24 May, 2006
Culture Clash

Lately I have been really concentrating my efforts on training Kyla and paying attention to meeting all her dogly needs. In fact my house is just one big training camp, for both me and the canine. But anyway. Dog behavior has become truly fascinating to me since I picked up this book: Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson.

It is primarily about operant conditioning in dogs. The amount of information it contains is somewhat overwhelming, which is why I’m reading straight through, trying to comprehend as much as possible, and then I’m going to re-skim it and make notes or mark sections that I want to review or actively use.

It talks about everything from how to stimulate your dog’s brain, feed their predation instincts, teach a non-fetching dog to fetch (holy crap it WORKS, Kyla now fetches when before she stared at me like I was an idiot when I’d throw a ball), how to properly play tug of war games and of course basic training moves (sit, down, stay).

It’s not a step by step dog training manual; it’s more of an essay on what dog training is and how it works. It teaches the science and common sense behind how dogs learn, the steps of teaching an operant (sit, stay, fetch), how to reinforce behavior and how to feed the dog information and create consequences for behaviors, rather than concentrating on saying the right word or using the right tone of voice.

The book covers using food as a primary motivator, and dispels the myth that a dog should obey “to please the owner.” Dogs are innocently selfish. They want to please no one but themselves. That doesn’t make them bad dogs or immoral creatures, it just is how they are. Dogs want to obey because it causes good things to happen for dogs. She encourages you to stop agonizing over your dog’s lack of worship for you and just love them exactly how they are.

It dispels the myth that most problems in dogs are caused by dominance (*cough* no thanks to you, Dog Whisperer *cough*) and encourages you to stop agonizing over WHY WHY WHY does a dog do this or that behavior, and get to reinforcing the behavior you WANT instead. Dogs don’t have big moral agendas. They pee on the carpet because it’s a porous surface and they need to go. They chew the couch because it’s there, HELLO. They bark at strangers and other dogs because, well, they’re dogs. This book makes so much sense (see the chapter “It’s all chew toys to them”) and I wish Jean Donaldson had a show instead of the Dog Whisperer. After reading this (and talking to several dog trainers/behaviorists) I realize how many of the techniques he uses are simply dog abuse. It sucks. (Sorry Kyla for trying some of them on you, I didn’t know what I was doing.)

It also talks about how to be a GOOD dog trainer, and a study that showed the difference between a good trainer and an ineffective one really struck me. The good trainers were speedy, reinforced often and gave immediate feedback clues to the tune of 10 per minute. The lousy trainers were slow, which often reinforced the wrong behavior (the dog would sit, but then stand up and sneeze and by the time the trainer reinforced the sit, the dog was sneezing: sneezing was reinforced), they didn’t give enough feedback (2 per minute average), etc. Dogs who had won obedience titles were included in the study and even they started pulling on leash, ignoring the trainers, etc. when the feedback clues were reduced.

The book also talks extensively about using aversives (punishment) on dogs, and how devastating it can be. If you don’t know what you’re doing, aversives will not stop behaviors, they will merely stop behaviors IN YOUR PRESENCE. Dogs don’t know right and wrong, they know safe and dangerous. That’s why a dog may never chew the furniture when you’re looking, but as soon as you leave, the couch gets munched. It’s safe to do it when you’re not around to yell/shake/grab at the dog.

There’s a wealth of information that I can’t even skim the surface of, but I highly recommend picking up this book if you are at all interested in dog behavior. I am learning so much.

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In other news, they are cutting a hole in the back wall of our office. The aim is to turn a former storage room (where old office furniture went to die) into an archive room where we’ll have freezers full of plates, slides, etc. As a result there is this awful glue/varnish smell permeating every molecule of air on the 3rd floor. It is truly heinous. Being a pansy, drugfree lightweight that hasn’t ever so much as smoked a joint in my young life, my brain is mush right now. I have the most awful headache I can ever remember having. I can’t wait to get outside at lunch.

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In other OTHER news, the Couch to 5K program is intimidating me for the rest of this week. Check out the workout regimen:

Tuesday: jog 5 minutes, walk 3, jog 5, walk 3, jog 5 (DONE!)
Thursday: jog 8, walk 5, jog 8 (okay the 8s are new but I can probably do this)
Saturday: jog 20 (??!??!?!)

That seems to ramp up awfully fast, and jogging 20 minutes straight sounds like hell personified. I know the POINT of this program is to run for a long time. Yes I know that, I just didn’t know it would be this week. People who run know that 20 minutes is a long time when you’re starting out on a training program. For those of you who think it’s easy, YOU try it. I know superfit people who can do cardio stuff for hours but that can’t run. I’m encouraged and impressed with myself that in spite of being “obese”, I can already run 15 minutes out of 25, and will run 20 straight by the end of the week. In fact I think I’ll do a spontaneous soul train in my honor.

Also, I have changed the date of my first 5K race. Turns out the one I signed up for is at the exact same time as Gracie’s high school graduation, so I’m not running that one. The new race is the Allen Stone Memorial 5K on July 22. There’s also a run-swim-run event, which should be fun to watch, apparently lots of hot military guys participate in this one. I’ll be the slow person on the boardwalk at the back of the 5K. Come check it out.

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Oh, and if you’re clicking over from the Apartment Therapy: Chicago site, thanks for looking at my closet. Feel free to peruse any categories on the right that might interest you. I recommend Daily Click and My House for designery things.

12 April, 2006
Summer Reading List

Today Alicia at Posie posted her spring/summer reading list, and I got really excited to do the same. I love going to the beach, and since most of the time we go to Chicks Beach where there are no waves (I don’t like to swim unless I got some waves to play in), I just lay in the sun and read.

Right now I’m finishing:
The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood
The Bonesetter’s Daughter — Amy Tan

In my queue to buy:
The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini
The Mermaid Chair — Sue Monk Kidd
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books — Azar Nafizi
Prep — Curtis Sittenfeld
The Joy Luck Club — Amy Tan

Started these but didn’t finish, will finish this summer:
The Secret History — Donna Tartt
Appetites: Why Women Want — Caroline Knapp
Drinking: A Love Story — Caroline Knapp
I Know This Much Is True — Wally Lamb

So, what’s on your list this spring/summer?

Also, where do you read? I read on my lunchbreak, sometimes late at night on the couch if I’m out of Law & Order: SVU episodes to watch & knit by, I listen to audiobooks in the car and I also read at mom’s on Sundays sometimes.

30 March, 2006
Reading Update

Well I finally finished the amazing and heartbreaking The Time Traveler’s Wife. It has rocketed into my top five favorite books ever. Yes, it’s that good. I also read The Handmaid’s Tale which has compelled me to read everything Margaret Atwood’s ever written. So I’m on to another of hers, and also picked up a little book put out by one of my favorite online communities, Apartment Therapy.

So, people. What are you reading these days?

08 March, 2006
Time for a reading update

I went to the library today looking for a book on drafting your own patterns (for clothing) and was highly annoyed to find out they classify it as a reference book, which means I can’t check it out. This book is like $90 at the bookstore. Ugh.

So I walked out in protest (no one noticed) and headed over to my favorite lunchtime haunt, you guessed it — Prince Books. I ordered a salad from the cafe, and grabbed the first book that caught my eye, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I’m through the first chapter and I’m already captivated. I feel a little guilty because I still haven’t finished The Time Traveler’s Wife but this book is really short, so I’ll probably be done in a few days. I think this book is going to be pretty sad. Lots about footbinding and how Chinese culture was fully crappy toward womens’ existence. But it’s beautifully written so far.

Anyone read this one? Time for another update: what are you reading?

09 February, 2006
Lunch at the bookstore.

This might sound really nerdy and weird, but I don’t care. You can’t imagine how excited I am that the ladies who run Prince Books (the independent bookstore in downtown Norfolk) know me by name. And noticed that I changed my hair. And were thumbing through the box for my member discount card as I was walking up to the counter.

Today I bought The Time Traveler’s Wife and read the first 42 pages while I ate lunch. I am enthralled. I got this book on recommendation from Miss Genevieve, who is one other person in the world who loves reading just as much as I do. I knew that if no one else understood my little “moment” today, she would.

Other things I have had my nose in lately (excuse the arrows, I’m too lazy to look anywhere other than Amazon):

1. Little, Big which is kind of weird, and supposedly is a “masterpiece of modern fantasy” or some such thing and was also recommended by Alicia, whose blog I adore, so I will keep on reading.
2. Memoirs of a Geisha, which was the first book I couldn’t put down in a long time. I adored this book and its beautiful imagery.
3. Haunted, which was and is thoroughly annoying and BORING, and I’m not going to finish it. Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors, but he must have been really bored himself when he wrote this or something. I LOVE the review Elizabeth Hand wrote of this book on its’ Amazon page but I wish I would have read her review earlier. A snippet:

   It turns out to be an old movie theater, and once they’re inside, they can’t get out, like they’re locked in for three months; and the food is all freeze-dried, not gourmet at all, and everything is pretty disgusting and shabby and meaningless and depressing and disgusting. Did I say that twice? I forget, because this book, it’s kind of repetitive, and it’s also really, really gross.

   Each character in the book tells a short story. Each also tells a poem, which is not such a good idea, as the poems aren’t very good. In Lullaby, Palahniuk’s really creepy novel from 2003, there’s a poem that kills people who hear it, but I don’t think anyone’s going to die reading stuff like this: “The film: a shadow of a reflection of an image of an illusion.”

   Yeah, it’s that bad. And really, really gross. Don’t read it. Read Diary or Lullaby or Invisible Monsters instead.
4. How To Be Good was amusing and made me love the characters like any good Nick Hornby book does, but then it ended after only four audio tracks. I realize if I had been reading the actual book instead of listening to a pirated audio book (ha) I might not have been disappointed because I would have realized it was very, very thin, but I had no clue and it was amazingly short. I wanted more, dude. It was sarcastic and dysfunctional and amazing. I wanted more.
5. Garlic & Sapphires I have checked out from the library but not yet begun to read.

What are you guys reading?