Guarding
I'm bringing this conversation over here from FB, because there's much more to talk about.
Brad started by being proud of Parka for chasing a hawk off that was diving toward the property. This is a real danger to the kai pups, and so its valuable that Parka and Blue do this so well!
So I asked him to tell me more about this bird-driving-away behavior, since I see this in Sage too (not at ALL in Rei or Juno). Sage will charge and bark, his tail spinning like a propeller, and will crouch as if threatening to leap if they are lower- but generally he tolerates no large soaring birds overhead without a huge display, he even sees very distant ones. The lower the bird, the more intense the reaction, from the hairy eyeball to charging and roaring.
me- "Perhaps I have been unfair to Sage as driving away large birds is his self-assigned duty, and I used to tell him to chill and shut up. But if I recast him as Parka, then I would praise him for driving off birds, tho we have no puppies to protect. Can I call it guarding if theres nothing to guard? I learn a lot from your real guard dogs...
Brad - "Blue tends to alert more to birds than Parka, Blue will bark at them if they are just flying over the yard at about the height of the house. Parka will only react to them if they are diving (or losing altitude) above the yard. This bird was diving just outside the fence, and Parka reacted. I think you can call it guarding even if you don't have any small animals for him to protect (tho Juno is smallish)."
Me- She is, but he'd behave the same if she was there or not. The effect is there, if not the intention- meaning I'm sure his motivation is "I just HATE those creepy birds!" and not "I'll save you, Juno!" He'd do the same thing if he was out there all alone. But, maybe that is how 'guard dogs' actually operate?
Not knowing anything about actual guard dogs, I would say that our word 'guarding' implies some altruism* (awareness of the presence of the pups, and concern for their safety motivates the action to charge and bark at a bird), making it different from just 'reacting' to the bird (awareness of & discomfort with the presence/motion of the bird). That and the fact that I didnt ask for a guard-type personality of dog means I historically have tended to see S's behavior as hysterics, not guarding. BUT- I suppose it doesnt matter why he does it, since as the dog owner, we would be just happy the dog reliably reacts strongly and the hawk/vulture leaves, and that the dog will *never* become desensitized to the hawks and quit driving them off: for Brad's purposes, protecting the pups; for mine, an unextinguishable behavior pattern that startles and embarrasses me.
If Sage and Parka/Blue are in fact doing the same thing, then it is only my attitude ("ugh! cant you just relax?") vs Brad's ("Good Boy! you saved the puppies!") that appreciates it properly, and maybe I need to change mine, call him a watchdog, and consistently praise him for it. (I have only recently begun trying on this praising-the-barking tactic, because if I have just been underappreciating a guard dog, hey, I can change! and that's much more likely to smooth the relationship than me trying to desensitize him to birds, or counter condition him to do something else when he sees a raven.) Maybe we'd all be happier if he knew I liked his 'work' (rather than him getting charged up at a bird/hitchhiker/teenagers and me bringing pressure on top of it) because I dont think he's giving up that job.
Maybe Sage is a scarecrow. I just dont trust myself to know what I see- if I am able to take a video of Sage, and you said "Yes, he's guarding, lay off the poor guy." or "that's guarding with a topping of fear, brought on by you historically getting upset at him, yelling at him and trying to catch him and bring him inside" or "no, he's just a freak having a meltdown." I could let it rest on Brad's authority.
*I dont have any problem with the idea of animals expressing some degrees of altruism.
Brad started by being proud of Parka for chasing a hawk off that was diving toward the property. This is a real danger to the kai pups, and so its valuable that Parka and Blue do this so well!
So I asked him to tell me more about this bird-driving-away behavior, since I see this in Sage too (not at ALL in Rei or Juno). Sage will charge and bark, his tail spinning like a propeller, and will crouch as if threatening to leap if they are lower- but generally he tolerates no large soaring birds overhead without a huge display, he even sees very distant ones. The lower the bird, the more intense the reaction, from the hairy eyeball to charging and roaring.
me- "Perhaps I have been unfair to Sage as driving away large birds is his self-assigned duty, and I used to tell him to chill and shut up. But if I recast him as Parka, then I would praise him for driving off birds, tho we have no puppies to protect. Can I call it guarding if theres nothing to guard? I learn a lot from your real guard dogs...
Brad - "Blue tends to alert more to birds than Parka, Blue will bark at them if they are just flying over the yard at about the height of the house. Parka will only react to them if they are diving (or losing altitude) above the yard. This bird was diving just outside the fence, and Parka reacted. I think you can call it guarding even if you don't have any small animals for him to protect (tho Juno is smallish)."
Me- She is, but he'd behave the same if she was there or not. The effect is there, if not the intention- meaning I'm sure his motivation is "I just HATE those creepy birds!" and not "I'll save you, Juno!" He'd do the same thing if he was out there all alone. But, maybe that is how 'guard dogs' actually operate?
Not knowing anything about actual guard dogs, I would say that our word 'guarding' implies some altruism* (awareness of the presence of the pups, and concern for their safety motivates the action to charge and bark at a bird), making it different from just 'reacting' to the bird (awareness of & discomfort with the presence/motion of the bird). That and the fact that I didnt ask for a guard-type personality of dog means I historically have tended to see S's behavior as hysterics, not guarding. BUT- I suppose it doesnt matter why he does it, since as the dog owner, we would be just happy the dog reliably reacts strongly and the hawk/vulture leaves, and that the dog will *never* become desensitized to the hawks and quit driving them off: for Brad's purposes, protecting the pups; for mine, an unextinguishable behavior pattern that startles and embarrasses me.
If Sage and Parka/Blue are in fact doing the same thing, then it is only my attitude ("ugh! cant you just relax?") vs Brad's ("Good Boy! you saved the puppies!") that appreciates it properly, and maybe I need to change mine, call him a watchdog, and consistently praise him for it. (I have only recently begun trying on this praising-the-barking tactic, because if I have just been underappreciating a guard dog, hey, I can change! and that's much more likely to smooth the relationship than me trying to desensitize him to birds, or counter condition him to do something else when he sees a raven.) Maybe we'd all be happier if he knew I liked his 'work' (rather than him getting charged up at a bird/hitchhiker/teenagers and me bringing pressure on top of it) because I dont think he's giving up that job.
Maybe Sage is a scarecrow. I just dont trust myself to know what I see- if I am able to take a video of Sage, and you said "Yes, he's guarding, lay off the poor guy." or "that's guarding with a topping of fear, brought on by you historically getting upset at him, yelling at him and trying to catch him and bring him inside" or "no, he's just a freak having a meltdown." I could let it rest on Brad's authority.
*I dont have any problem with the idea of animals expressing some degrees of altruism.
Comments
When hawks or turkey vultures fly over she watches them, but never follows or barks at them.
I'm sure if it got closer she'd act more.
I think Saya's reactions were more prey drive or whatever like wow big bird on ground I need chase it! Hey no fair you can fly! I'll chase you anyways!
Hawks don't seem to dive after birds when Saya is around, but when she is inside I seen them go for birds or squirrels last weekend one caught a bird there were two hawks a mom and dad my guess.
Sage could be protecting Juno or maybe he just doesn't like them near his yard?
Juno probably couldn't be overtaken by a hawk, but who knows. Hawks talons are sharp they could just kill a dog and eat it on site instead of carrying it off? I don't know anything on hawks so can't say..
I know some people have use eagles or hawks on fox and even wolves.
I dont know what Sage would do if he wasnt in a fence and could choose to actually engage a predator or not. He is really good at getting outraged, but I can't think of a time when he's ever fought.
Im going to go look at my videos and see if I have one of him watchdogging.
My NK don't do this, but I've always found it interesting when Tikaani would suddenly pause when he catches sight of a squirrel in a tree, as if he is contemplating how to get to it. He's also tried chasing Canadian Geese when they are on their migratory flight.
Sage alarms only at the big predator birds, and doesnt care about songbirds. He likes ducks and will chase them in flight if they take off from the pond, but will relax and watch them in water. (though he does swim, he is not THAT interested in getting them) Duck-chasing has no barking though. Hawk-charging has LOTS of barking. till he cant see it, then he settles down and watches some more. It really tires him out too.
He is a lot more in tune with what goes on above him than my other two dogs. He almost always spots birds and squirrels first.
So, my opinion is that there is a misunderstanding (misreading) in this statement...
Not knowing anything about actual guard dogs, I would say that our word 'guarding' implies some altruism* (awareness of the presence of the pups, and concern for their safety motivates the action to charge and bark at a bird), making it different from just 'reacting' to the bird (awareness of & discomfort with the presence/motion of the bird).
See, I don't think Parka or any of our guardians have a real understanding of WHY they are guarding, I think they're just pre-wired to react to certain environmental changes. Any environmental change that could be considered threatening initiates their instinctual "guarding" behavior (pattern).
When Parka ran off the bird, IMHO, it was less a "oh no that bird might eat the puppies" moment and more a "WTH is that thing doing, it's coming this way, I better scare it off as it looks threatening."
Our guardians will run birds off even if they are alone in the yard.
Take a treeing dog for example, like a Laika... They tree a small animal on instinct, not because they are doing it for the hunter. If you let your Laika go, they will tree an animal and stay there for a very long period barking at the game in the tree even if you are not around.
So, with Sage, it might be the case where he is wired for that behavior but it's just not useful to you so it's seen as an annoying behavior.
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Lisa ( @shibamistress ) came by today to play with Ayu's pups. She had met Kodi before and wanted to see him again, so I let him out and he was his typical Kodi-self (friendly and flirtatious). He seems to really like Lisa...
Well, after awhile he ran off to one of the large platforms and took up his perch looking over the yard. A few minutes later, while Kodi was still on his perch, Lisa and Ulli decided it was time to go home.
When Lisa bent down to say good by to the pups (they were in a kennel now), Kodi saw this and jumped up from his perch (about a half acre away), ran over and gave Lisa a very clear and to-the-point growl.
Lisa was too close to the puppies, in Kodi's opinion.
What's interesting, is this is the first time I've ever heard Kodi growl at a guest... No, not true, this is the second time. But anyway, he is not a "growly" dog. He only growls I guess when he means it, and he's a pretty friendly dog - he seems to genuinely like guests.
So, Kodi obviously knew he needed to guard the puppies... Sounds like altruism, huh?
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I love Kodi! He's an amazing dog!
I say this because today I noticed Bel has a very specific and different alarm bark for snakes. She saw one today in the neighbor's yard and I was sitting here, til it sunk in, and I thought--odd bark from Bel. But wait, it's familiar, and oh...shit! So I ran out, and yes, she was alarm barking from the snake she could see through the fence. (If the snake hadn't been on that side of the fence, it would have been dead--Bel is a very efficient killer of snakes). It occurs to me this could have been a frustration bark--I see prey but can't reach it--but if so, it's different from her other types of frustration barks. The only time I've heard her bark like this is for snakes.
I don't think this is guarding at all--it's more an alert of some sort. But the alerts seem to be tied to some guarding behavior--Blue and Parka alerting for birds that they perceive as coming too low.
Not sure where I'm going with this other than perhaps the alarm barking which may be more of an instinctive reaction in some breeds has then been selected for to enhance the guarding role? But what is the alarm barking for in the first place? To alert other dogs that there is something that they perceive to be threatening? I imagine most animals are "hardwired" for a reaction to snakes....
Sorry, this doesn't have a coherent point yet--I was just musing over the role of sounding an alarm and how that might be tied to guarding...
(none of my dogs seem interested in looking up, btw. The Shibas scan the sky sometimes, but clearly they are looking for prey not birds of prey! they do it around the bird feeders a lot!)
I think a lot of the time, when Toki sees something not normal outside of his domain: ie... person in a wheelchair at the pool, minding their own business... he barks to alarm. Is he letting me, in particular, know about this anomaly or is he just doing it because he is hardwired to do it? Or both?
However, when he sees weird little asian man with camera advancing near our door/breezeway, (filming Toki barking, of course
The common thing in both scenarios is that there is something not normal about what those people were doing. The thing that was different was the location. One wasn't in his home, the other was. I guess this might have something to do with guarding vs alarming???
But is it an alarm which is calling allies (other dogs or people), or is it a warning, as in don't come closer, or is it both? And does it depend on the breed, on the training, etc? To me a growl is clearly a warning--don't come closer!--but I'm not sure about the different kinds of barks.
(And in our case today, while I'm not sure how to classify Bel's barking, though I recognized it as her "snake" bark, I was absolutely sure I understood the "growling" sound the bullsnake made--it was "don't come any closer! I'm dangerous! Don't I look like a rattlesnake! Of course I do! Stay away!")
I'll try to take a stab but hopefully Brad comes in and fixes it
Alarming vs Guarding: I understand an alarming dog doesnt engage- it barks, looks to you, barks more, backs away. Whereas guarding they move toward it, and may not look to you. When Sage is after birds of prey, he charges and barks loud & deep. When he is upset about things he wont engage, his bark is higher and more frantic and he has 'exorcist head' looking to me and back at the thing. He alarms at things that are 'different'- once he 'alerted' on a pair of shorts the kids across the road left out on their lawn. He wasnt guarding against it, but he was extremely upset about it. (like in the snake video) I think he only eventually engaged the snakeskin because it was so upsetting (to him) and I wasnt doing anything about it, so he HAD to, or else tolerate it.
Being Reactive: I think with other dogs, he alarms, looks to me, but I can almost never do anything about it myself (such as engage the other dog when on a walk) without adding more energy into the encounter, so without our reactive dog protocols (if I do nothing at all) he tips over into charging/roaring- which is not guarding. He;s not guarding me, he's just overwhelmed and discharging his anxiety blindly at 'dog!' Inside the house, he may alarm to the neighbor dogs being out-of-position and I can help him- I can thank him, direct him and go out and take the dogs back home (or shoo them). I think he notices.
"Italian shepherds and goatherds also used Volpinos as watch and guard dogs for their flocks. One legend that circulates amongst Italian goatherds praises the Volpino's qualities. For some reason, probably due to nearby fighting during a war, some goatherds decided to take their flock of over 200 goats into the wooded mountains for protection. The flock was guarded and hearded by Maremmas, large Italian herd-guard dogs, and two Volpinos. The forest was full of wolves, and the little Volpinos spotted the killers and barked the alarm. Reportedly they attempted to "help" the Maremmas fight off the wolves, probably providing more of a distraction than any physical threat (but don't tell that to the Volpinos!). When all was safe, the flock and its guardians returned to their pastures without loss of one goat. "
I suppose we can't know, but I think we shouldn't rule it out. Unless one believes in a literal moment of god giving humans awareness of ourselves and others & our host of 'higher' feelings, culture and morals, I think they had to come from somewhere, I imagine up the evolutionary tree with everything else. In nature writing there are loads of documented observations of wild animals exhibiting such things. You can't read Jane Goodall without giving animals some decent credit. The fact that dogs can follow our communications better than any other species leaves open the possibility that they have some degree of the stuff of the 'soft sciences' as relates to their own experience. I wouldnt go all "Hidden Life of Dogs" exactly, but I think there's more to animals than Descartes & Skinner allow.
Mouse-hunting (especially if there's a mouse in the house) is silent too, though it gets her tail spinning in a circle and she is very adept at working with a person (or even the cat when the cat bothers to help) to snag the mouse as soon as it's driven out from behind furniture, etc. She sort of pounces on the mouse (moles too) and kills it immediately, then picks it up--but doesn't even try to eat it and will drop it for a person to take easily.
She's also always been fairly aware of what's above her, though predominately when it's something she may be able to eat. Then again she's also always been fairly spatially aware in general, especially when I compare her to a lot of the other dogs I've known. Better on rough terrain and better at judging jumps, catching things, etc. She typically has never worried much about hawks, though she would like very much to chase deer. Squirrels (and chipmunks, come to think of it) she is -immediately- aware of wherever they are, and will tree.
She has a very specific alert bark, too, though--9 times out of 10 she's just an alert dog (perfectly reasonable in a dog that only weighs 30 pounds), though sometimes she does make attempts to charge things that intrude. It always strikes me as a "Hey! Get out of here, this is my place so get lost!" Her dam seemed to do a more deliberately protective thing with me once when I was quite young (probably 7 or 8) and would place herself between me and semi-suspicious-looking strangers, consistently. That was silent, though. Just rather focused attention on the stranger.
The sheltie mix my stepmother had, I never knew what to make of her barks. She lacked most kinds of spatial awareness, too, though some of that may have been near complete lack of socialization to locations other than inside a house and yard. She showed herding instinct and would get irritated with other dogs being nearby, but that was all I noticed in her. No hunting attempts.
The CO and Kai watch the sky a lot.
I'll have to agree with that Saya she never barks when neighbor's walk by, but if someone knew goes by she'll give bark till I have her come to me and once she barked non stop it's her alarm bark she done it before when dad moved his arrow target without Saya seeing it in the day it was night so Saya couldn't tell what it was.
When she barked her alarm bark I looked everywhere didn't see a thing then I looked at the pond and on the other side near the pond a skunk was going for a bit of water or something.
Saya stared at it doing low wuffs! and she stopped when I called her and she wouldn't look away till the skunk went back in the high grass.
I'm glad she alerted us and we didn't go on walk there in case it was still there.
She didn't run after it either thankfully I wonder if she knew it wasn't good idea since it was a nice sized skunk.
She saw one in the backyard once before this and I coarse went inside and had her potty out front. I never go outside without a flashlight in case a skunk, coyote, or raccoon is out there.
I like this thread very neat in learning things.
It was neat hearing about Kodi glad he knows to growl to warn off.
Very cool about the Shiba and Kai "calling" Grym! That's good teamwork!
I've only had my Kai pup less than 24 hours and already noted the "looking up" thing. He noticed stuff on top of the big giant crate that Bel and Oskar never look at, and was looking up in the trees and the sky today!