Focus -- February 19, 2006
I teach reactive dog classes, and we have a yahoogroup which helps us to communicate during the week. In one of my emails to the group I answered someone’s question about what to do when you’re in the middle of a walk and your dog won’t pay attention to you. You are not near home or your car so that you can put your dog away, which would be what we’d do during class if the dog isn’t paying attention.
While this topic is rather specific and not directly pertinent to my cute little man, Bing, it IS pertinent to virtually every dog owner out there who is trying to get and maintain their dog’s focus in a distracting environment where, perhaps, the dog is overly excited, or fearful of a stimulus. What DOES one do when one is walking one’s dog through the neighborhood, a mile from home, and the dog begins to bark frantically at another dog? You call his name to no avail. You might even tug on the leash a little bit (hopefully not!). Playing the waiting game proves fruitless for a reasonable period of time. Begging is a ridiculous option, yet most of us end up doing just that!
A little bit of history:
In these reactive classes, we spend an inordinate amount of time teaching our dogs to pay attention to the owner. We teach them the meaning of the clicker. We teach them as large a variety of tricks as possible, so that we may initially be able to keep their attention on us instead of the distracting, fear response-eliciting stimulus in the environment (whatever that is to that dog). We eventually teach them to use that stimulus as a cue to look at the owner, thereby internalizing the whole process and allowing the dog to ‘own it’ (this is where it becomes very powerful). We teach them that the crate is a wonderful place, and so is the car. Why the car? Because using the car as a crate allows us to transport the dog to a huge variety of places, each of which is rife with new distractions.
We use positive reinforcement (reward the dog for paying attention to the owner) and negative punishment (put the dog back in the car if he doesn’t pay attention to the owner within X number of seconds). The more work we do on this, the more responsive to the owner the dog becomes, the more we build up a sort of insulation against the fear stimulus. Frankly, sometimes that fear stimulus response becomes a habit that we need to change.
Here was my response to that question:
There is no limit to the number of treats you can give a dog as a reward for a job well done...if I'm really happy with my dog I’ll give many many, many treats. I've even dumped my entire treat bag for a dog if I was thrilled! It is hard when you are far from home to help the dog understand that he's done something you don't like and now he's going home...it's too delayed of a response for much learning to take place. Your “I'm not really happy with this” pheromones will help but...this is why we spend so much time practicing getting out of the car and paying attention to you, doing stuff with you, looking calmly at stimuli without reacting. You have placed your dog in a very controlled environment so that you CAN use negative punishment (assuming your dog wants to be out with you, doing stuff and earning rewards) immediately to help the dog make sense of what you like and what you don’t like. The more you practice this, with the dog coming out of the crate, the car, the house, the more you are going to be able to 'explain' to your dog what you like, what is good, etc. Then it eventually translates to real life. This is why I recommend walking reactive dogs far away from stimuli at first, then with a few stimuli, farther and farther from crate/car/home. It's a long process and one that can stagnate if we expect that the dog is going to 'get it' really fast.
This process has applications no matter where you are with your dog, whether it’s on a walk, at agility class, in the obedience ring, at the pet food store, or just doing some training at home. Too often we beg our dogs for their attention. It puts us in a very compromising position, which is not where we want to be!
If you haven’t tried this process, now might be a good time!
Ali
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