Good and bad

Vanya did well on his evening pass-by with mellow Jake the yellow lab. He didn't do so well on his twilight walk in the village of Monticello--everything seemed to get him wired. Twilight clearly isn't his best time for new environments. After a few blocks, I decided to cut our losses and head back to the farm, the super-duper size of Jim Beam in tow. Vanya did get to meet a couple sweet people, who were even kind enough to stand still and wait for him to sit before they cooed and petted him. In his red jacket, he's pretty adorable--it screams "I'm a goofy puppy!" rather than "I'm the terrifying pit bull!"

Going to Town

Today we went to the village. How exciting! Well, for Vanya it is. We got to practice: walking calmly past the yellow lab in his kennel, greeting the lab, coming away from the lab, greeting two people (the lab's owners) and trying hard to sit politely while they scratched his ears, looking at other people and not screaming when denied the chance to greet them, walking calmly through the main street of town and ignoring the decrepit souls going into bars at midday on Sunday.

He did much better at all these activities. He was able to keep a loose leash and unfurrowed brow while we approached the kenneled dog, and he wasn't particularly interested in greeting that dog (Jake, by the way).  We passed by the lab 5 times, and each time he was able to glance at the lab and then focus on other things. He did try to jump up on the nice lady (Peggy) who petted him (and who owns Jake) and he did begin to yodel when the worker across the alley didn't have time to say hi to him. And he was pretty intense on the village streets, stressed, but not vocalizing at people (having trouble watching me, however, when cued to do so. Bribes helped). Overall, he did much, much better than he has in the past. Even though he wasn't very relaxed about town yet, at least he didn't go over threshold at all. I tried hard to capture and mark and reward his moment of relaxation and calmness. Now he is very tired. Me too!

A real dog!

Today, after a week of Miss Plushy, I got up the nerve to do meet and greets with a real dog--a huge, intact male yellow lab, who is the calmest, least reactive dog in the world, so far as I can tell. The dog lives in a kennel along the bike trail in Monticello, and several weeks ago, Vanya ran up to the dog and greeted him (separated by a fence) reasonably well: play bows, low wagging tail, some wiggles, which is a huge improvement over the usual screaming, lunging, tasmanian devil imitation.

Today, Vanya was very good with the real dog, able to approach him calmly on a loose leash, and actually pretty uninterested in him once he got a chance to go sniff and greet (they were separated by the kennel fence). Vanya was much, much more interested in greeting a person who walked by than in greeting Real Dog. I've never seem him so calm around an actual dog, so maybe this many-times a day encounter with Miss Plushy is working! To be honest, I think the most important thing about Miss Plushy is that she shapes calmness in ME. I've been so worried about screwing something up in actual dog encounters and ending up with someone else's dog hurt, that no matter how hard I try, I get tense. The first few times with Miss Plushy, I could tell my heart was racing, even though the stakes were low. So I'm getting calmer each time, and so is Vanya.

Happy Valentines Day! Youtube clips of Vanya and his sweetie

Here are some video clips of Vanya and his valentine, Miss Plushy.

First, Vanya is trying to be calm as we walk, on leash, near Miss Plushy. He can manage this for a little while, but then he gets frustrated and tries to pull out of his harness: (he's blurry and off in the distance, upper left of screen); see this video and the others after the break....

feb 2010: practicing with Plushy, the stuffed life-size dog

Our life-sized plush husky came today (from amazon; Melissa & Doug is the brand), and much to my surprise, from a short distance, she really does look real. I had set her up in the snowy orchard for some LAT/shaping calmness/focus around distractions work with Vanya, but I had no idea if he would be persuaded by her, or if instead he would wonder why a stuffed toy was standing out in the snowstorm. My husband drove up, however, and he thought the dog was real--he also thought I had lost my mind, coming home with another dog from the pound.

Once I calmed Frank down, he went out to "play" with the plush stuffed dog in the orchard (let's call her Plushy), while I put Vanya in his harness combination, armed myself with treats, and walked out around the barn, perhaps 100 ft from Plushy and Frank. The instant Vanya saw the two of them, he started pulling and vocalizing with excitement and trying to run over to them (he had already greeted Frank, so this wasn't about seeing Frank--it was his classic attempt to greet a new dog or person. Not aggression, but over threshold. Oops).

feb 7 2010: consult with Sarah Kalnajs of Blue Dog

After a 3 hour private consult with Sarah Kalnajs of Blue Dog Training, she felt Vanya was one of the more hyper-aroused dogs she had ever seen. The Dog's Best Friend private trainer back in Feb. 2008 had said pretty much the same thing. He wins a prize!

Seriously, new environments do get him wound up. For all the progress we've made with him on his arousal issues, he has a long, long ways to go. Wish us luck! We're both exhausted. At some point I will write out the homework and training goals Sarah set for us, and possibly even describe the consult, once I've digested it a bit more.

Oct 2009: another unfortunate consult with private trainer

In October 2009, I went to yet another private trainer to work on Vanya's leash reactivity. My goal was to get him to a place where he could socialize off leash with other dogs, so that his counterconditioning to leashed dogs could proceed a bit more smoothly. A kind trainer had suggested earlier (online) that I read Jean Donaldson's book FIGHT and look at the section on "Tarzans," because she thought my Vanya sounded a lot more like a Tarzan than an aggressive dog--ie, a dog with terrible social skills who was desperate to meet and frustrated by being restrained around other dogs. So I had embarked on a search for a trainer who would work with me to get Vanya to the point where he could be off leash with some selected dogs. (First I had bought him a basket muzzle and conditioned him to stick his nose into it for cheezwhiz). The e-trainer ran socialization sessions and after she watched Vanya on a long line around another dog, she thought it wouldn't be a problem to get him to that point, because she also thought he lacked social skills but wasn't showing aggression. 

This was a very well-respected e-collar trainer, and because the e-collar had worked so well to stop Vanya's livestock chasing, and because I was feeling a bit desperate to find socialization opportunities, I thought: well, okay. We first went to her for a consult in July 2009, and her work with Vanya around another dog was pretty overwhelming (read: flooding), but it did seem to have some benefits right afterwards--he was able to play briefly (muzzled) with another male dog (but too roughly), and then he was able to approach that dog several times, leashed, without completely flipping out. So I tried to do the homework she gave me, and then when I returned to southern Wisconsin in the fall, I went to see her again in October, hoping that we could try some socialization around other dogs. 

summer 2008: CU and leash reactivity

After that Feb 2008 class, Vanya became super- leash reactive. We immediately took him to a Dog's Best Friend for a two hour private LR consult, and he got so wound up--lunging, screaming, super-aroused--that the trainer didn't offer much hope, or at least I wasn't able to hear any hope in what she said. I started trying to find dogs I could practice Look at That on from a long distance--100s of yards away--but I couldn't find any nearby. We went into the village on a few snowy, icy days, and Vanya's proper loose leash walk (on the farm) turned into skidding, screeching, sliding over-arousal, just at the sight of new cars, people, houses. The city--actually, even the tiny little village of Monticello--seemed to push him into such arousal I couldn't reach him. He never redirected at me, and never showed an ounce of aggression toward me, but I worried.

When May came, I headed up north to Lake Superior, where I spend summers doing my forestry research, living in a tiny cabin on an acre, surrounded by public forestlands and a lot of neighbors with unleashed dogs nearby. At first, our two elderly female dogs came up with me and Vanya stayed on the farm, since we figured that farm life was a lot better for him than life on a leash.

feb 2008: disastrous class, or how to create leash reactivity

Vanya hadn't met new dogs since the first class hadn't worked out (except once on the bike trail, an unleashed big chocolate lab came bounding up to us. Vanya alerted and seemed very interested, but he didn't shriek or whine, and the lab ran off into the wood once he got to within 20 ft of us.)

I knew he needed to learn to be calm around other dogs, but because I wanted to be a responsible pit bull owner, I also knew I couldn't just let him loose to play with stranger dogs. So I signed up for a "barkers" class offered by a local trainer. I emailed with trainer, describing Vanya, and she said he would be perfect for her completely positive class. No aversives, she promised. None whatsoever.

Here's what I wrote, in tears, after the first class.