Village life

The last couple of weeks have seen Sonny and I working on acclimatisation to other dogs in our locality.  Unfortunately or, fortunately for us, many of our local dogs do not appear to be 'balanced' as Cesar Milan would say, so it is difficult to find the right sort of dogs for Sonny to meet.

However Sonny and I have persevered with the help of Sally and we have now made a few encounters which are helping us to see his progress.  Sally is noticing that the barking and lunging that often takes place seems to be losing a measure of intensity.  This is where having a trainer working with you is so invaluable.  There are so many things to concentrate on that if I was trying to do this on my own I would not be able to see the progress always and become disheartened.

The scenario goes like this, approach dog, if Sonny reacts, get him to sit and then take treats opposite the stranger dog.  This is because a large part of his fearful reaction is because he wants to get out of the situation as quickly as possible, another words it's an avoidance tactic.  Sally tells us that it is important that we don't allow him to avoid and that he needs to face situations and end them on a positive note.  The message is if you meet another dog, nothing bad is going to happen.  

Do you recall his previous experience with Colin the Collie?  Well, we did meet him again recently and fortunately Sally was able to tell me that this collie's stance was 'stalking behaviour' a prelude to play which was friendly and typical of the breed. Next time you are watching a collie herding some clueless sheep, you'll see what I mean! For a nervous boy like our Sonny this was however clearly too much for him to deal with at his current stage, so no wonder he was reacting badly.  Unfortunately I have not seen his owners since but if I do will try to find out if we can walk them alongside eachother again, as he really needs the practice.

On another occasion the good old boy (13 yr old black lab) who lives opposite came to help us at the local field.  Despite being docile as anything and very arthritic, Sonny made no distinction.  If it's got four legs and canine it's a threat me and my owner!  A dog that lacks confidence has to take his opportunities to big himself up and make himself feel important.  A good reason therefore to show him that his owner might decide to walk this other dog and feel fine about it.  Part of Sonny's fear gets projected onto me, because he fears other dogs he automatically assumes I need to be protected too!  Of course I didn't start out as fearful of meeting other dogs as I have been since having Sonny, but I've had a lot of conditionig.  Thus he is fearful, so I am fearful and it all goes round again.

I need to work a lot on my fear of us passing by people, particularly children.  We practiced this as an exercise with Sally today and he just sniffed her.  My fear is about him lunging but I know that anticipating a problem,praising him in a slightly tense voice before he has successfully passed the distraction,  jerking the lead and changing my pace or, direction are all triggers for him to see a reaction from him is needed.  How to break this habit in myself when it is now so automatic?  It is very hard, before you've even registered the thought properly your body has taken avoidant action.  Sally even tried to block me doing this today but I expertly dived around her, not even realising what she was doing.  More practice needed here I feel. 

Also on a positive note, I have been working separately with my other mongrel (welsh collie, possibly yorkie cross) who is also I have discovered. a real wind up merchant with other dogs.  Although not directly aggressive,' years of living with Sonny has led her to 'eyeball' any dog that comes by.  This needs to be stopped because we will not be able to walk them together if she is feeding him the bait every time.  So, I have been rewarding her for passing other dogs by ignoring them and in the same way, if the other dog is reactive, making her sit in front of them and focus on me.  This seems to be working well and I notice she is become much more trusting and leaving me to make the decisions in these situations.  However, she's a real diva so any day I'm not on top of it and she'll step right back in there, I'm sure.

Our next step is to meet up with Sally and another dog she knows to walk Sonny and this dog together, this dog is apparently quite lively and friendly.  We will let you know how it goes...