CJ,

I think it depends what your goals are for Vince.

The way that I see it, the face that you can tell the dog to "be nice," means you are already aware of an upcoming situation that is going to be potentially uncomfortable for your dog. Why not just walk away from it?

Am I over-simplifying it?

You cannot walk away from every situation. What if you turn around and walk away and there is a rowdy group of men coming the other way.


It is always better to train to handle a situation rather than to avoid it. That is my humble opinion. I live in a crowded city. There are no varying levels of distracting environment. When I step out of my gates, it goes from 0 to 100% . In such a situation one cannot turn back and avoid.


CJ, you can just train the "be nice". That is a good idea. However I find it beneficial to put the bad behaviour on cue too. just my way I guess.


Plus, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a stressed dog, as long as you can help him learn a way to relive the stress. I do not subscribe to the idea that a dog has a bad temperament if it does not allow Tom, dick and harry to come near it. It has a bad temperament if it cannot be taught how to handle strangers.

If your dog is going to be stressed or look at you with a sad confused face for a few hours or days while you teach the Be nice then that is the way it is.

With my dogs if I see a potential for a flare up, I will walk into it. I look at it as a training opportunity. Because I know that my ability to put pressure on my dog is infinitely greater than any external factor. And the beauty is that my dogs know it too.

You just have to do it a few times and the dog knows not to let it's mind wander. Is it positive and motivational? but it works for me.

 Quote: melissa hau

CJ,

I think it depends what your goals are for Vince.

The way that I see it, the face that you can tell the dog to "be nice," means you are already aware of an upcoming situation that is going to be potentially uncomfortable for your dog. Why not just walk away from it?

Am I over-simplifying it?

No Melissa, not simplifying at all. This is exactly what I have been doing, in a literally, round about way. And it’s working, it has worked great. I’ve had him out in public, strategically planned areas (muzzle in pack) but off.

The moment a person approaches, the tension is there, I distract and remove him. Tension goes away, we carry on. But that underlying tension is what is making him such a liability right now.

I've done hours of work with the people he currently tolerates and still there is a "cooling down" period when they first come into the picture. They could not walk up to him without him feeling a need to tell them to go away. It’s not a big reaction with these folks, but if he wasn’t on a leash, it could escalate in seconds.

An unknown, it’s a much deeper, air sucking growl and his body tension is quite intense. We walk away. Works great.

But we’re at a point where I feel he’s gained the confidence needed to move forward. I have no real plans for him at this time but he’s not perfect yet LOL, I guess that’s my plan.

Aside from this working on this issue, just enjoying the heck out him.

 Quote: Ramachandran Subramanian

With my dogs if I see a potential for a flare up, I will walk into it. I look at it as a training opportunity. Because I know that my ability to put pressure on my dog is infinitely greater than any external factor. And the beauty is that my dogs know it too.

You just have to do it a few times and the dog knows not to let it's mind wander. Is it positive and motivational? but it works for me.

It does work some of the time, but only with dogs with certain temperaments.

With the wrong dog it can blow up in your face. If you've got a dog that would never dream of biting a person you've got a lot more training options than with a dog that could very well take a chunk out of someone.

Personally I know there are some things that I will make my dogs deal with and some things that I'll walk away from depending on the dog, my current attitude and the overall situation. There's nothing wrong with walking away from a situation if you know your dog can't handle it. That is one of our jobs as leaders is to assess the situation and deal with it accordingly.

Yes, I agree with you , If I one thinks that there is too much risk, then one has to walk away from it. No questions there.

Why does this dog HAVE to be taken into public areas where he is stresssed out. Don't you live in an area where you have alot of open space? Therefore able to limit his exposure to strangers to a very occasional encounter. Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else on the board.

I have been down the road that you are traveling & all I can say is that you can desensitize to a limit, but, with that being said, the dog will not ever be truly trust worthy or reliable to react the way that you have tried to teach it. It may in some cases. But in the cases...when sufficiently stressed they will revert back to what is their inate comfort zone or knee jerk reaction to certain stimuli. VERY strict obedience is generally the best that you can hope for. At least that is as good as I was able to get & some others that I know with similar dogs.

I applaud your efforts with Vince & hope that you are able to move him along to be less stressed & more comfortable in public areas, if that is your goal. But it is NOT a stressless life for these kinds of dogs. They are always on the alert & defense. Always feel that they have to watch their backs.

I have always used a watch me command with my dogs when I need them to eye me & not a potential 'problem'. Or a leave it & them a watch me. Basically, just giving them something else to look at & think about & maybe lots of yummy treats while you are doing it. Keeping their focus on me. It is very hard to work with a people aggressive dog. Stressful for the owner as well as the dog.

The whole dog journal(on line) had a couple of good articles about dog aggression which are good & can be easily applied in the cases of people aggression to some degree,also. I think it is still on..it may have changed as this is the early part of a new month.

I could get the Flinks vid to play...but could not get the sound. I have to agree that dog was very stressed. Bernhard is an excellent teacher & makes every effort to help people with whatever dog they have to work with...so I am sure whatever info he gave was well worth listening to.

I agree that there are FAR too many fluffys out there that have the potential to give a good bite. Many are from poor breeding & probably more from owners thinking that their dogs are fur babies & not DOGS, allowing them far too many freedoms that they haven't earned.

Oh gosh, I just lost an entire post, ahhhhhh. But I see there's more to read. I need a coffee.

 Quote: Ramachandran Subramanian

there is absolutely nothing wrong with a stressed dog, as long as you can help him learn a way to relive the stress.

And there’s that insight again. Leash pressure work comes to mind when I read this. But of course, I am dealing with a much deeper, stronger, internal driver.

With Vince, in this case, there are just so many aspects to his life. I’ve worked with this boy for two years, watching him blossom in so many areas. I’ve also watched the highs and lows of this tension and feel I have a good understanding of what it is for him.

Right now he feels it and the expectation is he walks away, gets to play with a ball, goes to the solitude of crate (reward in his case). It’s all been pretty positive, with the few exceptions I’ve already gone into some detail on. He follows my lead immediately, but we’ve never confronted it, or remained to face it. Well we have, but under the assessment circumstances and we know how he handled those.

He is a much different dog today. He also had some major confidence issues to overcome. I would describe him as a pretty proud boy these days. An incredible bounciness to him, a glisten in his eyes and he just seems to be so happy all the time…. until people come into the picture. And it’s not like it’s an overwhelming daily occurrence but it can be pretty consistent at times. Be it at home or even on our mountain hikes, we do run into people. He’s not good with this.

Manageable, absolutely… but I just think he’s at a point where we’re capable of taking it further and I just really liked Mr’s Flink’s approach. Watching that video was like one of those “aha” moments. That dog is acting just like Vince and that approach is so clear. And I’m sure, like Vince would be, that was his first time learning this.

Yes, he was stressed but did you also him at the beginning, there was a lot of tension in that dog to begin with. After the (in my mind) ill timed correction (that dog should have never made it out in front and to the other side of him) that sent the dog between the guys legs (I would never do that :grin the guy seemed to be understanding better and the dog was catching on quickly.

A good night’s sleep and a little practice the next day, I’ll bet the light bulb went on pretty quick for that dog.

And while I know no training is ever 100%, it has a lot to do with the dog’s desire to perform what’s being asked of it. I’ve used a lot of distraction and redirection with Vince, but I’ve never applied a clear, black and white request or consequence to this behavior. He reacts pretty strongly to a “no” in obedience training, but in this state, removing the threat takes precedence over everything.

To me, knowing this dog the way I do, I just think this method has a good chance of providing a meaningful change in his life. I don’t have my mind set on anything at this point, just trying to think it through.

You know it’s funny, I can just see some people saying, “Just give the dog a correction already”. But it’s a bit more than that.

It’s not something he really knows not to do yet and very much a part of who he is. He’s going to be feeling pain while facing his worst fear. In many ways it doesn’t seem fair. I’ve remained incredibly consistent with him and this will be inconsistent with that approach.

He’s a soft dog that takes some time to recover and I’ve never wanted him to associate any unpleasantness with a human approach.

It would be a training process for this particular command. If I start, I would need to see it through. Of course completely open to any adverse effects it may be having on him.

And of course the big question, will the end justify the means?

I hear what you’re saying Anne and I truly do understand these dogs. I’ve seen them stagnate at an “acceptable” level and do well under very specific conditions. I think Vince is capable of a bit more though, it’s just a matter of asking/training him correctly. It will hold him to higher expectation, but is he capable of reaching that?

Complying in any given situation is an unreasonable expectation in his situation, but if he can hold it together to just get the concept, I can get an understanding of how he’s handling it. It would either give me something to work with or know he’s not capable of taking it any further. Right now, he’s a pretty blank stale in this department.

 Quote:

Right now he feels it and the expectation is he walks away, gets to play with a ball, goes to the solitude of crate (reward in his case). It’s all been pretty positive, with the few exceptions I’ve already gone into some detail on. He follows my lead immediately, but we’ve never confronted it, or remained to face it. Well we have, but under the assessment circumstances and we know how he handled those.

Why can't you continue on in this manner? For a dog like Vince I think I'd just want him to understand that he doesn't have to deal with people. That he is perfectly fine ignoring them.

Maybe I'm missing something because I can't watch the video (stupid dial up internet...)

If he's already tensing up with people at a distance then that is the reaction you need to change. People should = look at handler and wait for what we're going to do next. So what can you do to get that response?

Kipp is dog reactive if he doesn't have something to do. I can see his little mind go into overdrive - "oh no, what next, oh no what next, etc, react" I've tried the "deal with it" approach with him and it just makes things worse.

So I give him something to do. Play ball, carry a peanut butter kong in my pocket that I can slip to him to keep him occupied, teach him coping behaviors. And he's figured out that all he has to do is ignore and focus on something else. He'll look to me with a what are we going to do look.

By highlighting a perceived threat and focusing on that, you're often showing the dog that he does indeed have something to worry about.