Training Archives - Page 3 of 20

My Dog-Training Mentor and Inspiration

01•12•17

When I saw the theme for this month’s positive reinforcement pet training hop–my training mentor or inspiration–my first thought went to trainers whose work I devour: Patricia McConnell, of course. Victoria Stilwell. Debbie Jacobs. Et cetera.

But I wouldn’t know about any of those amazing women without their critical predecessor.

When I started to really think it through, it hit me that my one-and-only dog-training mentor and inspiration, the one who pushed me into the world of positive reinforcement and canine cognition and group training classes and desensitization and counter-conditioning… all of it… could only be Lucas.

It had to be him.

See, when we adopted Emmett in 2006, we thought we knew what we were doing. My bestie taught dog training classes, and we enrolled in her group class the day after we brought Emmett home from the shelter. He did great in class. He did great at home. He did great at the park and at parties and out shopping.

This is so easy, we thought. Let’s adopt another.

Enter Lucas.

All of a sudden–before we even left the parking lot of the animal shelter, actually, when we discovered that he was so afraid of cars that he would. not. get. in. to go home… and what the heck do you do in a busy parking lot with dogs everywhere and you have the dog who you’ve known for 30 minutes who has turned himself into a Tasmanian devil to keep from getting into the backseat of the car? what. do. you. do.–we understood that we knew nothing about dog behavior.

Sure, we could teach tricks and manners and such.

But nothing that resembled teaching behavior.

The agony of those first few months… he didn’t want to be patted. He didn’t wag his tail. He didn’t play with Emmett. He didn’t snuggle. What he did want? He did want to throttle every single dog he saw, and we saw a lot because we lived in a dog-friendly condo building next to a dog-filled park in DC. He did want to chew our chairs to toothpicks. He did want to have total melt-down panic-attacks daily.

Once we tried to list all the things he was scared of, but it was an impossible feat. Let’s just say he was scared of the TV being on and of plastic bags, along with everything else you can think of.

Oh, and we had this crazy accident in which giant Lucas got so scared on a walk he took off like a shot, but I had the leash gripped so tightly that he flung me into a No Parking sign and into the road. My face and arms were crazy bruised, and I had my 30-day review at my new job that week.

What scared him?

Our neighbor drove past and said, “Hi, guys!” out his car window.

There were tears. Lots of tears.

But there was also this gleam in his eye. Like, we could see him in there. And he and Emmett were slowly becoming the very best buds. Once they started to play, they never, ever stopped. They began to cuddle together on a dog bed. Then he began to cuddle with us and wag and play with us and with toys. He was in there.

Then we’d open our front door, and he’d retreat.

We met with several trainers who gave him a label: aggressive. Thank goodness we kept seeking other answers because we knew he was just flipping terrified.

That was our foundation.

We knew him. We knew he was in there. We knew just how fun-loving and playful he was. It was just hard for him to access that part of himself because the defenses he built were so thick and so high and so dense that it took monumental effort to dismantle them.

Those efforts kicked off the positive reinforcement journey.

And oh, how it changed all our lives. By the time we lost Lucas in 2015, he was himself. He was that fun-loving guy that was in there hidden by fear because the fear (well, most of it) was gone.

He LOVED doggy daycare! I mean, who knew?! That first year, that second year, if you had told either John or I that Lucas would be enrolling in cage-free daycare and boarding there, we would have split our sides laughing so hard.

But he did, and he loved it to pieces.

At a reactive dog group class Lucas and I took, one of the our classmates turned to me at one point and said, “Are you really sure he’s reactive?”

Highest praise I’ve ever received.

But the thing is, I was taking that class with him seven years after we had adopted him. He was never “fixed” or whatever. We learned his triggers and how to manage them, but we worked at it. Constantly. And had backslides.

He was so fun. Such a big, fluffy ball of love, filled with light and laughter. He loved hanging out with people and wrestling with dogs.

He still had his fears, and they’d crop up sometimes unexpectedly. But, at the end of the day, I learned so much from him, my training mentor and inspiration, about patience and about perseverance. I learned how resilient a dog can be and how the best things in life take the hardest work.

He was my teacher and carried a little piece of my soul with him. I’m grateful for all the lessons he taught me, and I sure wish he were still around to guide me.

I could sure use some help with Cooper. 🙂

The gift of positive dog training: kindness

12•09•16

Let’s say you’re at school hanging out on the playground. Another kid has some pieces of candy that you really want. You have two possible courses of action: Shove the kid over and snatch a piece, or ask him nicely if he’d be willing to share. The outcome in both instances is the same. You end up with a piece of candy. But in one, you’re a jerk, and in the other, you’re a friend.

Which one do you want to be?

OK, yes, there’s no question that that scenario is a gross oversimplification, but when you compare modes of dog training… it’s not too far off. I want my dog to sit. I can ask him nicely–through positive training techniques like luring or shaping–or I can shove his butt on the ground. In both cases, he sits. Mission accomplished. But in one, I’m a jerk, and in the other, I’m a friend.

That’s kind of how I think of it, and I’d always rather be a friend.

To me, that’s the gift of positive dog training. You have the opportunity to teach–and, thus, spread–kindness.

(Obvi, this pic is from over the summer. I snapped it after a round of Recall Relay, his favorite backyard training game. He looks so stinking happy in this pic that I thought it was the perfect representation of this topic!)

For dogs like Cooper, that’s particularly important. He’s a smidge neurotic, and what he’s totally fine with one day (nail clipping is nbd, yo!) he decides is terrifying the next (omg, get those clippers away from me, you devil you!) without warning. I need to work at his pace and accommodate his neuroses, and if I were the jerk, shoving him and pushing him and forcing him to do things that truly terrified him even if they make no sense to me whatsoever, maybe I’d get the same outcome but our relationship would suffer.

I’m not working against him.

I’m not pushing him or forcing him to do anything. With positive training, we work together. We’re building a partnership. He trusts me. He knows that if he’s scared, he can count on me to be there with kindness and, OK maybe not understanding (I mean, we clipped his nails for YEARS with the same clippers and never once cut the quick or anything negative, but now it’s terrifying?! huh?), but at least with gentleness and gratitude for his willingness to work with me.

Yes, sometimes he feels uncomfortable. Once we’re totally comfortable at one step, he has to go to the next step. That’s how it works. But by being kind, by being his friend, he trusts me to guide him to the other side of that discomfort, and he knows that when he gets there, I’m going to throw him one hell of a treat party!

This post in part of the Positive Pet Training blog hop, and this month’s prompt was “the gift of positive training.” Honestly, there are many gifts: that moment when you see the lightbulb flare to life in your pup’s head, that moment when something he was scared of becomes nbd, that moment when your tired-from-working-hard dog crawls onto your lap for a big snuggle. All that, to me, comes from the kindness inherent in positive pet training.

And that’s a gift that Cooper and I can keep on re-gifting to one another for the life of our partnership.

This month, thanks to the generosity of the blog hop hosts, there’s a positive pet training GIVEAWAY! Woop! You can enter to win two puzzle toys, a selection of treats, and a trick training book (it’s the same one Coop and I use).

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Thank you to our hosts, Tenacious Little Terrier and Rubicon Days, for making this possible!

When training takes years, literal years, don’t forget the small victories

07•10•16

It’s easy to forget how much progress is made with incremental, teeny-tiny baby steps.

When you’re in the thick of it, especially when you’re dealing with a problem behavior instead of, like, a fun trick, you can’t even fathom that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, let alone see it.

Once you get there, having taken those itty-bitty steps for God-knows-how-long, it’s easy to forget every teensy step that got you there. Or maybe not forget. Maybe gloss over. I call it self preservation because if you could conceptualize just how much effort some behaviors take… well, it might discourage you from trying.

You might have something in mind that was like that for you and your pup. Your own Everest of Dog Training. For Lucas, it was his dog aggression. Years and years and years of daily work, tears, classes, setbacks, more daily work, more classes, more setbacks… that ultimately made him Most Popular Jock at doggy daycare (title invented by me).

For Cooper, well, he has a series of Everests. Some are foothills, I suppose, because just about everything with him requires some sort of struggle. (Everything but cuddling and running, anyway.)

Our big victory, though, the thing I want to focus on for this blog hop is one of those that took so long and so many incremental steps that one day very recently (Friday) we realized… oh, my goodness… we’re on the other side of the tunnel/over the mountain and through the woods!

That thing?

The vacuum.

About 4 years ago, Cooper decided out of the blue that he hated the vacuum. Not only did he hate it. Oh, no. He needed to kill it. It came out of the blue because we spent a lot of his puppyhood desensitizing him to things like the vacuum that, post-adolescence, he just wouldn’t tolerate. (See: My theory why.)

Anyway, after struggling with his behavior… both vacuums are covered in bite marks… we decided to tackle the unsafe, unpleasant behavior. At the time I contemplated making a “before” video, but I ultimately decided against it because, once I was committed to addressing it, I didn’t want a single other incident!

We did all the usual vacuum-fear-counterconditioning things: Left it out and periodically put treats on and around it, touched the handle without turning it on while giving treats, moving it without turning it on while giving treats, and so on. The entire time, every time we had to actually run the vacuum, we put him outside or in another room to prevent repeats. Then we moved to running it with him nearby but behind a gate while giving him treats and ultimately escalated to tossing treats away from the running vacuum until finally, finally he was able to take treats from you while you were vacuuming.

Years. Also, our floors were never quite clean because all that? Yeah, it was a giant pain in the ass.

Which brings us to Friday. John got the vacuum out, and as soon as he hit the power button…. Cooper ran straight over to him! To where John was vacuuming! And right up to the vacuum!

Of course, four years later, his thought process is now, “Vacuum turns on, and even though I hate it, I get piles and piles of treattttttssssss!!!!” Which was the goal.

Yet, somehow we never really saw or realized: We achieved our goal!

No, he doesn’t trust the vacuum, and no, he’s not 100%. I’ve realized he still goes after the hose if I let his concentration waver. But. He did it. Or, at least, he’s doing it.

And it was so incremental, we didn’t even realize it!

“NBD! Gimme treats, man!” (Ed note: Please ignore the crappy photo. I will learn how to take pics some day… prob as soon as I get a camera… ha!)

“OK, maybe a little bit of a BD here with the hose. See these ears? These are BD ears. More treats, please.”

What are you working on in tiny baby steps? What progress have you made that you maybe take for granted? Celebrate those wins, y’all!

The Hedgehog Effect

06•10•16

Barking is a hot topic, huh?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about The Magic Box, and I’m pleased to report it’s still working (mostly) well. The trick is catching Cooper before the frenzy starts, or else it’s a lost cause. Emmett, though… Since he can’t really hear the trill, and he doesn’t bark at anything outside the house anyway, well, my sweet old boy just can’t figure out what makes The Magic Box spit out treats. He’s made it a habit to check it every few hours–after naps, after walks, after going outside, etc.–just to see if there are treats there.

Anyway, this isn’t about that exactly. This is about The Hedgehog Effect.

(I have a weird compulsion to name everything, apparently. It’s my Name All The Things Thing. Also, it’s always too chaotic when we use The Hedgehog, so no pics… but here’s one I posted recently on Facebook!)

After things passing by the house, Cooper’s next biggest flip-out is when anyone comes in the house. He gets SO excited, pretty much regardless of who it is. Even strangers, the little weirdo. Part of his excitement is shrill, frantic barking. Then, he redirects. When he used to do that to Lucas, it would occasionally turn into a fight. With Emmett, thankfully, Em just walks away. Cooper also jumps up, and he also smiles. The barking + jumping + smiling makes an intimidating picture for anyone who doesn’t know him or for anyone who’s his same size… Like our 6-year-old nephew, Owen, who’s pretty much eye-to-eye with Coop.

Rewind back to 2014: We attempted to curb this problem by handing Cooper a toy whenever we came in the house. It worked wonders. It was an instant fix, actually, which almost never happens with dog training! But then three things happened to derail.

First, we almost never remembered to put out a toy and give the full explanation to guests to give him upon entry, so that relationship never formed in Cooper’s mind.

Second, WE got complacent and kept forgetting to refill the toy bin in the garage, and it became so inconsistent that we all just sort of forgot about it.

Third, the toys that he didn’t outright destroy lost their luster. We just couldn’t keep a stuffie around for long enough to work more than once, and the hard rubber toys that last are way less cool, apparently, to Cooper.

But, now that we live so close to Owen, he comes over nearly every week to have game night or movie night or cookout or whatever. All things that include the dogs. So, we talked about what toys motivate Cooper the most. Interestingly, we came to the same conclusion as the toys that motivate Emmett the most:

A hedgehog.

I don’t know what it is about these stuffed hedgies, but they are THE winner in our house.

Kroger sells the cheap version, so John bought a whole bunch. The last time Owen came over, I called him up and asked him if he wanted to help me train Cooper to be calmer whenever he comes over. Of course he said yes. So, I told him I’d set a hedgie on the step and, as the dog trainer, he needed to hand Cooper the hedgie as soon as he walked in the door.

He did, Cooper dashed off to shred his reward, and all was calm.

We repeat each time Owen comes over to great success!

A couple weeks later we had the chance to really put The Hedgehog Effect to the test. My friend, who Cooper’s only met once, was in town visiting with her mom and her 3-year-old. Then, my sister came over with Owen.

It was chaos, the kind of thing that gets Cooper riled up.

But, honestly? He was (mostly) a perfect angel!

He shredded two giant hedgies into thousands of small pieces, but he didn’t jump on anyone. He didn’t bark in anyone’s face. He was pretty darn good!

Since then, whenever we’re worried that a situation will be overwhelming for him or get him riled up, we bust out a hedgie (or two) as needed. We’re reserving it for those stressful situations and stranger greetings–we’re back to regular, boring rubber toys for when we come in the house. I want to keep the hedgie special, plus his carbon footprint is getting so big… I may have to install another rain barrel to make up for it! But, it works to keep him calm.

There you have it. The Hedgehog Effect.

Are your dogs effusive door greeters like Cooper? How do you manage it?

Happy weekend, everyone!!

The arrogance of master

01•15•16

You are its master. It should do what you ask.

I saw that in a comment on a blog post elsewhere, and it got me all riled up.

Nope. He is my partner. He does what I ask because we love to work together.

Recently, I shared an article on Facebook that, to me, reflects exactly the spirit of that Maya Angelou quote, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

We are at a unique place in human history in which our understanding of animals is firmly rooted in science, in hard data, rather than a religious or agricultural or cultural understanding. We have canine cognition labs at major universities around the globe. We have fMRIs conducted on our dogs. We have chemical data taken from saliva and urine, and the empirical analyses of what those changes mean. We have pictures of dogs’ brains when they see and smell specific things. The list of data goes on and on and on.

Rightly so, that has changed our approach to animal training.

Right?

Well, not exactly.

If you glance through the comments on that article, the one that outlines tons of the science behind the behavioral approach that is not only humane but is also effective because it’s based in hard, scientific data, the comments are like, “Nuh uh.”

Hmpf.

How have we become a society that regards opinion more than data? (I’m not just talking about dog training, of course…) If you don’t want to train your dog in a particular way for any particular reason, why can’t we just say that? Why do we accept, “Well, MY OPINION is this, so I’m discounting the science, and I don’t believe you anyway because I trained my dog this other way and he was fine”?

If, in the face of data that shows not only how your dog’s brain is working while he’s working, and you still choose to train in another manner, then so be it. But we really, truly, seriously need to stop elevating opinion over data.

It’s to the detriment of our dogs.

It’s to the detriment of our relationship with our dogs.

“Master” is arrogant. I don’t want to be “master” of my dogs. I want to be partners. Even if the science weren’t there, shining a bright light down the path of change, doesn’t it feel like a more humane approach anyway? A kinder way of working together than dominance and mastery? Emmett and I had a long working relationship that was built on mutual respect and trust. End of story. For us, anyway.

We know better. So why do some continue to choose not to do better?

Discuss.