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Who’ll Let the Dogs In?
Wuff, Wuff, Wuff Neutering the Dogs and Training the Leader of the Pack March 19, 2010
By Steve Fox
 With 12 times the national average of stray dogs per person, Taos needs a revolution in its treatment of our animal “best friends,” dogs and cats. The events of this spring suggest that a critical mass continues to work toward that revolution. The overall statistics, however—especially as we head into breeding season—indicate that many more dogs and cats will be euthanized by those who care, before our community gets healthier and more humane with its pets.
National Spay Day was Tuesday, Feb. 23, and the visit to Stray Hearts Animal Shelter by Mayor Darren Cordova and the entire Town Council spotlighted the problems, the growing community response, the long way we’ve come and still have to go.
Mayor Darren’s radio stations—KVOT with Nancy Stapp and KKTC with wacky Jeff Singer—set up a remote broadcast and took turns interviewing people dedicated to ending the cycle of “Let ’em be natural and breed,” which leads to “Make other folks kill and dispose of ’em when they’re homeless.”
On my visit to Stray Hearts this Spay Day, I heard for the first time the staggering multiplication pyramid that freely-breeding dogs and cats can create. Assuming adequate nutrition and low predation by coyotes and speeding pickups, one un-spayed female cat and her un-spayed progeny will field a guerilla army of 420,000 feral cats over seven years.
One non-spayed dog and her non-spayed pups will total 67,000 dogs over six years of heated reproduction.
The Saturday morning before Spay Day, Salazar Veterinarians Trish Albin, Kim Sides and Sue Felser spayed or neutered 32 dogs and cats for free, also sponsored by the Stray Hearts donor. That is a marathon morning of saving animals’ lives by taking a bite out of the reproduction pyramid.
New Quarters at Stray Hearts
Nobody who loves animals can visit Stray Hearts and tour the bright new Quonset Hut-style pods without feeling torn by emotions. First off, your heart melts as the puppies and grown dogs stretch their paws up the chain link cages asking, “Are you my new friend and leader? I could love you!”
The cats in the new cattery—being cats—play it much cooler. But the effect of a long stare from blue or green eyes, and a soft paw reaching through the mesh, is the same.
You could fall in love with any of a dozen or more of these unlucky refugees. You, and they, would be so grateful.
Then the shadow of the other reality crosses your happy thoughts. “As we go into spring mating season, a tsunami of cats and kittens will hit us,” says Nikki, one of the many volunteers keeping the cattery spic and span. “We’ll have a hundred new cats in here. Many ‘shoppers’ will want playful kittens. These beautiful adult cats, all spayed and neutered, may be shipped out—like we just did with 20—to Denver, or eventually have to be euthanized.” Euthanizing is an absolute last resort for Stray Hearts. But as a shelter—not a sanctuary—there is a limit to how much one outfit can do to solve what is a Taos community problem.
I walk among the cats, thinking of the myriad personalities and graces on hold here. There are single cages and larger play areas filled with an array of cubbyholes, nooks, domelets and even cat-sized square hammocks. At first I don’t see all the cats curled up in these ingenious hideouts, but then I do. A part-Siamese stares at me with china-blue eyes, slowly flicking her tail. A languorous Maine Coon sprawls full-length in the valley he/she has created in the collapsing top of a cardboard box. “You talkin’ t’ me?” it seems to say.
The Other Half of the Solution: You, the Leader
Stopping the reproductive engine of our pets is only half of the solution. The other half is training us to be the smart leaders of the pack (even a pack of two). Stray Hearts is teaming up with Jane Gerard to offer FREE blocks of training for owners and their dogs. Called “Leader of the Pack,” slots are booked through the first week in June. Call Stray Hearts for info and scheduling.
Gerard was born in London, raised in the Bahamas, and returned to London for advanced schooling in training animals—dolphins, sea lions, horses and, especially, dogs. She’s the only internationally trained multi-species trainer of animals and their owners in Taos. “The way I train dogs is based on the way I learned to train marine mammals,” Gerard told Taos Horse Fly. “It’s based on positive reinforcement—praise, a caress, a food treat or a hike. Whatever the dog likes, you, the leader, reward the dog with positive reinforcement rather than using a choke collar or pushing them into the posture you want with your hands. This is new in the last years across the country. It’s really a revolution in training owners and their dogs.”
Gerard also emphasizes that her classes are tailored to the needs of Taos dogs. “Because we have so many roaming dogs here, I’ll be teaching owners how to keep their dogs on the proverbial short leash, in close contact with the dog’s shoulder next to your leg, where the owner can look directly down into their eyes. Then I teach the dogs to sit and stay, with no forward movement or contact with roaming dogs in the vicinity, until the owner tells them to go on.”
Roaming free, Gerard says, reinforces the dogs’ roles as hunters, predators and reproducers. Training you and your dog to know how to avoid being drafted into this canine army of free-lancers restores the proper relationship between you and your pet. “You’re the leader of the pack, however small it is,” says Gerard. “Dogs accept this readily when they’re insistently reminded of this hierarchy and rewarded for accepting their role.”
Gerard is a member of the national Association of Pet Dog Trainers. She founded The Complete Pet Ranch near Tres Piedras years ago, for horses and dogs, but I imagine that if you have a sea lion or couple of dolphins in the stock pond, Gerard’d be delighted to help you. She began discussing the idea of the classes with their eventual sponsor in 2007. The woman tried to adopt a young Lab from the county shelter when it was at the sheriff’s building and managed by Pennie Herrera Wardlow and the Four Corners Animal League. After the Lab didn’t get along with the family’s dog in a “try-out” sleep-over, she arranged through Herrera for the Lab to board/train with Gerard until she found a California family that wanted him. “I introduced the dog to the couple at the Santa Fe Opera parking lot, they bonded, got in the car, and left,” remembers Gerard.
Because of that successful rehabilitation, the same donor is now funding Gerard’s free dog-and-owner lessons for Stray Hearts. “We meet for five Sundays at the County Agricultural Center. Then, to ‘graduate’ them into the real public world, we hold the sixth session in Kit Carson Park,” says Gerard.
The donor supporting this program outlines three purposes: to make more people comfortable about adopting a shelter dog from a behavioral point of view; to improve community relations between Stray Hearts and people who say they haven’t felt welcome there in the past, or who felt it was too complicated to adopt from Stray Hearts; and to make it easier for people to train their dogs, producing happier dogs and owners and making it less likely that a dog will be abandoned because it’s too unruly or too aggressive.
You can check out Gerard’s methods and manner on her website, thecompletepetranch.com, where there’s a four-minute video clip of her dog training approach.
When the familiar “Who let the dogs out?!” comes over KTAO announcing the daily list of “Lost and Hound” dogs missing or found, be on the team that lets the dogs in on the proper roles humans and pets can share with each other.
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