Boulder Dog

I want a second chance with Sadie the puppy. I look back at fearful Sadie’s early months and wonder How in Dog’s name did I not see ‘that’ coming?

Puppy Sadie

But, alas, I cannot turn back the calendar. As I promised you last Thursday on the occasion of Sadie’s fourth birthday, I’ll tell you about a few things that, had I done them differently, I’m near certain we wouldn’t be dealing with the difficulties we are now. Why am I confident we could have averted trouble? Because in one case we did.

From day one, Sadie stalled at stairs. Our house is full of stairs. She absolutely HAD to gain confidence on stairs.

I picked Sadie up and placed her one stair from the top. Up she bounced. Then, I put her down on one stair from the bottom of the staircase. Down she stepped. Back and forth we went, each time I set her down a little farther from the top and bottom. After she became easier with the stairs, I placed treats on each step for her to scarf up as she climbed up and down.

We made near daily ‘stair stops’ at friends’ houses just to practice on ‘strange’ stairs. As we ventured farther a field in the world we trained on stairs in apartment buildings, offices, university buildings, you name it.

Sometimes Sadie regressed. Out of the blue one day she decided she could not descend the flight of stairs from Romeo’s deck to the yard. This was not an option. So we spent a training session with Gigi relearning those dastardly deck stairs.

Still, there are some types of stairs Sadie won’t touch such as those made of mean metal grates. But for all practical purposes I can depend on Sadie doing stairs.

Small spaces? Not so much. The smallest spaces in our house are the bathrooms. Sadie NEVER fully entered any of our bathrooms. She’d poke her head through the doorframe up to her shoulders then back away. Did I embark on a ‘bathrooms-are-the-funest-place-in-the-house program’? No. So what if she doesn’t go into the bathrooms?

It wasn’t just the bathrooms in our house though. Sadie shied away from dressing rooms in clothing stores, little brick outhouses on open space trails, and restrooms in stores and other buildings. In short, I couldn’t try on clothes or go to the bathroom when Sadie and I were out together, with one exception—the itty-bitty restroom at PC’s Pantry, made even smaller because it doubled as a storage room. Honestly, I don’t remember how it happened, but Sadie acclimated to that intensely small space. This is a good example of how dogs don’t generalize!

Truth be told, we finally are making progress with small spaces—slowly.

Sadie also does not like the earth moving under her feet. I understand this sort of thing. In my case, I was never able to learn to ice skate or roller skate. I couldn’t stand the feeling of my feet having minds of their own, shooting in every direction expect the one I wanted them to go. To this day I hate merely walking on ice.

I first noticed Sadie’s hesitancy when she stepped on, startled, and then backed away from a flattened cardboard box on the floor. I think she reacted to the box bouncing slightly when she placed her paw on it. What did I do? Nothing! Cardboard? It just didn’t seem like a big deal.

Ha! There are a trajillion things that unsuspectingly cause the earth to move like loosened tiles, broken chunks of sidewalk, and unbolted boards on decks and foot bridges, to name just a few. Getting from here to there could be like walking a gauntlet if anything dared to wobble.

So now we’re playing catch-up. I made a wobble board. It’s about 3’ by 3’ and covered with traction tape so Ms. S. doesn’t have to deal with slipping and wobbling at the same time. Baby steps are better than none at all. But, I’m sure we’d be far ahead in the game if I had paid attention to Sadie’s fear of unsteady surfaces nearly four years ago.

What do you get when you cross a small space with an unsteady floor? An elevator, of course. How do you think Sadie feels about elevators? Forgetaboutit.

So far we’ve not had to transport our bodies any higher than seven floors. Thank Dog we learned to do stairs or we’d truly be SOL.

Elevators are our new project since two years ago. Seriously. Sadie, Gigi and I have been working on elevators for two years. Every Tuesday for an hour we make the rounds of elevators in downtown Boulder. This is a saga unto itself. I’ll  blog about it someday soon. For now, let is suffice to say that I noticed Sadie’s discomfort when we rode in an elevator for the first time when she was about 12 weeks old. She didn’t like it, so we didn’t work at it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

It’s true what they say—EVERYTHING you want your dog to master as an adult, introduce your puppy to it during the two critical developmental windows. The first is from 8 weeks to 12 weeks. The second is from 12 to 16 weeks. Learning happens faster during the former, but is still going on, though at a lesser rate, during the latter.

So that’s our cautionary tale. If I could offer advice born of the benefit of hindsight: Think carefully about all the different kinds of environments in which you’ll want your dog to feel at ease, and the ‘things’ with which you’ll want your dog to be comfortable. Pay special attention when your puppy ‘tells’ you she’s having trouble. Then, make learning rewarding and fun for the both of you.

Tags: Behavior, Critical period, Dog behavior, Fearful dogs, Gigi Moss, Habituation, Positive reinforcement, Puppy socialization, Socialization