It's Christmasssss!!!

Twinkly lights, santa hats and that's just the owners!! Some people will be dressing their dogs up this Christmas.  I our house we go for a discreet bow or 2, not much more.  Dogs can look forward to a turkey dinner tomorrow with all the trimmings, it's the one time of year they get something other than their normal dog food.

I don't think they particularly like the Santa Hats but it makes for a good picture

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I remember when my aunt's dog rang off with the remainder of the turkey after sneaking into the larder during the afternoon zuzz, this was after frightening everyone to death by hiding under an antique table and then getting up taking the table and its' contents with her. 

What's the worst your dog has ever done at Christmas?

Oops what a plonker

http://www.jack-russell-terrier.co.uk
Just in case you thought we were getting far too smug I can inform you that all dogs no matter how far on in their training can have a bad day.
We were out tonight and Sonny apparently about to 'perform' my partner was relaxed and taken completely by surprise when Sonny suddenly pulled away from him to attack a miniscule adversary, a young jack russell about 1 year old.  How ridiculous, he was clearly using eyes not nose so I immediately took charge and brought the puppy back to Sonny who was now back under control and had been muzzelled all the way through to meet it.  He wanted nothing to do with it, however our other confident dog was able to politely greet and the puppy after initially shaking was happy to meet me and became a bit playful. 

This is such a different me to the one of 6 months ago.  Such an incident would have sent me home, probably in tears, feeling that the police were about to jump on me and remove the dog.  However this incident  is such a rarity now and today was partly our fault in that my partner must have not had firm hold of the lead for him to pull away from him.  Also very helpful was the owner of the puppy's attitude.  She was very laid back and taken as much by surprise as we were.  It is so important to ensure we do not overreact when our dogs have an adverse experience.  The more panicked and tense we are the more we create a memory for them that could lead them to see all dogs as a threat in the future.  This puppy is still learning and hopefully learned today that even a bad experience good turn out well.  As I said to the owner at the end she was more under threat from the open poo bag which flew out of my hand rather than Sonny who could never have done any damage! In turn Sonny learnt that he could not avoid a situation with a dog he found threatening and had to face it. What a nana !

Glorious Devon

We have just returned from another great trip to the South Hams we have loved the azure seas and the jagged coastline of Bolberry Down which would definitely give the med a run for its' money. 

Unfortunately Sonny's behaviour was not always impeccable on this trip.  Whilst walking him was fine, he elected to investigate the compost bin in the kitchen which he then proceeded to cascade all over the kitchen floor.  He polished off 2 salmon steaks which my aunt had 'kindly' left on the kitchen side as well as vomiting without warning shortly after our arrival.  You would imagine that such behaviour would put any normal person off the idea of having him to stay again.  However my particularly lovely aunt is always very calm about such issues and only says 'I continue to learn'.

Sonny of course should not be helping himself to items on the kitchen worktop however this is a habit I have been unable to cure him of in our years together and I think it's probably a bit late now.

A time for thinking

We have had a turbulent few weeks, for once not dog related as my father has died following a short but acute illness.  The dogs have been the most amazing therapy giving me a time to think as I have walked them in the inspirational terrain of the breathtaking South Hams.  As I knew my energy was not good I have elected to get my partner to do the bulk of walking Sonny as I did not want to give him any reason to revert to his former behaviours of lunging etc.  Fortunately he has held it together.


It reminded me of the importance of animals in offering solace and comfort at difficult times, however this unfortunately turns us into weak owners and is the one time it is more likely that our dogs will take over as leader of the pack.  It is very tempting to fall for a cute puppy when we are going through a bad time or, have just lost our faithful long term pal.  But really important that we pause and allow ourselves time to grieve and get over the loss, otherwise it will be grief that makes the decision for us, rather than our sensible brain.

Many times Cesar has dealt with grieving owners who are in this situation and tried to find a 'replacement' for the lost dog, often they are disappointed when the new dog is not behaving in the familiar way or, shows throught it's behaviou,r that it cannot be managed with the same regime.  This is when the problems start.

I am totally devoted to both my dogs but although as characters  they are irreplaceable I would never feel unable to give another dog the same level of love and attention.  After all, if our dog has lived a long and happy life and eventually died after 14 years, we have proved ourselves to be a good dog owner, capable of the love and commitment needed.  There are so many unwanted dogs out there, desperate for new homes, let's give them a chance too when the sadness has faded enough for us to be a good pack leader for them too!!

Life at last!

We've just returned from a fabulous week in Devon where the real impact of Sonny's improvements have finally begun to sink in.  We have been able to walk on narrow paths overlooking beautiful blue azure seas.  We have met lots of dogs big and small with owners of varying capababilities and knowledge.  In each case we have been able to pass them without too much trouble.  We've even been able to ditch the 'nervous dog do not approach' coat that he has been wearing for some time.

 It was such a joy to be on a proper walk.  No more quick round the b lock jobs acting like a scanner for anything four legged that came our way, at last we felt like proper dog walkers, after all that was one of the reasons I got a dog, because I like walking out in the wilds.

On our last day we had a long walk across Dartmoor.  My aunt is extremely knowledgeable about the place and so we were able to trail across deserted paths, overlooking a wild and unspoilt landscape.  Sonny was in his element.  As a collie cross, he is made for this territory.  Despite his advanced years he was up hills and down dales with barely a pant.  I think he could have gone on all day if we had been able to which of course we weren't as owner's levels of fitness do not allow it at this point.

What an amazing transformation!  Our lives have opened up  and we can make plans which do not have to include what the dog is or is not capable of and Sonny Boy, well he's having a life at last!

Anyone for a nudge?

The blogasphere has been quiet from the point of view of Sonny Dog, excepting you may have noticed I have been prettying it up a bit and as I find my way around the system, boldly added some new pages which I hope readers will find informative, amusing and possibly controversial.  I was on the point of threatening to put my article on dog poop in the local village magazine.  Hold on there, my partner said.  I'm not sure that it will have the impact you want and may put some people's backs up.  Do I care I wonder?  At least if you are putting people's backs up, you are getting them to talk about it and therefore  having some effect.  Rather than leaving everything to the status quo which might mean everyone carries on getting annoyed about it but not doing anything about it or, carries on doing it and ignoring their responsibility for it.  

Anyway this all prompted a much bigger discussion about how you get to change people's entrenched behaviour.  A while back our government became keen on a certain thing called 'nudge theory', this is the concept that rather than changing people by giving them negative consequences, you come up with fun positive ways to 'reward' them for changing their behaviour.  Example - in a certain country they had a problem in the public toilets with men (sorry guys) missing the toilet and peeing on the floor.  The authorities were getting fed up with all the cleaning up, so came up with an ingenious idea to deal with the problem.  What they did was they got someone to paint a fly on the inside of the toilet bowel and gave all incomers the additional challenge of trying to hit that fly when they were having a pee.  Result?  They reduced the number of incidents of people missing the toilet by 80%, now that's a result, isn't it!!

So this got me to wonder how us dog owners could find similar inventive ways to help people change their behaviour in terms of picking up after their dog.  I'd be glad to hear about any ideas that anyone has to deal with it.

The dog training is going really well.  Sonny is now SO MUCH BETTER  when it comes to encountering his fellow canines.  He has reduced his oppositional behaviour to in the main some heavy breathing, which is a massive change from the spitting, snarling whirling dervish of before.  The point is I think that we feel more calm and  confident about managing these situations, so are probably not transmitting so much anxiety towards him.  The new lead works a treat and we know it can both hold him and calm him down.

Recently we encountered a lady in the woods who was having trouble with her dog who very recently had become aggressive to both people and other dogs for reasons unknown.  Curiously despite these issues she was allowing the dog to walk off lead, anyway passing over that small detail, I was very interested to watch her and the dog when we encountered them.  Her immediate reaction on seeing us was blind panic, she shouted at us to stop and at the dog, who took absolutely no notice of her.  It reminded me so much of how I used to be only a few months ago and I really felt for her.  In fact we stopped and had a chat which helped the dogs to calm down and I was able to recommend both the wonderful Sally and Suzie to her.  It's all about paying it forward, learning from others and passing on what you've learned in the hope that it might help them out in the future.  Talk again soon...

Well I never

We went off today for our usual dog walk.  It was the first real opportunity to test out new found skills on passing by other dogs  We found ourselves with plenty to practice on and our first chance was with Collin the Collie, Sonny's nemesis!  Sonny has always reacted very intensely to this particular dog.  Being a collie, his body language is quite intimidating as he tends to adopt a 'stalking' pose whenever he sees Sonny.  Fortunately his owner is very affable and always jokes he doesn't know if Sonny just doesn't like him or, his dog.

So today, there we are walking along a narrow path and there is Colin.  Quick as a flash I began my zigzagging behaviour as I realised that if I just used the triangle this time, Sonny would have too much time to fixate.  Off we go up and down up and down, Sonny is wrong-footed, somewhat perturbed that I am actually walking TOWARDS this dog rather than away from it as I normally would.  That I am not pulling him on the lead, yanking him or anything else ineffectual I might have tried in the past.  Sonny's is breathing hard, I can tell he's trying his best to hold it together....and HE DOES!  We are past the dog with no lunging, barking, yelping behaviour, what a result!!!  I am elated and my partner and I do a high five.  This feels like a massive shift for us all.

We move on meeting various other dogs in different circumstances, and I am walking tall, head up, striding forward.  For the first time in 10 YEARS I am outside with my dog, feeling happy, confident and not living in fear of what might come around the corner.

I am by no means saying that Sonny is cured, I am sure we will continue to have good and bad times, but we are finally on our way and that is the main thing.

What a result!

Last night I got in from dog training and lay down on the sofa and did not raise my head the whole night.  Yesterday we did so much work and with so much exposure to other dogs I think I must have let go of a lot of anxiety, and Sonny, he slept well too!!  Today we are upping the anti and continuing the work with various dogs in the trainer's pack.  Did I mention she has 15 dogs?  Everything from Great Dane to Chihuahua, mostly rescues. 

Sonny is learning other skills today, excitable dogs, owners who are not taking any notice of their dogs on flexi leads, arrogant dogs with arrogant owners.  How to meet a dog on a narrow path....mmm, interesting.  What do we do here then?  Remember the triangle manoeuvre we talked about? This time we are doing a sort of tacking motion from side to side, again this puts the dog off balance and in a 'follower' mode rather than trying to take over and being out in front.  He manages it beautifully and now I'm beginning to feel more in control.  Instead of anticipating the approaching hound, rather like learning the waltz, I'm having to concentrate on where my feet and body are supposed to go.  Guess what, I don't feel nervous any more and because I can feel and see it working, my confidence is growing! 

And by the end of the day, guess what this is the result...........I never thought I'd see it happen, but it has!!!!!!!

Bermuda Triangles

It's the first day of training and I'm feeling nervous, I didn't sleep that well.  The prospect of being exposed to strange dogs with the 'whirling dervish' in tow is not something I look forward to.  Off we set, both dogs in the back.  We arrive at the trainer's house and we begin some work on the grassy verge nearby, introducing one dog after another (she has 15 by the way!)  Sonny is being taught to 'avoid' using a particular kind of manoeuvre which I will call the Triangle.  The purpose of this is to break eye contact and put him in a follower position.

We are given a different lead, a slim rope which slips over his head.  We have used one in the past but it was much thicker.  The purpose of this lead is to give us better feedback about what Sonny is doing.  I am told not to look at the other dog and to focus on the tops of the telegraph pole ahead of me.  I look around rather nervously.  The ground is uneven and it has not been unknown for me to go face down in the presence of my dog.  Is the woman quite mad?  Does she not realise that I have a homing device for potholes and  once managed to disappear down a hole and I might add, up to my knee in water whilst nonchalantly walking a path.  Oh well, trying not to think about the possible weeks in traction that await me,  I give it a go.  The purpose of this stance is to look decisive and in command.  I must admit it's a great relief not to be looking at what I fear, although it does give you quite an unnerving feeling as you are not quite sure whether the other dog is!!

We set off and Sonny does his usual launching himself in the direction of yet another canine adversary.  We try again and again, interestingly the triangle manoeuvre seems to put him off balance.  Once nearing being opposite to  the other dog we are taught to veer off in the other direction. Returning on course again once we have past it.  This is a strange feeling.  If Sonny starts to strut his stuff I am to stop, gently pull the lead up and wait, looking up to the sky.  Right now I'm beginning to realise that you can sort of feel him relax and then you similarly know when he is following you again.  We continue to practise, eventually moving on from a triangle to a gentle curve till eventually being able to walk straight past the other dog.  Once we have managed this, we walk alongside, noting how now both dogs are much more relaxed.  The trainer has taught me how dog's not only mirror us and our feelings but also eachother.  So, if another dog reads Sonny's behaviour as aggressive, it will similarly mirror this back to him.  When the other dog is not reacting to him, this is a sign that Sonny is calming down.  The walking alongside is a bonding activity, the starting to form a 'pack'.

Sonny the tester dog

It's been a long winter but the Spring is here and with it came renewed motivation to tackle my issues of meeting other dogs.

A few weeks back my partner and I had a tense conversation about the dog, him saying he felt we were not making progress and me saying how can I do more with him if I feel so scared?  In short stalemate.

Soul searching and lots of hynotherapy, which has revealed some interesting truths about the issues around my fearful reactions, not always immediately obvious, have had some effect.  However, the gaining exposure to other dogs and stopping the lunging behaviour was bugging the pair of us.  I recognised that feeling that I had to do nothing when another dog came along, even if Sonny reacted, left me with a load of fear and a sense of disempowerment, not a good place to be.

Idly googling as usual I came back to a website that I had visited before and a trainer that had apparently got a large pack of dogs at her disposal.  I decided to contact her really to find out if she would consider taking Sonny into her pack for a few weeks.  I was really keen to see if he could learn how to build his confidence and remember the ancient language of dog something he had never seemed to learn to speak.  She wrote back and told me that she could not take an aggressive dog into her pack but that she might be able to help, so this began a conversation about what we were doing in relation to canine encounters and her explaining a method that she used which was to teach him to avoid.  She explained that within a wolf pack certain dogs have the role of being 'testers' they apparently travel out in front and scout for danger, if this was in Sonny's DNA there was nothing that we could do to change it, but there was a way we could teach him to use alternative strategies.

The prospect of getting Sonny to stop lunging after 10 years was' as you can imagine, an attractive prospect, however I felt a strong personal dilemma as I was already working with a very good trainer and the last thing I wanted to do was to upset her, I was also worried that I was just being a butterfly again, dipping in and out of training methods without really committing to anything.  As Sally as previously told me some people just want you to put magic paint on the dog's tail to solve it's problems.  Was I one of those people after all then?

After further talks we decided to give it a go and booked a holiday near the trainer's home.  With two full days of training ahead, I was nervous the night before but actually found the method's reasonably easy to learn.  Interestingly she introduced me to a friend of hers who had several highly excited dogs over which she clearly had no control.  So Sonny was put through his paces well and truly with high, medium and low energy dogs.  The first morning he was reacting as usual but gradually he began to calm down and by the end of the two days he was.... well you'll have to wait and see.

slow progress

It seems as though I'm not doing much doesn't it because I'm not giving you any feedback on what we're up to.  However, steady progress has been made in some areas.

Before fearful of taking dog out on my own, partner nearly always walking him  Now can take him out more on my own on road only
Before walking dog alone with headphones to distract fearful thoughts and give another focus if we met a dog  Now able to walk dog without headphones using hypnotherapy techniques
Before use of tapping techniques to dissipate anxiety and calming 'mantra', worked to reduce anxiety in some situations  Now able to use calming mantra without use of tapping, it has the same effect - result!
Before unable to tackle walking with partner and our other dog as both dogs kicked off if they met another dog Now walking dogs together is mostly ok but still feeling unable to tackle offroad walking and fearful of meeting dogs offlead, BUT walking ahead with other dog, separating my nervous energy from Sonny, focussing on dealing with the dog offlead, explaining situation to the other owner can help him  and me to be less reactive!

Ongoing issues

My nervous reactions, which are very ingrained, mainly an issue when Sonny very reactive and lunging which I find very wearing,

Feeling confident to:
walk him offroad
deal with other dogs offlead without avoiding or fear
deal with walking in close proximity to people, he can still react aggressively even when the other person is some way away, and not just when he is with me
being suprised, people and or dogs emerging from turnings

Finding him a pack to mix with, does anybody want to take this on for 6 weeks so he can learn dog language and accept pack rules?