I trained a dog using treats as meal as I described in an earlier post. I bought the Natural Balance food that comes in a sausage roll. I cut off the correct portion for my dog and diced it into treats. That way, I knew my dog was getting decent nutrition in a treat.

Hmm... I mised the fearful dog part. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

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does really well with people, but is cautious with initial greetings, and stresses easily outside of the house.

Fear/nervousness can be genetic. It can be caused by negative experience. Bad training alone can cause it. Good training alone may not fix it.

You can expect to have a difficult time with the 3 minute separation at the end of the CGC test.

The "Training a Competition Heeling Dog" DVD is great for nervous dogs with a lot of food drive. It teaches the dog to look to the owner for direction, rather than worry about whatever could be around the corner.

I need to know more here to be able to say anything more.
What does your dog eat?
How much exercise?
Any health problems?
How old was he when you got him?
Any negative experiences outside?
More nervous when separated from Dakota outside?
Nervous away from you but not in crate?
What is the worst/most stressful thing for him?

Hello Anne!! Merry Christmas!

What does your dog eat?
Forrest eats 4 cups of Science Diet Adult kibble.

How much exercise?
It does vary throughout a course of a week, but routinely he has quite a bit of exercise in the morning with Dakota in the yard, she can easily go for 2 hours, chasing each other around the yard, and he’ll take breaks in between. He was walking with me throughout the neighborhood a minimum of a ½ hour usually up to an hour at least twice a week sometimes more, but since I have been working him on the car everyday, for almost 2 weeks now, I haven’t done the walks hoping it will help him find pleasure with the car (that is our outing). I am trying to help him associate the car with me and he is pretty tired when we come in. I play with him for at least a 1/2 hour everyday. Usually it’s me enticing him to fetch, as his toy/ball drive isn’t as good as his food drive. I think he prefers to chew on a bone.

Any health problems?
Thank goodness no. He is strong and healthy. He hasn’t been neutered yet, but I want to get it done hopefully soon.

How old was he when you got him?
He was 10 weeks old, and flew to me.

Any negative experiences outside?
Other than I think his flight and the car ride home, none.

More nervous when separated from Dakota outside?
This is a real good question! Forrest does not want to be out in the backyard unless Dakota or me is with him. And even when she (Dakota is not much of a barker) is out there he will bark at everything. But when I’m in the back yard and she’s in the house the only time he barks is when my neighbor’s dogs are in their yard (there are a lot of dogs in my neighborhood, 4 of my 5 surrounding neighbors have dogs). He does better when I go to take him for walks, as it’s something he now enjoys. But the other day I did try something, I feel is worth mentioning. My daughter and I went out front with both dogs. I had my daughter stand in the driveway with Forrest in a down/stay and I walked Dakota away in a heel, when we got out of his sight he cried and was all over the place, he wouldn’t pay any attention to her. When we returned within his sights again, he did calm down some but wouldn’t stop until we came back up the driveway. When I had my daughter take Dakota for a walk, and I stayed with him in the driveway, he did whine when they walked out of sight but didn’t move from his spot, he did stand up from his down/stay, which I corrected and then he continued to whine some, but not the way he did when it was Dakota and me.
Also he doesn’t need to be with her in the yard every time she goes (she loves being back there, and she tries to encourage him to go with her). But most times he is perfectly happy staying in the house with me if he wants down time.

Nervous away from you but not in crate?
If he is in the house with my husband, daughter and me, as long as I leave him with my daughter he’s ok, but not with my husband as he has very little interaction with Forrest. Forrest will whine if I leave him alone with him. My husband is tall and loud and does carry himself well, but he doesn’t spend any real quality time with either of my dogs, especially Forrest. He likes Dakota because she is more manageable. He doesn’t have my patience so I don’t allow him (hubby) to correct them, all he is allowed to do is say “no” if they are misbehaving. His approach and mine, we don’t see eye to eye. He also works long hours.
But I must add, I am a homemaker, and I’m more of a homebody, so he doesn’t really spend much time without me. And I had family members living with me up until this November so there was always someone here. Now that they are gone, I don’t take Dakota with me as much, when I know I’m going to be gone more than a few hours because I don’t know how he will do all on his on for that long period of time. When I do take her for walks and leave him in his crate I usually give him something to chew or his Kong and he is quiet when we leave, if I don’t give him something to distract him from us leaving he will cry pretty bad (she barks when I take him) but after a few minutes he will quiet down. I will listen out front before I leave. And when we return he is usually waking from a nap.

What is the worst/most stressful thing for him?
The CAR! But I have been working on it and we are up to it running and pulling out and back up into the driveway, without shaking, drooling, or throwing up. And he is starting to lay down in the backseat. The other thing would be walking to our main road just outside our development, where there are a lot more cars and noise. There is also a small local shopping center and it’s very busy with local residents throughout the day. But just walking within the neighborhood (just homes) he is a bit stressed at least the first 5 minutes, but he has improved a whole lot in the over all. Dogs barking beyond their fences use to really freak him out, now he will hold his heel with a verbal reminder and a light correction if he does try to walk his circle around me.

If you need any other info, feel free. I appreciate the time your taking to help me out. Thank you so much!!!

Oh, one more thing. Since I have the prong collar on him correctly now, he seems to be anticipating the correction by flinching. I am concerned and feel I should stop using the prong on him, your thoughts please.

Left- Forrest, Right- Dakota


Thank you for all sharing your time, during this very busy time of year! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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Thanks,
Pat

It's really hard to give advice without seeing the dog. So without being able to see him, this is about all I can do.

It SOUNDS like Forrest is sepearation reactive to some degree. The points that I really key into are the anecdote about your daughter holding Forrest while you walked the Dakota and Forrest being reluctant to go out in the yard alone.

Some dogs are predisposed to being separation reactive and it is believed that it can be identified and predicted at 4 - 8 weeks old (Fox 1971).

Koehler-type training (unpredictable correction should cause a dog to be visually attentive to the handler) can cause chronic stress and separation reactivity in a sensitive dog.

It sounds like there may be handler error in the way you give a prong collar correction. Give the command, if the dog does not respond, say "no" and THEN correct. The correction must be within 1 - 1-1/2 second of the misbehavior. If you are having problems still, on the Competition Heeling DVD, the rule "Three and a Free" is explained.

If your training is unpredictable, it will cause greater anxiety.

If I understand correctly, Forrest has had chronic anxiety.

Separation reactivness literally changes the structure of the brain, which can be medicated (in some animals) with Paroxetine (Paxil) (Nemeroff, 1998). The Paxil enhances serotonin, a neurotrasmitter. Serotonin levels can be increased by diet and non-drug supplements. I don't believe Paxil is being perscribed by veterinarians.

You need to create routine and predictability for Forrest. Probably he tolerates you leaving to take Dakota on a walk because you ALWAYS come back within a regular amount of time.

You need to socialize him in a way that is predictable for him.

I would approach the car ride this way:

Every morning, you get Forrest in the car, drive around the block, come home and he gets his breakfast in the crate.

You need to consider changing his food. Science Diet is one of the low-quality corn based foods on the market. Besides being overall not healthy food, corn reduces the production of serotonin (Lytle and colleagues, 1975).

I would look into a homemade raw diet for enhancing liver function (where serotonin is produced). I am experimenting on a diet of this type in a dog with chronic stress - too early for results though. I am using Calm & Relax as well - again I don't yet know if it is working for this dog.

If the prospect of making a raw diet is intimidating, look into Verve or Chicken Soup for the Dog-Lovers Soul brand kibble.

You can ask your veterinarian about the non-drug supplement SAM-e, I have not tried it, but I've heard anecdotal evidence that it may be effective. SAM-e is available OTC at pharmacies.

Angie, I think you should stop using the prong collar on him also. Forrest sounds like my dog Montana, or at least how he used to be. I don't use physical compulsion with him because he can't handle it. With him I had to use radically different training and it was all geared toward confidence building. His confidence is up now, but I still don't feel physical compulsion will do anything but ruin the work I did with him. Training is pressure to him and he can't handle it. His OB is passable but when I say sit his butt isn't exactly heading for the ground right away. I've accepted him as he is because he has no behavioral problems anymore. Look into desensitization type training; similar to what your doing with car rides, but model it toward all situations he is unsure in. Things that have really helped Montana are LOTS of exhuberant praise, for just about anything, me always acting in charge, similar to advice you've gotten on this thread already, and lots of one on one time with him exposing him to as much as he could handle using desensitization techniques. Sorry I'm not much more help.

Correction is necessary in desensitization and flooding. You may chose to use a non-stimulating corrective collar like this one and use the prong collar only for obedience. Also, with a fearful dog, your correction may only need to be as little as a tiny jiggle - not even enough to make the collar tighten.

I will qupte here as clinical evidence supports what I have learned by trial and error. This is quoted from The Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training under the subtitle "Response Prevention and Directive Training" on pages 230 and 231.

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While care should be taken bot to overwhelm fearful dogs with exposures that they are unable to tolerate, when avoidance responding does appear it must be blocked or corrected (Askew, 1996). In some situations, dogs may completely refuse to engage in some behavior as the result of competeing avoidance responding, such as climbing up stair steps or entereing certain rooms or places. In such cases, directive exposure involving the use of a series of corrective prompts on the leash is often both expedient and very effective.

This is also shown briefly in the Training a Competition Heeling Dog DVD.

This is critical because if you push the dog into fear response and then "give in" and back up, then continue positive reinforcement, you are reinforcing the dog's idea that his fear reaction is keeping him safe by you giving in. (This is one reason that the fear reaction is occurring.)

To do this would be incorrect and would perpetuate the fear response. The dog not be allowed to move away from the source of fear (ie:car) and excessive displays of panic should be ended with a non-stimulating correction collar.

You may think this sounds rough, but it plays only a very small part in the training. I will use the example of a dog I am working with now as an example to show you how this would actually be used.

The dog is a 2 yr old GSD, nice pedigree, by some freak of nature is nothing like any of the other dogs ever produced from the kennel, or her littermates.

I did the work in the first half of the Training a Competition Heeling Dog over about 1 - 2 months (Your dog would require less, this dog was afraid of people, but also aggressive) At 2 yr old, I don't believe she had ever seen a car before, she displayed an impressive fear response just walking by the car about 10 ft away.

I ignored the behavior and continued walking, effectively blocking the behavior and commuicating to her that it is unacceptable. We walked back and forth from the cars repeatedly until she showed no reaction and called it a day. The next day, I walked her in figure eights between 4-5 cars parked in a row. Again the fear response was blocked by continueing to walk and ignoring it.

The next day, I opened a car door while walking her around all the cars. Then used treats to lure her into the open door of the car. She would follow the treat forward, and I shortened the leash so that she could not back out, I gave her time to relax then lured her closer with more treats, and again kept her from moving back.

In two days she was jumping up and jumping out of the car easily. She comes home with me almost every evening for training and socializing - and she loves that car.

After I worked her through her biggest issue, she trusted me to protect her enough that she was immediately able to go visit pet stores, even go to the movies with me without a fear reaction.

She wears a (rarely used) prong collar for obedience and a dominant dog collar, just in case she has a fear response. I walk her on a slip lead.

Do you understand better how correction must be used in desensitization/floodng?

Anne and Barbra, it’s always great to see your responses.

Anne when you say separation reactive I’m thinking it’s the same as separation anxieties. It sounds the same to me from what I got from your post.

Over the last few days after I learned the right way for them to wear the prong, that’s when I seen him flinch, he has never reacted to any handling like this before. He has also become whineier, is trying to approach me and starts licking my arm when I correct him for not following a command, and he just seemed stressed, but when the collar was on wrong it didn’t faze him, at least not to the level it’s at. It was more like he would get a little hyped, so I knew we needed to work on his focus. And I have started working on the “look” command. But I have decided to stop with the prong. I haven’t used it again on him since. And Barbra your suggestion made me feel more confident in my decision. Guess he doesn’t have hard nerves. I just never corrected him to a point where it affected him like this before.

Forrest following commands has always been at his own speed. I can give him a command and he is usually very slow to react, takes him more than 5 seconds to fall into a sit once the command is given, and a down or sit stay is near impossible when he is stressed. I’m starting to realize it’s not stubbornness but rather confusion, because it’s not getting in. Maybe too much worrying going on in there. This past week I have tried a sterner approach with both my dogs and I can see it’s not going to work with him. Though my Dakota seems much more responsive to me being the leader, but we aren’t there yet. I pretty much knew that I would likely go a different route with him on training. But I wasn’t to sure on how to approach it with him. The way I have always approached training him has always been quite a few steps behind Dakota. I thought that maybe I was babying him. He is my boy!

I think that the Competition Heeling DVD may be the best direction, but I’ll do a bit more research before I jump into it. I’m starting to realize slow is the way to go with Forrest with everything. I don’t want to break his spirit, I want him to feel the confidence he should have and be responsive and I have already accepted the fact it likely won’t be at the level Dakota will achieve.

I do feel that Forrest can handle verbal commands even though he is slow to respond, but a physical correction is not going to work with him. My voice tones may need to have the effectiveness of him following through and having his attention. So I think food still needs to be a very big part of his training and teaching him to focus on me. Along with, taking it slow at a pace that brings him just out of his comfort zone and holding it there and not moving forward until the comfort zone shows it’s face again. This is how I have handled his fear of the car and we have been moving along. I know once I get the car slowly driving down my street, it will take us some time make it around the corner. But I am hopeful that we will beat this, and if you would have asked me 2 weeks ago how I felt, I would have told you he will never be comfortable with the car, even just sitting in it with the engine off.

Anne to be honest the food issue is a touchy one with me, because I tried to feed them the best kibble I hoped for them. To keep it brief, I took them off what the breeder was feeding them, and then tried an all-natural product no fillers, and then back to the brand the breeder was using. And now Science Diet, because my Dakota was having lameness and pain in her legs. We had an x-ray done and it was Pano. The decision to go back to the breeder’s choice was after her vet had examined her the first out of a few visits, before the x-ray and he was suspicious of Pano being the problem and I think he wanted to cure it with finding the food that worked. Anyway, he told me he has had seen good results with the switch and that’s what we did and she hasn’t had a bout since September. Forrest has had the change of diet as well along the way, not as much since he was still on puppy food when it all started. But for right now I’m sticking to what works. I will look into different brands and see if I can find something that is better, but also tend to her, as well as something I can afford.

Thanks again for offering your suggestions and sharing your stories. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Angie, I think you may want to listen to Annie and buy the things she mentioned. With Montana, he's just a mutt from a mobile animal shelter that I never had any expectations of except that he behave and act normal. You will get there with Forrest if you continue to work with him. Montana was probably much worse than Forrest and you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at him or hanging out with him that he has/had major nerve issues. I kind of copped out with his training because I'd never seen a dog like that before and I didn't know what to do besides build his confidence. After I got his confidence up I didn't want to ruin it. I saw something in him that you mentioned with Forrest; that confusion. I knew he knew the commands so I didn't understand him. I realized at some point that training, even simple stuff was a lot of pressure on him. Training, even presented in a fun and exciting way had him shaking, baring his teeth in a submissive form then writhing around on the ground. I didn't have the patience for that and still don't so as long as he is good, he can just relax and do as he pleases <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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This past week I have tried a sterner approach with both my dogs and I can see it’s not going to work with him.

No, no, no! Not stern at all. Encouraging and lighthearted, but also fair. Training is a game. Training is fun. With a fearful dog it is also slow (many, many tiny playful sessions) and patient (many, many repetitions, a regular routine).

If your dog is taking 5 seconds to respond, you need go back and use food again. Take a class on using a clicker!

It sounds like you are trying to train a dog with no motivation and then trying to introduce correction!

Even the worst cases of fear aggression do not prevent enthusiastic obedience. (I'll say this until I meet one.)

Good correction should not cause distress in dog training. Bad corrections over time damage the bond between the dog and owner.

The Theory of Corrections in Dog Training
Learning to Train with Markers

The reason I touched on the diet is that with most dogs with chronic anxiety, training cannot solve the problem. That leaves:

1. strenuous exercise (which Forrest is too young for)
2. dietary changes to reduce stress (non-drug supplements)and enhance liver function and therefore serotonin
3. medication (which only relieves symptoms)

Pano
You should have no problem switching foods in about 8 months when he's done growing. When you look at other brands of kibble, steer clear of foods that contain corn, cornmeal, corn gluten. Verify that the dog is getting it's daily requirements (varies by weight) of B vitamins, magnesium and vitamin C. There are TONS of posts on the board about this, so just use the search function to review many conversations on this.

Separation anxiety and separation reactive are different. Separation anxiety is a particular, severe display of symptoms (intolerable screaming, yelping, very destructive). Separation anxiety is a degree of separation reativity.

It's like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square, if you get my point.

I understand how stressful and heartbreaking it is to live with a fearful dog. However, from what you describe, Forrest is not too badly affected.