Change takes time and persistance

At the end of 2007 I ackowledged that I wasn’t coping and that I needed to go out and get help. I had snapped on a few occasions and ended up pounding on my frightened puppy. I felt gutted as soon as I did it, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from having that strong emotional response. So I went to see a counsellor, and I looked up a dog trainer.

The counselling did some good. Time management was a major stress issue for me, as was some old emotional baggage. The biggie was being able to talk to an objective person, and get some time management tips. Then I needed time to shift my mood habits.

The dog trainer promotes herself as a positive trainer who deals one-on-on with problem dog behaviour.  The first session was useful in giving me confidence in handling Amika while she was reacting. That was all we got out of it. The second session was, in hindsight, a disaster.

In operant conditioning, one golden rule is to set your learner up for success. The trainer set us up to fail, repeatedly, by making us work too close to her dog. Amika spent a full hour bouncing between frantic treat taking and reacting / lunging. I was set up to fail because I was told to hold her back and stand between her and the other dog. At the end of the session, I had a hair trigger dog who had been “over threshold” and unable to think clearly. She had been set up to learn to fight me to get to the other dog.

It took both of us two full days to recover physically from that ordeal. (A 15 month old shepherd does not normally lay around for two days, I was sore all over.)  At the end of the session, the trainer had said Amika might benefit from drugs, and recommended a vet. She had also offered to have us work on the outskirts of her reactive dog class.

After some consultation with some experts on e-mail, I  realised what was wrong with the training session (the other dog was way too close to Amika). I also saw others posting about what dog behaviour is “clinical” and in need of drugs. I decided against drugs at this stage, and let the trainer know that I thought she had worked Amika too close to her dog. I wasn’t at all rude, and asked about working the outskirts of her class. I had no more replies. But she still mails me her self promotional advertising junk.

I had re-joined the online community after a stress induced hiatus. Instead of going back to my raptor forums, I looked for dog training sites and found the ClickTrain forum (www.shirleychong.com) . These guys had experience, and knew what they were doing. They told me stuff I didn’t know, and mentioned a few good books. I began to understand how I had done things wrong and what was going on with my dog.

I joined a local dog training club at the beginning of 2008, after the private training disaster. A new book that the ClickTrain gang recommended had some useful stuff I wanted to try, and I planned to hang on the outskirts of the club and work on stuff by myself. I politely declined the offer of help from a club instructor based on feedback from my ClickTrain friends. He was using old style training methodology (set ‘em up to fail, then jerk ‘em in the neck).

I wasn’t ready for the pressure of this busy environment, where I couldn’t prevent Amika from reacting some of the time. She also seemed worse as the evenings got darker, and in dark conditions. I gave up on going.

While we were tracking, I found a couple of local trainers and had a few privates with one of them. I was a lot happier with this trainer! She is accredited and educated, and uses OC (operant conditioning) theory based stuff.

Unfortunately, in July Amika managed to cut her leg open in the back yard on some glass, requiring a break from tracking and training. I got a bad flu not long after. Then I started working with a Wedge-tailed Eagle who turned out to be more of a handful than I’d planned. The upshot of this was a bored dog and a worn out human.

The internet came to my rescue again. I discovered that the really useful book that my ClickTrain buddies had put me on to had a forum. The positive posts and commiserations of reactive dog owners on that forum was a big part of my turning point. They inspired me to make a new plan.

At the same time, I began to concentrate on treating myself better. It helped a lot for me to think in terms of clicker training. I needed to set myself up for lots of little successes and fun stuff as rewards, rather than ploughing through for days at a time, stressing because there was so much to do, and rarely noticing that I had actually accomplishsed a lot.