Elevators. With mirrors!
Crowded meeting rooms. Projection and audio systems. Applause. Lying down for 60 minutes with dogs (puppies!) nearby. Spending the night somewhere other than home. Seeing ships on the water. Hearing dogs bark in the room next door. These are just a few of how Levi is getting his brain stretched in so many good ways this weekend accompanying me to ClickerExpo.
Exposing a pup in a happy, no-pressure way is the best way to have a dog that’s a “go anywhere” with you dog.
Because Levi’s will be a service dog, we’re working hard to ensure that he sees all kinds of different things while he’s still quite young — before he’s five months old.
As long as we let Levi go at his own pace, we have lots of fabulous treats to help him get through novel and potentially unsettling experiences (the ship’s horn blast startled us both!), he’ll grow from each experience, realizing that new and novel things aren’t scary and — better yet — they’re fun!
Downtime for your dog is important, too.
Levi’s not even five months old. A three-day conference is a lot for any dog to take, let alone a novice youngster. Which is why I’m writing this in my hotel room while Levi takes a nap at 11:00a. Giving the dog a chance to take in the new experience, and then allowing him some downtime to rest up from that experience is crucial. By allowing him to rest in a quiet, comfortable hotel room with me, he’s recharging his batteries so that he’s ready to take in more new and exciting experiences when we head back down.
Gotta run, Levi has awakened from his nap and it’s off to the doggie bathroom area!
Laurie,
I would love to explore this further. We are at ClickerExpo with a 17 months old Lab in training as a service dog. We will be attending today’s sessions with you. He has been socialized from early puppyhood in all kinds of environments such as work, ball games, movies, hayrides, restaurants, civic center events, you name it. Like all Labs he has a loving disposition, is interactive, and curious. BUT…he randomly reacts to strangers with barking and there seems to be no rhyme or reason. Six people can walk by and he barks at the seventh. To add to our confusion, other handlers in our group report similar behavior with their dogs. We all follow a positive, rewards based training program. We are trying to work through this by sitting in various areas and rewarding with high-value treats every time someone walks by, but because we don’t understand the trigger, we really are not getting to the root cause.
Is this common with dogs who are in public a lot?
Hi Charlene,
Thanks for stopping in! I definitely think this could have a genetic component based on what we talked about when we met in the Learning Lab today. It sounds like several dogs from the same litter are experiencing the same problem so it could very well be partially genetic and partially learning related.
For Levi, I spend a large proportion of the time classically conditioning him to novel stimuli. That could be the sight of a dog coming around the corner, a squirrel that darts across the lawn, leaves blowing across the sidewalk, or anything really.
My reaction to anything new is to feed, feed, feed. I try to capture the split second between when Levi notices something and when he reacts to something. In other words, I want the treat to show up after he’s noticed, but before he barks at something.
It takes some practice, but after a couple of weeks, my timing is pretty good. I’m now delaying my feeding and predictably Levi is looking at me now when he sees something new on the horizon.
“There’s another dog. Do you see it? Will you feed me” says Levi.
“You bet, buddy, great job, here’s your treat for seeing the other dog and voluntarily looking at me.”
Before you know it, if you’ve done a good job at setting this scenario up, the dog is now looking at you when he perceives something new instead of barking, lunging, disconnecting from you.
I love clicker training! The dog makes the decision, not me, and is justly rewarded.
Hi Charlene,
Thanks for stopping in! I definitely think this could have a genetic component based on what we talked about when we met in the Learning Lab today. It sounds like several dogs from the same litter are experiencing the same problem so it could very well be partially genetic and partially learning related.
For Levi, I spend a large proportion of the time classically conditioning him to novel stimuli. That could be the sight of a dog coming around the corner, a squirrel that darts across the lawn, leaves blowing across the sidewalk, or anything really.
My reaction to anything new is to feed, feed, feed. I try to capture the split second between when Levi notices something and when he reacts to something. In other words, I want the treat to show up after he’s noticed, but before he barks at something.
It takes some practice, but after a couple of weeks, my timing is pretty good. I’m now delaying my feeding and predictably Levi is looking at me now when he sees something new on the horizon.
“There’s another dog. Do you see it? Will you feed me” says Levi.
“You bet, buddy, great job, here’s your treat for seeing the other dog and voluntarily looking at me.”
Before you know it, if you’ve done a good job at setting this scenario up, the dog is now looking at you when he perceives something new instead of barking, lunging, disconnecting from you.
I love clicker training! The dog makes the decision, not me, and is justly rewarded.