Monday, April 5, 2010

Set back.

We got mobbed by a friendly and exuberant off-leash dog yesterday, and Dottie has been way worse around dogs since. The dog came up and met Gustav, who was on-leash. Gustav kicked its ass, as he is wont to do, and the dog decided it didn't want to play with a crazy bully. Dottie, off-leash, helped out by barking incessantly from the sidelines. It only lasted seconds, and the dog was easily called away. The next day we saw a dog from at least half a block away, across a street, and Dottie lost it. Totally freaked. Later on the walk we just HEARD a dog barking and Dottie put up all her hackles and stiffened quite a bit. Sigh.

The silver lining is that I was more or less unruffled, which means I've come a long way in not getting upset by bad days and setbacks. I just thought "oh well, we'll just keep doing the same thing and build up again."

4 comments:

  1. I call those "life happens" moments an ego check-in. Pops my fairytale balloon.

    I just take note of the good stuff, and think of ways to recreate the scene in a controlled environment to work on the other stuff.

    To be honest, for adolescent dogs who are all over the place...it's an older dogs job to let them know they've got to be mindful of their approach.

    That's the way it works.

    Happy go lucky or not...they've got to learn to match their meet and greet style with the dog who they are approaching.

    No blood was shed, so really, hopefully the other dog learned that not all dogs like to be approached that way.

    You're doing a great job of figuring things out.

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  2. I've been lucky so far that the off-leash dogs we've encountered have backed off immediately after realizing Gustav isn't going to be fun to hang out with. If they decided to really work it out with him, I might have a pretty bad day on my hands. Gustav is a jerk, but he's not out for blood so hopefully he would give it up and everything would be okay.

    My behaviorist is working with her dog on greeting styles using a shaping procedure called constructional aggression treatment (CAT). Ever heard of it? She said it's working pretty well for her dog and I think Dottie could really benefit. We're going to do a session with Gustav regarding people in a week or two. Greeting dogs is a pretty far off goal for me, for now I just want to move through the neighborhood peacefully which had been going great until this. Didn't seem to bug Gustav, though. I don't think he's really afraid of other dogs, just ill-mannered and bully. I could be wrong about this, though, who knows.

    Thanks for your support, I appreciate it.

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  3. Yup, BAT & CAT are great tools! The more you have in your tickle trunk the better you'll be able to assess what is needed at that time.

    Here's BAT if you haven't read up on that as well.

    http://ahimsadogtraining.com/store/proddetail.php?prod=MCH-0103

    The only thing I wish is to replace the word "training"... I really think it sets people's expectations up into something being a pill to take and then that's the end of it.

    For me, it's another communication tool, which sharpens my and dog's connection. Learning and teaching them that they have more than one body language option to diffuse or get out of a situation that overwhelms them. Or sometimes to let my guys know that I don't find their behaviour becoming. I swear sometimes my guys do it for the fun of it....especially when I walk them together.

    Just think...someday, you'll be able to help someone else out!

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  4. Also Cynthia,

    Let me know if you ever want Finley to come up and you can work on training (in the future) with Dottie or Gustav. Despite his impossible fence and leash aggression that we're constantly working on, Finley gets along famously with all but one dog (Neko) and even that dog, as soon as he sees them, Finley's response is to run the opposite direction in terror, so it might be a good training tool, and I'm totally comfortable about using him to help socialize other dogs.....let me know (and remember the offer stands, even years from now, whenever you or Gustav are ready) :)

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