Cyclists are utterly evil to Marley! They need lunging at and barking at, so on our morning walk today when cyclists kept going past we did lots of calm watching :) Hes still scared of them- so I will carry on doing Click The Trigger with him and cyclists :) We had another good time with dogs ( its unnerving - 2 days in a row!) We said hello to a Scottie dog across the road who he used to always react to. Walked past 2 yippy yorkies , 2 greyhounds and even came nose to nose with a terrier round a corner! He didnt bark at a single one. It would be very easy for me to think thats it- hes got it and he doesnt need anymore work. The reality is that hes giving me opportunities currently to reinforce behaviour that I deem appropriate. So him looking calmly at the other dogs must be reinforced or he will regress. Im aware that hes been about to go over threshold with all dogs today , he held it together very well but he was quite scared. If i had got any closer to any of the dogs then he would have reacted. (He was slower to turn back and get his treat after every click and starting to fix on the other dogs)Then we would have gone back in training a lot. So I will spend the next week creating the same amount of distance I had been prior to the last few days. Im going to be doing a lot of clicking the head turn at a larger distance. Im thrilled hes able to look at other dogs for so long now, he wasnt able to even glance at dogs not so long ago, however hes now getting rather starey with other dogs. Being so starey as well as being quite stiff while he gains as much information as possible by looking and sniffing appears rude to other dogs. The stiff body language and staring can be incredibly threatening and its likely if I allow him to meet other dogs like this then its quite likely the other dog will react negatively and he would then have a negative association in greeting other dogs. So more work to go- it never stops ;) but we are getting there and it feels great :)
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:49:16 +0000
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