Training Resumes…again!
We’ll see how long it lasts this time…but, I was inspired to return to training. Because Caspian’s been showing signs of settling down as he’s gotten older, I think it’s worth testing the waters again with him around other dogs. And I’d love to be able to use Kaia sometimes with my clients’ dogs, so it seemed like a good plan to start bringing them both to work on Mondays (currently, my Sunday) for about half an hour in the evening to work in a nearby parking lot while dogs go home for the day.
This was the first Monday since the plan occurred to me, so at the moment I’m 1 for 1. I brought both dogs and worked with both dogs, and Caspian and I saw 1 (kind of 3) dogs with no barking. Woo hoo! A good start, for sure.It’s a pretty safe way to work around other dogs: we require that our clients leash their dogs to enter or leave the building, and the few clients who don’t follow that rule have their dogs under pretty solid voice control. We’re in a fairly industrial area, so it’s pretty rare to see dogs who aren’t coming to our facility. That means that I can pretty accurately predict when the dogs will appear, where they’ll be coming from, and where they’ll be going.
I worked with Kaia first. Caspian did a tiny bit of frustration barking when I first took her out of the car and left him to watch us work, but calmed down very quickly. He chewed a little on the bone I left him, but mostly he just watched us through the window. Kaia looked..well, Kaia looked like a dog whose owner hasn’t worked with her outside of the house in however many months it’s been. I got some good, fast sits, downs, and shakes from her, but couldn’t get any heeling at all. Her name response wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t perfect. I expect to see fast improvement with her, if I stick with this weekly training. We worked for about 10 minutes.
Caspian had about 2 minutes of total brainlessness (typical for him) with lots of whining, shaking, and checking out the environment. Then we went into “yo yo” mode, where he’d bounce rapidly back and forth between giving me clickable behaviors (looking at me, moving into heel position, sitting) and rushing off to the end of the leash as soon as he got a click and a treat. I increased my rate of reinforcement and did some loose leash walking and saw definite improvements and less yo yo-ing, which was great.
One thing he offered by chance that I actually really liked was a nice back up and sit while in heel position. It would be great to have him automatically move behind me when he’s feeling concerned! He offered that 5 or 6 times; I’ll be curious to see if he offers it again during our next session or if it was just a fluke.
By some less-than-great fluke, he happened to be lying down when the first dog came into view. Interestingly, he didn’t get up – it actually looked to me like he just kind of froze when he saw the dog, and it didn’t occur to him to move. I know I’m anthropomorphizing, there, but I can’t think of a different explanation. He certainly wasn’t comfortable about her presence (she’s about a 50 lb German Shepherd mix, who was probably about 50-60 ft away from us at the time), so I don’t know why else he would have stayed lying down.
He wasn’t responding to the click at that distance, but he did respond to the sight of food in front of his nose, and he ate it every time. He didn’t bark at all, and while he did get to his feet at one point he did not lunge forward or pull on the leash at all, but stood next to me while watching them. The dog and her owner came out of the building, crossed the parking lot for a potty break, then crossed again to their car. He whined off and on for about 10 seconds after the dog disappeared into the car, but he never barked.
We saw the tail ends of two more dogs, but his focus was somewhat gone by that time and he didn’t notice either of them until about a second before they disappeared behind a car. I clicked and treated him for looking at each of them, but still wasn’t getting any head turns in response to the click. I turned around and we walked back to the car (away from the dogs), and still didn’t get a head turn when I clicked for loose leash walking. I took that as a sign that we’d done everything we could for tonight, and got him back into the car before we saw anyone else.
Everyone seemed a little more stressed than usual when we got home, but nothing terrible. Kaia was mildly resource guard-y with her birthday present (today is her adoptive birthday, yay!), but nothing excessive. We’ll see how things go in the next few days before I’m really convinced that Cas is handling training better than he was before, but I’m hopeful so far. If I continue to be good, I’ll post another update next Monday!
Have you taught Look at That with a neutral object at home? Once the dog has the pattern down (look at scary thing, whiplash turn to mom for a c/t) it’s a lot easier to get it in the face of bona fide scary things like other dogs.
We taught a bc I work with a trick called “incoming”. When this is cued, she turns to face her handler, sits, puts her head between the handler’s legs. This gives her something to do besides get totally focussed and locked in on the other dog. She considers most other dogs a waste of space, I think it’s fear-based but I’m no behaviorist.
Nice to see you back. Good luck with your training,
Liza
January 15th, 2009 at 12:59 pmThanks for the reply, it’s kind of nice to be back and posting and working with my dogs! We probably should spend more time playing LAT with neutral objects, but he does have a terrific response to the click more often than not when we’re looking at anything but another dog.
I like the “incoming” solution, that’s cute! It might be a good thing to teach Kaia, since she’s past the point where she’s fearful. She’s just, ultimately, not a very tolerant dog, so a cue like that could really help in a pinch if we’re going to be forced to encounter a dog I think she would rather not meet.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:43 pm