Westley, aka Sassypants, takes his Leave It cue very seriously.
#heeler #acd #australiancattledog #dogtraining #positivereinforcement #positivedogtraining #blueheeler #redheeler #sassypants #dogs #dogsofinstagram
I've been waiting 9 months to see him run like this again.
#heeler #blueheeler #redheeler #acd #australiancattledog #tplo #tplorecovery #dog #dogs #dogsofinstagram
Westley being his adorable, good boy self.
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People. This may look ridiculous, but DO IT ANYWAY.
I'm serious, people. STOP CHASING YOUR DOGS. All you're doing is making it a game for them and they have ZERO incentive to come back to you or let you catch them.
Also, I promise you, if they don't respond the first time you say their name, they ARE NOT going to respond the 200th time you yell it. They can hear you just fine.
For the love of every dog runner in the world, spend the time teaching your dog recall. And until then, when they run, STOP CHASING THEM and sit. Fall. Walk away from them. Let them come back to you, because they'll do that a lot faster than you're suddenly going to be able to catch them or use their name to get them to come back.
This is Jackson. He's a 2 year old chocolate Heeler. His people reached out to me early last month because while they split their time between two very dog friendly communities, Jackson was aggressively barking, lunging, and scaring off anyone he was unfamiliar with, even on the trail that borders their yard.
My plan was easy and I knew it would work because I used it with my own reactive Heeler, they would just need to do the work and stay consistent. Which is why I enlisted Westley to help me at three different training sessions this month, even though he's still not fully back to 100% after his surgeries in April (he's at like 75%, though!). I wanted Jackson's people to see with their own eyes what their future with Jackson could look like, as long as they put the effort in to stay consistent, because Westley WAS Jackson at 2 years old.
But I also wanted them to see what trust and communication between dogs and their people looks like, because in a lot of ways, cattle dogs NEED to trust their humans. They need to know they're being heard, that when they say something isn't ok or makes them uneasy, they're being listened to. Which is what desensitization and counterconditioning is about: you understand X makes them afraid/uncomfortable, so you help him conquer than negative emotion while slowly reassociating that trigger with really positive things (toys, pets, praise, all of the above). You move at their comfort level, establishing the trust with them that you'll listen to their cues and won't push them past their threshold. We had to get Westley 1000 feet away to start with before Jackson was able to see him but stay calm enough to not react to him, but 4 weeks later and Jackson was not only to stay calm with West less than 20 feet away, he made the choice to look away and at his people for the first time.
This was a HUGE victory for Jackson and his family, and a huge leap towards the outings and life they're hoping to be able to share with him for the rest
The hero and I just dropped Westley off for bilateral TPLOs. He was so scared, I had to walk him back to the prep room because he wouldn't leave me.
The next few days are going to be so rough. We live in a bi-level so there's two flights of stairs to get in and out of my house. Nico made him a real grass potty pad for the back porch so he won't have to do the stairs for the first few days other than getting into the house, and I bought him a Help Em Up harness to help him get up and down after that.
The bad news: Absolutely no activity for the next month beyond bare minimum for potty breaks and making sure his muscles don't atrophy.
The good news: If I can keep him calm for the next month, we'll be able to start with short, controlled leash walks for a month. If I can manage to somehow keep him calm (😬😬) through all that, we can go back to off leash, full crazy Heeler muchness by end of June.
Video of him swimming last summer after being TERRIFIED of the water for the last three years to remind myself how much of a badass he is.
This is little miss Sadie. She's almost sixteen months old, and has been in her forever home for just under 3 months. She gets lots of exercise every day (she's got two new older sisters (Kimber and Remy) to play with and several acres she gets to chase her Dad around on while he rides his side by side) but she's really been struggling with settling in to her new home. There's too many new sounds, new people, new smells, new dog siblings. And she hasn't quite figured out her job yet, or what she's supposed to bark at and alert her parents and doggie sisters to. So, just in case, she's been barking an extra lot--every time someone walks into the room or stands up or is out of her sight.
She isn't trying to be annoying, it's just a new world and she's trying to find her place in it and learn to trust again.
So I've had her dog parents helping her with impulse control. But a very big part of teaching Sadie impulse control has been building her trust that her new guardians aren't going to let her dog sisters steal her treats and rewards for listening. We originally tried to do this with her sisters outside, out of her sight, but this just caused her too much anxiety. So this week, I asked to keep K and R inside, just out of Sadie's immediate line of sight. She still struggled with focus but was able to learn the basics of Leave It in just a few seconds. And once she realized the more she listened and focused, the more praise and treats she got from her mom. Which is exactly what we were hoping for, because every time she was rewarded for her impulse control, the quicker and easier it was to regain and hold her attention.
We've been working with Sadie for three weeks now, and every Sit, every Stay, every Paw, feels like a victory because you can see how hard she struggles to control her anxiety and impulses, but watching her gain that trust and confidence in herself and her new parents has been one of the best things of my year so far. It hasn't been easy, but they'r
Westley never fails to amaze me. He is TERRIFIED of the vet. Normally, this dog will patiently follow me anywhere, for any length of time, but we haven't made it to the vet once in 4 years without him attempting to rip my arm out of the socket with his mad, crazy sprints towards freedom. And once he realizes that's not going to work, he starts to shut down on me. Today was no different.
After fifteen minutes of overwhelming stress until he was panting so hard he drooled, wouldn't take even his highest value treats, and wouldn't make eye contact with me (his default behavior when he's unsure of a situation or scared), he was too over-threshold to pay attention to anything but staring at the wall.
Then I tried 'Wait'. While he's on the floor, I'll tell him to wait while I place treats on his paws. He'll then instantly make eye contact with me until I tell him to go get 'em (his record was 7 minutes of eye contact until I told him to go get 'em). And while I had to wait for the eye contact this time and it was barely a flicker, it was such a huge win for my boy, I wanted to jump up and happy dance.
#PositiveDogTraining #positivereinforcementtraining #positivereinforcement #acd #australiancattledogsofinstagram #blueheeler #forcefreedogtraining #nwi
