eileenanddogs - What my dogs teach me

I Got a Kick Out of You: Twitmyer’s Discovery of Classical Conditioning

Posted on April 25, 2024April 25, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A reflex hammer such as a physician uses. The head is triangular and aqua colored and the handle is silver-colored metal — Reflex hammer

Pavlov was scooped, but nobody noticed.

Most people have heard of Ivan Pavlov and his dogs, and many are aware of the specifics of his discovery. He accidentally conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a buzzer, realized what he had done, and explored some of the profound implications. But hardly anyone knows that at the same time, the American Edwin Twitmyer also discovered the conditioned response. His discovery involved a different reflex but was similarly accidental. His research was published in 1902—a year before Pavlov’s. This is the story of his discovery and the underwhelming response it received.

Studying the Knee Jerk

Edwin Twitmyer, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to study the human patellar reflex for his doctoral research. By 1900, physiologists knew that there was a lot of variation in the knee jerk response between subjects and even between responses by the same individual. Warren Lombard had determined variations in the knee jerk having to do with time of day, temperature, and barometric pressure (Lombard, 1887). The physician Ernő Jendrassik discovered a clever way to thwart the attempts of patients to game the reflexive response when the patellar tendon was tapped (Zehr & Stein, 1999).

Twitmyer set out to record multiple observations of the knee jerk under controlled conditions and to define and codify the responses. He noted that “when the patella tendons are struck at exactly the same place with blows of constant force and at regular intervals, no two of the resulting knee jerks are of the same extent” (Twitmyer, 1902, p. 8). He wanted to find out if he could draw conclusions about the variation in the responses and come up with a reasonable definition of a normal range.

Twitmyer had access to a pool of research subjects: other psychology students. He recruited 17 males and began his research. He studied the knee jerk under both “normal” conditions and with various adaptations. He controlled for the variables that Lombard had discovered.

So, where did this variation in responses come from, how far did it normally extend, and how much variation would there be if they kept knocking and knocking and knocking on the subjects’ knees for extended periods? Would there be discoverable patterns? Variations that were predictable through the individuals’ physiology?

A sepia colored photograph of Edwin Twitmyer holding two small terrier-type dogs. He is dressed in a suit with a vest and a hat. Photo circa 1925. — Twitmyer and his dogs

Twitmyer also hoped to find evidence as to whether the knee jerk was a true reflex, a mechanical response to sudden pressure on the patellar tendon, or a combination of the two. He conjectured it was the last of these, and he was correct. The hammer tap stretches the quadriceps muscles in the thigh. This stretching triggers a monosynaptic reflex. The message is sent to the spinal cord, and a return message causes the quadriceps to contract. When the leg is hanging free, this causes the leg to kick.

The purpose of the patellar reflex is not to kick doctors. In normal life, when our feet are on the ground, the patellar reflex helps us balance. That it can be triggered when we are sitting with legs swinging free is a fluke.

Dogs and many other animals have the patellar reflex, too.

Creating Consistent Stimuli and Measurement Systems

Twitmyer set up a mechanical pendulum system in his lab so that the tap of the hammers on the patellar tendons would be uniform. In most experiments, both knees were tapped at once. There was an automated warning bell that warned the subject to prepare for the hammer taps. (Do you see what’s coming?)

Twitmyer set up a mechanical method of measuring the extent of the kicks as well. There were strings tied to both of the subjects’ feet, and these were connected via a pulley to an apparatus that somewhat resembled an analog seismograph with its turning roll of paper and moving pen. Twitmyer noted that the friction of the pens on the paper and the balancing weight on the pulley were minimized, so the resistance added to the kick was negligible.

In a black and white photo from the very early 1900s, a young man sits in a large chair with his feet dangling. A construction in front of him includes a horizontal bar above his knees. Reflex hammers hang from the bar and wires or strings go from the bar assembly to a panel in the wall — Twitmyer’s experiment

Twitmyer kept data on all the responses of the subjects, including one subject who had no response to the tapping hammer at all, ever. Today we would question whether this student had a neurological problem.

He found over the course of 60 experiments that the average knee jerk of his subjects varied from 0–165 mm, and concluded that it was not really possible to assign a “normal” range of motion to it. He examined the subjects’ knee physiology to determine if there were a relationship between it and the extent of the kick and could find no correlation. Ditto for muscle tone. He conjectured that the differences in kick magnitude were probably due more to the “irritability or conductivity, or both, of the nervous structures involved in the knee jerk mechanism” (Twitmyer, 1974, p. 1055). He also studied the swing of the leg after the reflexive kick.

And that would have been the extent of it, except one day the bell rang without the hammer tap. It just so happened that a subject with a very robust kicking reflex was sitting in the apparatus. He kicked. Twitmyer’s discovery of respondent conditioning, like Pavlov’s, was an accident.

Getting a Kick

Here’s how Twitmyer described the incident in his lab and his curiosity about it:

During the adjustment of the apparatus for an earlier group of experiments with one subject (Subject A) a decided kick of both legs was observed to follow a tap of the signal bell occurring without the usual blow of the hammers on the tendons. It was at first believed that the subject had merely voluntarily kicked out the legs, but upon being questioned, he stated that although quite conscious of the movement as it was taking place, it had not been caused by a volitional effort, and further, that the subjective feeling accompanying the movement was similar to the feeling of the movement following the blow on the tendons with the exception that he was quite conscious that the tendons had not been struck.

Two alternatives presented themselves. Either (1) the subject was in error in his introspective observation and had voluntarily moved his legs, or (2) the true knee jerk (or a movement resembling it in appearance) had been produced by a stimulus other than the usual one.
(Twitmyer, 1902, p. 24)

Twitmyer turned his research in that direction. He first performed a series of experiments on the subject who had exhibited the leg kick in apparent response to the bell. During these experiments, the hammers did not always touch the knee after the sounding of the tone. (They were dropped, then caught, in a maneuver the subject couldn’t see.) The subject did not know when the hammers would touch and when they would not. The subject consistently kicked after the tone, even when the hammers did not drop. Twitmyer ruled out other explanations for the kicking.

Twitmyer then added five more subjects. He got consistent kicks from one other subject and a few kicks from three others. Only one subject failed to kick at all in response to the tone alone in the first round of experiments. After implementing some measures to enhance the possibility of response to the tone alone, all of the subjects were kicking away at the sound of the tone.

Twitmyer noted later in a short journal article in that it took between 150 and 230+ pairings of the bell and the hammer to condition the reflex (Twitmyer, 1902, p. 34). Most of his subjects had different magnitudes of responses from their left and right legs. Interestingly, these differences were maintained in the left and right leg responses to the bell as well.

Making Mischief

But there was one more twist. At least one of the students was secretly trying to suppress the jerk. These were psychology students, after all. Twitmyer had carefully tried to hide the purpose of the experiments where the hammer didn’t always strike, but it must have become fairly obvious. The student was interested and fiddled with his responses, but he wasn’t able to suppress the jerk.

He finally confessed his attempts to Twitmyer, who promptly added it to his dissertation. Some reflexes can be suppressed or circumvented to varying degrees. But in the case of the knee jerk reflex there is a way to prevent most deliberate modifications of the reflex movement by the subject, and Twitmyer was probably aware of that. As previously mentioned, a Hungarian physician named Jendrassik had discovered that asking his patients to clench their teeth and interlock their fingers generally enhanced the magnitude of the patellar reflex and prevented its suppression. Though he doesn’t refer to it by name in his dissertation, Twitmyer was probably familiar with Jendrassik’s maneuver. Twitmyer mentions throughout his dissertation that he required his subjects to “clinch their hands” (Twitmyer, 1902, p. 25), as he put it, as they prepared for the hammer tap. Try as he might, the would-be saboteur couldn’t suppress the reflex while following the instructions to “clinch his hands.”

In a black and white photo circa 1920, a man, presumably a patient, sits in a chair with one pant leg raised to expose his knee and calf. The man is holding his hands at the level of his breastbone and has his fingers laced together. Another man, presumably a physician, applies a reflex hammer to the patient's knee. Interestingly, the patient's feet are flat on the floor. — The Jendrassik maneuver

Twitmyer’s discovery was a milestone of science but wasn’t recognized as such. His thesis was published in 1902, but published by a private company. Pavlov published his research on the conditioned reflex in 1903.

Twitmyer presented his research results at a meeting of the American Psychological Association in 1904, but had an unfortunate place in the schedule. By the time he got to speak, lunch was overdue. Perhaps the audience members were even salivating in anticipation. In any case, the eminent William James, probably in response to his own rumbling stomach, whisked through the possible question period and called for a lunch break. Hardly anyone took notice of Twitmyer’s discovery.

You’d think that triggering the knee jerk reflex without touching the leg would have been viewed with amazement, but no. Although he had a successful career, Twitmyer never performed another experiment along that line of research. Most of us have never heard of Twitmyerian conditioning.

This post was originally published as an article in the IAABC Foundation Journal in 2016. Thank you to Tiro Miller for his excellent editing.

References

De Watteville, A. (1882). On reflexes and pseudo-reflexes. British Medical Journal, 1(1116), 736–737.
Lombard, W.P. (1887). The variations of the normal knee-jerk, and their relation to the activity of the central nervous system. The American Journal of Psychology, 1(1), 5–71.
Mills, C.K. (1899). Some points of special interest in the study of the deep reflexes of the lower extremities. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 26(3), 131–160.
Twitmyer, E.B. (1902) A study of the knee jerk (Doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania). Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company.
Twitmeyer, E. B. (1905). Knee-jerks without stimulation of the patellar tendon. Psychological Bulletin, 2, 43–44.
Twitmyer, E. B. (1974). A study of the knee jerk. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103(6), 1047–1066.
Zehr, E.P., & Stein, R.B. (1999). Interaction of the Jendrassik maneuver with segmental presynaptic inhibition. Experimental brain research, 124, 474–480.

Photo Credits

Twitmyer and his dogs: courtesy of JSTOR.
Twitmyer’s experiment: University of Pennsylvania archives.
The Jendrassik Maneuver: Arthur Van Gehuchten, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Reflex Hammer: by Jeff Youngstrom via Flickr under this license. I altered the image by removing some lettering that was on the hammer, flipping the photo horizontally, and brightening the colors.

What If My Dog Responds Only When I Have Treats?

Posted on March 31, 2024April 1, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A woman wearing jeans and a purple shirt kneels in front of a small black and brown hound dog. The dog is crossing her front paws and looking intently at the treat held in the woman's hand — Teaching Zani to cross her paws using targeting, shaping, and luring

This is for people who have started to train their dogs with food. First, good for you! Food is a primary reinforcer, dogs usually love to work for it, it’s handy, and you get a lot of bang for your buck!

If your dog responds only when you have food, nothing is wrong with her. Somewhere along the way, she learned some patterns.

Dogs Are Great Predictors

Here are three patterns of your behavior your dog may have learned.

If you try to get rid of your food lure after using it a couple of times, and she doesn’t do the behavior without the lure, you may bring the lure out again.
Even if you don’t normally lure, if she hesitates after you give her a cue, you may touch your treat pouch, show her the food, or even give her some.
Before any training, you gather up some food, perhaps cut up treats, put them in your pocket or pouch, and go to your usual training place. Dog says, “Yay! This preparation means I get food for doing stuff!” You rarely use food outside of this scenario.

Your clever dog has noted these patterns. One day when you aren’t wearing your treat pouch and you haven’t set up for training, you cue her to perform a behavior. She looks blankly at you and doesn’t move. You don’t have any food to show her, and she continues to stay where she is.

What happened?

She is not being stubborn. She’s not cheating. You have accidentally made “visible food” or “presence of food” an antecedent to the behavior. Food is part of the cue. So when the food is not there, the cue is not complete.

You can fix this.

Isn’t a Cue Just One Thing Like a Word or a Hand Signal?

Most cues have more components than we realize.

A tan dog with a black tail and ears lies on a purple mat. She is stretching to get a treat a woman is handing her at floor level. — Luring Clara into a down. It was easy because the yoga mat is also a cue for lying down.

What happens if you pick up your dog’s bowl or gather up food toys at a time close to when you normally feed her? She gets excited, right? A meal is coming.

But what if you pick up the same bowl or food toys some other time, not close to a normal mealtime? She may notice or even pay close attention. But she probably won’t leap up, ready to eat. That’s because, besides the bowl and food toys, another part of the cue for “mealtime coming” is the time of day.

The problem is that most of us don’t realize all the things the dog has noticed that come together to create her cues. And if we accidentally leave some of them out, she may not respond. It’s our job either to see that all the components are present, or teach the dog what is and is not important. We’re going to do the latter to fix this problem

A Three-Part Plan

Here’s how you can fix the “dog doesn’t respond when food isn’t present” problem.

You need to show the dog what doesn’t predict food: your treat bag or the smell of food in your pocket, the sight of food, training session preparations, time of day, etc. And you need to show the dog what does predict the opportunity for food: your deliberate cue for a behavior. So here are the parts of the process.

Clean up training mechanics by properly timing the food delivery and fading lures quickly.
Show the dog that certain stimuli (e.g. the presence of a treat pouch) do not predict reinforcement on their own. (This process is called an extinction trial.)
Clarify the cue. We do this by showing the dog there is reinforcement available for performing the behavior after the correct cue, no matter the other conditions.

1. Clean Up Your Mechanics

Set up a camera and video your training. What are we looking for? Cleaning up mechanics is a big topic. What we want is:

Human delivers cue.
Dog does behavior.
Human marks with a clicker or some other marker.
Human reaches for food.
Human gives food to dog in one way or another.

A white dog with a brown ear and some brown speckles is sitting in front of a standing woman. We see the woman only from the waist down. The dog is looking eagerly at her left hand, which is reaching into her pants pocke. — Thanks, Lewis, for telling the world I keep food in my left pocket and that I often reach for it just a little too early

So when you watch the video of yourself, make sure you don’t reach for the food or even twitch your hand toward the food until you reach #4. Don’t let your hand drift toward your treat bag as you say the cue or start reaching as the dog does the behavior or as you deliver your marker. That hand stays still until after you deliver your marker, if you use one, or until the correct behavior is in progress if you don’t.

Practice without, then with your dog until your mechanics are clean.

Luring is another common way food can become the wrong kind of predictor. If you use a food lure to get a behavior, you need to stop using it very early in the game. This is called “fading the lure.” Here are two excellent videos by Emily Larlham about that.

The following video focuses on fading the lure.

Dog Training Tutorial: Fading a Lure (while teaching SPIN)

This next video is about fading a lure and adding a cue. What I really want you to see are Emily’s excellent mechanics. Watch her right hand starting at about 3:00. She keeps both her clicker and food in that hand. See how it stays stock still as she uses it to click, and doesn’t move until the dog has done the behavior.

DEMO of removing a LURE and adding a VERBAL CUE

Big thanks to Emily Larlham for having an excellent video on virtually every positive reinforcement training topic.

2. Break the Prediction with Extinction Trials

For a week or two, a couple of times a day, do what you normally do to prepare for a training session, but don’t have one. Cut up food and put it in your pocket or fill up your treat bag. Then continue your business for a while. Work at your computer, do the dishes, work in your yard; do anything but train your dog. When they come and “ask” you about it, acknowledge them, be sweet to them, but do not give them food. This is an extinction process and can be hard on the learner.

A woman is leaning over a white dog with a brown ear and some brown speckles. She is luring the dog with a treat in her hand and the dog is turning in a circle. — Luring Lewis into a spin

If there are other indicators you are about to train, such as gathering gear or going to a certain room, you can decouple them too. Your dog has likely learned them.

You are teaching your dog that when you work with dog food or carry it around, it means nothing in particular. Food is background noise. (But you can still have regular training sessions during this time that you set up in your usual way.)

A trainer friend told me her dogs stopped noticing whether she had her treat bag on or off after she became a professional trainer. Suddenly she was coming and going with the treat bag on, and it didn’t mean anything anymore.

Make yourself a schedule for these times you will wear a treat bag or do other predictive behaviors. Choose different times of day so the dog doesn’t learn a pattern. (They are so good at that!)

Most of us would agree that a dog who thinks they are about to have access to food, then doesn’t, may feel the doggie equivalent of disappointment.

To soften the blow, plan for your first steps to happen when training is unlikely, i.e., when there are cues for competing activities. Examples of such times would be:

right after you have finished training
when about to play with your dog with a toy (get the toy first, and make sure no food can fall out of your treat bag!)
when going for a walk or a ride in the car to somewhere fun (if you don’t normally use food)
when getting ready for bed
during human meals, but only if you never feed your dog from the table or shortly after

OK, you haven’t fixed the problem, but you’ve laid the groundwork.

3. Food Can Come from Anywhere

This last essential step is a fun exercise, and is a good thing to teach your dog even if you don’t have problems with them expecting to see the food.

Have some treats on your person in whatever way is normal for you. Usually, this will be in a pouch or a pocket. Also, have some of the same food in a jar a few steps away (positioned so the dog can’t help himself).
Ask your dog for a behavior. After the dog performs the behavior, use a marker if you normally do (clicker or verbal marker). Step to the jar (quickly) and reinforce from the treats in the jar. Do not give your dog food from your pocket or pouch.
Do this in different parts of your house (location can be a big predictor of a training session, too, so mix it up!), but at first, always have the jar very close.
Gradually reduce the number of treats you have on your person. If you consistently get treats from the jar, carrying food becomes less important. Work your way in steps to an empty, clean treat pouch, then no pouch. Same with pockets: work toward empty pockets in freshly washed clothes. Of course, dogs can smell food on clothes that have been washed, but they can also tell the difference between fresh, present food and the food molecules that remain after washing.
When your dog responds reliably to your cues when you are not carrying food, start to move farther away from the jar before you cue a behavior. The dog still has a visible “food cue” in the picture, so we want to remove that one, too. So start getting away. Three steps. Five steps. Do this gradually, over several sessions. Finally, the jar is around a corner. Or in a closed cupboard. At the other end of the house. Just inside your back door—and you give the cue outside. Our goal is to teach the dog their behavior makes food appear, whether or not they see the food beforehand.

You can even get fancy and make it so your dog usually gets a better reinforcer when you aren’t carrying food.

After the steps above, you can do most of your training sessions like you always have. But be conscious of your mechanics. And be sure to keep mixing in “remote” treats to keep your dog believing that food cam come from anywhere.. You’ll find it handy to continue to have little caches of food around the house.

Note: This Is Not the Time To “Fade” Treats!

Even if you plan to go to thinner reinforcement schedules and not give your dog a treat after each correct behavior, you should continue to do that while doing the above procedure. If “previewing” food has accidentally become part of the cue for all behaviors, this is a training mechanics error. It’s not a reinforcement schedule issue. Fix your mechanics first. Cleaning up your antecedent arrangement (food being too prominent before the behavior) is separate from thinning a reinforcement schedule (how often food is delivered after the behavior).

You can check out these two posts on reinforcement schedules.

High-Value Dry Foods

A tannish-yellow ceramic treat jar that has the word "WILD" scored into the clay and painted in black — Ceramic treat jar

Here are some of the foods I use in jars around the house. They are chosen so I don’t have to worry about spoilage.

Dehydrated lamb or beef lung
K9 Granola Factory treats
American Journey Oven Baked Dog Treats
Stella and Chewy’s dehydrated raw foods
Lotus oven baked dry food

I also use some other foods with a shorter shelf life for high-value treats. I make sure not to leave them out too long.

Credit for This Idea

Leaving food in containers around the house is not a new or uncommon idea! Neither is the above method for teaching a dog that food can appear from multiple sources. I first read of this practice in two different places: in the old ClickerSolutions Yahoo group, I believe posted by Greta Kaplan, and in Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels. It’s not anybody’s unique system, though. It follows the principles of graduated change, stimulus control, and generalization in behavior science.

How to Check a Dog’s Environment for Ultrasound

Posted on January 25, 2024March 31, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A scientific diagram on a black background with time on the x axis and frequency on the y axis. The frequency range extends to 70,000 Hz. There are blue and green areas from 50 to about 3,000 Hz, representing sounds in that range. There are faint, ascending lines in the range at and above 30,000 Hz, representing constant sounds in that range that are rising in pitch.

How can I tell if there is high-frequency sound in my house or yard that could bother my dog?

To detect possible ultrasound in your home, you need two things:

a specialty ultrasonic microphone that can sense frequencies higher than 20,000 Hz and connect to a smartphone or computer; and
an application that can record the sound, do frequency spectrum analysis, and bring the sound into human hearing range.

Desensitizing a Dog to High-Pitched Beeps: Part 2 of 2

Posted on January 12, 2024January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

Closeup of the head of a black and rust colored hound mix. She has drop ears, which are held a little forward. She is looking forward at something. — **This is a still from a sound exposure**

Please read Part 1 of this two-part series before this one, Part 2!

Part 2 recounts an informal case study I did when I applied the concepts I discussed in Part 1. To desensitize and countercondition my dog Zani to electronic beeps, I started with a low frequency that didn’t scare her and worked up to the original frequency. I did this rather than starting with a quieter beep since the beeps were already quiet and still scared her. I also adjusted the duration as part of the process.

Case Study: Successful DS/CC Using Frequency and Duration to Modify the Trigger Sound

Desensitizing a Dog to High-Pitched Beeps—Part 1 of 2

Posted on January 9, 2024January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A small black and rust hound mix sits on some colored mats. She is looking in the direction of the camera and her head is tilted to one side. She is listening to a sound that is being played over a speaker. — **This is a still from a sound exposure**

I am long overdue to write about this. I successfully desensitized and counterconditioned my clinically sound phobic dog, Zani, to electronic beeps. Here are some concepts and practices that could be helpful to others who are working with such dogs.

It’s Not Always about Volume

If I could convey one thing to people who want to desensitize their dogs to sounds other than low-pitched booms and bangs, it would be this: Think beyond the volume control.

Putting a Dog’s Harness on without Getting Bloody Arms: Adjusting Antecedents

Posted on December 31, 2023January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A woman and a brown and white dog are at the end of a hall next to a piano bench. The dog is standing on his hind legs with his front feet on the bench. The woman, in a red shirt and gray cap, is leaning over the dog and touching his leg near the shoulder. — I’m teaching Lewis to get used to body handling in the “paws up” position

I remember how magical it was, the first time I saw someone’s dog come running and happily thrust their head into their harness, then stand still for the buckling up. I was astonished that a dog could learn to do that. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

Since then, I’ve taught a good handful of dogs to be happy with wearing a harness and to help me put it on them. This includes a couple of challenging dogs who were worried at first about wearing gear.

6 Ways to Prepare Your Sound Sensitive Dog for New Year’s Fireworks

Posted on December 22, 2023January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A firecracker exploding with sparks flying

Get Ready

Is your dog scared of fireworks? Don’t wait until the holiday hits. Even with just a couple days’ lead time, you can make a plan and act now to help your dog be less afraid of the unpredictable scary sounds of fireworks, firecrackers, whistles, and even guns.

Here are some things you can do starting today.

Senior Dog Clara Is Barking at (Apparently) Nothing

Posted on December 15, 2023January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

Clara has never barked much. She rarely joins into social barking with other dogs, partly because I taught her when young to come to me instead. She doesn’t bark for my attention or from excitement. She doesn’t demand bark for meals or toys. She doesn’t even bark to be let in or out doors. The only barking she does much of is alarm barking. For instance, she’ll bark at some neighbors or their dogs when she’s in the yard. But even with that barking, she’s not persistent.

Although I have influenced her behavior with training over the years, it’s not all me. In a lot of ways, she’s a low energy dog, and I think she’s naturally not much of a barker.

Until now.

Why Do Dogs Tolerate Some Awful Sounds (and Smells)?

Posted on November 23, 2023January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

This is a revival of a post from March 2020, considerably rewritten. I wanted to play the included video in my recent webinar, but had to cut it for time. So here it is in the blog instead!

Why do dogs seem to be OK with some sounds and smells that are awful to us? This is not a clickbait question. I’m asking. I’m wondering about it because of an observation.

I’m not talking about sudden, loud sounds. That’s an easy answer. Sounds that are very loud and very sudden can trigger the mammalian acoustic startle response, a group of reflexes that fire to prepare us for danger. You all probably know what that feels like. Fear conditioning can result from such a sound.

Clara’s Advanced Trick Title: We’re Baaaack!

Posted on October 19, 2023January 26, 2024 by Eileen Anderson

A woman is leaning over a tan dog with a black muzzle and tail. They are in a back yard, standing in front of the trunk of a large tree. They are holding a braided, multicolor leash together.

Two years ago, I was working on Do More with Your Dog tricks with Clara. We earned three titles: Novice Trick Dog, Novice Masters Trick Dog, and Intermediate Trick Dog. We both enjoyed it so much. I had no plans to stop.

Then I brought Lewis home.

I am still embarrassed, and yes, ashamed, that I stopped working on tricks with Clara for almost a year. (Yes, it’s almost two years now; I’ll explain.)