· By Minou Tpain
Author: Denise Partlow
Instagram: @modernk9 Carolinas
We need to have a mind shift from wanting to stop a dog’s behavior to helping the dog feel comfortable enough so they no longer exhibit a specific behavior.
Therefore the majority of our training should focus on helping the dog gain confidence either in his own body, in new environments or around stimuli. But it’s not a race & we must go at the dog’s pace.
So what does the training look like?
Let’s use noises as an example. My foster, Reid, is scared of grocery bags so during training I will bring out some bags, but remember he’s scared of them, just the sight of them makes him want to run so my end goal cannot be my starting goal.
My end goal would be to walk towards him with a bag in my hand without him running away. So I have to break that into very tiny increments where I gradually approach him with a bag one step at a time.
The starting template for this training would be (modifications may be necessary)
-Walk to the cabinet the bags are in
-Open the cabinet
-Open the cabinet, touch a bag
-Open the cabinet pick up a bag
-Open the cabinet, pick up a bag, shut the cabinet, open the cabinet, put it back
-Repeat the above, but take one step towards the dog, put the bag away
-Repeat the above, and keep adding an additional step until you’ve made it all the way to the dog.
Seems pretty simple, right?
But you will need many repetitions of each one of those steps and you’ll want to reward your dog after every step.
And the most important piece is you would not move to the next step until your dog is happily taking treats from you, and he’s more excited for the reward, and not concerned with the trigger.
There is no set amount of repetitions that anyone could tell you to do. It’s all about the dog and how they are feeling in that moment. That is what should guide your training.
When training around triggers, it can be very difficult to know how to break down the steps of something that may seem like a single step to us but for a dog there are many steps.
Check out the story highlights labeled Fearful dog for more examples!
Tomorrow’s post- working in a new environment
