Lots of fun happening at Hot Diggity Dog today! See comments for more!
This is an example of Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) to deal with reactivity, in this case Guinness' reactivity towards construction workers at my home. It utilizes positive reinforcement and counter-conditioning techniques to teach Guinness to remain calm when he sees a trigger, desensitizing him to the trigger so that he can get closer and remain calm, and teaching him to make other stress-reducing choices that are in themselves reinforcing for him (returning to exploring, thereby allowing him to habituate to the workers' presence). This type of training must be done under the dog's reactivity threshold, that is, starting from a distance far enough away from the "trigger" to be able to tune/teach while the dog can notice the trigger but still be in a calm enough state for learning to occur.
This technique can be taught to shelter dogs who exhibit fear or reactive behaviors, as long as triggering events can mostly be avoided. This is the management piece when not in BAT training mode, important so that the reactive behavior cannot be rehearsed. We also don't want to sensitize a dog to his or her triggers, whether in training mode or not. If when a dog sees his trigger when on leash, the dog feels something unpleasant like a jerk on his/her neck, this could create a negative association for the dog in the future when he or she sees the trigger, and should be avoided. In a shelter environment, the best management technique for helping the dog to remain calm when faced with environmental triggers is not perfect. The best approach would be to keep the dog as calm as possible when exiting the kennel, and try your best to avoid the dog's triggers *most* of the time, looking ahead for approaching triggers and moving away from them before they become an issue.
At the shelter where I used to work, I taught a Behavior Adjustment Training class to the volunteers. They still utilize this today, and one of the volunteers has taken over teaching the class. We have succes
The conditional use permit to operate my business was granted last night. Now I can concentrate on the work of helping the dogs of Columbus become better citizens!
"Training opens the door to a lifetime of trust and communication between you and your dog."
