Bonding And Confidence Building Exercises?

[*kirty*]

My newest foster is a very frightened little boy. He is a combination of naturally wary breed + no socialisation. My dogs are doing their best to encourage him to play and show him that people are OK. I am hand feeding him all his food and giving him space, but I have to corner him and carry him inside or he won't come in. He is curious and follows me around but cringes if you try and touch him. Are there any things I can do to boost his confidence and help him realise that people aren't that scary?

[BC Crazy]

Hi Kirty, how long have you had him? I rescued an extremely timid BC years ago. He had never been socialised. Was kept under a house 24/7 And had been severely beaten on a regular basis.

I couldn't get near him for many weeks but he did start to follow me around eventually. Still remaining about 10 feet away from me. If I did try & approach him he would run under my house & stay there

till I went away, then he would come out. To feed him I had to push his food bowl under the house with the broom. It was so upsetting to see him this way & so very sad.

I am no expert but I just gave him his space & time. I didn't approach him at all. Didn't call him. I just talked to him quietly/kindly as he followed me about. After a while I noticed that he was getting closer

& closer to me. Till I got to touch him. Gaining his trust. Once I did that I could do anything to him. I found gentle massage helped him & did this every day. It helped him relax & he loved it. I believe massage also

helped build his confidence as well. But as I say this all took lots of time. Many months, & I also found I got much further with him if I moved very slowly around him. If I tried to rush him he would retreat back to

his old ways & run scared into a corner or under the house, cringing/shaking.

Hope I was of some help & good luck with him. This boy ended up being my heart dog. I had him 14.5 years. He was just amazing & I loved him to bits.

[BC Crazy]

Oh just had to add Kirty. As my boy started to warm to me slightly I watched him carefully & tried to catch a glimpse of what might get him engaged. I got a couple of soft toys & just left them lying around.

Picked up one & purposely put it close to him, no response. If fact he was frightened of them. I then rolled a tennis ball past him, 'bingo' he couldn't take his eye's off it so I knew he was a ball man. I used this to help

create a bond between us as he got braver I introduced the ball & eventually we played lots of ball games. This also helped his confidence soar. He loved his tennis ball :)

Edited August 27, 2013 by BC Crazy

[Dory the Doted One]

Hi Kirty,

Don't know if this would help you at all...but have you thought about looking up Nose Works training?

Here's a quick YouTube clip of them using it on shelter dogs.....

[BC Crazy]

I think that is a great idea Dory & I enjoyed the link :)

[Nekhbet]

keep him on a leash with you and when he's not on a leash, confined like a large crate or a small run. Hand feed him, just take him with you and go about your daily routine. If he has the opportunity to keep running off and hiding he will think it's the right way to deal with his fears. If he tries to run, let him pull, ignore him and he will see it's not successful. When he's ready to think and stop panicking, a treat/toy/attention is there for him, whatever he prefers best.

[BC Crazy]

Yes nekhbet, I used to close the door to keep Redman in what ever room in the house we were in as he had never had a collar or lead on when I first got him at 17 months old. So you are sort of blocking the escalation of their panic is what your saying. Makes perfect sense .

[*kirty*]

Thanks everyone. :) He is so sweet and he is breaking my heart. You can see that he wants to be friends and wants to try, but everything in his experiences so far tells him to stay away.

He's much worse outside. He is inside most of the time but when I put him out to pee he then wont come back inside. He runs to the door and looks inside but then runs off again. I suspect he was punished for coming inside at his previous home. I will try keeping him on lead more but so far he won't toilet in front of me. He will take treats but has no idea about toys.

[BC Crazy]

No Redman didn't know about toys either. Scared the wits out of him, especially the squeaky ones. It is so sad when you can just tell that they are a really sweet dog but so damaged & frightened.

Maybe try to take him out on a long lead kirty or retractable so he can toilet at a distance. Just a thought: :)

[*kirty*]

Good idea. :) Mind you he has no trouble peeing in front of me inside!!

[Nekhbet]

Yes nekhbet, I used to close the door to keep Redman in what ever room in the house we were in as he had never had a collar or lead on when I first got him at 17 months old. So you are sort of blocking the escalation of their panic is what your saying. Makes perfect sense .

Dogs do what they find successful. Many panic reactions I see are a learned behavior - pulling, hiding, or barking/snapping etc. Now, I don't mean as if they are not based on fear/anxiety etc, they are. But the dog has learned if I feel afraid, I do X behavior and I am successful in getting away/moving away that scary thing.

Take away the success of the behavior and you have a dog now sitting there thinking WTF now ... thats when the brain is now in a mode of thinking, learning, working things out how to deal with it's stres and thats when the handler steps in and teaches it the alternative behavior.

I make it sound cut and dry but I find it very very successful in retraining dogs like this quickly and happily. They all come out the other end fine. I did it with Chloe a bit with her rolling over and scuttling ... she now owns the place and bosses everyone and everything

[BC Crazy]

Nekhbet... :laugh: Worked REALLY well with Chloe then :laugh:

Yes I believe it is a learned behaviour as well. I watch Stella who is scared of pretty much everything. As soon as she hears something she bolts blindly up & down the back yard, crying / barking. I swear she doesn't even realise

she is doing it. I go out there ASAP & stop her. Holding her firmly around the girth. She settles very quickly then looks up at me blankly like, "What"!!!! Goes & lies down. If she is left to keep running she will run for

hours. Seems the more she runs the more upset she becomes. Like the running ends up feeding the fear. If that makes sense. Me not knowing what else to do from here that is where I am up to with her. Was thinking I might

put her crate on the back deck & when she cracks up I was going to put her in it till she calms herself down but was worried that would be like the crate would be a punish for her which I don't want to do.

Edited August 28, 2013 by BC Crazy

[BC Crazy]

Kirty, yes funny that isn't it. When I had Redman I had the best "watered" indoor pot plants in town :laugh:

I never was able to toilet train him either. Just too damaged I think. Poor boy He was never really happy inside anyway. He liked it better outside.

I made sure he had a raise bed & was under a big patio anyway. He could always see us as we had glass doors, which he loved. He just ended up coming inside to

say hi & have a cuddle then back outside again.

[corvus]

The reasoning is sound but the application can be more sophisticated and IMO humane. Try this for a relatable example.

In the past, if a strange dog has come rushing at you and your dogs you have shouted "STOP! Go away!" and somehow magically the dog stops and goes away. Now say one day out of the blue this just stops working. You shout "STOP! Go away!" and the dog keeps coming at you. How is that going to make you feel? What are you going to do? Your one strategy that has always worked has failed. You have nothing up your sleeve. You are at this dog's mercy. Maybe it turns out the dog just sniffs you and then wanders off. Does this make you feel better the next time you see a dog coming and you shout "STOP! Go away!" and it again doesn't work?

What if instead, you see a dog milling around. You're not sure if it is going to rush at you, so you watch it closely ready to shout at it. You tense up, watch the dog like a hawk, but it doesn't come any closer and you take a deep breath to try to calm yourself and THEN the dog goes away. Huh. This happens a few times and you decide to try something. You see a dog and you take a deep breath and bingo, the dog goes away. You can make loose dogs go away by taking a deep breath. How does that make you feel next time you see a loose dog?

One is kind of an extinction procedure and the other is a negative reinforcement procedure. They both work, but the latter I think gives you way more control and reduces the stress on the animal considerably. I've done this myself and it's highly effective, particularly when the animal figures out for themselves a new coping strategy that in their view is extremely effective. I find that when I aim my behaviour modification at the point before the animal acts, I am highly likely to have them produce an alternative behaviour (or a bunch of them) that are highly appropriate that are exactly what I'm looking for. This is all about safety. If the animal knows they can ask for safety and get it promptly, they will in time stop asking for it so much because they feel generally more safe. They can relax a bit because if ever they feel uncomfortable they need only 'say' so and voila, the pressure is removed. It takes patience, but there is nothing more rewarding than having a previously timid and flighty animal confidently approach you and settle right in your personal space and let you touch them because they completely trust you. It is pretty overwhelming.

With my doves I did this mostly with desensitisation and a little counter-conditioning because they are easy and have terrible instincts. One was very hand shy when I got her and has taken a fair bit more work. The hare was probably about as hard as any animal is likely to be and I did it with a safety signal and negative reinforcement and later moved to desensitisation and a wee bit of counter-conditioning. I have used negative reinforcement a little with my dogs to get them doing something they otherwise probably wouldn't have done. For Erik as a pup it was social skills with dogs he couldn't avoid. It worked brilliantly. For Kivi, body awareness and problem solving skills, which I actually used to improve his confidence, as it happens. It was highly effective as well. Kivi is kind of overly confident these days. Maybe all that confidence boosting we did with him gave him more confidence than he has common sense to know what to do with it. :p For this dog, I would teach him a safety signal and use a bit of desensitisation and some negative reinforcement. And some counter-conditioning in the form of hand feeding. I would not flood him. It's just not necessary.

[Nekhbet]

The reasoning is sound but the application can be more sophisticated and IMO humane. Try this for a relatable example.

Yes I'm inhumane :laugh: deary me. Your example has a flaw - there is a single party acting on it's own making the decision and that is where the danger and problems lie already. The dogs are making the decision single handedly how to handle the situations and hence why we see such primitive reactions. I want the dogs to learn that the reaction is unnecessary in order to remain 'safe' and that it will be taken care of, so don't worry about reacting. Instead, react the way I heavily reward you to.

I also don't walk other dogs up to reactive or frightened dogs, I think you don't understand how I do this. That would be stupidity since it's one of the most confrontational ways to access an animal and the point is not to frighten the hell out of it. It is taken successively but I don't skirt the issue or reaction. The reactive dog is usually the one doing the walking. A little stress helps proof the behavior, too much blows the dog up and that's useless to me totally as it's incapable of learning a thing. It comes down to repetition, heavy reward and teaching the dog to use it's brain and think about whats happening and how to gain that reward. You make the dog do it's own cost analysis on situations - do I waste my stress and energy to gain nothing, or do I calm down, think and gain everything. I believe in creating self sufficient animals and ones that can generalise this thinking if they're not attached to their owner. That's the point of behavioral training.

It only takes a couple of sessions. Problem is most people don't want to put the dog under a little stress for whatever reason or panic, or plain old don't know how to train a dog so we get this whole over extended rubbish. Dogs deal with things instantly, be it in a good way or a bad way. They don't do things by halves or successively, start them how you want them to be and they will follow your lead :)

Edited August 28, 2013 by Nekhbet

[persephone]

;) I have used a similar principle with a dog which was stand offish with others in the run ( around 6 dogs shared a run) I put on a collar & leather leash ..then put dog back in run. All being young labs , of course, everyone wanted to grab the leash ... so they did , and the unwilling playmate , after a minor freak at first , eventually got the idea , and ended up playing tug-o-war , tail wagging ...

It was his choice - to remain standing, and be pulled around ...to follow ... to interact and be more in control , and have fun.. Flooding isn't ideal in many instances ... but I must admit to it being a godsend sometimes!!

[corvus]

"More humane" doesn't mean your version is inhumane. I was trying to be delicate, but I don't think there's a way to say it without sounding critical. I think you are making a division where there is actually a continuum. Everything you are describing is pretty much what I would do. The only difference is in magnitude. I want to make the animal ever so slightly uncomfortable. Just enough that they start thinking about what they can do to make themselves more comfortable, not enough that they want to move away. To me, restraining a frightened dog close to a trigger has the potential to create a stronger reaction than I want. That's all. You might end up flooding him.

Dogs only deal with things instantly when they have to. If you're training dogs to handle triggers with some kind of successive approach, but you're letting them go at their own pace, then you'll see that they will have a good think about what they should do. They certainly will do things by halves. That is exactly the point of all the pussy-footing around. There is no issue with a single party acting on its own as long as it acts appropriately. The point of using very slight pressure is that you're setting them up to act appropriately, which you can then reinforce with a functional reward, like distance. They drive the training, but you shape it. They still learn that a reaction is unnecessary, because they have something that works better. In the process of using that, their emotional association with the trigger changes. Things aren't as scary when they are in control.

I don't know what you're doing because I've never seen it. I'm not having a go at you. I'm promoting extra special gentleness with fearful animals, because IME it is the most effective approach. I'm suggesting avoiding restraints because IME restraints can cause panic and if they panic you can find yourself set back months. Just because you have a more resilient animal than that doesn't mean the approach is risk free. The risks are well documented in the scientific literature. If you want to take them, that's your prerogative. I prefer not to, and that's my prerogative.

[Nekhbet]

I'm promoting extra special gentleness with fearful animals, because IME it is the most effective approach. I'm suggesting avoiding restraints because IME restraints can cause panic and if they panic you can find yourself set back months.

When a client comes to me with a dog, I don't have the choice of months to sort this out. I promote safety and gentleness as well, I do not advocate chastisement, in fact any interaction with a panicking dog, because to do so will get someone invariably bitten and the dog learns nothing, owner confidence is now through the floor and it all turns to poo.

Restraint is for everyone's safety and the prevention of the extreme end of the behavior reoccuring. Most of these dogs have problems with things outside their homes, I have to restrain them to ensure they don't run out under a car or in some cases attack another dog/person. Bad luck restraint, they deal with it. I sound harsh, but the dog has to learn. I walk the dogs past what they fear and we walk on, reward, walk back past, reward, walk back past, reward etc etc. Up and back, closer to the object they don't like until they ignore it and take the reward from me with full focus as we go past. For dogs that lunge out to have a go, they get put on a corrective collar and they can go lash out - they hit the end of the lead, realise that was really stupid and the owner then calls them with a scrumptious reward waiting for them. It's why I use corrective equipment - the dog dictates when it gets the correction, the owner is not to ARRHHHH, NO, BAD DOG etc. Let the dog learn on it's own. There is a lovely potential reward here of whatever you love and affection from me, instead you decided to run at that other dog. It's part of tipping the scales - let the dog make it's own educated choice.

As for fearful dogs we don't let them run away. When the fearful reaction starts we get no closer and we just stay at that level - the point is not to reinforce the behavior by increasing distance but to show the dog nothing will happen. It comes down to reading the dog too, some you can easily throw into the deep end as you see their behavior is total BS, others you take slowly. Heavily reactive dogs I put on the outside of my dog school fence, have someone else supervise and let the owner and dog just watch at a distance they're comfortable at, or play with a toy, do stupidly simple things for reward etc.

I like flooding, I believe it's not the demon it's made out to be and can be incredibly effective in creating good, solid dogs with temperament resilience. I just encourage people to do it under supervision so I can teach them and their dog how to cope together as a team. Now let's not think that flooding is tying up a dog on a short tether and blasting horrific noises at it until it concedes defeat - that's cruelty. I want to see wagging tails, trotting steps, strong focus on the handler through motivation during flooding exercises NOT yank and crank/force. Anyone who's met me knows how the owners get a lashing from me for not rewarding/interacting with their dogs enough. Sometimes grabbing the bull by the horns and waiting out the tantrum is worth it more then skirting the issue, all I'm saying.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Nekhbet

[Vickie]

I'm promoting extra special gentleness with fearful animals, because IME it is the most effective approach. I'm suggesting avoiding restraints because IME restraints can cause panic and if they panic you can find yourself set back months.

Actually experience has taught me just the opposite.

i have lost count of the number of dogs I have personally used or recommended & supervised the method Nekbet suggests.

Many of these have come from situations where distance & extra special gentleness has tried & failed.

My unscientific opinion is that so long as you remain unemotional with a tethered dog they quickly develop security in the routine you are creating for them without all the pressure that treating with extra special gentleness inadvertently creates.

Not saying your theory/research is wrong...just saying my experience to date doesn't support it.

[corvus]

*shrug* A lot of people think they are being extra special gentle but they are not being quite sensitive enough. When I was first learning this stuff I was surprised how far you have to go before you have an animal teetering between doing something and not doing anything. It's very easy to teeter a little too close to the doing something side and then you won't see what you're looking for because when the animal acts it is too fast. The nervier the animal, the quicker the micro-behaviours stack up and the less chance you have to grab the right one, reinforce it, and simultaneously break the chain before things get carried away.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Lots of people are using these techniques with great success with dogs. They don't seem to mind about the time it takes. I don't think it's really that long for most dogs. It's long for a flighty prey animal.