I took the dogs on an hour long walk today. They got pretty wet and slow, but at least they'll take a nice long nap. Gustav had two barking incidences: one, a man came running toward us across the street at full tilt. We went off to the side, because this was obviously a threat in Gustav's eyes. He still barked and put his hackles up. Oh well, can't win 'em all. We saw a bunch of other people and I got some nice autowatches out of him. Autowatch is when he looks at something threatening to him, then automatically looks up at me. Then I give him chicken. He only seems to do this when the threat is at an acceptably low level, like if the person is across the street. When he first learned it he did it only with people on bikes, for reasons that are totally mysterious to me.

He definitely thinks that some people are more scary than others, but I've been unable to find a clear pattern. He doesn't like bags, umbrellas, kids, or big burly dudes, but sometimes I am totally mystified as to why he barks and lunges as some people but not others. Could be something I'm not picking up on, like scent, my own reaction communicated without my knowledge, or maybe the amount of eye contact the person is giving him, which is confrontational to dogs. Who knows.

I worked a little on his "watch me" cue, which is his name. He's only about fifty-fifty on this one, and usually there's a significant lag while he finishes looking at whatever has caught his attention. I still treat him when he finally looks at me, but I'm not sure how to speed up his response. Dottie, on the other hand, has a great "watch me" that is immediate and automatic. I assume Gustav's problem with this is his inability to look away from things that threaten him and still feel safe, and just plain old lack of practice and reliability. Dottie used to suck at it, too. Dottie, however, seems much more willing to put herself in my hands in terms of protection and safety. She is a pretty submissive dog, especially with people, but has a streak of hysteria and anxiety. She's also super barky.

Which leads me to Gustav's other barkfest, which was funny. We came across maybe the ugliest lawn display of horrible blow-up snowglobe Christmas decorations I've ever seen, and Dottie started barking hysterically. Gustav took up the cause too, and I tried having them sit and quiet and give treats. Dottie could only quit barking long enough to eat the chicken off the sidewalk, and I got worried she was being reinforced for barking instead of conditioned against the snow globe, so I just laughed and dragged them past it. I had them sit and watch me a bit past the lawn, so they wouldn't completely get the message that barking and acting foolish would result in increased distance from the scary thing, but I'm not super hopeful that it worked. Anyway, with reactive dogs like mine, sometimes you just have to laugh it off and hope those snowglobes don't become super popular lawn ornaments.

Coming soon: Gustav's exciting change to low protein food, shown in a study to reduce fear aggression in some dogs, after he recovers from a disgusting encounter with bad meat!!

I told you this blog would be totally uninteresting to anyone except myself and dog behavior nuts.