Feed the dogs breakfast with me! 🍽️ if you were a dog, who’s breakfast would you prefer?
Here’s another clip from Miklo + Illusion’s outing yesterday where I talk about advocating for Miklo when he’s interacting with another dog
Sharing a clip of a casual video I made for Miklo’s owners about dog-dog play and socialization. Seeing Miklo open up in play with Illusion has been so sweet!
Here’s a long video (what a world where 7 min is long 😅) I would post this on YouTube since I filmed it casually for Midge’s owner, but since I filmed it in portrait I figured why not share it here in case anyone finds it interesting!
Midge is a dog who doesn’t really think she just acts, so a lot of what she is learning is how to think and exist in the world. I would not do something like this if the dog she was interacting with was a strange dog or one who might actually hurt her. She’s interacted with Wulfy many times so he’s not new, and obviously I know him very well.
If she was seeking help from me in a productive way then I would allow it, but what she wants to do is hide behind my legs and scream/snap at Wulfy from her perceived safety bubble. She needs to learn different ways to handle discomfort, and you can see in this video she is starting to learn how to disengage from Wulfy by sniffing, moving away, etc. Much more effective and healthy!
I tried to fit my morning routine with the dogs into 90 seconds ⛅️
Rainy day at the river *asmr* version
A reel with no music so you can hear the sounds of our hike 💨🍃🦅🚂🌊
One of the biggest challenges when dealing with aggression is that you often can’t let your dog make their own choices because doing so would not be safe. This can create a dog who does not know how to make choices at all, good or bad, and you and them become stuck in a management loop forever.
One of the ways to start getting out of this loop is to find situations/environments where you can start letting them make choices, with your guidance to help them make the right ones.
Here you can see Bean is engaging in some hunting behavior, first with a squirrel and then with some ducks. Instead of telling him to what to do in these moments, I’m actually not telling him anything and letting him decide what to do.
The only choice I really want from him here is to stay connected with me, and I’ve stacked the odds in favor of that happening through all the training we have done prior to this.
My favorite moment in these videos is in the last one, when I start backing up and he twitches his ear back to listen for me, then turns around and comes to me. That’s the level of engagement I’m hoping for, that even if something else is holding Bean’s attention, he’s still maintaining that connection to me.
Additionally, by joining him in his hunting game I can create rules and structure and safety around his prey drive. I’m a partner and leader for him, not just a barrier to try and get through. Prey drive isn’t going anywhere, we can shape it and put control on it but we can’t make it go away. Learning to work with your dog’s prey drive instead of against it is another way to get to real
behavior change instead of just staying in management.
What a decompression hike looks like 🌲😌🌿
I want to make more videos about my decompression hikes cause there’s so much more to say than what can fit into 90 seconds
I’ve also contemplated making a long form video of a whole hike in real time. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in that, or how I’d film it, cause it would be like 2 hours long. But it could be fun to skip around and just get an idea of what it looks like in real time/unedited. Maybe? Maybe not?
I realize some people might be curious about Illusion’s *sensitivity* because I’ve mostly shared video of him doing really well. So I thought I’d share a few videos of him being nervous/fearful/reactive so you can see I’m not making it up 😅
There is wayyyyyyyyy more to say about this than can fit into an Instagram caption. I don’t like sharing stuff like this typically on social media simply because I can’t get across all the information that I’d want to go along with it. So just know there is a LOT of info that I just can’t fit here about how/why these situations occurred, the way I reacted to them, how they factored into our training and eventual decision etc etc etc.
There is an interesting balance when raising a service dog of setting them up for success but also evaluating their true temperament. I spent a long time carefully curating Illusion’s whole life to set him up for success but at a certain point, you have to see what the dog is made of. And Illusion is (partially) made of a lot of nerves and a desire to bark.
This isn’t a bad thing for him as a dog, it just makes him not suited for service work. Now with a lot of training and management, I could maybe get him to a point where he could look “fine” and be placed as a service dog. But what happens a year down the road, when he’s been living with someone who is NOT a professional dog trainer, and who isn’t going to manage him like a professional dog trainer would, and something scary happens out in public? There’s a good chance he would completely melt down, and then his handler would have to start all over again from square one to find another service dog. It just isn’t a gamble worth taking.
Not to mention the stress it would put on him to have to suppress all those big feelings to “work” in this way. So much of the job of a dog trainer is about changing things, fixing things, trying to put square pegs into round holes. Having the experience of seeing that I
Longer video, and not great filming cause that wasn’t my priority. There was a loud truck (machine? Idk what you’d call this 😂) at the park so we used it as an opportunity for some confidence building. Illusion has always been sensitive to noise so this is something we put a lot of thought into.
It’s important to note that for some dogs getting excited like this around potential triggers (meaning anything that triggers fear, nervousness, aggression, etc.) especially moving towards them, could actually make things worse. I think of smooth collies as sort of “herding dog-lite.” If Illusion were a cattle dog, border collie, german shepherd I might take a different approach.
Even though Illusion is a lower-drive, lower-arousal type of herding dog, I still want to make sure I’m not sensitizing him to the loud machine, or teaching him to get over-excited around it. So what I did here was use a food scatter, which elicits lower arousal, to book-end the higher arousal running around the machine. This helps the presence of the machine not be a cue for high arousal, cause he’s also practicing low arousal food eating near it, and it then helps him come down after the excitement. The ability to move up and down in arousal is hugely valuable.
Eventually/ideally I’d like the machine to be mostly insignificant to him and just part of the environment. But before we can get to that I have to make it not scary or concerning.
