Exercising Reactive Dogs Thread

[grumpette]

If I make it to advance, thistle will be doing offlead work around other dogs and people. Something I'm only comfortable in the obedience class environment and because I know the other dogs have as solid obedience and the trainers are there to help if something goes wrong. Some in the class are DA but thistle is the only one reactive to humans I think. Or at least, the most noticeable.

And in the class my understanding is sometimes dogs are in position and people will switch places and be moving around so thistle needs to be able to hold her position while ppl are in close proximity and I am not. She can do this for stand and drop while I was 5m away. But since she can't hold that stand in class...

Currently in lvl 3 we do a lot of work on long lines and at a distance. So the midway point to offlead. but obviously we have had to work up to this. I think even average dogs you can't jump straight to offlead with.

Personally I don't think I would do formal obedience or agility. Not yet anyway, 50% thistle but been really turned off by the culture around these. Very unwelcoming to new ppl, even if I am just watching to learn... But I've considered rally o, our class gives introductory sessions and it was fun. Seems less exclusionary, flexible and open to "just for fun" people. I'm really hanging out for nose work but that's only advanced... Just fun activities to do with thistle when we've got most of the tough bits smoothed out ;) but it would depend on the dog, I think even though reactive eventually we can teach her to just ignore other ppl and dogs in majority of situations. Which most of these need.

And I intend to attend lure coursing in September :) and I've been looking into weight pulling. Want to try a little bit of everything to see what she enjoys the most.

There was someone in dol who taught a scared dog stand for exam...I think it was for showing? It's like the first and only result for "scared dog stand for exam" in Google. I refer to that thread every few months to refresh myself on ideas.

I am so sorry that you have been shunned whilst attending obedience trials or events. But please don't let that stop you from trying these activities or attempting to compete, especially in Rally O, when you think that you and Thistle are ready. Obedience and Rally O have been brilliant for Dee, her confidence and her self control. She is DA, has very high prey drive and can be wary of strange people.

Below are photos from one of her obedience trials, her first trial in Novice in August 2010. Notice her tail down, ears back and head facing the judge and the licking as he approaches. Then notice her tail up, her attention on me and her focus as she heals around other people. There is also a Border Collie working in the ring next to her. She does not like fluffy dogs, as they were the ones that attacked her.

She passed that day, and went on to gain two more passes and obtain her Novice or CD title. It took nearly 3 years and I never thought that we would get out of that level, due to her lack of confidence, but we did. Before this we were in CCD, which is all on lead. She is now in Open where she gets to fetch things and jump, so more arousal and more distance from me. However, she does not enjoy formal obedience as much as Rally O. There are two reasons for this: you cannot talk to or encourage your dog during the exercises, so she gets no reassurance that she is doing well; and it is stop start between the exercises, so I am super vigilant about what is happening in the surrounding rings, just in case something catches her attention and off she goes.

Dee excels in Rally O. She loves the close working distances that we have. She loves that I can talk to her, encourage and praise her as we go along. She loves the speed of the exercises and the variety of the courses, because they are always different. See the video below to get an idea of her demeanour. It is so different to formal obedience.

http://vid260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/grumpette_bucket/VID-20150622-WA0002_zpsuj20f3iv.mp4

So please consider giving Rally O a go.

[Two Best Dogs!]

Are all rotties such opinionated motor mouths when working? :laugh: Thistle is dead silent and serious when "working" but all the rotties i see seem to like barking as they go. I love it! It is so different I laugh every time. She is so happy to work with you.

It is heartening seeing your pictures! Currently at this stage I am allowed still right in front of Thistle so I am taking advantage of that, trying to teach her to target my belly to remind her of her positions! But later on expect to stand further away like you are. A tense looking pup indeed probably be what thistle will get to I hope. I think she can do it, just the way we go about it is the important bit. Counting down to this sunday at fingers crossed head trainer intervention. I really do believe if we can start doing it in class in a way thistle "understands" that no harm will happen, she will get pretty reliable at it fast.

I think between obedience and rally-o, we'd enjoy rally-o a lot more. It is hard to choose some things to try out with a dog, sometimes it seems like not many choices and other times too much! For agility will just stick to playing on the equipment when no-one else is on it. Having fun (for both of us) is most important parts!

Edited May 10, 2016 by Thistle the dog

[grumpette]

Dee loves agility, especially the tunnels and the jumps, but I would never consider entering agility trails. Way too much excitement and too many dogs for her and me. So we play on the equipment for our own entertainment and fun.

My next dog I will learn to train in drive from K9 Pro, so that I can harness that energy, but not diminish the spirit.

Each dog teaches us something that we can take with us onto our next dog.

You will get there and so will Thistle.

[Two Best Dogs!]

Thank you grumpette She is my trainer as much as I am hers I reckon

[Two Best Dogs!]

BAT 2.0 has arrived! This book is really dense! I only skimmed for now to get an idea of the content and already I am learning.

Like I knew lip licking was a signal to indicate stress of heightening levels of arousal. Did not know it is also an indicator of anticipation! That makes me feel better over the tummy rub lip licking.

There is a section on trigger stacking that I only first heard about in January from you guys. It stacked for both of us then and i wish had known in advance. Save us some tears

There is the lazy bones BAT (around not reacting to dogs walking past the house?)

There is the name game and Lassie protocol, both are methods my behaviourist taught me on that first visit after thistle was attacked. They are invaluable. It will be good to read on how it works in detail sin X that conversation was more general, verbal and a year ago.

And, keeping a loose lead in greetings! I really struggle with this, I want to move thistle away from the other dog but I do not want to stress her. Or make it a bad experience.

There is a bit around labels too. I label thistle scared and reactive but it is limiting? Can I really call her a scared dog when she takes most things in stride and only certain things upset her, or should I keep it to the situation? I’m not sure because sometimes it's like she's bombproof and other times is small cowering. I’ll read that chapter later as it was to the end of the book.

I am looking forward to reading this book! The only bit I am :/ is at the start the trainer talks about feeding yard dogs on their walk. ???? I would be furious if someone did that with thistle. What if she is allergic? What if I don’t want her to take food from strangers when I am not there?

Hopefully the author has permission they neglected to mention ???? or was written earlier to that part of the book.

The problem right now is it is also a big book. I will need to dog out my big bag if I want to read it on work commute.

101 dog tricks is also awesome ideas. I don't like some of the methods but they describe alternative methods in addition to "push the bum down" style of training.

[Scottsmum]

Found a new blog today & it made me think of you guys (via a new facebook group - Thanks to Papillon Kisses )

I thought this particular post was light, but good. I really enjoyed it.

Here's a biggish chunk. Will be going back to read more next time I'm looking for something to read.

http://twoblockheads.blogspot.co.nz/2016/05/little-yellow-rowboats.html

A few slides into the start of her presentation, a picture of a yellow rowboat appeared on screen. Debbie reached down into a bag and pulled out a handful of stuffed animals, which she happily tossed into the crowd. The presentation continued.

This happened maybe five or six times throughout the morning. Rowboat appeared, toys were tossed. By the third time we all laughed and were excited when we saw the slide. We understood what was going on. A room full of trainers was just systematically conditioned to love a rowboat picture. The more it appeared, the happier we got. By the sixth time, people were clapping and let out little woops when the boat made an appearance. We anticipated the shower of stuffed animals.

And then the boat appeared, but when Debbie reached down, she did not come back up with a stuffed animal. She had an inflated balloon, and was holding it up to a pointy pen. The room audibly cringed. (She did not pop it, thank goodness).

After another few slides, the little yellow rowboat popped up again. But there was no happy cheering. Just quiet, nervous anticipation as we watched to see what she would do.

It was such a simple lesson on conditioning, but it was profound. It took us all a few repetitions of boat = toys to start to really anticipate the fun stuff, but only one negative experience to be wary of the very thing that previously had us laughing.

Negative experiences effect the brain with more force than positive ones. Fear, at it's simplest, is survival. It's hard to change a fearful reaction for a reason. The dog has deemed whatever is scaring it as dangerous, potentially life threatening. However imagined the threat may be, it's real to him.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Scottsmum

[Pjrt]

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Edited May 15, 2016 by blinkblink

[Scottsmum]

OMG OMG OMG! I am going to share this with my trauma counsellor on Monday! THIS is exactly the tactics people like my f***ing mother use to destroy people, and in my case, a child like me. OMG! As a result of my mothers conditioning I live every moment of my life in that nervous anticipation because of nine years of this conditioning. OMG ! Clarity .

Glad it was helpful Blink

[Papillon Kisses]

If anyone wants to join the Facebook group for anxious dogs just PM me with your full name and I'll send a request to the mods for you. It's just become a secret group.

Many many pages back there was comments about favourite blogs. A couple I like are Paws4udogs / Paws Abilities https://paws4udogs.wordpress.com which is written by a trainer who has a dog with Generalised Anxiety Disorder; and Mutt About Town.

And it's not a blog as such, but Suzanne Clothier's articles:

http://suzanneclothier.com/content/articles/

Thistle, here's a recent article which probably links into what I assume is said in Bar 2.0 about labeling dogs: https://muttabouttown.com/2016/05/09/fearful-dogs-are-not-broken/

You might also like to read up on "people-first language". There are pros and cons to person-first language, but I think the intention of it is good: to recognise that we are more than our diagnoses, that illnesses or physical or mental limitations are only one part of who we are, and to shift the focus from disability to ability.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Papillon Kisses

[Scottsmum]

Today I went to meet the owner of a Nose Works class who I've been talking to online about Justice. She's really keen to help him and to try and accommodate his need to avoid seeing other dogs and has offered to run a special little class just for him, after the other dogs have left for the day, which is so wonderful of her. I wanted to check out the training grounds without Justice so that I could work out the best way to manage him there and she suggested going while there was a class on so that I could watch it and chat to her afterwards. It was great to see how excited the dogs are before they're let off leash to go and work and the way they race up to the scent detection area. The owner was absolutely lovely and I'm really excited about Justice having a class that he can go to. The only parking is on the road and I need to get the car parked and Justice out of it and in to the building without seeing a dog, so we've agreed that I'll get to the area before the class with the other dogs finishes and drive around the streets nearby and when the last dog has left, she'll text me and let me know it's safe to drive down the street and park. She's going so far above and beyond anything I expected and I'm very grateful. The next round of classes doesn't start until mid-July but I'm looking forward to seeing him have fun there. :)

Hope that works out for you - the place I was going in Sydney was amazing for that kind of thing. So accommodating in terms of personal space and patience. We had one very nervy dog in one round of classes I did - couldnt even get him into the scout hall for his first lesson - he just improved in leaps and bounds over a 4 week class. I love, love, love Nosework. I miss it so much.

[Two Best Dogs!]

Happy 1 year of obedience classes!

Good news first:

Well, she did Stand for Exam in class (twice!) and she also did a dialed-back version of it after class with the head trainer.

We did some useful exercises where everytime Thistle would move towards the trainer I would give her long pats on the side and I would stop when she moved backwards. I would also release and play every 15 seconds or so. Except that towards the end she wasn't wanting to move away and play - she was wanting more attention from the trainer! Which is good.

Bad news:

Still not in advanced because Thistle broke her 10m distance drop (long line). First time she broke it because her best lab friend broke and ran over to other dogs and Thistle wanted to as well. She recalled instead though.

Second time she broke because a bee flew past and she needed to kill it (that was funny because she was jumping in the air for it, but also not on ).

Third time she broke because blue heeler broke and ran...up to Thistle and past Thistle who broke to chase after, then they rolled over each other and got tangled in each other's longlines, then more rolling over each other.

There was a lot of growling (from blue heeler?) but the trainer reckons they were playing with a lot of noise and the owner confirmed the other dog is a vocal player. She said their body language was all loose, I'll take the word for it! I was tunnel visioned on going over without turning it into a negative experience and untangling the long lines from them and splitting them back up (easily done once the line was off).

The heeler's legs in particular were really tangled up in Thistle's line and close to her head so I was worried if someone needed space they couldn't do it. Like I tried to recall her and her head came towards me but the tangle forced it down again.

Thistle's side release martingale also came off in this at some point.

All in all, considering they were two strange dogs tangled up in long lines - could have gone much worse. No-one was bearing teeth or snarly or trying to bite the other. But if they are playing, not with long lines on please! I could see the heeler getting a broken leg easy

I was quite featherheaded afterwards, and lingered about (my car was boxed in ...). I guess a lot of people were watching or saw cause it was commented on (mostly that it sucked other dog was able to get over to us in first place) and the lower levels gave us more space than usual when classes ended.

I think overall the class was a win? Her issue now is staying in position and not chasing after bees or dogs that run past her face. But nothing bad happened. Except that I am officially the last of my group to go to advanced...

Not my weekend tho Too many worried emotions for me. I'm almost resentful it's as sunny and nice as it is outside. I want a nice thunderstorm and blankets!

Edited May 15, 2016 by Thistle the dog

[Papillon Kisses]

It was absolutely a win!!

YOU GOT STAND FOR EXAM — AND NOT ONCE BUT TWICE!!

And you got in some excellent behaviour modification with the trainer!

Well done Thistle and mum!

You're both doing so well. You might be the last in your group to advance, but you've probably come the furthest with your dog. Thistle has achieved the 10m drop before, right? I bet you'll be in advanced very soon. Either way, she overcame a huge hurdle today with her fear of people, and did not react negatively in a tricky situation with the heeler. She also did not get stung by a bee!

That's a huge cause for celebration!

That said, you've both been through quite a bit this weekend, so perhaps the celebration can be with ice cream, treats from the Dog Lovers Show, and a nice long cuddle on the lounge. :)

[Scottsmum]

She was talking about one of the other dogs who's super dog reactive and he turned up for the next class while I was still there. Even though there were other dogs there and he apparently started out barking and lunging and carrying on, all he was doing this time was giving excited yips with no aggressive behaviour. The dog of the person who suggested I look in to these classes is also doing amazing. He's very human reactive and the vet behaviourist we both see hasn't been able to touch him yet, but he's so relaxed and confident in the classes that he goes up to the owner for pats. I'd love it if by the time we go to the end of the six weeks, that Justice could do the outdoor part (the first half is indoors and the second half is outdoors) and be so excited and confident that he ignores other dogs while he's doing it. That would be a huge step for him, although I'm not sure how realistic it is.

We also had a some very DA dogs who got ... betterish. I know Justice isn't really either of the two - but I've seen some really cool stuff - even in the first round of classes I did at the facility which shall not be named I was a huge change in one of our class mates. Very different scenario but by the end of it he'd drop and eat a kong while the others did their things.

Marion, our "head trainer" often spoke about the dopamine associated with a search and how it becomes so important to the dogs. I really hope it all works out for J.

[grumpette]

Wow hoo go Thistle. Three stand for exams. Brilliant work. A major hurdle overcome Be very proud of what you and your dog achieved on the weekend. That is a huge leap forward.

With regards to the stays, I don't blame Thistle for moving when the other dogs came over. At her level I would be rapt that there were no fights and that stays are still a positive experience for her. She just needs to learn that rewards are at the end of the exercise, when she is told, not when she decides is a good time

[grumpette]

So excited for you and Justice Snook. Those classes sound amazing. Yes please keep us informed.

[Papillon Kisses]

It just occurred to me...

Malcolm has started napping through the afternoon dog parade — aka the witching hour when dogs stream past our fence/gate, with some of them trying to attack him as they are dog unfriendly themselves. He used to spend the entire time racing out to do his bark and mark and spring bok around the garden. I haven't even been playing his calming music.

Edited May 18, 2016 by Papillon Kisses

[Two Best Dogs!]

Thanks grumpette :) I am very pleased she didn't take the other dogs approach as an attack or scary thing!

PK yay!!!!!! He must be feeling so much less worried! Good on him!

I am using these protocols to help teach thistle that yes, as grumpette says, you stay in position until I say so XD ill take it out to the park on Sunday.

[Scottsmum]

It just occurred to me...

Malcolm has started napping through the afternoon dog parade — aka the witching hour when dogs stream past our fence/gate, with some of them trying to attack him as they are dog unfriendly themselves. He used to spend the entire time racing out to do his bark and mark and spring bok around the garden. I haven't even been playing his calming music.

Yay! Go Mal! :cheer: :cheer:

[Two Best Dogs!]

We did a successful Stand for Exam again! Whew! I would like to thank the lawnmower and the robot dinosaur for helping to proof it.

We have a new trainer this week (supervised by previous trainer). It makes sense to put the new ones on the second most advanced class. It's basically a whole new class since Thistle's best lab friend graduated to advanced and I think the heeler who distracted us last week is going to be moved up soon (a tiny part of me thinks that's unfair cause when she broke she ran up to thistle, when thistle breaks she runs up to me not other dogs). But the previous class had a bunch of graduations too so now there's like 10 more dogs in the class, and we only 'know' a couple of them (including brown poodle she pancaked squashed in hello the one time, and a staffie who started about the same time as us etc). She's very interested in the two huskies. They seem like teenagers to me, very bouncy and vocal. I think she wants to play "squash me" with them.

Trying not to think about how I have spent more than half a year in the one level it's so hard not to think about it

(this will be me, watching longingly with my face ugly-pressed against a window)

Thistle got a bit whiny and excited when the schnauzer #1 was loudly playing tug but quieted down. She only broke her distance sit twice, to drop - not move from her spot, which I guess is improvement. There was lots of recall practice. So used it as an opportunity to reward her for the few times she stayed in a drop while other dogs recalled. She really struggles with holding her position when others move. Like, she moves towards me (and not them) at least, but is choosing to end her position ;)

So I did lots of 2-3 metre drops and gave her treats for not moving or getting ready to move but settling at an "ah!".

I like seeing all the different breeds. Only 1 lab in this new version of level 3. 2 schnauzers, 2 huskies, 2 rotties, a staffie, a different type of staffie, the blue heeler and two poodles of different sizes.

Puppy sessions have gotten huge! I counted 5 classes! There is a beagle puppy and nose is always down, but is keeping an ear out and doing commands :laugh:

Edited May 22, 2016 by Thistle the dog

[Papillon Kisses]

Congratulations on another successful Stand for Exam. :)