truly feel inside.  And sometimes, perhaps we’ve even hidden it from ourselves.

The healthier, more honest and open we can be with ourselves, others, and of course, our dogs, the better.  This will improve our communication, and ultimately, our relationship with the world and everything in it.

To conclude, Lucid is a constant reminder of how inspiring ONENESS can be between human and canine. I will cherish that moment with her forever, and strive to create a foundation for more experiences like that one.  At least this time, I think Suzanne Clothier {author of my all-time favorite dog book, If a Dog’s Prayers Were Answered, Bones Would Rain From the Sky} would be proud.

Miabella & Lucid.

this weekend i had the good fortune to share time & space with some of the funkiest, most awe-inspiring austinites; our time overflowed with wooden mind games, psychedelic harry potter fires, galactic gazing, and yes, percival the pig.  {the most bodacious pig on earth, i might add…}  add that to a wonderful training session with a shepherd/lab named Marley, and a rendevouz with my favorite surfboard furniture maker and musician, i’ll say it’s been a radical time, indeed.  so here’s to you, percival, for hammin’ it up, and to the funky, awe-inspiring austinites who brought me to you & beyond… ODE.

miabella

detail:

Enjoy

Miabella & Lucid

detail:

Here’s a video, of Lucid on her second training session with this trick.  I taught her on Wednesday evening, and it is now Friday.  She is now turning it on and off.

Training Tips:

• Use a high-value food treat that really motivates your dog.
• Remember to mark and reward Fido for ANY close approximation!
• This is a high-activity trick because of the jumping and balancing against a wall.  Keep sessions short – between 30-60 seconds.
• If Fido is getting frustrated, try to work thru it, and always end on a good note!

As always, have fun, and good luck!

Miabella & Lucid

That being said, here are 2 training videos.

The first video is the first session where I train Lucid that she’s no longer allowed in the kitchen.  At first, I trick her because I say “Come” in the kitchen, but she learns that she has to go out and around to the other side to get a treat.  Because it’s the first session, you’ll notice she hasn’t quite figured it out.  I use the word, “No” and “ah-ah!” quite a bit, to mark when her behavior is incorrect (ie paws on the kitchen tile floor).  The second video shows the progress made 2 days later.  I probably worked on this one time from the first video to the second, which is just to say that this behavior is fairly easy to train.  Good luck, and Enjoy!

her dog is learning to fetch a beer from the refrigerator, but doesn’t know how to close the fridge door.

i taught Lucid using the “touch” command, which goes as follows:

• find a lid to a jar of pickles or olives, or one of those canned dog food lids.
• rinse it off.
• stuff a squishy piece of food (cheese works well), into the rungs of the lid so Fido is interested and wants to lick the lid. don’t let him eat the cheese.
• if he touches the lid with any part of his body, say “yes” in a monotone voice and give him a treat immediately [this is called marking a behavior, and is a very effective training tool].  Fido would love it if the treat were cheese, so he doesn’t feel gipped!  

there is no specific amount of time to allot to any of these steps.  don’t get greedy, go at your dog’s pace.  if he seems frustrated or is not getting it 80% of the time, take a step backwards.  once Fido understands to touch the lid with the cheese in it, take the cheese out.

• now hold the lid up in various places, near Fido’s nose.  do not say anything, but wait to see if he’ll touch it.  anytime he does, mark with the word “yes”, and reward with a food treat.
• eventually (which could take days… be patient!), once he touches it every time you hold the lid out, say the word, “touch” before holding out the lid.
• repeat that last step until anytime you say “touch”, he automatically touches the lid with his nose or his paw.

now you have a dog that will touch the lid on command.  simply tape (duct tape works well) the lid onto the fridge at the height of his nose/paw (whichever he uses)

• keep the fridge door closed, and just get Fido used to touching his nose/paw to the touch-lid on the door.  create a solid reward history for this.
• once he is consistently touching the lid on the fridge every time you say touch, open the fridge by an inch, and say “touch” again.
• wait until the door is closed, mark it with a “yes”, give Fido a food treat.
• do this until you can gradually open the refrigerator all the way, and he understands what to do to close it.

the “touch” command can be used for many other behaviors in training a dog.  if you decide you’d like to change the name of the cue from the word “touch” to something more fitting for the fridge, like “close” or “push”, click here.

If you decide to change your dog’s name, or the name of a command or cue, you will say both names at the same time.  Say the new one first, and the old one last.  Because dogs anticipate, they will eventually remember that if you say this new word, the next word is coming next, and then the food treat!

HOW TO CHANGE A DOG’S NAME

• If you want Fido to be called Ferrari, you’ll probably spend a few days or a week sounding pretty silly.  Say “Ferrari-Fido”.
• Pay attention to when your dog’s ears perk up.  If it’s at the “Fido” part, keep calling him “Ferrari-Fido”.
• The moment his ears perk up when you are still on the “Ferrari” part, you can drop the “Fido.”

HOW TO CHANGE THE NAME OF A COMMAND or CUE

• If you want to change the cue from “Place” to “Bed”, say, “Bed-Place”.
• As soon as Fido (or is he Ferarri now?) gets on the place bed, reward with a food treat.
• Practice getting on and off the place bed several times, saying, “Bed-Place” each time, and rewarding when he gets on.
• Remember to “free” him before he gets off.
• Once he moves towards the place bed before you can even say the “Place” part of “Bed-Place”, you’re ready to take the “Place” out. (wow that was confusing!  Please feel free to let me know if that somehow does NOT make sense.)

Good luck and have fun with this!  Try it with a friend’s dog when they are out of town… maybe you can teach their dog all German commands…