I’m compelled to share a personal experience about working with my own dog. To catch you up to speed, I have a very typical nuclear family, a husband and wife, a girl dog and a boy dog. Our girl Cosmo was our first. She was house trained in a week, sitting and laying down in two weeks, socialized with hundreds of puppies by 6 months of age. Everything was by the book. She was doing advanced tricks before she even graduated from her puppy class, and I had her starring in a commercial at age 3. She was an angel (or at least that’s how I remember her puppyhood). The reality is that she had our undivided attention – first child syndrome where we were prepared for every step of her development.
Raising a puppy was as it was hoped – pleasurable, fun, easy, exciting, etc. So, naturally we got a second one. There was a naive expectation that Cosmo would just rub off on her new brother Brody. I was in the overwhelming throes of opening K9 Kingdom when we got Brody, so his housetraining, manners training, and socialization were all… well…. not on the top of my priority list. We tried, but he definitely suffered from second puppy syndrome and the truth is that the cues he did learn truly were because he learned from watching Cosmo! He’s one of the loves of my life for sure, but 4 years later I have to admit that he’s become much more challenging than I would have hoped!
Brody turned out to be a very anxious dog. What started as a fear of men in hats and sunglasses (not all that uncommon) turned into a stranger danger that no longer discriminates between the sexes, age, or race. He’s reactive around other dogs, and it makes taking walks very unpleasant. Less walks means more pent-up energy which results in worse walks! This past week, I once again came to the realization that unless we opt to live in a bubble forever, we’ve got to find a way to get past this!
On Friday I pulled out my trusty treat apron, my favorite leash, and the front clip harness that makes a world of difference, and I set out to find a place to work with Brody. I took him to a strip mall parking lot where I could control the distance between us and the scary people, and we got to work. It wasn’t rocket science. It wasn’t even anything new. I just worked with him on the “look at the man” cue that Amy taught us in classes. Rather than trying to distract him from the things that scare him, the “Look” cue teaches him that it’s ok to check it out, and then rewards him for looking back at me. Essentially, it allows him to acknowledge the situation instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
I liken this training exercise to trying to get a human over their fear of spiders. Imagine you’re terrified of spiders and you come across a tarantula in your bedroom. You’re probably not going to be ok turning your back on that spider and sitting politely nearby it no matter how many treats someone tries to entice you with. You’re not going to want to take your eyes off of it. BUT, if you’re allowed to put some distance between you and the spider, and you’re allowed to look at it as much as you want, there’s a decent chance you would learn that it’s ok to take your eyes off it from time to time too.
So how did it work? Well, we started at a distance of about 300 yards from people coming and going out of the mall. We practiced ‘Look’ over and over again, always rewarding for quiet, calm behavior. We worked our way closer and closer to the point where we were calmly hanging out in a grassy area across from the gym where people were coming and going every 30 seconds! Big people, little people, men, and women, and Brody was completely non-reactive. That was a single session of 20 minutes. WOW!
It continually amazes me how quickly dogs can make tremendous improvements in their behaviors, and all it takes is a wee bit of effort on the owners’ part. In two 20 minute sessions of working with Brody, I witnessed massive improvement. And most importantly I experienced the hope and promise that he can continue getting better and better simply by repeating the exercise in different settings. All it took was the conscious effort to help him, patience to work through some challenging situations, and some knowledge about which exercises might help get him through it.
Whether a dog has suffered something as complex as neglect and abuse, or something as simple as second-dog syndrome or owner-too-busy syndrome, the amazing and rapid resilience of a dog is something that can inspire us all.
~CB
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