President’s Message
by Karen Sontag
The annual picnic was held on Sept.29 at Todd and Suzanne Robinson’s.
Trusting that you had a wonderful Christmas with your families and Wheaten(s) and if your life is anything like mine have had a busy start to 2008. With nearly a month of the New Year behind us it is exciting for the club to continue to plan events for the year. As usual we will be having our Annual General Meeting in conjunction with the St. Patrick’s Day Potluck. This is the year of elections for the executive positions, so think about getting involved and letting your name stand for a position. The potluck is always a great time to connect with Wheaten owners who love to share their experiences with you. Details are enclosed in this newsletter. Please plan to attend.
A BIG THANK YOU to Barb Zimmerman for graciously accepting the position of newsletter editor. She has done an awesome job along with Andrew Lindstrom on the website so we are confident that you will be well informed with an interesting newsletter. Remember, however, Barb also needs you to submit articles, pictures, Wheaten stories, etc. to keep the newsletter interesting for all.
The spring dog shows are just around the corner. It will be exciting to see some junior puppies make their debut. Keep checking the website for a listing of shows in the area and plan to enter or come out to support your extended Wheaten family.
One of the best ways that we have found to keep members informed about club activities is via e-mail. Our secretary has sent out messages for dog walks, the picnic and seminars. Ensure that you continue to check your e-mail so that you do not miss out on joining us. As spring arrives and we plan more dog walks and activities for everyone it is important to stay connected.
Thanks to all the members that have continued to be involved. In 2008 we welcome new members and look forward to conversing with you at our club functions.
Have a great start to 2008!
In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely train him to be superhuman. The point is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog
-Edward Hoagland
Take Me Out To The Dog Show
Are you or someone you know interested in entering a Wheaten in confirmation or obedience competitions? Perhaps you would rather cheer on fellow Wheatens and enjoy a day impressed with the beauty of our wonderful breed as they show their stuff. Find out what shows are coming to your area by going to canuckdogs.com.
Here’s a list of a few shows to peak your interest.
February 1-3, 2008 – Calgary, Stampede Park, Calgary
February 29 – March 2, 2008 – Calgary, Stampede Park, Calgary
March 22-24, 2008 – Camrose, Regional Exhibition, Camrose
April 4-6, 2008 – Red Deer, Westerner Altaplex, Red Deer
April 18-20, 2008 – Edmonton, Northlands Sportex, Edmonton
Call For Nominations
Every two years the SCWTAC – Alberta Chapter elects its executive. The current term expires March 15, 2008. Four offices are elected, as follows:
President
Vice-President
Secretary
Treasurer
Under the by-laws of our parent organization, the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier Association of
The nomination and acceptance should be sent by letter or email to the Secretary of the Alberta Chapter. Ballots for contested positions will be mailed out prior to the next AGM on March 15.
Please forward nomination and acceptance letters to:
SCWTAC –
c/o
169 –
or forward nomination and acceptance emails to:
Election of Executives:
To participate on the executive you must be a member of the National SCWTAC… If you are not currently a member, membership can be obtained.
Positions open are:
President: Writes a column for the newsletter. Presides over general and executive meeting. Helps coordinate activities of the club (i.e. boosters, picnic, potluck supper, Wheaten rescue committee, etc. In conjunction with other club members, fields calls from people regarding Wheaten issues. Liaison between club and other community groups.
Vice-President: Supports president and club in its endeavors. If for some reason the president is not available, the vice-president takes over the president’s duties at the president’s request.
Secretary: Maintains minutes from all meetings. Coordinates memberships with treasurer. Maintains membership records. Receives and responds to any club correspondence.
Treasurer:Deals with financial matters of the club. Maintains club financial records. Arranges for the club records to be audited.
Please note:
Since all existing executive members have fulfilled their maximum allotted tenure, all positions are open and the incumbents cannot run for their positions again.
IMPORTANT DATE TO REMEMBER!
St.Patrick’s Day Potluck and Annual Meeting is March 15
The annual general meeting and potluck will be held on March 15. Once the location is determined a notification will be sent out to all members through email or phone.
Please come out and support the club and elect your new executive.
Dear Pet-Pourri
By Susan Perry
My adorable Wheatie has several bad habits. Could you give me some hints as to how I can correct them (listed below) and still have my Wheatie like me?
Concerned Canine Parent.
Dear Concerned,
One of the assumptions that are often made by dog owners is that if they are too strict with the dog, the dog may not “like” them. It is quite the contrary. When guidelines and rules are made clear to the dog, the dog becomes more relaxed in its environment. This results in a happier, more confident dog that tends to exhibit more affection towards its family. Mixed signals (i.e.: “NO” only means no some of the time) will make the dog anxious, uncomfortable and more apt to exhibit temperament problems. This has the potential to manifest itself in aggressiveness towards family members.
To correct problems or rather irritating behaviors, there are a couple of basic rules that will make the attempt at changing the behavior faster and more successful.
- The dog must be clear as to the behavior that is not acceptable, that means the behavior has to be corrected, by whatever means, as the behavior is happening.
- The negative enforcer (correction) must be followed immediately with praise when the desired behavior is achieved. This is the part most dog owners fail to do!
Eg. Dog pulls on leash- Correction given (pop on collar)- dog stops pulling on leash- Praise with voice and or food reward.
Learn to ‘set your dog up’ to achieve a correction. If the same stimulus causes the same problem behavior, set the scene and be in control of the situation to be able to correct it.
Eg: Dog goes ‘crazy’ when the door bell rings. What do you do?
- Get treats ready, really good ones, and put a training collar and short leash on the dog.
- Ask the help of a friend or neighbour to come over and ring the bell.
- When the dog reacts give a quick ‘pop’ on the leash until the dog settles and sits the reward with treats. Open the door and greet friend. At anytime during this step the dog gets up out of the sit, ‘pop’ again and repeat the reward for calm behavior. Friend exits.
- Repeat a few times the first day and repeat as often as needed to change the behavior. Notice how, after a few tries the dog settles quicker and is reacting to the bell by looking at you for a treat. This is called behavior modification. You have taught the dog to react to the doorbell in a different way, which he will be rewarded greatly for. NO, you will not have to give him food at the door forever, although you may have to reinforce it once in a while, but never forget to give lots of verbal praise for a job well done each and every time you get the behavior you want-a calm sit at the door.
When correcting a problem behavior, make sure the ‘punishment fits the crime’. Start out with mild negative enforcement.
If the correction has not been successful after trying a few times, you may need to increase the intensity.
When observing handlers in my obedience classes, those owners that have an assertive yet kind approach in training, have the greatest success. Those that are too domineering are just as slow to succeed as those that ‘baby’ the dog.
Clear signals, immediate correction, and lots of praise for desired behavior results in a secure, well behaved companion.
Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot about little puppies.
-Gene Hill
Used with permission from Dogs In Canada.
THE TOP 10 DOG BEHAVIOUR MYTHS
There are a lot of myths about dog behaviour so I whittled it down to ones that were pervasive and that made myth.criteria, which are:
a) there is no (zero) scientific evidence supporting the contention;
b) there is scientific evidence against the contention and/or scientific evidence supporting alternatives.
1) Dogs are naturally pack animals with a clear social order. This one busts coming out of the gate as free-ranging dogs (pariahs, semi-feral populations, dingoes, etc.) don’t form packs. As someone who spent years solemnly repeating that dogs were pack animals, it was sobering to find out that dogs form loose, amorphous, transitory associations with other dogs.
2) If you let dogs exit doorways ahead of you, you’re letting them be dominant. There is not only no evidence for this, there is no evidence that the behaviour of going through a doorway has any social significance whatsoever. In order to lend this idea any plausibility, it would need to be ruled out that rapid doorway exit is not simply a function of their motivation to get to whatever is on the other side combined with their higher ambulation speed.
3) In multi-dog households, “support the hierarchy” by giving presumed dominant animals patting, treats, etc., first, before giving the same attention to presumed subordinate animals. There is no evidence that this has any impact on inter-dog relations, or any type of aggression. In fact, if one dog were roughing up another, the laws governing Pavlovian conditioning would dictate an opposite tack: Teach aggressive dogs that other dogs receiving scarce resources predicts that they are about to receive some. If so practised, the tough dog develops a happy emotional response to other dogs getting stuff – a helpful piece of training, indeed. No valuable conditioning effects are achieved by giving the presumed higher- ranking dog goodies first.
4) Dogs have an innate desire to please. This concept has never been operationally defined, let alone tested. A vast preponderance of evidence, however, suggests that dogs, like all properly functioning animals, are motivated by food, water, sex, and like many animals, by play and access to bonded relationships, especially after an absence. They’re also, like all animals, motivated by fear and pain, and these are the inevitable tools of those who eschew the use of food, play, etc., however much they cloak their coercion and collar-tightening in desire to please rhetoric.
5) Rewards are bribes and thus compromise relationships. Related to 4), the idea that behaviour should just, in the words of Susan Friedman, Ph.D., “flow like a fountain” without need of consequences, is opposed by more than 60 years of unequivocal evidence that behaviour is, again to quote Friedman, “a tool to produce consequences.” Another problem is that bribes are given before behaviour, and rewards are given after. And, a mountain of evidence from decades of research and applied settings has demonstrated over and over that positive reinforcement – i.e., rewards – make relationships better, never worse.
6) If you pat your dog when he’s afraid, you’re rewarding the fear. Fear is an emotional state – a reaction to the presence or anticipation of something highly aversive. It is not an attempt at manipulation. If terrorists enter a bank and order everybody down on the floor, the people will exhibit fearful behaviour. If I then give a bank customer on the floor a compliment, 20 bucks or chocolates, is this going to make them more afraid of terrorists next time? It’s stunningly narcissistic to imagine that a dog’s fearful behaviour is somehow directed
at us (along with his enthusiastic door-dashing).
7) Punish dogs for growling or else they’ll become aggressive. Ian Dunbar calls this “removing the ticker from the time bomb.” Dogs growl because something upsetting them is too close. If you punish them for informing us of this, they are still upset but now not letting us know, thus allowing scary things to get closer and possibly end up bitten. Much better to make the dog comfortable around what he’s growling at so he’s not motivated to make it go away.
8)Playing tug makes dogs aggressive. There is no evidence that this is so. The only study ever done, by Borchelt and Goodloe, found no correlation between playing tug and the incidence of aggression directed at either family members or strangers. Tug is, in fact, a cooperative behaviour directed at simulated prey: the toy.
9) If you give dogs chew toys, they’ll learn to chew everything. This is a Pandora’s box type of argument that, once again, has zero evidence to support it. Dogs are excellent discriminators and readily learn with minimal training to distinguish their toys from forbidden items. The argument is also logically flawed as chewing is a ‘hydraulic’ behaviour that waxes and wanes, depending on satiation/deprivation, as does drinking, eating and sex. Dogs without chew objects are like zoo animals in barren cages. Unless there is good compensation with other enrichment activities, there is a welfare issue here.
10) You can’t modify “genetic” behaviour. All behaviour – and I mean all – is a product of a complex interplay between genes and the environment. And while some behaviours require less learning than others, or no learning at all, their modifiability varies as much as does the modifiability of behaviours that are primarily learned.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO?
by Susan Perry
Going back over 25 years ago now, when David and I were first introduced to the world of Wheatens, Alan Fox of Regina Saskachewan was the ‘Wheaten guy’.
Alan and his wife Carolyn had been one of a handful of Canadians that got the breed going and ultimately started the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier Association of Canada. I owe much of my involvement in the association over the years to Alan’s encouragement (or maybe it was a little more like “pushiness”!) in the beginning. I soon found myself as a director then vice-president within a short period of time.
I remember when we first met Alan and Carolyn. They and their two daughters were going to be traveling west through Alberta and would be stopping to visit us. My first thoughts were along the lines of “wow, I will get to know so much about the breed from Alan”. When they arrived I was so anxious to glean all of the information about structure, how to pick a puppy etcetera from him I barely gave them a chance to settle in before I tried to pump him for words of wisdom. When asked about such things as structure and analyzing puppies, I will never forget his response- “Well, I guess if I look at them and I think they are cute, that’s the one I would pick!” After all these years and becoming slightly more analytical than that I must admit when it comes right down to it I think I have made my choices in much the same way and think I have been pretty successful at it!
Alan and Carolyn’s visit that year started the annual “Wheaten Picnic”. In honour of their visit we invited all wheaten folk that we knew at the time and had a great turn out at our acreage.
The Foxes have been hard working and dedicated members of the SCWTAC and our membership owes them a lot. They truly helped to boost the breed in Canada for many years. They do not have wheatens anymore, but continue to keep an eye on the breed. Alan is retired from his career as a schoolteacher and they are both enjoying some travel these days. If you are ever in Regina, you will want to give them a call and say “HI”; you will never meet a nicer couple that really lays out the welcome for wheaten folks!
Please share your Wheaten pictures with us, for inclusion in the newsletter and on the website. Picture files can be sent to the editor: brgjane@gmail.com