I’ve offered quite a lot of information and videos of poodles who have been trained to service jobs – search and rescue, guide dogs, assistant dogs, etc. There is another class of working poodles (in addition to sheep herding and such, which they also do very well). It is the field and/or hunting dog.

Poodles were originally bred as hunters and retrievers, and their water skills led to a whole different poodle-like breed, the Portuguese Water Dog – of which the Obama family’s “Bo” is currently most famous. Their tendency to tolerate gunshots near them without fear also led to them being among the best of war dogs.

The best site I’ve seen out there on the web for all sorts of information about these sporting poodles – and yes, sports like these are indeed work – is the Working Field Poodle section of the Versatility In Poodles site. They offer excellent information about finding the right trainer, what a good training regime should look like, what things must be covered during that training, and it offers great lists of skills to be earned from the beginning through intermediate and advanced training.

But perhaps more important overall is the good information on choosing just the right poodle puppy for this sort of activity. The first criteria is to choose a driven retriever. Which my beautiful black Kenya proved herself a star. This is a pup who’s always got a ball or stick or toy in his or her mouth, and is constantly trying to get you to throw it. Not only do they chase, they also bring it right back so you can throw again. Kenya would retrieve anything, but her best was a snowball I’d throw into a snowbank. Now, THAT is a committed retriever!

Second on the list of inborn traits you’ll want to look for is a love of water. Not just being unafraid of a bath, but ready, willing and able to jump right into water and swim. If the pup hasn’t yet been exposed to water enough to swim in, a pup that plays in their water dish, chases water from a hose or really enjoys a bath is a bood bet.

You’ll want a pup that likes people and isn’t aggressive to other dogs. You want one that doesn’t act skittish or try to hide at any sudden noise. A pup that will confidently walk with you over unfamiliar terrain is good too, try flattened cardboard boxes or creek bridges.

Poodles are such intelligent dogs that it’s not that difficult to evaluate traits early, even at 6 or 7 weeks of age. Some are better suited to certain tasks than others, though almost any well-bred poodle can be trained to do things other dogs only dream about. Go on over to the Versatility in Poodles website and check out some of their good information about all sorts of poodle jobs!

Looks to me like Angelina is going to be a valuable ‘first responder’ in her working life, and perhaps an international star as well!

Here’s a great story about an “Educational Dog” in Oregon, who has been a ’school dog’ since he was just a pup. Our childrens’ classrooms have hosted mice, ferrets, hamsters, guinea pigs, snakes and ant farms through their primary grades, so what’s wrong with a class poodle?

Should dogs be banned from schools? How about hamsters?

“He was four months old when he started school,” said Witt, who was teaching fifth grade at the time. “I got him specifically as a classroom dog.”

A year later, when Witt began teaching third grade, Rosebud followed.

Students were thrilled to have a dog in class. The animal even serves as an incentive for some students.

“He makes it easier to come to school,” said 8-year-old Madison Canova.

What do you think?

I found this video by sanprins over at YouTube. It shows service poodle Gautzy Wopper at work, helping with some basic household tasks. I’ll be featuring some further videos of service dogs at work and play in this series, so please enjoy!

Back when we’d first adopted our beloved Beau the black standard from the local animal shelter [A Poodle and His Clown] we were working as directors of a state funded after school program for at-risk and adjudicated young teenagers (12-14) at a local Jr. High school.

Beau was just 6 months old when we got him. He was about 9 months old when a volunteer from the local police force (good outreach) volunteered his time to help us with the kids. He turned out to be a great asset, kept most of the adjudicated kids out of trouble from then on by being their friend and mentor. One afternoon he brought a couple of beautiful German Shepherds – the ‘real’ shepherds that surprise people. Smaller than expected, low-slung in the rear. Seems he’d been promoted to K9 training and these were his babies. He’d trained dogs when in the military, our town was just starting a K9 program. His dogs were the same age as Beau, who as it happened had been to the vet that day so ended up at the school with us for the program that day.

We’d told our young policeman about Beau, of course, and he’d mouthed some platitude he’d learned in the Army about big poodles being excellent service/K9 dogs, but he’d never actually seen or met one. The moment he saw Beau – who was quite hairy at the time and already bigger than either of those shepherds – it was love at first sight. All that he’d heard about giant poodles suddenly clicked in his mind, and within 15 minutes he had Beau joining his pups in the “Obedience Show-Off Game.” He offered to include Beau in his training course for free, just wanted to work with him.

We politely declined, not really all that interested in having a K9 trained drug or attack dog around the house. But we were flattered, and our policeman friend went on to become a trainer for a service dog outfit (for disabled folks and search and rescue dogs in the civilian sector, said he wasn’t cut out to be a policeman anyway), finally did get to work with poodles, goldens, border collies and labs as well as shepherds. His dream job!

The thing that impressed us that day watching Beau play with those two extremely well-trained pups was how he took his cues from them on what the commands were and what they meant, and figured out for himself how to rig the system – with that impish poodle talent for doing something funny just for laughs, while at the same time beating those shepherds at their own game. Did I mention that poodles have big egos?

See, we aren’t good trainers. In fact, we generally don’t spend any time training our dogs. They’re expected to figure out what’s what using their own brains, and so far they always have. The poodles of course figure it out quickly (took Big Ras Bob exactly 2 hours to figure out exactly what we needed in a dog after walking into our home). They are that smart, and they do genuinely want to please. Plus, living with clowns is great fun for them – we always laugh at their jokes.

So yesterday I was surfing around for details and pretty pictures of standard poodles in training as service dogs. I happened upon a very cool blog from Dogviews, Roxi: Service Dog in Training. One recent post on that blog talks about the dog training methods of Cesar Milan – that guy with the popular “Dog Whisperer” television show on the National Geographic channel. Milan boasts that he “rehabilitates dogs, trains people.” Yet as Hansen points out in her blog post, he’s come in for a lot of criticism from professional dog trainers as well as some humane society spokespersons.

I’ve watched Milan’s show, and his methods are not materially different from those our policeman trainer used with his pups. He emphasizes body language and mind-dominance, which (along with generally reasoning with a dog smart enough to want to understand) is pretty much the ‘natural’ way of things for all the dogs we’ve ever owned and NOT formally trained. Dogs are smart, they want to love and be loved, and they want to have a real place in their family’s life.

Of course I’m quite sure there are dogs that don’t fit this profile, but I just don’t know them personally. To be our dog, you’ve gotta find a way to fit in, and our dogs have all managed that. The poodles have taken more interest in doing an actual job than the mutts have, but the mutts have their jobs as well – like letting us know when someone’s on the property and keeping deer out of the yard. They bark at bears too, but are smart enough not to try and chase ‘em away. At any rate, all dogs and dog breeds have their particular talents for which they were bred (or in the case of mutts, can pick and choose to display). And all individual dogs have their personalities and issues, just as people do.

It seems to me that to be a good trainer, you’ve also got to be a good “Dog Person” – able to connect and communicate with a dog on a real level the dog understands and respects. But then, it seems to me that Dog People need that skill all around, whether or not they actually do any serious dog training. A truly smart dog is going to do what his or her family requires and expects, will readily respond to body language, voiced disapproval and praise, and will organize for themselves how that translates by way of behaviors in home and out in public.

Do check out some of the links below to information about service dog training programs, and what they require of their dogs. One company – apparently quite successful – even teaches the dogs to read! And yes, they prize those standard poodles on that particular skill! I’ll be writing more about this training later, so stay tuned!

Links:

Assistance Dogs International

Assistance Dog Institute

American Poodles at Work

Canine Partners forLife

CPL TeamTraining: Marie and Showbo

Snowflake Foundation

National Service Dogs (Canada)

“Vell,” the white-haired egghead in the lab coat begins in his thick Austrian accent, “ve taught zem how to drive, and found zey stopped at all ze red lights while proceeding through all ze green lights!”

It’s the cognitive dissonance that makes a joke like this funny. But wait! There’s more, and no, it’s NOT a joke!

Neurologists and cognitive scientists have what they call the “Mirror Test” that is supposed to measure the self-awareness of animals based on whether or not they can recognize themselves in a mirror. Thus far among ‘lesser’ creatures the great apes, some monkeys, dolphins, elephants, rats and octopi are the only ones confirmed to recognize the image in the mirror as themselves, and humans only manage the feat after they’re 18 months to 2 years old.

Dogs thus far have been ruled failures at self-awareness – despite some disagreement in the scientific community as to whether the test can be properly applied to an animal that relies primarily on senses other than sight. In fact, there is considerable debate ongoing in science as to whether this test means anything at all about self-awareness and/or intelligence for any animal.

I must admit that I’ve always thought the mirror test was highly suspect. For instance, as a family of performers mirrors have always been a big item in our home. There’s a wall full of make-up mirrors with lights, and another wall lined with big mirrors used to perfect moves, flourishes, techniques and puppet manipulation so we can see what we’re doing as others will view it.

Thus it was no surprise to us when our grandson, who was born to mirrors and people who made serious use of them, recognized himself in the mirror very well by the time he learned to crawl – 7 months. As soon as he managed to get himself pulled up to a standing position (9 months – he was precocious) and relied upon Uncle Bob the Poodle to support him as he made his unsteady way from point A to point B, His favorite point B was right in front of the floor-to-ceiling wall of mirrors. He and Bob could be found in front of the mirrors quite a lot of the time.

Bob had no problem knowing who the boy reflected in the mirror was, and I’ve no doubt he knew who the reflected poodle was too – in fact, whenever Bob would come home from the groomer’s with a new haircut, he’d go straight to the mirrored wall to admire himself from all angles he could manage.

Now, maybe scientists just haven’t bothered mirror-testing poodles, who are notoriously finicky about their grooming and impressive good looks. Or maybe they’ve never spent any time with performing dogs (and their people) to know how much performers rely upon mirrors to make sure their performances are well timed and well done. And perhaps child psychologists just don’t deal with baby performers, for whom practicing in front of mirrors is taken entirely for granted from birth and availed just as soon as that baby can get himself to a mirror.

Heck, I once stood in the doorway watching 14-month old grandson seriously practicing his fit-throwing – theatrically throwing himself onto the ground, pounding his fists and feet, etc., the basic body language of the “Terrible Twos” early as usual for him. Finally I laughed and he knew I was there. “You’re never going to be able to pull off a decent fit, you know,” I told him with some humor. “Just not spontaneous enough.”

Not surprisingly, he never did become a famous fit-thrower, skipped that stage entirely, having been caught in the act.

Perhaps (my own opinion), cog-sci guys and psychologists just don’t know enough about self-awareness and self-consciousness to measure it. New research from researchers at the University of Vienna in Austria tends to confirm my strong suspicions that dogs are a whole heck of a lot smarter, self-aware and self-conscious than scientists have wanted to admit to this point. Turns out they can differentiate complex colors and images in photographs and on computer screens – even USE computers! – better than anyone previously imagined.

Dogs Can Classify Complex Photos In Categories Like Humans Do is a really interesting article about this research. From that article…

The authors also draw some conclusions on the strength of their methodology: “Using touch-screen computers with dogs opens up a whole world of possibilities on how to test the cognitive abilities of dogs by basically completely controlling any influence from the owner or experimenter.” They add that the method can also be used to test a range of learning strategies and has the potential to allow researchers to compare the cognitive abilities of different species using a single method.

I’m glad they’ve moved beyond mere mirrors and assumptions, all the way to teaching dogs to use touch screen computers so they can communicate their knowledge to researchers who didn’t think they were smart enough to even know they were dogs. Of course, all any of them ever had to do was ask a dog-lover (particularly any Poodle Person). They’d have gotten an earful on how intelligent they are.

Of course, as the joke at the beginning of this post suggests, perhaps no one should be surprised that researchers are surprised that dogs can recognize pictures of dogs, while NOT being surprised that dogs can be taught to use touch screen computers. Go figure…