Hard Mouths
After reading all your postings regarding dogs which are Hard Mouthed (don’t know if hard mouthed is proper English) I remembered an article which I wrote in dutch earlier this year. And you’ve guessed probably right, the subject was hard mouths. Only problem is that it’s written in dutch so I’ll try to translate it and try to capture the essence of the article …… here we go…….
It looks like hard mouths are becoming a common problem. More and more reports about (extreme) hard mouths are told everywhere, thousands of pages are being written about this reoccurring problem. What is the cause of this phenomenon, well I’ll mention a few of them:
1. Genetic degeneration
2. squeaking, soft toys given to the dog when he was just a puppy
3. inaccurate and wrongly used training materials during his period as a pup
4. Too little time on your hands, the training-steps are too big, the dog cannot keep up
5. Stress (often the consequence of point 4)
6. etc.etc.
First let us define what Hard mouths are. In my opinion hardness in the mouth is crunching the game. Ducks with open chests, hares with cracked backs, dummy's with the stuffing hanging out of it, everything goes to pieces or is at least damaged. Mind you, in my opinion there is a difference between ordinary game and carnivorous game like foxes or rats. Belief me when I tell you that I know weims who will crunch a fox and retrieve a duck properly, undamaged that is. Apparently they know the difference instinctively and crack the carnivore first to be sure it is dead. (don’t know this for sure but call it a gut-feeling). If I had such a dog I would not consider it as a problem as long as the dog retrieves the rest properly. I don’t want to classify this as a hard mouth.
Okay, I also know a heap dogs which are rather rough in the mouth. Many solutions are offered but funny enough all those solutions are based on preventing hard mouths.
Solutions like:
* let the pupster get used to game in a very very early stage of his life
* not to much pressure on your dog etc.etc.
We all know a bunch of tricks to prevent him from becoming hard mouthed.
But what if your dog is already hard mouthed and you want to tackle this problem. I,ve seldom read an solution that appealed to me. Everyone knows the trick with a steel brush. Let him fetch a steel brush and when he is gonna be hard mouthed he will hurt himself big time. And yes I know a few dogs at which the brush trick worked but I also think there are to much dangers hidden in this trick. Fysical and technical, The dog HAS to fetch no matter what and do you think he likes the steel brush? Ofcourse not. So the fact that he HAS to fetch something that hurts the mouth produces large amounts of stress in the dogs mind. The smart ones will fetch the brush very, very carefully…eureka?? No unfortunately the duck will be knackered again.
From the last paragraph you can draw the conclusion that hard mouths are usually the result of an overdose of stress. (at least in my opinion, maybe 5% of the dogs are really degenerated). You can recognize stress by behaviour like “tongue is flicking in and out the mouth constantly” , “trampling (front) paws’ , “eyes on stalks” , “urinating everywhere” .Everyone knows them, dogs that think they have to urinate everywhere after they’ve received the command to fetch. You can hear the handler of the dog grumble “look at that dominant bastard, he is just givin me the finger”. Well I disagree!!!!!! But what is he telling us then?? I think it’s a little pee to calm himself down and more importantly to calm the the handler down. He is just telling you “pffff it’s tough mate, I,ve got it very difficult inside my head at the moment, look I’m peeing to calm YOU down”. And here we have our first communication disorder between you and your dog and the outcome is that the handler is growling a bit harder and the dog will bite the game to pieces…stress…stress…stress everywhere.
Some time ago I was training a group of obedience-handlers. One member of the group was a giant of a man, he had biceps as big as my upper legs. He handled a giant of a Labrador. The man behaved like you expected him to. He had a roaring voice and was full of “tough-talk”. He was very proud of the fact that his dog was also a tough-one. Well I was in doubt about that. Indeed the dog was a tough cookie…..for himself that was, the dog went through barbed wire, you could kick him, nothing seemed to hurt the dog. Despite that he really adored his handler, he adored his handler big time.
First something about the dog. It was a dog who loved to work, obedience? He loved it and was very good at it. Same goes for working trials, however the dog had one problem….yeah you’ve guessed it right….hard mouth. Once on a dreadful winter eve, the dog achieved to fetch one hare in two runs. First the head of the hare and second the rear. The only thing fetched in one piece was a piece of metal and even then I checked the metal for tooth-marks Everything except the metal went into pieces. If I had a solution for this problem and the steel brush wasn’t the solution, the smart dog just turned the brush in such a way that he could grab only the wood and yes, the backside of the brush went into pieces. When the training was over asked the guy to do a simple fetch so I could analyze what was happening between the two of them. This is what isaw:
1 Handler gives the dog the command to heel and has the dummy in his hand in sight of the dog. Before the dog heels he walks 3 times round the handler and flicks his tongue rapidly in and out of his mouth (both cases signs of stress)
2 The handler stops, dog sits immediately. WAIT roared the handler, even my ears where ringing.. The dog flicks his tongue even faster in and out the mouth and scratches behind the ear ( stress and insecure behaviour).
3 The handler swings the dummy forward and even before he let go of the dummy the dog is trampling his font paws like a junkie without speed. (extreme turmoil in the dogs head).
4. The dummy is thrown and there goes the dog (without receiving a command) WAIT roars the handler. Dog crawls back to the handler while putting his nose gently in the left hand of the handler. (sorry sorry sorry, I’m a good boy again? ) And the handler? Well he groused a bit more.
5 Finally the dog is allowed to fetch the dummy. Again a roaring command FETCH. Aaaaaaai on the way to the dummy the dog urinates BAD DOG!!!!!!!!! On the way back…welll you get the picture.
6 Dummy is presented like it should be except for the fact that the stuffing of the dummy is all over.
I tried to describe it very shortly, but this was a case of extreme turmoil in the head of the dog and lots and lots of stress and stress-related behaviour, partially caused by the fact that the handler read his dog wrong and just didn’t saw what the dog was telling him.
“Well can you get it out” asked the handler. “Lets have a little talk” I replied. First I tried to explain that the peeing was not a matter of dominance. After I had told him what I thought the pee-behaviour was he said “aah a kind of submissive pee”. Not exactly what I meant but for now it will do. At least now he looked at in in a different way. Then I asked the handler if he noticed what the dog did with his nose. “His nose?” Yeah in your left hand…..”eerrrhh….. “
The handler had’nt noticed the subtle signs his dog was sending to him, I also told him what I thought the dog had wanted to tell him.
When the dog was just a puppy there were somethings which went not so well. One of those things: the dog learned to count to three. The handler threw a dummy, counted till three, shouted fetch and there the pup went. Why do you always count to three was my question. Cause the dog has to wait with fetching until I tel him to, was his answer. “And that time is always three seconds?” was my counterattack and there I lost the handler…
The handler had always counted 3 secs and then no matter what, the dog was allowed to fetch. What he should have done was wait till the dog was relaxed, no matter how long this took. The dog learned that the more pressure he had in the body the better it was. The handler hadn’t noticed the pushing and puling of the pup and on the count of tree he shouted fetch……get my drift? The dog was successful in pushing and pulling through the leash and that was the reason of his impatience at the moment………not the dogs fault, he was badly trained.
Problem number two: The dog was corrected al lot and hard, it was a tough cookie to crack or not…….Every correction on the leash resulted in extreme yawning, scratching behind the ear etc. etc. All signs of insecure behaviour. I had already noticed that the handler was very wasteful in his correction and they were way to excessive.
Nice bullshit story (YAAAAAAAAAWWWWN) I can hear you think, but what was the solution. Well the most important thing I saw were extreme stresslevels in the dog. First something about stresslevels. When a human-being suffers from mild stresslevels this will have a positive effect on his achievements and his capability to learn increases. On the other hand when the stresslevels going off the scale he can do absolutely nothing let alone learn something.I’m convinced that the same rules regarding these hated stesslevell applie to animals. Whether they are fish, horses, parrots or dogs for that matter. Our mission was to bring down the stress of the dog to such a level he could learn something new. I was gambling on the stresslevels, when we could ease them to an acceptable level, I presumed the “hard Mouth” will be a thing of the past.
I already told you that there were 6 main things we have to work on. Normally I’m in favour of working point by point. In this case everything could be brought back to stress and inaccurate interpreting the behaviour of the dog, so we had to work on that. Solution?
?
The dog wouldn’t fetch at all for the next few weeks. He could watch other dogs fetch though.
The assignment of the handler was to bring down the stresslevels.and learn to read your dog without false sentiments, whatever the hell that means.
We agreed the dog would watch other dogs fetching for 15 minutes, when the obedience training was done. The “tough” Labrador wasn’t allowed to fetch anything, no game, no dummy’s, no groceries…nothing. The handler wasn’t complete sure about it (me neither but he didn’t need to know that). “so a bunch of german shepperd and shelties are going to fetch and my lab not?’ he asked me sarcastic. Exactly, was my firm answer. But due to our last conversation he went overboard and the could begin. Although it sounds simple enough there were a few difficulties to overcome. His assignment was, just look at the other dogs fetching with your lab on a leash and you’ll not correct him, not even with your voice, no matter what happens. I knew in front that the dog would go nuts. My last question to the handler was “what is the most sensitive spot on your dog”. Well you can imagine the answer, all tough guys among each other and offcourse the answer was his pencil.
The second most sensitive spot?
Ahhh now we are getting somewhere, behind the ears.
Right, assignment number one: If the dog reacts very stressful call your dog with a high pitched voice and pet him behind the ears, whether you think his behaviour is unwanted or not.(howling, pulling the leash etc etc). Ai, the handler disagreed, if he thought I was a late hippie or retarded I don’t know but I convinced him with the next story:
When you’re very sad, or you cry your eyeballs out of your head (imagine handler was worldchamp tough-talk)and someone gives you a long hug or the person massages you shoulders, it won’t be long before you can think straight again…or not? After a bit of growling he understood and gave in…he mumbled something like “yeah, yeah, stresslevel grmbl down grmbll”.
So the assignment was, no matter what, you’ll squeak to your dog ans pet him behind the ears simultaneously.
Assignment number 2, You let your dog jump to the dummies no matter what, and you keep your piehole shut, no WAIT, no NOOOOO, no nothing. The dark voice of the handler had such an effect on the dog, stresslevels went, more often then not, off the scale. Don’t I teach him something wrong? Was the question I had to deal with now. No you don’t, you’ll just teach him that there’s no point in going after the dummys without being given a command. He will never have any success as long as you tryto keep the dogs stress beneath a certain level he will learn a lot, you’ll see.
There was a BUT and a big one too. Everytime the dog jumped at the thrown dummies he corrected himself through the leash. He walked against the borders of his leash by himself so to speak. Remember it was a big fella and a very large Labrador. There was still to much force involved. Especially in the area of the neck of the dog. With this kind of force in the neck the streslevels would never go down. I had to think of something else. The answer was simple, a harness. Our luck was that I knew somebody with a Labrador of the same size. They participated in flyball and coincidentely they went on holidays, so the let me usethe harness. Problem was the harness belonged to a bitch and the colours of the harness were pink and yellow with little purple harts everywhere. Imagine the face of our tough handler when he saw the harness. It worked wonders no corrections in the area of the neck anymore.
Allright from now on it’s a simple story. Let the other dogs fetch, our lab jumps to the dummies every opportunity he gets, handler is a very disciplined man an says nothing, just calls the dog back, with a high pitched voice and pets the stress out of the dog. Whole procedure again and again and again and……
An other problem was that our handler was also training for Working trials, by an other trainer then me that is. The method written above does only work when you keep it up for several weeks. Problem with working trials, fetching, fetching and fetching again. The other trainer was a good acquaintance of me so I gave him a call, explained the problem (as if he did’nt knew, he had seen more damaged game that season then is his whole life before) and I explained my solution. Luckily he wanted to cooperate and the same trick was continued in the fields.
Suspicious me, I went over to take a look and to check if I’m completely honest. Seldom have I heard such a laughter, imagine all hardcore hunters, tough selfmade men. Our poor, meanwhile very quiet, handler stood there, enormous Labrador, enormous guy and a yellow\pink fluffy harness,hehehehehe. BUT……….100% respect for our handler he didn’t give in, not an inch. He didn’t gave in for three weeks long, three weeks of laughter and (friendly) humiliation. After three weeks in the harness, the dog didn’t jump at the dummies, wasn’t flicking his tongue all around, no insecure behaviour, no he was just waiting when it was his turn, although it was a loooooooong wait. The dog had learned that he had no success on that particular behaviour, he wasn’t allowed to fetch the dummy anyway.
After three weeks I thought it wass time to see how things went when we allow the dog to fetch some game.
Fetching it is, a dummy first. Dummy flies to the air, the dog stayed on his bum, fetch said our handler with a high pitched, almost whispering, voice. Where was the dark voice, where was the volume in it….gone, so the handler had learned something too. Mud flew all around when the dog started, didn’t urinate on the way to the dummy and brought the dummy in one piece, even without the tiniest of hole, to the handler. Never seen a happier men. Alright lets try a duck, same story, duck through the air, dog waits nice and calm, nice and calm verbal command. Mud is flying through the air, dog fetches duck and urinates……..shiiiiiiit…..keep your mouth shu…….pfeeew handler keeps his curses to him self, stays friendly and gets the duck in one piece…….mission accomplished.
I’ve used this same trick with two other dogs this year and both of them are not hard-mouthed anymore. It requires lots of patience, endurance too. But let me say this, the moment the stresslevels are going up these dogs will be hard in their mouths again. Our handler? Has achieved beautiful results in obedience, working test and he is asked to come along with some hunts cause his dog keeps the game in one piece. And I….well he boozed me up one night…beyond belief. My head still hurts thinking about it.
Well this was my trick whats yours?
The old englisch was a bit rusty, sorry for that but I hope I’ve kept the essence of it all in the article despite a crummy translation.
Gr. Ralph
?