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...

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.

That brain

It was an extremely hard day yesterday.  I have been away for a few days so unable to do our usual session last week.  As you know for those of you who are regular readers, gaps in training make my anxiety get worse.  Yesterday was no exception. My other dog Holly was to be part of the picture today as Sally needed to assess the impact of 'Miss Diva' on Sonny's behaviour.  In the morning she had been a little madam, being very pushy with me about getting into the car on her terms, so I was not expecting great things.  However, she was in fact to be impeccably behaved throughout the morning.  However, the gap in training, my work having been less than enthusiastic about letting me take yet more time off and the addition of another dog made me feel much more worried, now I have another dog to think about and Sonny has been very reactive to other dogs this week with me feeling quite frustrated with him that he has such a long way to go in terms of his desensitisation. 

A spaniel, approaches off lead, Sally has given me clear instructions about situations like this, walk on, don't falter, the other dog will just fall into line and walk alongside or, give up and rejoin his pack.  My unconscious fear works overtime and I find myself diverting off to the side, separating myself from Sally and Rocky who are forging ahead.  It happens in an instant, the drive to avoid situations that I cannot cope with is stronger than the rational side of me that wants to help my dog and conquer my fear.  Sonny does well, he has not reacted, better than he had been managing earlier this week, however Sally is clearly not pleased and makes a wry comment, I'm sure she means well, but as I don't tend to respond well to teasing, I slump further into depression about this brain of mine which still reacts so strongly to situations in which I need to feel strong enough to help my dog.  Things are not going well today.

Further on some young people are mucking about with boats, we have swopped dogs by now, so Sally is taking Sonny forward, putting him up against his fears about close proximity to strange people and things.  A man in a rubber suit holds his hand out to Sonny, it's a tense moment, there's not much more you can do after you've put a big yellow sign on your dog's back, warning people not to approach him!  To my surprise he merely sniffs the man's hand and moves on.  Again I think it's not that he can't be different, he just can't be different with me!

We talk about various options, putting him into various packs of dogs that Sally knows of, none of it sounds ideal and it would be a big thing to do, meaning he would probably have to be away for a few weeks.  What if he reverted to type when he came back to me? It is possible, I've seen it on Cesar Milan several times where the owners simply have the wrong energy or, don't address the unwanted behaviour in the right way.  These dogs usually end up living in Cesar's pack, but today if I thought he would be settled and happy, I think I'd let him go.  What, me? Give up on my beloved dog? Now you can tell what sort of a day I'm having!

It's been a difficult morning, we agree enough for now.  He is making progress but it's very slow and I am up against pressure from work with regard to taking time off for the training.  I'm feeling hemmed in, frustrated, upset and angry.

A few days later and a good sob on the phone to my partner about how useless I feel and how Sonny would be better off with a different owner, I've picked myself up a bit.  Maybe I need to look into doing something about this fear in a different way?  Sally mentioned she knew a good hypnotherapist but I don't want to see a man and he's a long way from where I live.  I decide to look closer to home.  I discover someone not far from me and I go for my first assessment on Saturday.  If she can help me with whatever it is I'm afraid of, maybe we'll get somewhere.  I'll let you know how it goes...

Watch him go!

Wednesday is training day, Sonny and I headed off the local park to meet up with Sally and Rocky.  Today we are going to challenge him by having to tolerate Rocky being off lead and running for the ball.  Fortunately Rocky has one of those ball launchers which even with its aid shows up  my complete ineptitude with hand eye coordination. (the bug bear of many a school netball team that had to have me on its patch)!  Fortunately in the dog world, if the ball is unpredictable it makes life more interesting so Rocky was very tolerant of some rather peculiar throws, how he loves his ball!  Sonny of course, now being detained at Sally's side, is beside himself for two reasons, one his beloved mum is more than a stone's throw away and to add insult to injury playing with another dog,

secondly we suspect he would love to join the ball game but cannot.  Next we challenge Sonny's sensitivity to having people and animals coming in close proximity to him. Sally reminds me of the unpleasant feeling that being on a packed train on the underground can have, unpleasant for a lot of people, so we can fully understand how he feels.  But for a guy like Sonny, who is so hyper-sensitive this feeling must be multiplied many times.  I am tasked with running up and down, getting closer each time, with Rocky in tow, putting myself between the dogs, he manages this but I acknowledge that people appearing out of narrow openings unexpectedly is very much a source of my own fear because I am so worried he will react.  Sally suggests I get my partner to practice this as an exercise, so in a way me being startled which is natural, is nothing for him to worry about.  Again I get the question, what am I afraid of when it comes to these situations? I KNOW he can't actually hurt anyone, he could knock a child over, but I would not let that happen, so what is it that bugs me?  Hard as I try I cannot get to the bottom of it, I am even wondering if I should try hypnosis to desensitise myself to these encounters, but still thinking about that one as would be another expense.  How much money is this dog going to cost me over his lifetime, rather like parenthood, best not to think about it!!

Finally Sonny get's his chance, we agree it's safe enough to let him off lead as there are no other dogs around.  Sonny is still muzzled but running for the ball, he loves it, he's totally not worried about Rocky and in future we might even get to a point where they can be off lead together.  At present I'm trying to find a muzzle that would allow him to just be able to pick up the ball so the whole game has some reward for him.  Let's stop it on a good note, Sonny has a positive association of being around Rocky and having a game which will serve him well for next time.

What this dog really needs is to go and live with a pack of dogs but as we know they would need to be balanced as further trauma is not what he needs right now.  My sense has always been that if Cesar Milan had seen Sonny he would have suggested taking him into his pack for several weeks, that would involve intensive work and being around other dogs to the point that he learns the language of dogs.  At present his levels of fear are so great that he is unable to differentiate between non-threat and threat.  Much as I love him I do not propose to ship him off to LA however we may come across a situation that we can put him in here, we will let you know.

Before I finish can I just have a rant about insurance?  It has come to my attention over the last few weeks that it is impossible to get any third party liability insurance for a dog that has bitten, even if he is being muzzled AND on medication AND being rehabilitated by a professional trainer who will vouch for his behaviour and diagnosis.  This, as Sally and I have discussed is a serious issue for anyone with a dog that develops problems with aggression or, considers taking on a dog from a rescue organisation who might have these type of issues.  The future for these troubled and difficult dogs, often presenting with such challenging behaviour through no fault of their own looks very bleak and potentially even more dogs will be euthanized as no one will dare to take a risk!  My best offer was that 'he had to be free of aggression for 2 years' before they would consider it. Thanks a lot Petplan!  Bearing in mind that he would be 12 and a half by then it really wasn't worth it.  All I can say is GRRRRRR!!!