Back to school (finally!)
Yay! We made it back to reactive dog class at the Shepherd club. It seems like it has been a long road to get there.
I hadn’t intended to give her the summer off, but that’s sort of what happened. Between my lack of enthusiasm some days, very hot weather and general “other stuff” she hasn’t been back for two months or so. We finally had a break from the horrible hot weather today, and I was determined to get back again.
In the meantime, we have been working on stuff:
Through January I was taking her out for a run almost daily, plus doing clicker training stuff at home. The run at our secluded park always begins with some heeling work. I was using food, but then found toys were more motivating for her. I also started walking her to different areas adjoining the park and practicing loose leash walking.
The beginning of February was the annual holiday for 11 days. I got her onto some Chinese herbs and homeopathic stuff before leaving her at the kennels. I also fattened her up some since they had trouble feeding her last year. She came home skin and bones with almost no interest in food. Now, 3 weeks on, she is approaching normal food motivation. It took 3 full days for her ‘happy’ to come back too. The herbs are powerful things, and I think part of her lack of appetite may be a ‘don’t care’ thing related to them. But she also just flat did not cope. I’m not sure what I’ll do next year, but don’t think I’ll go back to that kennel.
Back at home, I decided to push the envelope. Amika had a nice restful night at home before I took her out on the street. I haven’t taken her on a neighborhood walk in about a year, I think. She gets hyped so quickly and I have not had the emotional stability to ‘deal’ with her having an outburst. For some reason that’s changed, and almost every day we go for a walk or two around the suburban streets.
We started short and have graduated to going around a whole block and a bit. The weather hasn’t helped this endeavor, but I’ve just done it anyway. She still gets more anxious about night walks, so have to make sure we don’t overdo them. And since she had no interest in food that first week, I take a pocketful of treats and the rest of the time have focused on building toy drive, and used “go sniff” as a reward. Yes, there have been a few dogs. I just keep on going and reward alternative behaviours (the non-reactive ones).
Back at class, I didn’t know what to expect. One thing I learnt a long time ago abut animal training (and life!) is that the less expectations you have, the more miraculous the outcome. As soon as you form ‘expectations’ of your learner’s performance, you will be disappointed. I still do this… but not tonight.
I did the standard thing you do after a break: went “back to kindergarten”. All the criteria were low, the rate and quality of reinforcement was high. I had one set of behaviours in mind based on what I learned on the Caterpillar Dogs group. However it wasn’t’ formal or scientific- I was very relaxed about it.
On arrival, she reacted to a distant dog while still in the crate. I was at the back of the car getting gear, so I was able to open the other door of the crate, hold her harness and help her into a down. I have been trying Dr. Dunbar’s idea of being a broken record in certain situations where she can’t think, so it was “down, down, down..” and gradually she did, and I gave her some dinner-on-a-spoon as a reward. This dinner had mackerel mixed in, and that got her attention. She was able to self-calm pretty well after that.
I put her back in her crate once. That was just after getting her out the first time, since she wanted to react at distant dogs. After that it was all mat work. Our mat work is pretty shoddy at the moment, since I haven’t revisited it in months, but she still knows the drill. We moved out onto the oval, and other than some over-the-top greetings of people, she was pretty focused. I think this has improved as a direct result of the stuff I have been doing the past couple of months.
We headed out onto the edge of the oval with the mat and the container of dinner-with-a-spoon. I also had some new toys: Hurleys made by West Paw Designs. These are near indestructable floating, throwing and chewing on things. She loves them. The pattern was this:
- Start on mat in relatively relaxed position, reward eye contact and relaxation.
- Walk on loose lead while having a sniff then sit by me and look at other dogs calmly- click.
- The reward is to run back to the mat and get food.
I also played with the hurleys a couple of times. To start out, she wasn’t that interested. As a reward for tugging with me a bit, I sent her to sniff. At the end of the session, I used the extension on her lead and did the whole sequence of tug, throw, retrieve, tug, throw… Also, when on the mat, I asked for “tummy scratch” a couple of times and got happy, relatively relaxed responses. She wasn’t snapping back to attention after, but I kept it brief. That seemed to calm her, and she just generally offered ‘relaxing’ on the mat in order to earn not only treats but another round of “go sniff” and heading towards the other dogs.
Amika did bark a few times. Mostly it was pure happy-excitement. On a couple of occasions other dogs got a bit too close but the reactions were pretty small and short lived. She’s getting much better at calming herself down. Part of that is the herbs, but she is also learning. We didn’t get particularly close, but I was thrilled with her level of comfort. She still breathed harder than normal- this IS hard work for her- but she left the oval more relaxed than she arrived!
On the way home, I thought about stuff. One thing I have known about for a while, but not really taken in as a belief, is that you need to let their emotions lead you in order to gain trust and build confidence. I haven’t thought of it in quite that way before, and mostly it has been just an ‘out there’ fact. I’m happy to feel that I’ve internalised that some more. I’ll be trying to use that more with my birds as well.
I’ve posted before about wanting to push to the boundaries which makes her fail. That mindset comes from just looking at coarse / big behaviours. Is she reacting? No- push closer. Still not? Even closer… until she fails and practices the same old unwanted behaviour. The stuff I’ve read says this isn’t a good way to do things. If, however, you focus on the fine detail stuff that just relates to emotional state, you get a whole new “edge” that is further out than the big barking display. Happy ears? Yes. Move closer. Still happy ears? NO! There’s the new edge- we’ve failed in keeping her 100% comfortable, but we’re still several steps away from practicing the bark / lunge mess. We haven’t lost ground by driving her adrenaline up a lot, and she hasn’t added practice to the old pattern.
I’m going to concentrate on Amika’s new edge, honoring where she says it is, and try, so very hard, not to push her beyond it. The next thing I need to believe in / internalise is that the distance she needs will shrink without me pushing it.
