Raising Millo

Getting ready for Millo

2018-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Realising that a new member is going to join the family can be quite daunting, even if it’s only a pet. Millo is our first dog but we knew that our lives were going to change as soon as he crossed the threshold of our home. However, we were more or less prepared. As we’ve explained in our previous posts, we’d carried out some research on dog training and we felt ready for what was to come. It was now time to arrange our surroundings to welcome a young puppy.

Most of the books and resources mentioned in our “Learning about dog training” post feature specific chapters about what to buy and how to set up your house for a puppy. Many of the things discussed in there hadn’t even crossed our minds, so we were really happy we’d done our homework before picking up Millo.

Essential dog gear

The first step was buying all the stuff we needed. Some of the equipment was quite obvious: stainless steel bowls for food and water, a collar and lead, or a tag with his name and our contact details. We also got some puppy pads, as we were sure that potty training was going to be one of our biggest challenges but, luckily, we never got to use them. As to a dog bed, we’d read that puppies could chew them quite easily so we decided not to purchase one, and we were glad we did. Millo slept on old towels and blankets for the first few months of his life with us.

However, we hadn’t thought about some of the gear that proved to be the most useful in the long run. It was only because we’d read it on the dog training books we’d been studying that we bought a crate, a puppy pen and a long leash. The crate was as vital for Millo as it was for us the first few weeks and, to be honest, even now. It became his safe place, where he would sleep and hang out, and where we could leave him unattended for a couple of minutes without worrying about what he might be doing. The puppy pen rapidly became an essential tool to isolate Millo in one area of the house, without access to potentially dangerous stuff, as well as to things he could chew and destroy. We’re convinced that the fact that he’s now so uninterested in anything that’s not a toy or food (except the odd sock and slipper every now and then… they’re just too exciting) is because we used a pen from the beginning. Finally, we’ve used the long lead practically every day since we purchased it over a year ago. This ten-metre leash is great not only to have control over the dog while training or hiking but also to know he can’t go anywhere when he’s in our unfenced garden.

Puppy-proofing the house

Following the advice on those books we also puppy-proofed the houses we were going to be staying in. And I say houses, plural, because we picked him up in Spain and then returned to France a couple of weeks later. So, in a little bit more than two weeks, he stayed in four different places. Obviously, the puppy pen was our biggest help here. Just by restricting the area where he could walk around unattended, we didn’t need to worry so much about the rest of the house. Anyway, we still looked for potential dangers and neutralised them, from electric cables to empty sockets or chemical products. We just made sure he couldn’t have access to any of them.

Preparing the trip

The final stage was arranging the trip. We had to drive for more than 16 hours to pick Millo up and, two weeks later, drive back home with a young puppy in the back of our car, not a small feat! We decided to bring all the gear needed from France, so the boot was filled with dog food, toys, a crate and other doggy essentials. We also bought a seatbelt for him to wear on the way back, a trip that we split up in three days sleeping in dog-friendly hotels along the way.

So, with a car full of puppy gear and a mind full of worries and excitement, we set off for a long journey to meet our new best friend.

Thanks for reading! Check out our next post to learn more about our journey with Millo. 🐾

Choosing reward-based training for Millo

2018-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Why did we choose reward-based training? Well, I guess it was the method that resonated more powerfully with our principles and values.

As we’ve already mentioned, before Millo all our contact with dog training was based on TV shows and widespread clichés. Things like: “You have to be the pack leader” or “The dog must be dominated” were all we knew. But, thanks to the internet, a quick search showed us that there were other methods and dog training schools.

The myth of dog dominance

Just like we said in our previous post, Zak George was one of the first trainers we found online. His videos were eye-opening, he showed us that you could teach manners to your dog without the use of positive punishment. After the first few weeks, we decided we needed to go deeper into the subject and we kept following the lead of Youtube dog trainers. Simpawtico Dog Training was a great resource. Thanks to Ian Stone’s advocacy for reward-based training, we found two videos from professionals in the field - John McGuigan and Michael Ellis - that confirmed our suspicions: dog dominance is a myth, there is no no scientific evidence that dogs follow hierarchies or adapt to rank-based societies. It’s true that it seems like wolves do, and that is where this idea has stemmed, but dogs are so far removed from their wild relatives, having lived with humans for thousands of years, that this trait seems to no longer exist in them.

The theory behind reward-based training

On the other hand, reward-based training has solid research-based foundations. It’s relatively easy to find academic papers on classical conditioning, operant conditioning and reward-based training methods, which is where most positive training methods are based on. Michael Ellis was a big influence in our final approach to raising Millo. Even if we don’t adhere to all of his techniques, especially things like the use of leash pressure, we were inspired by his Philosophy of Dog Training video. In it, he explains what classical and operant conditioning are, outlining the premises of reward-based training, as well as throwing light on important issues when teaching your dog, such as motivation.

Reward-based training, the right approach for us

After a little over a year of training, we can say that we’ve solved our main challenges either rewarding an expected behaviour or ignoring unwanted rehearsals. When we’ve needed to stop or prevent an unwanted conduct, we’ve managed Millo with either a leash, his crate or a puppy pen. We’ve always refused aggressive methods such as choke, prong and e-collars and, of course, we’ve never laid a hand on him. We have no idea if reward-based training works for all dogs in any situation but we can definitely say that it has worked, and is still working, really well for us.

Thanks for reading! Check out our next post to learn more about our journey with Millo. 🐾

Learning about dog training

2018-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

We were adopting a puppy and there was no turning back! As soon as we contacted the breeder to sort out the details to pick Millo up, it dawned on us that we didn’t know a thing about how to raise a dog. He’s our first pup so all our experiences were based on watching random episodes of dog training TV programmes, mainly César Millán (and its Spanish version, Borja Capponi) and Victoria Stilwell but we were aware that it wasn’t at all enough. We only had three months to figure out what we were going to do with the little ball of fur that was going to become part of the family for over a decade. The only thing we knew was that we didn’t want to base our training on punishment, physical or otherwise.

Where did we start?

We decided to start off by watching YouTube videos. I know it doesn’t sound very professional but we thought it would be the best place to learn the very basics, and we weren’t wrong! We were actually lucky enough to stumble upon Zak George’s channel, YouTube’s biggest dog training star with well over one million subscribers. And I say lucky because George is an advocate for positive or reward-based training. What he said made sense and the way he explained how to deal with the challenges involving a new puppy were easy enough to follow for total novices like ourselves. So we spent a good few days watching and re-watching his videos, especially those dealing specifically with puppies.

A couple of useful books for new dog owners

However, the videos clearly weren’t enough, we wanted to know more. So we took the Amazon way: we bought a couple of dog training books. Zak George’s “Dog Training Revolution” was the first one on our list. It deals with all the major issues for first-time dog owners. From what to buy and how to set up your home, to how to deal with the first obstacles, teach your dog to play with you and learn their first tricks, all using reward-based training and avoiding punishment. It was a great starting point.

Also on our shopping cart was “Training the Best Dog Ever” by Dawn Sylvia-Stasiewicz and Larry Kay. Sylvia-Stasiewicz has trained several White House puppies and, in her book, she lays out a perfectly scheduled dog training routine that, in 5 weeks, promises to create a more or less well-behaved puppy using only reward-based training. We loved the idea of organised training and there’s even a diary that you can download to note accomplishments, potty hours and other stuff to keep track of your puppy’s advances and challenges. We obviously started out set on writing down on Millo’s diary every day and, although we didn’t always achieve this goal, following the 5-week programme was one of the best decisions we took at the beginning of this journey. Millo actually performed better than expected and succeeded in many of the training challenges way earlier than what the book said… what a smart puppy we have! In this book, there is advice on how to prepare for your new dog too, as well as tricks and some problem solving tools. All in all, a great resource to start the adventure of having your first puppy.

We also purchased César Millán’s “How to Raise the Perfect Dog” but, by now, we were sure we didn’t want to follow his approach and, a few chapters into his book, we decided we weren’t going to do what he recommended. Reward-based training made a lot more sense to us, if only in theory at this point. I believe that time proved us right and it was the right approach for Millo but more on that in our next post!

Thanks for reading! Check out our next post to learn more about our journey with Millo. 🐾

Can de Palleiro, a very special breed

2018-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

We’ve always loved dogs so, as soon as we moved in together, we started fantasizing about getting a puppy of our own. We’d have long conversations about it, imagining our dream dog joining us in one of our favourite summer mountain hikes, helping pull us uphill when we went ski touring or snuggling with us on the sofa while watching Netflix. It needed to be a strong dog, able to accompany us on our sporting adventures and to adjust to all sorts of weather, from the humidity of Galicia to the heat in central Spain and the snow in the Alps. When we learnt about the existence of the “Can de Palleiro” we knew that we had found the perfect breed for us, not only because of its features but because it’s the quintessential dog from our region, Galicia.

What’s a Can de Palleiro?

Also known as a “Galician Shepherd Dog”, the “Can de Palleiro” is a regional breed from the northwestern corner in Spain, Galicia. Barely known outside this land, these majestic dogs are currently in danger of extinction with just under 1300 individuals officially registered. At the very end of the 1990s, the regional government decided to study the possibility of reviving the breed, starting a search for surviving specimens. An official breed standard was described allowing for the start of a raising project aimed at increasing the number of individuals. Club Can de Palleiro have been, since 2002, the guardians of the breed, overseeing all official offspring and organising adoptions to help recuperate the Galician Shepherd.

Traditionally employed as herding dogs for cows - and as guard dogs at farmers’ houses where they usually slept in the hayloft or “palleiro” -, the Can de Palleiro is a beautiful animal. It closely resembles its cousin, the German Shepherd but, fortunately, lacks the ailments commonly assigned to this popular breed such as hip problems. On the contrary, current Galician Shepherds have been carefully bred to avoid inbreeding, thus eliminating the chance of genetic diseases and other issues. They’re quite big, with males reaching up to almost 40kg in weight and, as we’ve found out, really strong and able to adapt to any environment. They’re also very smart and well-balanced when it comes to their personality although they can be a bit shy with strangers at first. We jokingly say that they’re slightly distrustful, just like us Galicians but that, once they get to know you, they’re the best friend you can possibly have (again, just like us!).

Why a Can de Palleiro?

The popularity of the breed didn’t really escalate until a local supermarket chain decided to make it the focus of one of their TV ads. Allo, the dog that starred in the commercial, became well known all around Galicia and people started to contact the Club to see how they could get their own Galician puppy.

Some newspapers reported that the soaring trend had resulted in a long waiting queue to acquire one of the golden pups but that wasn’t at all our experience when we finally decided to get in touch with the Club early last year. The process couldn’t have been easier, after filling out a couple of documents stating our ability to give a dog a suitable home, they sent us the contact details of a few breeders who were going to have adoption-ready puppies around May. We wanted to wait until then because we live in the mountains and we thought that a snow-free environment would give a baby dog a better welcome in our world.

We nervously sent a message to one of the three numbers they had given us, selected at random. Her name was María and she informed us that her steady couple of Palleiros had just had a single male puppy. We knew it was a risk agreeing to adopt Millo without actually having met him first but we also knew that we wanted to help the breed by getting a Galician Shepherd, so we readily decided to take the plunge and said yes.

The hardest part was having to wait for almost three months until we could pick him up. However, regular updates on his health and general behaviour from María made the wait more bearable. She also sent us pictures frequently so we got to see him grow, even if from the distance. He was the cutest puppy we’d ever seen, and he was going to be part of our small family in just a few weeks, we couldn’t be more thrilled!

Thanks for reading! Check out our next post to learn more about our journey with Millo. 🐾