Gus is shedding. By the handful, bucketful, and mattressful.
While he’s grazing after our sessions, I have nothing better to do, so I brush him steadily. Usually I just use my fingers, rubbing him in circles and against the grain and up and down, shaking clumps of hair into the wind every few seconds. Or if I remember to bring his gear out with me beforehand, I use a soft rubbery thing with big knobs to scrub the hair loose, then I scrape him with a hoop-shaped and slightly saw-toothed shedding blade, and then I finish with a regular brush. But really I never finish. No matter how many times I go over him and no matter how much hair comes out, the same amount is yielded by every next pass of a hand or brush.
(My dog, a Heinz 57 mix heavy on the hound and German shepherd, is the same right now. I scrub and rub, and I rake with a shedding blade, and I brush and brush, and the quantity of released hair never diminishes. Ditto for the hair still coating him: he should be bald by now, but he’s no less shaggy than before.)
Gus’s bison brow is thinning, and his chest is smoothing out. But his lush crop of belly fur still billows in the breeze, and the hair on his back piles up in swirls and rivulets. I notice all these details, because our de-shedding sessions run to 30 and 40 minutes these days. That’s how long it takes him to maybe slow down in his munching, and that’s when my attempt to terminate the session is less likely to result in knock-down, drag-out resistance.
I’m gratified to report that the over-and-under lead-rope technique is still 100% effective at preventing any knock-down drag-out escapes. Sandy has told me that it’s worked for her too. Thing is, in operant conditioning like clicker-training, there’s a phenomenon called an extinction burst. When an animal comes to expect that a behavior yields a desirable result and then finds that it no longer does, a common response is to intensify that behavior — to demand, goddammit, that it work as expected. (If a toddler’s fussing has cued its parents to deliver a snack, but then they start ignoring it, the fussing may burst into a tantrum.) If the trainer remains firm and consistent, this behavior burst precedes the extinction — the giving up and abandonment — of the behavior.
While I’m braced for this with Gus's escaping the lead line, lately I’m beginning to hope we’ll get the extinction without the burst. He does still yank and shove, and now he’s trying the signature donkey move of refusing to move. But the new rope attachment has so far risen to every challenge and enabled us to get him from Point A to Point B no matter what. And the what hasn't yet escalated into anything I'd call a burst.
He’s a smart guy. He’ll learn that resistance is futile, and it’s easier to accede to his alien overlords. Well . . . he would if he were a horse, or a dog, or a cow . . . but he’s not. What we may have here is an 800-pound honeybadger with hooves.
While he’s grazing after our sessions, I have nothing better to do, so I brush him steadily. Usually I just use my fingers, rubbing him in circles and against the grain and up and down, shaking clumps of hair into the wind every few seconds. Or if I remember to bring his gear out with me beforehand, I use a soft rubbery thing with big knobs to scrub the hair loose, then I scrape him with a hoop-shaped and slightly saw-toothed shedding blade, and then I finish with a regular brush. But really I never finish. No matter how many times I go over him and no matter how much hair comes out, the same amount is yielded by every next pass of a hand or brush.(My dog, a Heinz 57 mix heavy on the hound and German shepherd, is the same right now. I scrub and rub, and I rake with a shedding blade, and I brush and brush, and the quantity of released hair never diminishes. Ditto for the hair still coating him: he should be bald by now, but he’s no less shaggy than before.)
I’m gratified to report that the over-and-under lead-rope technique is still 100% effective at preventing any knock-down drag-out escapes. Sandy has told me that it’s worked for her too. Thing is, in operant conditioning like clicker-training, there’s a phenomenon called an extinction burst. When an animal comes to expect that a behavior yields a desirable result and then finds that it no longer does, a common response is to intensify that behavior — to demand, goddammit, that it work as expected. (If a toddler’s fussing has cued its parents to deliver a snack, but then they start ignoring it, the fussing may burst into a tantrum.) If the trainer remains firm and consistent, this behavior burst precedes the extinction — the giving up and abandonment — of the behavior.
He’s a smart guy. He’ll learn that resistance is futile, and it’s easier to accede to his alien overlords. Well . . . he would if he were a horse, or a dog, or a cow . . . but he’s not. What we may have here is an 800-pound honeybadger with hooves.
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