Category: Guatemala

The Chicken Experiment

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San Marcos La Laguna is teeming with free-roaming chickens. They are in the streets, they are in the yards, they are behind fences and outside of fences. Roosters cockadoodledoo all night, and chickens, big and small, enjoy their life (until they don’t).

Where we used to live for the past 2.5 years, there was one trail that led past chickens and turkeys. My dogs initially craved a bite or two, but soon learned to walk past without giving it much thought. They accepted that killing chickens just wasn’t in the cards for them. 

When we got to San Marcos la Laguna – the first stop of our slow travel road trip – Game showed me she had generalized her walking-past-chickens skills. I walked her off leash, and she was great at strolling past chickens without paying attention to them. Until The Day That Changed Everything.

The Day That Changed Everything

Our morning walk to the lake led us past a metal gate with a gap below, just tall enough for a chicklet to squeeze out into the street. One morning, we were walking past the gate as usual, minding our own business, when a little chicklet ducked under the gate, and tried to cross the f*ing road. By the time I noticed the wee bird, it had strolled right under Game’s muzzle. “What’s that?” Smack! Game lowered her Baskerville-muzzled nose, and that chicklet’s road-crossing intentions were cut short. Game was delighted! Who knew that smashing down your muzzle makes the little feather toys stop moving! So much power! So much fun!

(I found the owner, apologized, and paid the equivalent of US$15 dollars for the chicklet. Yes, that’s certainly the price of a whole flock of grown chickens, but I’d have paid twice as much, too. It was my fault; I certainly deserved the financial punishment.)

Game is a smart dog capable of single-event learning. Going forwards, she didn’t look at chickens like she used to (the way she looks at furniture: boring; whatever). She now looked at chickens – big and small, black and white and brown and red and stripey, egg-laying or cockadoodledoing – like this:

A recall challenge

I wanted to continue having Game off leash in this town of free-roaming fowl. I was only going to stay for a few weeks, but I have never met a recall challenge I didn’t like. I could, of course, also have made this a “leave it” challenge – most trainers probably would; “leave it” seems more intuitive in this context. But recalls are my thing, so that’s what I went with.

I remembered an interesting episode from The Canine Paradigm: Episode 22 – Greyhound Versus Cat. In this episode, Pat modifies the prey drive of his sister’s newly adopted Greyhound to keep him from eliminating the family cat. Pat doesn’t approach this as a recall issue – but his training intrigued me, and I decided to use my chicken challenge to try something similar.

If you haven’t listened to the Greyhound Versus Cat episode on the Canine Paradigm – do so before reading on! Pat’s story will help you understand what I am doing in the videos below. It’s also a great podcast episode. I wouldn’t do it justice by trying to summarize it – just check it out yourself. And in the unlikely case that you haven’t heard of The Canine Paradigm before, get ready to add a new podcast to your personal favorites!

So many new things to try!

I had never used existential food to convince a dog not to chase a prey animal. While I train with kibble a lot in everyday life, I’d generally use higher value reinforcers for something as difficult as a recall away from a chicken. I have also never fed an entire meal after a single click.

Would a large amount of food make up for its lower value (kibble is low value, but an entire meal is a big reward)? Would Game be able to eat an entire meal without lifting her head, and thinking chicken thoughts, right away? Or would it take a while for her to learn that interrupting the behavior of eating caused the restaurant to close? I couldn’t wait to find out.

The Game plan, part 1

I came up with the following rules:

  1. Game was going to earn both her daily meals – breakfast and dinner – for chicken recalls.
  2. For a single chicken recall, she would receive an entire meal.
  3. If she stopped eating (i.e. lifted her head), I’d take away the food.
  4. The next opportunity to eat would only come around at the following mealtime, which, again, would happen in a chicken context.

Session #1

Criteria: No recall cue. I’ll click for her choice to reorient to me after figuring out she can’t get to the chicken.

Session #3 or #4:


Criteria: I’m adding a recall cue, but will reward her even if the leash tightens before she comes back. (I will require the leash to stay loose a few sessions further down the line.)

An unexpected injury

While we were training our way through the chicken challenge, Game hurt herself (she’s a head-through-the-wall kind of dog – it happens surprisingly often). I put her on limited activity for a week. No running, no playing, no training – except for her two daily short leash walks culminating in a chicken recall at meal time.

Session #5ish

Criteria: same criteria as the previous session.

You can see greater intensity and arousal in the video below: if Game’s exercise needs aren’t being met, she turns into a little maniac. She REALLY wants to go for that rooster, and she can’t finish her meal (I learn that if she’s on limited activity, this protocol is setting her up to fail):

My stubbornness pays off!

I stuck with the protocol though, and got to a place where the line would stay loose between the recall and Game returning to me for an uninterrupted meal. (There’s some sessions that I didn’t record.)

Upping the ante: off leash; chickens kept safe behind a fence

Once Game could reliably recall away from chickens without tightening a leash or long line, I found a place she could be off leash, with the chickens safe on the other side of a fence.

Session 10ish:

The rep below is not perfect – you can see Game hesitate before responding; then she realizes there’s no way to get across the fence and comes back. If there had been no fence, the session below would have resulted in a fatality.

Session 11ish:

This one is better: there is the tiniest hesitation (I know what her whiplash turn-on-a-dime-s look like, and this isn’t quite it – but she’s almost got it):

… and we did it: by the subsequent session, I got that perfect turn on a dime with the chickens behind a fence!

The Game plan, part 2: off leash Game with unprotected chickens!

It was time to get some chickens of my own, and up the ante: I wanted to try this off leash and without a fence, and I wasn’t going to subject someone else’s chickens to this experiment.

I LOVE environmental rewards, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to integrate them into the second part of my training plan (here’s where my plan wildly diverges from what Pat Stuart did with his sister’s Greyhound: no cats were going to be harmed in Pat’s training! The questionable ethics you are about to read about are entirely my own.)

The morality of it all

I have no qualms about eating meat, or feeding my dogs meat, and I also have no issues with (quickly) killing an animal in order to eat it. (I do have issues with livestock or wildlife being killed for reasons other than eating.)

I planned on getting two chickens (that way, I’d be able to have at least two reps, even if the first one didn’t go as planned). I’d use the chickens in my training, and then we would eat them. First, I would recall Game away from a chicken in a crate, and reinforce with her usual meal. Then, I’d recall her away from the same chicken outside of the crate, and reinforce with a release to run back and kill the chicken. (I decided that being quickly killed by a dog is no more inhumane than being killed by me, the human. The chicken was going to die and be eaten either way, so using it as a reinforcer seemed morally acceptable to my pragmatic self.)

I was particularly curious about how this experience would translate to the chickens we met in the street: would Game be more likely to engage with me in order to earn that once-in-a-million jackpot of killing (my theory was that she would), or would she become more likely to try and kill on her own time (my theory was that she wouldn’t)? I was determined to find out!

Time to purchase some chickens

I had to run an errand in Antigua, a city some 150km from San Marcos. It was the perfect place to buy chickens from someone I would never see again. I went to a farming supply store that sells chickens, and doesn’t ask questions. And there they were: a big wire cage with lots of poultry crammed in, clucking and sticking their heads out. They were black-and-white barred chickens. My favorite kind, because from a distance, they look like a mad novelist scribbled all over white birds in black ink. They are pretty. I’m sure they are also tasty – if not to humans, then certainly in a raw meal for my dogs. 

I stood there watching the chickens in the cage, and then, just like that, I didn’t want to buy them anymore. It would be lying if I said I couldn’t buy them anymore – it wasn’t that. I’m not particularly sentimental about death; neither my own nor that of another animal. They were going to die sooner or later, and their current life wasn’t exactly amazing. But I looked at their less than ideal existence, crammed into that cage. I imagined their several hours long, less-than-ideal journey back to San Marcos, in a cardboard box, in my hot car. All just to be killed once we got there. It seemed quite pointless, especially since Game and I were going to leave the town of free-roaming poultry soon anyways.

I told myself to remain standing there for another minute, and remind myself of the facts: this was my one chance of buying two chickens far from the scene of the murder I was plotting, and following through on my training plan.

A minute or two later, I still didn’t want to do it. And so I didn’t, because at some point in the last decade, I’ve learned that it is perfectly okay to walk away from a perfectly good plan.

The anticlimactic ending

Game spent the remaining week and a half in San Marcos on a leash around the chickens roaming the streets. And then, we left for Huehuetenango, a city that doesn’t have free roaming chickens – or at the very least, we didn’t meet a single one. I’d like to say that the chicken store chickens lived happily ever after – but that’s pretty unlikely, so I’ll need to end this story on a different note: the feeling I remember. As I walked away from the chicken store, I felt a moment of humaneness. The kind that makes your heart jump. I thought to myself: “I’m humane sometimes. Sometimes, I am kind.” And for a moment, that thought (however misguided it may seem) made me smile. 

Resources mentioned in this post:

Pat Stuart & Glenn Cooke, The Canine Paradigm: Episode 22 – Greyhound Versus Cat (podcast)

Lessons from driving in Guatemala

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“Rutas alternas” have toll booths. They are fancy highways; the two directions separated; no potholes, little traffic, no one stops you once you’re on it. The freeways crisscrossing the country have potholes, and traffic, dead dogs, and checkpoints. They are manned by boys wearing uniforms and carrying guns: the police. You see them up ahead, and hope you won’t be pulled over. 

On the drive from Antigua to San Marcos, I am one of the unlucky ones. I stop the car. I have dark tinted windows, which is why I don’t wear my mask when driving: no one sees me breaking the law when I’m the solitary passenger of my car. So I put on the hazard lights, and pause my audiobook, and take off my headphones, and put on my mask. That new step of putting on a mask seems to take a lot of time. It feels like the police person outside must be waiting and wondering what I’m up to behind my dark windows. 

Make sure my nose is covered. Roll down the window. Smile: “¡Buen día!”

There’s two of them at my car; another team at the station waggon ahead of me, and a sole police guy at the first car in our line of three.

So far, I always got to stay in my car – even when they were looking for reasons to collect a bribe. I hand my passport, my license and registration through the window.

“Where are you from?”

“Austria.”

“Where are you going?”

“San Marcos.”

He finds the page in my passport that holds my visa. Studies my driving license – a pink sheet of laminated paper with a picture of my 16-year old self glued into it; the same format and style as the Arian passes of my grandmother’s generation. I am always amazed when people abroad actually believe this is my driving license. I mean, it is – but it looks like something a 10-year old designed and printed in their basement. I suppose it looks too fake to actually be fake. 

He asks me to step out of the vehicle. They are going to search it, he says. I fish my flip flops out of the side console. He watches through the window as I wiggle my toes into them. 

I always drive barefoot when it’s hot. There’s a very unsexy reason for it, and it is Epidermis Bullosa Simplex. If heat combines with friction – such as the heat of a summer day and the friction of my feet against a shoe – my skin will blister. (Yes, I have tried wearing other shoes. No, there is no cure. And I am tired of your unsolicited advice.)

I get out, and smile. He sticks his head into the car, suspiciously eyeing the ginormous crate that would fit a small pony. 

“You got a dog in there?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of dog?”

“Un pastor belga.” A Belgian shepherd.

“Uh. They’re bad dogs.”

“They are great dogs.”

“Is he bravo?” A word that means different things, depending on who uses it: it can mean aggressive and mean; or gritty and courageous.

“Yes. She’s brava.”

“Does she bite?” 

“Yes. She bites.”

He’s joined by his companion, who’s walked around the car.

“How much is that dog worth?”

I look straight into his eyes. “A lot.”

He spits out a laugh. “Is your dog worth more than I am?”

I do not laugh. “My dog’s invaluable.”

Boy #1 asks me to empty out my pant pockets, and put the contents on the driver’s seat: my wallet. The keys to my AirBnB. A poop bag.

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure.”

“But are you sure?” His eyes, inquisitively. 

“Yes, I am sure.”

“Are you really sure?”

“Pat me down if it makes you happy.”

“If it makes me happy!” He laughs, and proceeds to touch my pockets, which are, surprise, empty.

His compañero picks up my wallet, and starts nosing through it. A couple bills. A check. Debit card. He is thorough, looking into the fold in the bottom of each pocket; sliding his fingers into every little crevice. He puts it back down, then remembers the coin department, and goes through there as well. A handful quetzales and cents, and a lucky charm – a tiny glass lady bug – a friend gave me years ago. 

I do not take my eyes off of his fingers in my wallet for a second, which means keeping my back turned to the other one, who suddenly seems very intent on making smalltalk: how often do I go back to my country? How old is the dog? Are you here by yourself? Flicking a bill out of a wallet and into the sleeve of a jacket takes less than a second; I will not give him that gratification. 

Dude #1 puts down my backpack, and dude #2 stops the smalltalk. He walks around to the passenger door, and proceeds to ruffle through my backpack, and the bag of groceries on the passenger seat.

Dude #2 moves the passenger seat back and forth. “El macho alpha todavía no ha aparecido?” he asks casually. Haven’t you come across an alpha male yet? He peaks under the blanket I’ve tied around the seat because Game sleeps there sometimes, and I don’t want her to get the seat dirty.

“No. Not yet.” Sexist jokes are part of the checkpoints. Either that, or they flirt. The first time I got stopped, I ended up exchanging phone numbers with the guy.

They motion for me to open one of the back doors, revealing a large bite pillow and a tug toy, and a 15-kilo bag of Kirkland; cut open and taped shut again so the kibble won’t spill out on the drive.

“Dog toys?”

“Yes.”

“Dog food?”

“Yes.”

He closes the back door, and comes up front again. If I were to smuggle drugs or arms, I would hide them under the dog, I suppose, or buried deep inside a bag of kibble. (This, by the way, is the lesson I promised you in the title: if you’re smuggling something, hide it under your dog crate or bury it in kibble. No one has ever looked there on my drives.)

They really wanted to find something today. Maybe I look like a drug dealer now because I forgot to put on my baseball cap before rolling down the window. I’m letting my hair grow out, and it’s at that stage where my head looks like a topiary that stuck its finger into a power outlet. Or maybe it’s because I’m driving barefoot, and going to San Marcos. Everyone knows that San Marcos is where gringos congregate to align their chacras, heal their crystals, grow magic mushrooms and drink cocoa. (What’s the deal with the cocoa, anyways?) It’s a coincidence San Marcos is where I found a good AirBnB for the month. But I suppose I look bastante dishevelled and stoned with my bare feet, the scrub growing on my head and Game’s rainbow blanket on the passenger seat.

Guy #2 turns to me. “Usted no smoking?” 

“No.” For a second there, I thought he was asking me for a cigarette. 

“No smoking?” He pantomimes taking a deep draw from a joint.

“No fumo.” I don’t smoke, and I have the irritating habit of repeating English verbs Spanish speakers put into a Spanish-language sentence back to them in Spanish.

“No smoking?”

“No. No fumo.”

“¿Seguro que no?” Are you sure you don’t smoke?

“I’m sure. Sorry.” I shrug. 

He nods. “You can go.” His friend hands back my documents, and I get in. Time to move on. They are already flagging down their next victim.

____________________

It is interesting, this game, because it’s like improv theater: anything can happen, so you can’t be prepared. One time, somewhere between Guatemala City and Jutiapa, a police guy demanded to see my dogs’ paperwork, which, he said, shaking his head dramatically as I looked confused, I was legally obliged to carry when transporting a dog in my car. There is no such thing – the document he demanded does not exist, and we both knew it. I needed to bribe him anyways to get on with my day. The upside is that you can also bribe your way out of actual infringements, like the time I forgot both my passport AND my driving license and “bargained” my way from “I might have to deport you” down to “let me just pay you a generous ‘fine’.”

It’s hard to faze me with a cultural experience like eating tamales, learning to salsa, or being stopped at a checkpoint. There is one crucial difference between these experiences though: you choose to order a tamal or learn to dance, while the checkpoints just happen to you. That significantly lowers the degree of enjoyability of my cultural experience, which is a shame. True enjoyability requires a sense of agency. 

I just sat down and solved checkpoints (you are welcome) to make it more fun next time, both for myself and for you:

Checkpoint BINGO

(Inspired by Jane McGonigal’s book Superbetter.) 

The picture shows a 9-square BINGO board, numbered left to right. The middle square, #9, reads "FREE!" Images in the top line: 1 Elephant 2 Cutting board with a cut-up sausage 3 Man handing a bouquet to a woman Images in the middle line: 4 Bag of gold coins 9 FREE! 5 Gun 6 Dog 7 Treasure map 8 Wallet

When to play:

At any cross-country drive or border crossing in Latin America.

How to play:

1. Pick your rewards:

1A What will you win when you get BINGO (a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row of 3 squares crossed off)? Make it something you can easily treat yourself to within 24 hours after reaching your destination – something small, but special. Example: I get cheesecake when I win a game of BINGO. 

1B What will you win if you succeed at the smuggle quest? It can either be a second round of your first reward, or something different. The same parameters apply: you’ll have to be able to treat yourself to it within 24 hours of completing your drive. As for me, I get a second slice of cheesecake!

2. Opt into the game before starting your drive by printing out the BINGO sheet, and carrying it with you in your car, along with a pen to cross off squares. The tag point is putting your equipment into your car and saying: “If I get pulled over, I get to play!”

3. Your smuggle quest: I once asked a police person what they are looking for when stopping cars. They said drugs and arms. You are going to pretend that you are on a mission of smuggling an object or illegal substance to your destination. It can be any small object – for example, a toy car – or substance – such as the small sugar envelopes you get with your coffee. Before you embark on your drive, hide the object or substance somewhere safe in your car, in your luggage, or on your body. Caveat: you may only use each hiding place once. So the more you drive, the more hiding places you will have to come up with – it’s got to be a different one each time. 

You win the smuggle quest if your object or substance is not discovered by the police or military guards at the checkpoints, i.e. they do not come across it when searching you and your car. If you win the smuggle quest, you automatically get reward #1B, and you get to cross off square 1 on your BINGO board.

The squares on your BINGO board:

Cross off whichever happens! Mentally as it is happening, and with your pen once you’re on your way again!

1 Smuggle success!

2 The police or military person makes a sexist joke. 

3 They flirt with you, ask for your number, or find a reason to touch you.

4 You bribe them.

5 If you wanted to, you could easily reach for and grab their gun. (You’ll be amazed how often this happens. It would be so easy …!)

6 You are asked to take your dog out of the car.

7 They question a real document you carry (your passport, driving license, papers for your car etc.) or ask for an imaginary document (which, obviously, you do not carry).

8 They search your wallet.

9 Congratulations, it’s your lucky day: you get this square for free just for having been pulled over!

You win reward #1A if you cross off 3 adjoining squares – horizontally, diagonally, or vertically.

Have fun! 

The town you used to live in

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It is interesting how profoundly a place changes when you go from living there to just visiting. You see it through different eyes. It can never be the same again.

Last night, Game insisted we go out at 2 in the morning. I don’t think I have ever been out at 2 in the morning in Antigua. Certainly not these past 3 years that I’ve lived here. I don’t think even back in the day, over a decade ago, when I was backpacking through. I was already working remotely then, and getting early starts, before digital nomading became a thing.

I have never seen the city as peaceful as it is tonight, except in Carlos Lopez Ayerdi’s eerie pandemic pictures. Not a single soul in the street. A lone police car pulls around the corner.

Game and I walk two blocks to Parque Central. The shapes of the homeless seam the archway of 5a Avenida Norte. Everyone is covered in a blanket; most have a dog with them, nestled up close to their bodies.

The first time we walk past, nobody steers. We’re quiet. Game, no dog tags to give her away, scavenges around the benches and fountains and crane flowers on silent paws. She finds a chicken bone in one corner; a stale tortilla in another. It must have been a busy night at the park, and the cleaning crew will only come in a few hours.

Warm, soft light is draped over the Palacio de Los Capitanes like a cloak. The central fountain with its mermaids bubbles peacefully, with no one watching but me and Game.

Finishing the loop around the park, one of the dogs hears us. They start barking, and soon everyone joins in, a cacophony of barks; four-legged shadows break away from the resting human mounts. Having a dog is a universally good thing.

Naked Feet

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[Disclaimer: this is not a dog training post.]

 

I saw a woman lying in the middle of the street. She was curled up like you’d do when spooning someone. Only there was no one to spoon. 

 

The street was a freeway. I was on a bus – the first vehicle that stopped after a motorcycle ran her over. Her feet were naked. Her skirt had slipped up, revealing her lower legs and bare feet. 

 

Should I get off the bus and make sure she got to a hospital? 

 

She was facing away from us. “Dios mío,” whispered the woman sitting next to me. The sun was shining.  

 

A friend, a lawyer, once told me, “If you ever hit someone in Guatemala, run.” What if the guy on the motorcycle had received the same advice?

 

His motorcycle was parked on the side of the road. He was fine. He was making a phone call. He wasn’t going to run. And, just like that, I decided to stay on the bus. 

 

The woman in the street slowly lifted an arm. Just a for a second; then it dropped back down. It was the only movement I had seen since we stopped.

 

“She’s fine”, said the driver. “She’s moving.”

 

(I’ve seen the mouth of a sheep open and close a minute after separating the head from the body. Clearly, moving an arm doesn’t prove you are fine.)

 

And we continued on, the bus leaning into the turns so you had to hold on to your seat with two hands, blasting reggeaton.

 

Later that day, I asked a friend what would happen to the woman. She had no shoes. She certainly had no insurance.

 

“They’ll take her to the Hospitál Nacional,” said my friend. “It’s free.”

 

“Will they do a good job there?”

 

“They won’t,” he said. “If she gets there alive, and she’s badly injured, she’ll die.”

 

I thought of Peter Singer. He holds that there is no moral difference between walking past a dying person in the street, and choosing not to think of all the dying people in far away places. 

 

It’s morally outrageous to see footage of someone walk past a dying person in the street. We all believe we would stop. (We can’t know if we would. I’d have said I would stop – but I stayed on that bus.)

 

The thing is: there was no good reason to stay on the bus. If someone is lying in the middle of a freeway, and no one stops the oncoming traffic … How long until they get run over again, this time for good? I’ve seen cats and dogs on that freeway, flat like sheets of paper. There was no breakdown triangles, no traffic cones, and no one was stopping cars for this woman. I could have stopped cars for her, had I gotten off the bus.

 

I suppose Peter Singer is right. There is no moral difference: maybe we’re just as bad up close as we are at great distances.

Adventures in Herding #8: Into the Round Pen!

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When the sheep had just moved in, I let Mick have a go to see what he’d give me. He was quite bitey, and I ended the session quickly to work on foundations some more. I don’t want to use harsh punishment on my dog, and I don’t want my sheep to get hurt. I took the biteyness as a sign that Mick wasn’t yet ready to be in with the sheep at that point.

I worked on recalls and lie downs in the proximity of sheep, and on flanks outside the round pen. Mick’s ability to keep me in the picture grew. He got used to the fact that there were now sheep on the property, and less excited about this fact. At the same time, I have been learning more about sheep behavior by trying to move them from A to B myself. My growing sheep literacy is helping me read Mick better as well.

After watching the MacRae Way videos on Starting Young Dogs, I decided to take a paper bag with me into the round pen. If Mick tried to bite a sheep, I’d shake it. Ideally, I’d prefer not to use this visual and auditory punisher, but just having it made me feel confident that I’d be able to protect my sheep if push came to shove. I needed to be sure of that before taking Mick into the round pen again!

Mick’s round pen behavior looked a lot better this time – likely a result of our practice over the last few days. My growing sheep literacy allowed me to identify several antecedents to Mick’s biteyness in today’s first session:

+ When the sheep huddle against the fence and Mick can’t move them, he’ll bite when they finally do move.

+ He’ll get bitey if they scatter rather than stay together.

+ He’ll get bitey when one of them (usually the largest ewe) challenges him.

These sheep aren’t easy to herd. They don’t (yet) know to come to me for protection, and they like to huddle against the fence and stand still. Even though we worked in the round pen, Mick had a hard time moving them off the fence:

I tried to help him, but couldn’t get them to leave the fence, either. So I ended the session to go back to the drawing board.

In the following session, I had Grit outside the round pen to help keep the sheep off the fence. As a result, Mick’s confidence grew, and he had less reason to bite!

These are still messy beginnings – I’m throwing out “Come by!” and “Away!” as Mick goes the respective directions, and waiting for Mick to find balance so I can start walking backwards and have him bring the sheep to me. This is messy – but it’s a little less messy than what we started out with, and that is making me happy! I am hooked!

Adventures in Herding #1

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Herding! I’s been a dream for a while, and this year, I’m making it happen. I’ll be sharing my meanderings, and the trials and errors of my learnings under the Adventures in Herding category. I’m looking forward to learning from my mistakes, my dog, and my sheep while striving to be kind and fair to all of them, keep in mind the scientific principles of learning, and resolve new challenges on the basis of positive reinforcement.

On Friday, 6 sheep moved in. They are Dorset x Pelibuey crosses – 3 brown ones and 3 white ones. Otto has started them for me, so being herded is not completely new to them.

Herding sheep isn’t completely new to Mick, either, but he hasn’t had a chance to work sheep in a long time. He’s starved for sheep work, and highly excited.

This is what we did today:

I had Mick in a harness and on a 15-foot (5m) long line, and took him into the enclosure where my sheep currently are. Holding on to the long line, I called Mick. I waited until he came, cued “Sheep” (the marker cue I’ll be using to release him to work sheep), and let go of the line. I allowed him to chase/play. After several months without working sheep, I suspect he needs to get out some steam before he can work them calmly and quietly. I mostly observed at this point: I’m learning about both Mick and the sheep, and how the behavior of each species affects the other.

When Mick tried to bite rather than just chase, I stepped on the long line, and got him back: biting without a good reason results in the loss of the opportunity to keep herding.

This, again, set me up for the next rep of calling Mick away from the sheep. I’d say his recall cue (Magpie), wait him out, mark moving towards me with “Sheep!”, and reinforce by dropping the line so he could go chase sheep again.

He worked himself down relatively quickly. In the beginning, his tail was up; he was highly excited. He was hunting/playing rather than working. After a few reps of interrupting him for getting too wild, he lowered his tail into a working position, and his movements became more methodical. As a consequence, the time I let him chase sheep got longer.

In order to end our brief session – it was about 10 minutes altogether – I stepped on the leash and told him “All done” – my end of work cue for my dogs – and walked him away with the help of the leash.

Chrissi runs Chrissi’s Dog Training in Antigua, Guatemala. She also teaches online at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, and for the Pet Professionals Program.

The Death of a Chicken

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I need to learn how to pluck a chicken.

Grit killed today. On our morning walk, she silently dove into the undergrowth – she often will; there are smells to be smelled and sticks to be found. I whistled, and she reappeared, carrying a chicken. The head, on a surprisingly long neck, swung back and forth with each of her joyful leaps; there was nothing to be done for the bird.

The chicken must have strayed too far from my neighbor’s house, and ended up in the forest. There had been no screams, no sounds of a scuffle. Death came fast and on silent paws. Grit carried the chicken like a pointer carries a pheasant; holding a full grip on its chest and back without breaking the skin.

We continued our walk, leaving the chicken behind a tree to pick it up later. I looked at my phone. 9AM. Good; I’d have time to drop off the dogs in my yard, head to my neighbor’s to apologize, pay for the chicken, and be back in time for my training appointment. I’d tell Juan Antonio, my neighbor, Grit had killed one of his chickens, and then I’d ask him how much he wanted for it. I was going to give him a chance to overcharge me if he was so inclined.

We had a good walk, the dogs and I. The morning sun filtered through the canopy of leaves. The forest vibrated with the sounds of insects and birds; I heard the one that sounds like a bicycle bell.

The death of the chicken didn’t upset me. I’d pluck it, and I’d feed it to the dogs. Maybe I’d have some of it myself. I have no fridge – a logistical challenge; we’d have to eat it soon. Juan Antonio raises chickens to sell the meat. The chicken was always going to die and be eaten.

Would I, under the same circumstances, have seen more than just a chicken in the past? I’m not sure. Today, in any case, it is just that: a chicken. The Trump administration is now targeting immigrants who are legally entitled to welfare programs, Pam Fessler told me on my weekday morning news podcast. What’s the death of a single chicken (always meant to be eaten) at the teeth of a dog in the light of the death of Jimmy Aldaoud (and so many others like him) at the hands of democracy? The US keep moving the mark of what large-scale cruelties are politically acceptable, and Europe is following suit.

chicken politics

I’m not scared of telling Juan Antonio that my dog killed his chicken. We’re just two people living on a mountain, doing the best we can. There was a time I’d have been scared of the conversation, scared of Juan Antonio, scared of what he might think of me, and my dog. Scared of potential consequences and implications. I might have obsessed about it for hours, days even. I might have self-righteously framed it to be his fault: why didn’t he take better care of his chickens? Out of fear, I might not have said a thing, and I’d have wondered if he knew it was me for days and weeks to come. I’d have avoided him in the street. We might not have eaten the chicken, either (how pointless a death it would be!): every second I’d have had to look at that chicken would have been one shameful second too many, reminding me of my failure (as you know, the lack of chickens killed at the teeth of your dog defines your worth as a person, your professional expertise as a dog trainer, and how deserving you are of love). The story I’d tell myself would be different, and the story I’d tell you wouldn’t exist since it would be a story too shameful to share.

The person I am today isn’t scared of individuals, or of conversations, or of dogs killing chickens. The things that move me deeply today are not fear. They are love and sadness, anxiety sometimes (about trivial things, but not chickens). The world is getting scarier – I appreciate that on a cognitive level – and I have become less fearful in spite of it, or because of it, or maybe just less fearful, period.

In a world that makes little sense, I want to be the kind of person who’ll tell you my dog killed your chicken, even if you’d never find out for lack of witnesses. The fact that my dog killed a chicken says little about me. The fact that I’m going to own it does. That may not be much, but it’s something: it also means I’m seeing the mark that gets moved, and I know that I’m part of the problem – as are you, and you, and you too – unless … we find a way to pay for that chicken. I don’t know how to do that, but maybe tomorrow, I will. For now, I’ll keep training dogs and telling you stories like this one, because those are two things I know how to do.

Image by Peter H from Pixabay

Riding in Cars with Roberto

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Disclaimer: this is not a dog training post.

 

***

My car broke down today. I went to my neighbor’s workshop to ask for help.

 

Roberto, the mechanic, is in his 50s. He’s got a bit of a belly, the dirty fingernails of a good mechanic, and a formerly white Toyota that looks older than he is, but is still going strong. We took his Toyota (I miss having windows that can be opened manually) to go to San Cristónbal El Bajo where my car had broken down. A yellow teddy bear with long legs and long arms dangled from his rear-view mirror, and he had one of these little flasks with “new car smell” in his old car; a tiny tank holding a purple liquid attached to the air vent. There was a reassuring amount of dust on his dashboard. We’re in the dry season – la estación del polvo. Open the windows and don’t clean your car for a few days, and there’ll be enough dust on your dashboard to leave visible traces in it with your finger tips.

 

The first time in someone’s car, you learn something about them. Like the first time in their house. You notice things (like the teddy bear. Like the radio with a screen that came to life when he started the car. There was a USB stick plugged in, but the music was turned off. What someone listens to, and whether they turn on the radio or not – it tells you things about a person that go beyond their use of cars).

 

Roberto didn’t turn on the radio. I wound down the window, and we exchanged the usual semi-ritualized politenesses: how long had I lived here? Were he and his sons from San Pedro Las Huertas originally; had they always run the workshop? What did I do for a living? These four questions is all it takes to know whether you’ll want to continue the conversation, or get through whatever time you are having to spend together in silence, avoiding further engagement. Whatever result you come to – ideally, it’ll be mutual. Mutual silence? That’s okay. Mutual conversation? That’s okay, too. One person talking and engaging, and the other one decidedly looking out the window, playing with their phone, turning on the radio? Awkward.

 

Roberto and I unspokenly agreed that we were going to have a conversation while the wind was blowing late morning heat through the car. Noon was in the air, and dust – always dust.

 

“I’ve heard San Pedro used to be controlled by a gang. This whole concept of gangs … it’s foreign to me. It doesn’t really exist where I come from. Can you tell me about it?”

 

And he did. “It wasn’t really a gang,” Roberto said. “People like to exaggerate. It was a bunch of boys. Ladrones del pueblo. They’d steal stuff  – chickens, for example. Anything they could get their hands on, really. They’d threaten people and take things from them, or break into houses.”

 

“That’s interesting … It seems like San Pedro Las Huertas isn’t full of super rich people. Who’d they steal from?”

 

“Oh, everyone. It didn’t matter if you had little or a lot for them to take it.

 

We didn’t have problems with them for a long time. My dad … he was the kind of man who doesn’t get involved in the lives of others. You know, the kind of man who doesn’t get upset as long as the ladrones harass someone else.”

 

I nodded.

 

“But we did have issues with them at some point …”

 

“What happened?”

 

“My brother was walking … right here, in this street. Walkmen had just gotten popular, and he had his walkman and headphones. They took it …”

 

“They stopped him and threatened him … with weapons?”

 

“With knives, yes.

 

We knew who they were, of course. We knew where they lived.

 

And then they took my brother’s bike, too, the next time they saw him.”

 

“Wow.”

 

“Yeah. So my dad, who usually didn’t get involved, went to their house, and he knocked on their door …

 

He said, ‘Why did you take my son’s things?’

 

They denied it, but my dad just took the boy’s machete from him … And he told him to return my brother’s stuff.”

 

I could imagine Roberto’s dad – probably looking much like Roberto did now – threatening that young man at his door. The mechanic would speak calmly, and look directly into his eyes, exuding power by his mere presence. I pictured him wearing an oil-stained red polo shirt, like Roberto was wearing one today.

 

“They gave it all back, and they didn’t steal from us again”, said Roberto. “Some people let others take their stuff.  So they will keep taking stuff from them. Others confront the ladrones; they stand up to them – and they’ll be left in peace.”

 

“What happened to the ladrones? They are gone now, aren’t they?”

 

“Yeah … one of them went to prison. One was murdered. One left … None of them are here anymore.”

 

“… until another group just like them takes their place?”

 

“Yeah. There was another group already. They tried to do the same thing. But people stood up to them, and the group didn’t last.”

 

We got to the place I had left Bergziege, my car. Roberto unloaded a rusty yellow toolbox and a large piece of cardboard, and his upper body disappeared under the chassis. There’s something reassuring about a person’s legs sticking out from under a car, for some reason. I sat down on a concrete step and told him to let me know if I could assist him in anything.”De acuerdo,” he said, “Okay.” He wasn’t a douchebag kind of guy who believes women can’t hold a hammer.  

 

The problem, he said, was the transmisión. Bergziege had lost a few screws. He took something off the undercarriage: a long metal tube with a joint in the middle.

 

“You can drive like this, without the transmisión. Just not up very steep hills; you’ve only got front drive now. It’ll take a few days till I get the screws, but then we’ll put it back on.”

 

“Okay. I’m supposed to drive up a hill today though … That’s actually what I was going to do when the car broke down. I need to take three bags of cement up there. You think I’d better not …?”

 

“Nah, better not until you’ve got the 4WD back. You may not make it up with the cement.”

 

I asked him if he’d help me. Could we take the cement up the hill in his car?

 

“Sure; I’ve got time.”

 

We loaded the cement out of Bergziege and into the Toyota, and then it was my turn to tell a story. His daughter, now 27, used to really, really want to see the snow when she was little (he said).They got a Christmas tree, and covered it in styrofoam crumbs to give her a glimpse of the experience.

 

My story, then, needed to be a story about snow. I told him about a particularly snowy winter a few years ago, when I lived on a hill in Austria. I seem to always end up on hills of some kind. We’d walk up the hill, through the forest, in the snow – they only cleared the street once a day, and if it kept snowing, cars would be useless. (The way it feels to walk uphill in fresh snow; how it gets exhausting, but is also its own kind of beautiful? What it’s like to walk at night, taking a shortcut through the forest, when the air is crystal clear and cold and dark, and if there were no highway close by, it would be completely silent except for the sound of your feet? The way the snow makes time slow down, and your thoughts too? Also, being in warm houses when it’s snowing outside; the beauty and the relentless cold and all the things that fit in between.)

 

We had delivered the cement, and he stopped on the bottom of the hill to let me out where Bergziege was waiting. “Thank you, really,” I said. “What do I owe you?”

 

“Don’t worry about it. Come by on Tuesday and see if I already got the screws we need for your transmisión.”

 

I closed the car door, and the sun spit his Toyota back out into the dusty street.

 

***

 

What can we learn from this? At least five things. In chronological order: people tend to exaggerate when talking about crime. Quiet people are more powerful than loud ones. Cars come with large metal parts that aren’t essential for them to work. I’ve got lovely neighbors.

 

(Also, something about human nature and the fact that standing up to ladrones pays off, but I’m not sure about the details of that lesson.)

Corrugated Metal

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Do I dare
Disturb the universe?

Are you familiar with the trolley dilemma? It’s a thought experiment. You see a trolley moving towards five people tied to the train tracks. You know it will not be able to stop – and if it keeps going, it will kill the five people. There is a lever in front of you. If you pull it, the trolley will be redirected onto a sidetrack and the five people tied to the main track will live. However, there is one person tied to the sidetrack. If you pull the lever, the trolley will kill that person.

What do you do?

I don’t have to think about this a lot to know what my answer would be: I would not pull the lever. It’s an easy decision. If I pulled the lever, I’d feel personally responsible for killing the person on the sidetrack (but I wouldn’t feel responsible for saving the five). As long as I did nothing, I’d feel like an innocent bystander watching a tragic situation unfold. I can live with that, but I do not want to be responsible for the death of an individual.

Interestingly, most people will choose to pull the lever in the thought experiment. Their criterion is to save the most people possible. Rationally, pulling the lever is the right thing to do because it meets that goal.

I’ve had many conversations about the trolley dilemma. People’s answers – and how they reach them – fascinate me. It always gives me pause when a good friend believes they would pull the lever without hesitation. From where I’m standing, pulling the lever in the trolley scenario looks a lot like getting involved in something it isn’t my place to get involved in. I wonder if whatever personality trait makes people want to pull the lever and play God is also behind our ethnocentricity, our wars, our self-righteous attempts to keep immigrants out of our countries or our denying of health services to those who can’t afford the insurance premium. If you pull the lever, you change the trajectory of others because of your own belief about what the path of these others should or shouldn’t look like. How is this different from building border walls to keep people from pursuing their journey? The one pulling the lever (or building the wall) always believes they are doing it for the greater good. I’m critical of all these things. Taken out of context – and the trolley dilemma has no context (who are the people, what are they doing tied to the tracks and why is there a trolley coming?) – I cannot justify pulling that lever.

~~~

dog training, ethics, Guatemala

Body jolts can be a symptom of neurological deficits caused by distemper. I didn’t know that until a friend mentioned it the other day. Distemper is a viral disease that spreads through aerosol droplets, fluids and contaminated food and water. I had seen body jolts like the ones my friend described in one of the free-ranging neighborhood dogs. One of the dogs who hangs out in my street – the only one who isn’t in good shape. A black female. I took a video of her incessant body jolts and sent it to my vet. “Looks like distemper,” they said. “She probably needs to be put down.” My hand was already on the lever when I realized what I was doing.

I asked around and found Black Dog’s people. A dark red corrugated metal door in a corrugated metal house. I knocked, and a little kid opened the door. I caught a glimpse of the dirt floor patio, the rusty white pickup truck parked in the corner and a cage with a blue parakeet. Black Dog (whose hind legs seemed wobbly) stumbled up to the door to see who was there.

“Is Black Dog yours?”, I asked the kid.
“Yes.” They were holding on to the doorframe with one hand and staring up at me with bright brown eyes.
“She looks ill. I thought maybe I could take her to the vet.”
“Sure,” said Little Kid.
“Thank you! Are your papás here so I can ask them as well?”
Little Kid ran into the corrugated metal house, and came back with Papá who must have barely been 20.
“Hi,” I said, “I’ve noticed Black Dog shows signs of moquillo. Distemper. It’s an infectious disease that could put the other neighborhood dogs at risk. I wondered if you’d let me take Black Dog to the vet.”
“Okay,” said Papá. “You can take her if you want. She was hit by a car … That’s why she’s not well. That’s all.”
“Okay,” I said. “If the vet says she also has distemper – would it be okay with you if they put her to sleep? In case we need to do it so she cannot spread the disease?” The Spanish word for “put to sleep” is “sacrificar.” Literally “to sacrifice.”
“Yes,” said Papá.
“Thank you. I’ll get a leash from my car and then I’ll take her. I’ll let you know what the vet says.”
“Okay.” Papá closed the corrugated metal door behind me and Black Dog. Black Dog strolled down the street, sniffing for food.

I got hot dog slices and a slip lead from my car and followed her down the street. The sun was shining. Black dog was happy to pick up the hot dog slice I put on the street between us and let me pull the lead over her head. Being incredibly gentle with her mouth, she took a second hot dog slice from my hand. I lured her to Bergziege, my car. Black Dog let me lift her into the crate without protesting much.

“You’re very good”, I told her on the way to the vet. “Let’s see what the doctor says.”

“We’re almost there.”

“You’re a good girl.”

“It’ll be okay. You don’t worry.”

The vet had no doubt it was distemper. The jolts and her wobbly gait were advanced neurological symptoms, they said, meaning the virus was affecting her nervous system.

They switched off the cheerful bubble fountain in the examination room aquarium. I lifted Black Dog up on the metal table and wrapped my arms around her.

“Hold her tightly,” said the vet. “You can talk to her.”

They injected a sedative, followed by a reddish liquid that would stop her heart and finally saline solution to push the euthanasia drug to her heart. It was peaceful and took a few minutes at most. I told Black Dog she was a Good Dog. That it was okay. In German this time: “Brav bist du. Es ist okay … Gleich ist es vorbei. So ist es gut.” Her neck went limp. I let her slide out of my arms and onto the table. The vet listened for her heartbeat. It had stopped.

I helped put her in a large black plastic bag and paid 300 Quetzales. One of the staff members carried the bag to my car. In Guatemala, your dead animal is your responsibility.

“I’m sorry,” I told Black Dog in my car. “I am sorry, girl.”

The road to my neighborhood isn’t paved, and I could hear Black Dog in her bag slide back and forth in the crate every time I went through a pothole. Jhhhh-clunk. Jhhhh-clunk.

I stopped at the red corrugated metal door and knocked. The sun was shining and the street was busy with farm workers on their way to the coffee fields.

Papá and Little Kid weren’t home. Abuela opened. They had no teeth in their mouth and were hard to understand.

“Hi … I’m the one who took Black Dog to the vet.”
“You already took her?”
“Yes. I am sorry … It was distemper. The vet had to put her to sleep …”
“He killed her?”
“Yes. I am sorry.”
“Well.” Abuela started to close the door.

“Wait,” I said. “I have her in my car. We should bury her.”
“I don’t want to see her.”
“I am very sorry …”
“You killed her. YOU bury her.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will bury her. I am really sorry. It was moquillo. We had to to put her to sleep to keep the other neighborhood dogs safe.” “Sacrificar.” That word again. It seemed oddly appropriate.
There was a moment of silence.
“It is a sin to take the life of an animal or a person,” said Abuela. They were calm. They didn’t cry. They didn’t seem angry. They looked straight into my eyes and informed me of a fact. “It is a sin.”
“I am sorry,” I said, because really, what else was there to say?

We said goodby and I left. Black Dog was dead, in my car, in a black plastic bag. I realized that I didn’t own a shovel.

~~~

Black Dog is now buried on the edge of the coffee field behind my house. I asked two people working in the field to help me. “Of course”, they said. They had shovels. We made a deep hole and buried Black Dog. “One gets attached to the animals, doesn’t one?”, mused one of them. They were wearing a shirt which, inexplicably, was still white after hours of field work. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s true.”

~~~

Today I pulled the lever and I redirected the trolley. I reached into an ecological niche and pulled Black Dog out of it. I don’t know whether the death of Black Dog will butterflyeffect the free ranging dog population “for better” or “for worse” – I don’t think it is possible for us to know.

I believe there is no “right” answer to the trolley dilemma. The dilemma isn’t about doing the right thing – it’s about knowing who you are, or who you want to be. Do you get involved in something you aren’t a part of – something you can only see from your own limited point of view – or do you not? Do you dare disturb the universe?

I do not want to be the kind of person who pulls the lever if it means harming someone. Today, I harmed Black Dog’s family by imposing my own cultural beliefs on them. (Sure, you could say I was imposing facts, medical facts, on them rather than mere opinions, and of course I was doing it for the greater good; for all the other neighborhood dogs, for the vulnerably-aged puppies down the street or for whatever helps me sleep at night. It’s easy to justify the dogmas of our own ethnocentrism.) It wasn’t my place to disrespect Abuela’s beliefs though.

Abuela must think I do not understand. At all. And they would be right. I do not understand what their life with Papá and Little Kid and Black Dog is like behind the corrugated metal door, in the corrugated metal house, in a postcolonial society. Who is Abuela? Who are her family? What do they love and fear and hope for? What do people and animals mean to her? Did they love Black Dog? I don’t know. I’d like to think they did. I, not God, took Black Dog to die, and maybe the fact that I could go out and do this – just like that! – is part of what is wrong with the world.

The most difficult moment today – the moment I needed to hold my tears back – was not the moment I held Black Dog in my arms on the sterile metal table and felt the life slip out of her. That moment was peaceful. I am not scared of death and I don’t think animals are either.

The difficult moment was when I turned away from Grandmother in the door and towards my car. “It’s a sin to take the life of a dog or a person.”

There is a power dynamic that allowed me, the white person with the broken Spanish, to knock on a red corrugated metal door in a little corrugated metal house with a dirt floor and take something away from a Mayan family. And I don’t mean their dog – I mean something bigger than their dog. The moment Abuela looked into my eyes and said: “It is a sin,” I learned that I would rather be someone who respects the beliefs of others than someone who knocks on doors in this way. I would rather allow a sick dog to continue in the population, whether that entailed watching the trolley run over five others or not. I am, of course, aware that it doesn’t need to be one or the other. It is a false dichotomy. Maybe one day, I’ll have the grace it takes to move in this world without stepping on things.

What’s a behaviorally healthy dog?

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What makes a behaviorally healthy companion dog? I’d say the ability to get along well in a world designed for and by humans. And yet most of my dog-geeky friends and colleagues have – just like I do – a dog with a minor behavioral issue or two: insecurity or separation anxiety, overarousal in public, a tendency to bark and lunge at dogs on leash, …

These issues are so common that they seem normal to us. So normal, in fact, that we go out of our way to nip them in the bud: from the day we get a new puppy, we socialize her to dogs and people, and we carefully introduce her to the visual, auditory and tactile stimuli she will encounter in our world. We don’t just expect her to grow up and be behaviorally okay; we actively make an effort to minimize the chance of future behavioral problems. We recognize that we need to invest a lot of time and energy into setting our dogs up for lifelong behavioral success. And that seems pretty normal to us, too. So normal that we don’t consider minor behavioral issues a reason not to breed a particular dog, for example. If his hip scores are perfect and his ring performance is great – who cares that he doesn’t like strange dogs! We avoid potential problems by means of things like leash laws that, as long as people abide by them, keep the leash-aggressive dogs we have bred from biting each other.

San Pedro El Alto Dog

Over the course of the last year, I’ve been immersed in cultures that have different norms of dog ownership. I’ve observed something that fascinates me. The dogs I’ve seen on the sidewalks and ranging free in the streets – and there are a lot of them! – are the most behaviorally healthy population of dogs I’m familiar with. They get along with each other, and they get along with people and farm animals. They are attracted to people, but not to an obnoxious degree. They are moderately active, happily walking with the farm workers into the fields every day, but not pushy and demanding if they miss a day of exercise or attention. They are independent enough to not annoy their owners, but have a degree of handler focus that makes them stick to their people quite naturally when out and about, and curl up next to them when they work in the field rather than taking off – and all that without mat work or tethers, radius or recall training. They are the epitome of what people are looking for in a companion dog – even though their owners certainly haven’t invested a lot of time and energy into consciously socializing them as puppies.

Where do all these dogs come from, and why do they seem so much less aggressive, stressed, hyperactive, insecure, and barky than the average Western companion dog? Who – or what – makes them this way? And what are we doing wrong in Western Europe and North America since our dogs seem to have many more issues?

Maybe the free-roaming dogs I’ve seen here are close to the proto-dogs – to the first dogs who domesticated themselves a long time ago, when people started settling down. I like the theory of domestication put forth by Ray and Lorna Coppinger: dogs developed into dogs because of natural (rather than artificial) selection. The wolves with the shortest flight distance lived to reproduce, because they could eat the most food at the village dump: they got there first when someone threw out food and ate the best bits, and they didn’t waste energy on running away whenever a human looked their way. Tameness was THE selection criterion as far as behavior was concerned – and that’s how the wolf turned into the dog. Not because he was consciously bred by humans, but because he was well adapted to the ecological niche of the village dump. Tame animals got fed (i.e. they fed themselves), hence they survived.

The dogs in my neighborhood today are still very much the result of natural (rather than artificial) selection. The most well adapted ones survive long enough to reproduce and pass their genes on to the next generation. The people in my neighborhood absolutely factor into this, but much more indirectly than a breeder would. They don’t select breeding pairs – they simply feed the dogs they like, don’t feed the ones they don’t like, and cull the ones that cause problems.

I can see at least four behavioral criteria that determine whether a dog will live to reproduce and spread her genes in my neighborhood:

1. Attraction to people.
People live closely together around here; farmers often work in groups; children play in the street … Dogs need to get along with people. Threaten or bite someone or their child, and sooner or later, you’ll get culled.
People like dogs who are friendly and tame – those are the ones who get dinner scraps, and those are the ones who’ll pass their genes down to the next generation. However, be too much of an attention seeker and annoy your people, chew up their shoes and disrupt their workday, and you won’t get fed, and might get culled if you take it too far. The result: most dogs in my neighborhood are neutral if ignored, and friendly and curious when invited to interact.

2. Dog-Dog Sociability.
The free roaming dogs here tend to get along well with each other. I haven’t seen a fight – neither here in Guatemala nor in Thailand. Conflicts are resolved through body language alone. They are social: I’ve seen them play with each other, and I’ve seen them roam in small groups of friends.

3. Being a scavenger rather than a hunter.
People around here have farm animals, especially chickens and horses, and the dogs are indifferent to them. It’s unlikely the people in my neighborhood have the time or energy to train a dog who kills chickens or chases horses. This is not a rich population with a lot of spare time to train dogs – it’s easier to get rid of a dog who doesn’t fit into the community. Benevolent indifference towards farm animals is positively selected for.

4. Moderate activity and moderate loyalty.
Everyone here walks. And everyone who walks walks with their dogs. Men, women, children – usually, their dogs aren’t far. People will occasionally call out to their dogs, but mostly just let them roam around them. Dogs who aren’t interested in joining their people on errands will likely not get thrown a tortilla for lunch.

In a nutshell: the typical free-roaming dog here knows his people and sticks with them – but is independent enough to not be annoying. He enjoys exercise enough to walk a few miles every day, but doesn’t require more than that. He doesn’t chase critters and farm animals, and he is good with people and good with other dogs.

I’d say this describes the ideal companion dog – the kind of dog most people would love to have by their side! And maybe this is exactly the kind of animal we started out with when we began to artificially select and develop different breeds of dogs. But somewhere down the line, we lost elements of sociability and mental balance. Maybe part of the reason is that looks got more important, and behavior less important. Maybe sociability just didn’t seem as important anymore when dogs started to be kept inside the house and walked on leashes: as long as we control and micromanage our dogs, it doesn’t matter much if they like other dogs or people! Maybe developing breeds for particular purposes made us zoom in on one or two particular traits and neglect others, equally important ones. Maybe some desired qualities got lost through inbreeding. I don’t know – but I’m deeply fascinated by the dogs I’ve met around here, and I’d love to hear from you if you have observed a similar (or very different!) population of free-roaming dogs in a different part of the world!

Please note: these are my subjective thoughts and observations. Are things really the way they seem to me? I don’t know. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re not. I’m not trying to say that breeding dogs according to breed club standards is wrong, either – not at all. I like purebred dogs. But these dogs, the free-roaming ones in my neighborhood? I’m very fond of them, too.