Week 6

We arrived early enough tonight to get a short warm-up in before we started. Gus could definitely use a longer warm-up, but it is really hard to get home organized for me to leave any earlier. He was very keen on the food which can be good, but it can also be a bad thing as part of his issue is guarding. At home this week he had a couple of fights with my parents aussie over food crumbs in the kitchen, or just the hint that he was going to get food. He isn't doing damage in these fights anymore as Data is too old to fight back now.

Anyway back to tonight he was definitely a little more on edge than usual. Perhaps it was from residual stress from his day at home (he ware a citronella collar out in the pen today so he didn't wake the baby from her nap). We worked opposite Winter today. Gus finds her a little hard because she is such a bouncy young puppy. We did 3 u-turns with 5, 10 and then 15 steps and then we progressed to following. Following is Gus' hardest exercise especially when he is in front. He was quite concerned about Winter following him (distance varied from 10-20 feet). He doesn't seem to have much difficulty when he followed Winter. His mouth was definitely hard tonight, not that that is unusual. It is constant work to keep him focused on relaxing his mouth. I consistently tell him "gentle" when taking treats and I try not to release treats until I feel tongue.

The second round of work, again with Winter, we started down at the road, we did following and our leap frog passing I've described before. Gus had a hard time with this, lunging a few times to the end of the leash. He only barked once, though, the other times he got to the end of the leash and came back into heel for treats. We upped the speed a little bit and Gus and I did some running passes which seemed to increase his likelihood to lunge. I worked really hard at keeping my leash hand planted to my belly button each time to give Gus the opportunity to make a choice and not tence up or jerk him on the leash. This was really hard, and I'm proud of how I did tonight in this regard. We ended the session after some difficult passes with a stationary dog cutting into a following position.

Week 5

Tonight we arrived a little late to class, mainly because I was daydreaming on the the drive and missed the turn. When I arrived I set up the wobble board and labyrinth as I had been requested. Then I started to warm up Gusto. Since the warm-up had helped him so much last week I wanted to make sure I did the same thing. We did some attention and then some TTouch to get him comfortable and relaxed enough to be able to think and learn.

For his first session we worked him with Kaya again. Kaya was more stressed tonight and had been for at least a few days Lisa said. Lisa is only a week or so away from her delivery date so we had some fun postulating about whether that might be affecting Kaya's behaviour... Who knows? Anyway, her higher intensity made her harder for Gusto to work with. We started out with Gus stationary and Kaya walking around ranging from about 25 - 10 feet away. As Lisa was feeling tired, Anne-Marie worked Kaya and she wanted to establish the working relationship before we made it too hard. Gus did well and I worked on "GENTLE" in an attempt to keep his relaxed mouth we had achieved through the ttouch. We progressed to some following exercises on the road. Gus seemed more stressed by the traffic tonight than I have noted in the past. After some following and parallel walking we did some of the leap frog technique I described last week. I had aske Anne-Marie to add speed in the pass -bys to challenge Gus a little bit more. It certainly worked. He lunged for Kaya as she went by the first time. He quickly recovered though and kept on working. After a few more times with no reaction we returned to the driveway which is noisier due to the gravel. Anne-Marie made it harder again by cutting tighter with Kaya into Gusto's space. Again he lunged, but didn't bark and returned to work right away. After a few more leap frogs with speed, he looked at Kaya when she passed by took a quick step, stopped, took another quick step then decided to just look up at me and work with me. Tina and I both thought this was progress. One last leap frog got no reaction. We went back and had a party in the car and some more ttouch.

Our second session we worked with a husky mix named Winter. Gus let out a low growl when we were about 30 feet away so this was our starting distance for some following work on the road. Gus had no difficulty in front or behind Winter. We did some pass bys on opposite sides of the road, and Gus did well. We did pass bys at 10 feet which again wasn't a problem for Gus. Next we did some parallel walking which was a little more difficult for Gusto, though he didn't have a full blown reaction, he did look at Winter more (aparently Winter was really staring at Gus at the time). Next Anne-Marie pulled out Fischer, her Labrador and we did the speed leap frogs again. Gus seemed less bothered by Fischer that he was with Kaya. Anne-Marie really pushed the distance that she'd cut us off, which definitely pushed the envelop, but Gus did really well. Yeah for Gusto!

Week 4

Tonight was our fourth session at reactive classes. It has been 3 weeks since our last class. One week class was cancelled due to the long weekend, and we missed last week as we were away on a trip. Before our session we took a few minutes to to some TTouch and relaxation work ("Gentle"). In our sessions, we worked with a high drive little lab cross who has some minor dog-dog issues. In our first session we did some following and parallel walking along the road. Due to an abnormally high volume of traffic we continued work on the driveway. Gusto did well working with Aspen, but did show some signs of tension such as a tense mouth, hard bite and some glances toward her. Overall he did quite well. At the end of the first session we did an exercise I'll call "leap frog" where one dog overtakes the other from behind and cuts in front. Then the new dog in the back overtakes the dog in front. You continue to "leap frog" around each other along the walk. This exercise definitely made him uncomfortable but he did well. We also did some walking around each other. This makes me a little more uncomfortable. I'm constantly concerned that another dog will come into Gusto's space and he'll nail somebody. His obedience is very good, which has the downside I think of giving other dog handlers a false sense of safety around him...

In our second session we started with the leap frog exercise from before. Gus did really well. We also practiced an impromptu T-greeting in the mix. By this I mean that a couple of times when Gus wasn't expecting it (we assume), instead of cutting in front and walking in the same direction, Aspen would cut across at 90 degrees and walk straight across our path. This had happened once in the first session by accident and Gus had reacted a little so we thought we'd throw it in. Gus did well with this, so I asked Aspen's handler to scuff her feet to increase the noise as she crossed. This did get a little charge out of Gus toward the dog, but there was also an increase in Aspen's speed in that trial which may have also contributed to Gusto's threshold. We'll play around with those variables next time. I ended the session as Gus had done really well.

My sister was in town visiting and watched our session. She noticed that I get very stressed and talk really fast during class. I'll have to work on this.

Week 3

It rained this week. I only worked Gus one time. Due to the rain we worked an exercise called the "Look at THAT!" game which we took from Leslie McDevitt's book "Control Unleashed." Basically you use a reward marker like a clicker to train the dog to look at an object, person, or in our case, dog. We invest a lot of time teaching our dogs to look at us. It this really practical. Our worried dogs need to look at THAT! Why not teach them to look and then look back. I LOVE this game actually. I love how it can take a dog who wants to stare down another dog and teach them to just do short looks which serve the purpose of earning a treat instead of gaging whether or not to explode barking. We did multiples, but Gus was a little distracted by all the people crammed into the garage. The dog we chose, was the instructor's male chocolate lab, as I hope someday we will be able to go for walks together. I'll keep you posted on that.

Week 2

Our second week of reactive class put Gusto with a new dog. This week he worked with a male Siberian husky named Harley. We started with U-turns again, this time at 120 feet. Gusto was definitely more worried about Harley than he had been about Kaya as he let out a few woofs during the exercise and his teeth got "sharky." Throughout the work I tried to keep his mouth more relaxed by insisting on licking to get the treats out of my hand. I found it a little more stressful working with this dog because I wasn't as familiar with him or his owner. When walking or working your aggressive dog, you really have to trust that other people can control their dogs as if their dog gets into your dog's space you know it could end with a bite. It is also so important to try and stay "present" and "in the moment." If you are stressed about what MIGHT happen IF ... then you are getting your adrenaline fired up and your dog can sense that. This adrenaline may also cause an OVERREACTION on your part if the dog does indeed have a reactive or aggressive outburst.

The second round was a little better as Gus had had some T-Touch and relaxation work. I have to try to get there earlier next week so that I can do some of this before his turn. I also requested that I not go first so that I'll have more time.

This week I finally came to grips with the fact that some (all?) of Gusto's dog aggression issues stem from guarding. Is he just an extreme guarder? He doesn't guard from people - we did and do guard prevention work all the time - But is his aggression just an extension of his guarding. The bites he has given the dogs he knows well or lives with have all stemmed from guarding. I will continue to assess and ponder this possibility as the weeks progress.

Our first night at Reactive Dog Class

Well, our first night went fairly well. Gusto worked with a little rotti cross named Kaya who is also reactive with other dogs. I didn't work him on his head collar, just his flat buckle collar. We worked "U-Turns." Essentially you walk a predetermined number of steps toward another dog and about turn (180 degrees) away from the other dog. For example we started 100 feet apart and started with 1 step. Each handler and dog takes one step toward one another and then turns away.

Gusto didn't have a barking reaction to Kaya, and barely looked at her during our session. He was very excited to be there and was barking and carrying on as he usually does when it is his turn to work. His mouth did get hard (he bit my fingers while taking treats) as we got closer to the other dog, so he definitely knew she was there and was stressed about it, but not enough to give a full blown reaction.

I didn't choose to work the confidence course (a few obstacles we set up to help dogs increase their confidence with "weird stuff") as I wanted to focus on relaxation with him between sessions. I worked on T-Touch and "Gentle" to help soften his mouth and relax his body and mind.

The next session was noticeably different as he wasn't as noisy as he was the first time. He managed himself as well as he did the previous time out and we introduced some "Parallel Walking." In parallel walking the two dogs walk parallel to one another at a predetermined distance. For us it was 20 feet. This was harder for Gus and Kaya and they both had a little woof at each other. By the end of our turn they were walking about 15 feet apart. Yeah for Gus.