For a start, I was away overnight and arrived home to an enthusiastic greeting from Amika. She doesn’t like it when one of her people is out of reach, let alone out of sight or away from home. She doesn’t have serious separation anxiety, but she does miss us. I’m sure that she doesn’t sleep as well when we aren’t properly settled under her observation.

Today she didn’t get any exercise at all before it was time to go to class, and she was the most excited I’ve seen her since before the kennels. To top that, we were both in the car, and that really gets her thinking she’s in for a good time. Usually she settled and dozes on the long roads, but not this time: she was up circling and whining for half the trip.

So we had a bit of extra adrenaline, some no-exercise-yaya’s and someone else to keep track of. She did self calm pretty well after the initial singing session about being there. I got eye contact pretty much straight out of the car and didn’t put her back in the crate again until it was time to go home.

We dealt with the yaya’s (excess energy due to lack of exercise) by taking her into the greyhound run. She’d run out ahead, run back when I called, chase a Hurley, bring it back as we ran away… It was a short bit of off lead exercise, and well worth it. Exercise in this setting does drive up her arousal level, so we went back to the car for a drink, stopping on the mat on the way.

The virtual separation anxiety is something I’ve mentioned before. I think it is sheepdog gene related. Amika wants to make sure that all of her people are rounded up in one spot so she can keep and eye on them. If the flock splits, it makes her uncomfortable. This was pretty easy to manage simply by parking the man next to the mat. She knew where she’d left him, and he stayed there and was still there when she returned. Though having him out of reach did concern her.

The extra hype/ arousal stuff turned out not to be a huge issue. My dog has developed coping skills!!! She was more on edge than last week, which wasn’t great, but she showed excellent eye contact as a default and most of the time responded to cues first time. My partner observed that the trigger for her to begin reacting (mildly in all cases) was another dog walking towards us. Distance wasn’t a big factor at the distance at which we are working. That is a big change over last year, when distance was a big issue, as was ANY movement from the other dogs.

I worked on a couple of things tonight. We got in two people greetings, and I managed to do good at both. I got her to sit and acknowledge my existence for a split second before I gave her a release and let her close the gap. She still does the singing, lunge-ing idiot routine as people approach with eye contact, but it isn’t quite as intense. A few times on neighborhood walks, she’s actually almost ignored passers-by in favor of smells. This is a good thing.

I wanted to work BAT with the criteria of her doing a calming signal before running back to the mat (and the man- a big extra reward!) This got complicated because I’ve taught her eye contact really well, so she looks for a bit and then turns back and looks into my eyes. That on its own is incredibly amazing considering what I was up against last year. So I just went with eye contact some of the time.

Amika doesn’t offer clear calming signals very often. Tonight I missed marking and rewarding two beauties: a look-away and a lip-lick. I’m not beating myself up about it because I know I’ll get there eventually. I ended up just going with relative calm body posture (so subjective) and that fantastic eye contact. I did some reps of BAT: she sees the dogs, looks and is relatively relaxed and I mark and run with her to her mat. I also did CU-ish stuff with her offering look-at-that (LAT) and then eye contact for a treat.

Something different about the last few sessions is that she is definitely no longer hauling me towards the other dogs. Yes, she heads their way sniffing when I cue her to have a sniff (which is a combo calming signal, stress reducer and just plain fun for her). But the frenzy to close the distance seems to have gone. Tonight her focus was also with the other human whom she’d left by her mat, so her motivation to go away from the dogs was a little more pronounced. Even so, I’ve noticed she goes for mat breaks during rounds of people greetings, so she does seem to be using it as a self calming space and choosing to go there.

Towards the end of class, while the class participants were circling each other fairly closely, I approached with Amika. We got closer than we have been (about 30m ?), and even with a dog looping towards us Amika was able to cope without a reaction. We did some un-cued LAT reps and called it a very successful night.

I do need to lift my game as far as responding to her signals. Part of the problem is that I haven’t decided what I want to do. This is because I don’t know what Amika wants. She whines and kind of wants to bark at them, and I tell her not to. That’s not great, because I’m asking her to suppress behaviours, which is a lot of effort and isn’t going to support her in changing her emotional state.

I’m thinking that I will try clicking those signals and move away from the dogs. I think we’re at the stage where I might be able to really discern “I want more space” from “I wanna run wild with them”. We started with the latter when she was a pup, but now I think it really is the former. Probably both “space” and “play” are forms of stress relief from social interaction anyway. I’m also going to try to capture some calming signals and put them on cue. Easier said than done, but I have made a start on “stretch”.

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.

Working with Amika

We got there, I set up crate and mat. She was excited well before we got there this time. To start out, I took her over to the greyhound run for some exercise. This is a laneway that runs the length of the property, filled with nice sand. It goes for over 100m. Rather than getting someone else in to call her back and forth, I just gave the “run!” cue repeatedly, between calling her back my way with a “c’mon!” So I mostly jogged in one direction, and turned to pretend to run the other way as she came past.  I probably covered about 30m and then doubled back to the gate we entered by, but Amika covered a lot more ground by running back and forth past me.

So this wore her out pleasantly, but hyped her up a bit. We headed back to the car through the car park. It was good to see that while focused on getting back to the car for a drink, she wasn’t too fussed about the dogs on the oval. Once recovered from fatigue, though, they became much more of a focus.

I did lots of in and out of car crate to mat, LAT dogs, GMAB / go sniff and reinforced lying in her crate with opening away from other dogs. I wasn’t very happy with her emotional state overall: she was edgy, wanted to go interact and not ‘happy’ to work. More like she was working with me under duress. Part of this would have been my mood- I wasn’t able to be particularly fun and upbeat.

She did offer lots of good eye contact, and only had one partial reactive episode when someone popped out from between cars way too close, and walking towards us. I dragged her back to the car for a break when that happened (no point trying to -make- her stay in soft crate, that’s counter to what I’m trying to do!) I brought a frozen kong for her to work on during breaks (gave her several) but she seemed to feel pressured to eat it NOW, and get it done so she could get on with stuff. The fact that it was a slow process just seemed to cause frustration, which I saw a lot of during the evening. Patience isn’t her strong point, and she seemed to have less than usual.

Though we were able to work in a fair bit closer to the action in short bursts, I am feeling frustrated that we seem to be stuck at this ‘level’. We aren’t able to be close enough to interact with the class, and it doesn’t feel like we are making progress as far as decreasing distance. Distance seems to be dependent on her frame of mind, rather than anything we are doing, but that could be in my head.

Moods

I was thinking about the ‘frame of mind’ thing last night after class. I find that many animals are complicated people, and Amika seems to be one of the more complex ones I know. She is a pushy bitch, wanting her own way NOW. She is easily aroused, and seems to want to get into an aroused state (adrenaline junkie). She is sensitive to my frame of mind over a longer time frame, and is currently suffering from stress due to my moodiness (I’ve taken on too much work= depression / anxiety). I also think I’m seeing a pattern of her stress leading to allergy flare-up, with resulting dullness of mind. To top this, I have been doing less stuff with her and her brain hasn’t had enough consistent exercise and there isn’t much of a routine in our days.

I’m floundering a bit, but am aware that my state of mind has a big influence over my dog (and of course, me!) I’ll be on the mend over the next few weeks. It will be interesting to note how Amika responds to changes in my state of mind, and see if the allergies disappear again.

Class progress

The actual class had several people and dogs in it last night (good to see!) and they are all starting mat work, with some able to so so in fairly close proximity in the pens. I’m really happy to see CU working well for them. I’m still hanging out for more “Night Three” stuff. But since I do feel that we are stuck and not making progress to getting closer, we wouldn’t be ready to join in anyway!

Behaviour Adjustment Training

I may try to tee up some BAT sessions. Assuming that I can make moving away rewarding for Amika, this may be a way of explaining to her what behaviours “work” in proximity to dogs. Right now, her pattern is to want to close the distance, get frustrated and fly right out of her mind. Apparently this gets rewarded by the “rush” of adrenaline.

One hitch that I have with Amika is that I have trouble getting her to move with me at the best of times. I keep working on it, but it is always an uphill battle to get Amika to stay interested in / connected with me. This brings me to: how am I going to be able to read (and reward) good body language if she is pulling ahead to check out that other dog? I can try to heel towards to other dog, and then turn and play before she looses focus on me, but then I’m not rewarding a new instance of behaviour. BAT (from what I understand) works best if your animal moves with you, you stop, they give a calming signal, you reward with distance / play. Maybe I just need to set up BAT with a big mirror?! Then I reward when I see the other dog do something good.