🐶🐶Practising thinking and responding in the face of distractions 🐶🐶
I often get people asking how to start working their dog around distractions. There is so much in the world that acts as a distraction for our dogs - and we can start working around them at home.
It’s hard for our dogs to think when they are out in exciting environments and the Adrenalin starts pumping! This could be from excitement or fear/worry! So…it’s up to us to teach them how to be able to engage their thinking brain even in those settings. We have to start easy, then gradually get them out to harder environments. Marley loves his toys! Flirt pole, tug toys, balls……all of them! So….here he is learning to respond to me better even in the presence of his toy (flirt pole in this video).
It’s early stages so I’m simply lying the toy on the ground between Marley and I. I’m then asking him to do some simple things such as “come” and “go to bed”. You can see he is already excited at the presence of his toy as he is bouncing around and excitable. I have to keep the energy low so he can do the exercise. If he looks like he will get the toy I can move towards it, or I can give him a verbal reminder “uh-uh” so he leaves it and carries on.
If this is too hard for your dog, you may need to simply have the toy in sight of the dog, but not in such close proximity to your dog.
At the end of the session I put the toy away. I don’t want it to become a pattern of doing these exercises and then always playing.
He did well - even with the distraction of Smarty at the beginning 🤣
All dogs benefit from impulse control teaching - let’s get into it :)
🐶🐶 Happy Thursday! 🐶🐶
Marley wanted to show this video (ok really he has no idea, it’s me! All me!!!!
Marley used to struggle big time with self control. If he wanted something he would go for it. This is normal for our dogs - they are not born knowing how to control themselves. So….we started teaching! He has always had to sit and wait for his breakfast/dinner but that’s not enough.
He loooooooves his toys. We don’t leave toys lying around for him otherwise he would pick them up and bring them to us all the time insisting we play. He wouldnt relax a lot, and it would end up in frustration on our part too. (He would also chew them and end up ingesting all sorts!!). So his toys come out when I get them out. If he jumps around like an idiot trying to grab them off me and behaving rudely, he doesn’t get a game. Sound tough? Who wants a 30 + kg dog jumping all over them with their brain turned off??!!
This video shows him waiting for me to say “get it” so he knows the game starts. When I say “stop” he needs to let go of the tug. This time I also started asking him to get in his bed. This makes him think of doing something else even while his toy is out. It also starts the process of chilling him out. This time he was only on the bed for short periods, we can then start to extend that time. It’s so important not to just have a full on excitement session every time there are toys around. Use them to help the dog learn to regulate their excitement! It’s like a dimmer switch - start the game, build excitement, but also practice dialling it back, then up again.
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Who has a dog that gets fixated on things? You try and try getting their attention away but you just can’t!
Here is Bindi, fixating on a cat in the window. She would love to chase that cat down! This video shows that at this point - she is unable to actually take her focus off the cat. Her hearing actually diminishes in this state so she can’t actually hear as well as normal! All her energy is on her sense of sight rather than anything else!
The only thing to get some focus from her is to increase the distance from the “thing” that gets her fixated. In this case - I have to drive away from the cat and then I will be able to get her attention .
In order to change her response to cats we need to start waaaaaaaaaaaay back from this situation .
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We all know Bindi is a hunter. Some days when she comes out with me in the van we spot a lot of cats! Yesterday was that kind of day - she saw heaps of them! Needless to say she gets very intense and stiff and really wants the cats.
In this video she sees someone’s head and thinks it’s a cat! I think this was a result of seeing so many on our drive around and being a bit on edge and alert for anything that may resemble a small animal!
It was kind of funny, but it just goes to show how repeated exposure to things which stress/excite/ignite behaviours can put dogs more on edge.
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The pattern game in action.
I just wanted to show this video to demonstrate the conditioned response you want to build with this sort of game.
We haven’t done it a lot lately, so when we were out on a walk, I though I would give it a go to test Marley’s response. Turns out he hasn’t forgotton it at all!
He was walking along thinking about dog stuff, and then suddenly he flicks his attention up (when I started counting) and knows what is coming.
I will try and get one when we see a dog, but we don’t always know when we will see a dog!
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🐶🐶Trigger stacking 🐶🐶
Basically a dog-nerd term for “pushed to the limit”. We all have our limits....we all have those days where lots of things go wrong through the day, and the day ends with burnt dinner (or something else) just to top it off! 😡
Animals are no different - they also have their limits! Well....I stuffed up and Marley got to the end (and then some) of his coping level.
We walked past the first dog who was barking and running along the fence line. Marley coped admirably. Thoughts in my head were “wow good boy - you’re ‘cured!’”. It was at that point we should have turned around. We went past the next house which also had a dog (he often runs up and barks and runs along the fence too). We got past and Marley was a bit stressed bit doing ok. We turned around.....and....well the video happened. 🤦♀️
He had obviously reached his limits and the second dog just pushed him over. So yeh, he lunged. There were some good things - he recovered quickly after he lunged. He re focused on me and walked past rather than continuing to worry and stress about the dog.
Trigger stacking is important to think of when working with dogs. I thought Marley was doing so well, I didn’t see any of his subtle signs of stress. In hindsight he was probably grabbing at food more than usual (sign of stress)....but really there wasn’t a lot.
We all stuff up. The reactivity journey is bumpy as! 🐶❤️
Just a case of canine craziness this morning! 🤣
It’s usually instigated by Bindi and Marley gives in to her demands! They are a pretty good combo though - they do stop themselves when they have had enough.....and sometimes we step in to stop them if Bindi just won’t listen to Marley’s signs when he is telling her he isn’t keen!
Marley is very vocal 🐶🤣❤️
Let’s talk off leash control. It’s not - get your dog to sit, release their lead and then let them run wild, doing everything they want, running up to any and every dog they see with high energy.
It is - having voice control over your dog so if you call them - they come!
This video demonstrates pretty strict off leash control because we are on a road! Sure it’s a quiet road, but still. Marley doesn’t do this much - it was just something to practice whilst we were out. When staying with me and paying attention to me - he got reinforcement in the form of food. I’d love
To have a dog I can walk more off leash like
This - but we have a loooooong way to go!
We are not perfect - my dogs are not perfect. But we all have a responsibility when out and about with our dogs. Please don’t let your dog run up to dogs - whether your dog is “friendly” or not 🙂
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