Boulder Dog

Hint: Do not choke, shock or punish your dog’s barking, growling, or lunging in any way shape or form. You will only make things worse by confirming for your dog that whatever it is she’s afraid of will indeed cause her harm in the form of your so-called “correction.” Do not correct your dog. Correct your understanding of your dog’s experience.

Hiding: If I can't see you, you're not there.

Fearful, shy dogs, of which Sadie is one, are often reactive, meaning they react behaviorally (freezing, barking, growling, lunging, hiding, cowering, for example) to the things that trigger the emotion of fear. Actually, all dogs are afraid of some things, as well they should be. So are we. Fear of novel and unusual phenomenon is good. It can save our lives. But, fearful, shy dogs like fearful people tend to react more often to more things than, well, regular people and dogs.

Dogs brains and our brains function pretty much the same when fear is aroused. Our amygdala goes into overdrive and our thinking brain recedes into the background. We don’t act, we react. Typically we freeze, if only for an instant. Then we flee from what’s scaring us or we try to make it flee from us. You know the old saw, the best defense is a good offense.

Lots of things trigger Sadie’s fear response. Let’s take one example–a person seeming to suddenly come out of nowhere on a trail in hazy light in which they appear as a featureless silhouette. Sometime they’re wearing a back pack or using walking sticks which only makes their outline look even scarier. I’ve learned from experience, unfortunately, that Sadie will freeze for an instant and then run barking towards the figure as if to say, “GO AWAY!” Patricia McConnell refers to this as an active defense reflex. The responses of hikers on the receiving end of Sadie’s deep-chested barks have ranged from startling and stopping in their tracks to just walking by and and saying “Hi” as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

In any case, I don’t want Sadie to feel afraid, and I also don’t want her behavior to scare people. What to do? Well, the traditional answer is to do a classical counterconditioning protocol which is a fancy way of saying ‘change Sadie’s emotional response from fear to, if not joy, at least equanimity to an approaching stranger.‘

Doing this would have required finding a string of people that Sadie didn’t know, or people she did know but dressed up as people that she didn’t, to act as decoys. They would appear out of nowhere on various trails around town at a distance far enough so that Sadie could see them but not close enough so that she would react. I would feed her an extra special goodie at just that moment. Soon approaching figures would predict good things happening, a special treat, and that would in turn change her emotional state to something positive rather than fear.

We didn’t do that.

Clicking and treating the behavior you want to interrupt is not the intuitively obvious thing to do. (After all, we typically click to ‘mark’ the behavior we do want and then follow-up with  a positive reinforcer, usually, but not always, food.) But, that’s what I did.

So what behavior did I click and treat that I didn’t want Sadie to do? Freezing and staring at the oncoming figure. Remember, that’s the behavior that immediately preceded barking.

Here’s what I did under the guidance of Gigi, our trainer. I let Sadie look at the person for two seconds, not more. Then I clicked. Because Sadie is clicker savvy and she knows a goodie, a positive reinforcer, follows the click, she would look back at me and come to me for her extra special cheese. By the time the person caught up to us I had Sadie sitting at the side of the trail either gobbling up goodies as the person walked towards us (classical counter-conditioning) or performing other learned behaviors on cue, including ‘look’ at the person passing by, for which she was reinforced. I described some of these behaviors in a previous post, “Magic Touch for Fearful Dogs.” Leslie McDevitt discusses the ‘look‘ cue in her book, Control Unleashed.

Sadie caught on quickly. When she saw a stranger in the distance she started looking back at me almost immediately. I clicked her head-turns and she bounced back for her treat.

I’m always watching the trail ahead. On rare occasions I see someone before Sadie does and I call her to me. More often, though, Ms. S. sees someone before I do and comes running to me all on her own steam. I LOVE that! I positively reinforce her for those stellar performances!

Sometimes, like earlier today, a person seemingly appears out of thin air which catches us both by surprise. Sadie slipped in a couple of barks but we managed to abort her running towards the man and his dog who had stopped and politely moved off the trail.

This post is part of the Never Shock a Puppy Campaign.Please click on the bright green and blue image to visit the Never Shock A Puppy blog and leave a comment before midnight MDT, Sunday, October 10. You’ll be entered into a contest to win great prizes including a gift certificate from K9Cuisine and a free training session with a reward-based trainer in your area!

Tags: Barking, Clicker, Clicker training, Control Unleashed, Dog behavior, Dominance theory, E collar, Electric shock collar, Fearful dogs, Gigi Moss, Leslie McDevitt, look cue, Never shock a puppy, Patricia McConnell, Positive reinforcement, Positive training, Reward Based Dog Training, Scared dogs, Shock collar, Shy dogs, stop barking