Diary of the Cobbler’s Kids – Week 1

Cobbler’s children go barefoot

I often wonder if I am the only trainer who feels guilty every time they think about their own dogs’ training. My dogs are the proverbial cobbler’s children. I spend time working with other people to help them train their dogs but often neglect to follow the same advice for my own – even when they have the same challenges! I do train them of course: after all they’re learning something from you all the time – whether you intend it or not – and both have issues that have needed attention. But our training has become haphazard at best. Rather than the structured plan that I give to clients, my own get a bit of this and that, slotted into walks and around the house – and I tend to be reactive rather than proactive. We muddle through and do OK but the time has come to really practice what I preach, in the way I preach it!

So the Diary of the Cobbler’s Kids will be a regular new feature on the Canine Confidence blog for 2012. I plan to post an entry at least once a week. I’ll be talking about what we are doing and how we are going about it. And hopefully will have progress to report.

But before we start, let me introduce you to the Cobbler’s Kids:

Jake is our nearly-9-year-old Smooth Collie and, incidentally, has the cutest ears in the business. He came to us at 11 months when his owner tragically died of cancer and we have her to thank for his early training. He had been intended as her replacement service dog and so came to us already clicker-savvy and with all the basics in place.

On the whole he has been an easy dog, who loves to work and is fun to have about. But he can be reactive if startled so he is muzzled when off lead in public just in case (it keeps us both relaxed – as I discuss here).  He’s pretty tolerant of other dogs, unless they are particularly rude, and is good with people when he is not surprised. But I want to work on increasing his tolerance levels and help him to be more chilled.

Mirri is our 6-or-so-year-old Lurcher. I found her as a youngster running loose in rush-hour traffic. I stopped the car, knelt down and called to her, and after a second’s hesitation, she rushed to me and collapsed against me with an audible sign of relief. When I took her out the day after I found her, she kicked off big time, barking and lunging at a German Shepherd a couple of hundred metres away. At that point I prayed she had an owner out looking for her! She didn’t, so she stayed.

She’s improved a lot since then. She can now cope with most dogs at about 10 metres and some close up and, if she can walk calmly with them for 10-15 minutes, she is fine with them after that. I was very pleased with her progress but she’s regressed a bit after the incident reported here. And I’ve realised now that that isn’t going to get better on its own, so I need to work on her reactivity again. With people she is very reliable, if sometimes a little shy.

 

So that’s the dogs – what about the training? Well my plan is to think about them as if they were client dogs. What would I be suggesting? I tend to look at three elements with clients: core, foundation exercises to reduce tension, develop calmness and increase self-control; training alternative behaviours and changing emotional responses; and management to avoid repetition of unwanted behaviour and to give the first two the best chance of success. I work primarily with TTouch and clicker training but, for reactivity, also suggest specific exercises like Karen Overall’s Relaxation Protocol (I like the excellent mp3 versions from Champion of my Heart), the Look at That exercise from Leslie McDevitt’s Control Unleashed, and Grisha Stewart’s BAT, depending on the situation.

So I will be doing an assessment of each dog and developing a detailed plan, which I will talk about in the next few posts. But a few things are immediately obvious:

• First management. My habit has been to take the dogs out together. However, split attention is not good and certainly not conducive to effective rehabilitation of behaviour issues. When I am working on Mirri’s response to another dog, I don’t need to be distracted by what Jake is doing and vice versa. I want to be fully present with the dog I am working with. So my first decision, temporarily at least, is to walk them separately. I have done this a few times now and it makes a huge difference not least to my stress levels, which means the dogs are more relaxed as well, and we can enjoy both walking and training much more. A good start.
• Second foundations. Both dogs need to learn to relax in any situation, so the Relaxation Protocol seems a sensible foundation, whatever else I do. I have done this in the past with dogs, and regularly recommend it as a core exercise to clients, but I have to confess I have not done it systematically with these two. So that is our Something Wagging Train Your Dog Month Challenge: get through our first two cycles of the Relaxation Protocol. We are a few days in to the first cycle.  Surprisingly Mirri is getting the hang of it more easily than Jake, for whom I thought it would be a cinch as he has, in his day, done a lot of proofing of stay activities. But in fact he is finding it much harder just to “be” and to let things happen around him, without being left in a formal stay. So I am learning unexpected things already.
• Third training. The one straightforward trained behaviour that I feel both dogs are missing is a rock solid recall. They each have a functional recall under average circumstances but I have to confess I doubt my ability to recall them from chasing a hare or a deer, or for that matter an unexpected stray dog (Mirri) or a sudden cyclist (Jake). So I want to train a turn-on-a-sixpence-whatever-you-are-doing whistle recall. We started yesterday working on charging the whistle and will keep that going daily for the next week or two.

So those are our immediate plans. In the next instalment I’ll take you through my observations and assessment of Jake and Mirri from a TTouch perspective.