Mission: Keep a Weimaraner Busy

Some projects start with a perfectly rational need.

And then there are those that start because a dog figures out the games you buy him far too quickly.

This one belongs firmly in the second category.

Kiss is a Weimaraner.

He's curious. Very curious.

And he needs to be kept regularly occupied.

So naturally, we've tried various intelligence games for dogs: moving a piece, opening a compartment, operating some mechanism to get to a treat...

The problem isn't that he can't solve them.

The problem is that he can.

Once he's understood the mechanism, what was initially a problem to solve quickly becomes a procedure that simply needs to be repeated.

So we started cheating.

One solution is simply to hide the game somewhere in the house. Kiss then has to find it before he can start solving the puzzle itself.

It works.

But inevitably, after watching him do this for a while, an idea started to emerge.

What if the game itself could change?

Apparently, It's a Weimaraner Thing

Before adopting Kiss, I'd obviously read quite a lot about Weimaraners.

Energetic, intelligent, curious, extremely close to their humans, observant, sometimes rather clingy...

Reading some owners' accounts, you'd think their dogs spent their days analysing how the house — and the humans living in it — worked.

To be perfectly honest, I used to take some of those stories with a pinch of salt.

People who are particularly passionate about a breed sometimes have a tendency to attribute every possible quality to it.

And the Weimaraner comes with a rather particular image.

William Wegman's photographs probably have something to do with that. For decades, his Weimaraners have been portrayed in such remarkably human situations that they have helped create this image of a dog that's almost... too human.

I found it amusing.

But I also sometimes suspected there was a little bit of self-congratulation behind some owners' stories.

Then Kiss arrived.

Let's just say I've revised my opinion slightly.

He Wasn't My First Dog

Kiss isn't the first dog I've lived with.

There were others before him, including a Rottweiler with whom I shared nearly fourteen years.

He too belonged to a breed historically selected for work.

He too was very attached to me.

And it was a wonderful experience.

But a very different one.

Looking back, I think I could summarise the difference like this:

My Rottweiler wanted to be with me.

My Weimaraner wants to be with me, but he also seems to want to participate.

Or, if participating isn't possible, at least watch very closely whatever I'm doing.

It's particularly noticeable whenever I start doing something he considers unusual.

A strange object appears, I start taking something apart, I'm handling equipment that isn't part of the usual routine...

He generally has to come and investigate.

Not necessarily because he expects something from it.

Simply because something is happening and, apparently, it concerns him too.

I don't know whether Kiss understands more than the dogs I've known before him.

I mostly get the impression that he wants to understand more.

All of This Sounds Wonderful. Well, Almost.

Presented like that, it all sounds rather appealing.

A curious dog, attentive to what you're doing, eager to participate and constantly interested in his surroundings.

In real life, it can occasionally be a little less poetic.

When you're working on a lawnmower, for example, discovering a Weimaraner's nose practically inside the engine isn't necessarily the kind of technical assistance you were hoping for.

And that curiosity obviously isn't limited to whatever I'm doing.

A delivery driver arrives with a parcel?

Mandatory inspection. It might be for him.

Guests enter the house?

It seems perfectly obvious to Kiss that these humans have made the journey specifically to admire His Canine Majesty. They therefore deserve a proper welcome and, if possible, he should quickly become the centre of their attention.

It's funny when you know the dog.

It's considerably less funny when the person standing in front of him isn't comfortable around dogs — or is simply afraid of them.

An adult Weimaraner deciding to take a personal interest in you is still an animal whose presence can be quite imposing.

So we're also working on that side of his behaviour: being curious doesn't mean you have to participate in everything, and not every human who walks through the door necessarily wants to interact with you.

On that last point, we clearly still have a few differences of opinion.

The Keys

Kiss already communicates very effectively with us.

Not with words, obviously, but he has developed various ways of making us understand what he wants.

One of them particularly fascinates me.

When he wants to go into the garden and the door is closed, he stands in front of it.

So far, nothing particularly remarkable.

But if we don't notice him quickly enough, he rattles the keys located near the door.

And it works remarkably well.

The noise gets our attention almost instantly.

If that first attempt doesn't produce the expected result quickly enough, we generally get a whine.

And if, for some reason, we're still not looking at him, he'll rattle the keys again.

Obviously, it's impossible to know exactly what's going on inside his head.

So I'd rather stick to what we can actually observe.

This behaviour seems to have acquired two functions.

First, the keys have become an excellent way of making us turn our heads.

But in this particular context, they also carry information that we've learned to interpret:

"I'm standing in front of this door and I want to go outside."

And when the first attempt isn't enough, Kiss clearly has several ways of escalating the request.

Keys.

No result?

Whine.

Still nothing?

Keys, second service.

Patience is definitely not his greatest quality.

Except, strangely enough, when he decides that the task in front of him genuinely deserves his attention.

When He Decides to Work

We do dog training with Kiss twice a week.

In terms of pure obedience, I don't think there's anything particularly extraordinary to report.

He obviously knows a whole range of commands, some more useful than others.

And, incidentally, a dog that understands "left" and "right" is far more useful than you might think.

But ultimately, the number of commands he knows isn't what interests me most.

It's his relationship with work.

When he's in the mood for it, his level of involvement can become quite impressive.

He can, for example, maintain a static position while remaining completely focused on what he's being asked to do, even while other dogs are playing, moving around or generally behaving like idiots nearby.

It's the kind of thing that regularly catches the attention of people watching our training sessions.

We also did training with our previous dogs.

Usually for about a year.

Eventually, the essentials had been learned and continuing didn't seem particularly necessary.

With Kiss, the question feels different.

We don't particularly need him to learn more things.

But he seems to need to keep working.

He clearly loves those sessions and can become incredibly invested in them... when he feels like it.

So we keep going.

Not because there are still essential things we need to teach him.

Simply because it seems to be good for him.

Tiring the Legs Isn't Always Enough

When people talk about a high-energy dog, the first thing that naturally comes to mind is physical activity.

And obviously, that's important.

But living with Kiss has also made me much more aware of another dimension.

You also have to keep what's between those two ears busy.

I'm going to stop fairly quickly before wandering too far into the field of dog training.

I have neither the qualifications nor the legitimacy to teach anyone how to properly meet a dog's needs, and there are people infinitely more competent than me to talk about that.

I can simply describe what we observe with ours.

Walks and physical activity are important.

But training sessions, games, exercises and learning new things seem to fulfil a different need.

Kiss doesn't appear to simply need to burn energy.

He also seems to enjoy having something to do with his brain.

A Small Aside I Wish We'd Had Much Earlier

Since I've nevertheless put one foot into the subject of dog training, I might as well mention a French-language resource I personally wish I'd known about from our very first dog: Esprit Dog.

What I particularly appreciate about their content is that it isn't simply a collection of recipes for teaching "sit", "down" or recall.

A lot of it is about understanding the dog that's actually standing in front of you.

I'm obviously not claiming that everything they say should be treated as universal truth.

It's simply a source of information that I find useful enough today to want to recommend it.

And no, this isn't sponsored.

We've had several dogs over the years and, along the way, received a few pieces of advice from supposed specialists that we could quite happily have done without.

Looking back, some mistakes could probably have been avoided if we'd had better information from the beginning.

But that's another story.

Unfortunately for English-speaking readers, Esprit Dog's content is essentially in French.

Genetics, Environment... or a Bit of Both?

That leaves a question I obviously don't have an answer to.

Why do these kinds of descriptions appear so often among Weimaraner owners?

Part of it probably comes from the characteristics for which the breed was originally selected.

But I also wonder whether there's some kind of feedback loop involved.

A dog with enormous amounts of energy and a strong need for interaction almost inevitably forces its humans to spend a great deal of time with it.

More activities.

More training.

More interaction.

And therefore also an enormous number of opportunities to observe humans, their habits and the consequences of certain actions.

So how much of it comes from genetics?

How much comes from the environment?

How much simply comes down to the individual dog's personality?

I don't know.

And this project certainly isn't intended to answer that question scientifically.

But having been fairly sceptical when reading some owners' accounts before Kiss arrived, I find the question considerably more interesting today than I did back then.

So, What Are We Going to Build for Him?

Ultimately, all these observations are what led to this project.

Traditional intelligence games work.

But once their mechanism has been understood, they quickly become repetitive.

So the objective wouldn't be to build a puzzle so complicated that Kiss can't solve it.

That would probably be an excellent way of creating frustration rather than stimulation.

The idea would instead be to create something capable of evolving.

At this point, I haven't built anything yet.

I'm imagining relatively simple modules that can easily be moved around.

Buttons.

Sounds.

Different mechanisms.

A reward when the correct action is performed.

We could start with all the elements grouped together in one place.

A sound.

A corresponding action.

A reward.

Then gradually introduce other sounds and other actions.

After that, perhaps move the modules.

Change their positions.

Change the associations.

Introduce multiple steps.

Physically separate some of the elements.

In short, try to build not a game where Kiss has to learn the solution, but a system capable of regularly presenting him with a new problem to understand.

And perhaps, along the way, observe how he approaches it.

No Idea What's Going to Happen

For now, that's exactly where the project stands.

An idea.

A few observations.

A few possible mechanisms.

And a lot of questions.

I don't yet know what electronics I'll use.

I don't know what form the modules will take.

I don't even know whether Kiss will understand the principle I have in mind.

And it's entirely possible that after several hours of design, 3D printing, electronics and programming, he'll look at my magnificent prototype for three seconds before deciding that the cardboard box the components arrived in is considerably more interesting.

That would be unfortunate.

But it would also be an answer.

So the first objective will be much more modest:

build something simple enough to discover what Kiss decides to do with it.

As for what comes next...

We'll probably have to ask him.