The overall theme of this seminar was
choices. Early on in this series, I talked about how our dogs need to
have choices. I also alluded to the fact that this can be hard to do
when you have a reactive dog who might make dangerous decisions.
Thankfully, Kathy talked about this! Her acronym SMART (See Mark And
Reward Training) actually includes a sneaky second S: Set up.
Setting up means that you control the
environment and not the dog, and refers to both training
sessions and life outside training. Kathy told us that so much
good training can be undone if the dog practices bad behavior outside
training sessions. She gave us the example of a dog who barks at
windows when people pass the house. Even if you train for an hour
every evening, the eight hours your dog spends barking out the window
while you’re at work will have a stronger and longer-lasting impact
on his behavior.
Good set ups mean that you limit the
dog’s activities so that he can’t rehearse the very behavior
you’re trying to change. It’s kind of like a bucket of water: if
you don’t plug the holes, the water will leak out. No matter how
much water you add, you simply won’t make progress.
 |
| Not drowning! |
This is especially important with
reactive dogs. We talk about keeping them “under threshold,” and
again, this applies to both training and life. Kathy used a
drowning analogy. If a child can’t swim and falls in the deep end
of the pool, you not only want to pull him out of the pool but you
also want to prevent him from going near the deep end again.
This means that reactive dogs often need to be heavily managed or
even confined early on during their training.
With a controlled environment, we can
help our reactive dogs make good choices, making the neural pathways
for the desirable behavior stronger. Then we can slowly add in
distractions, which can become cues to perform the behavior we want.
This allows us to “retire from the full-time job of cueing!”
Having lived with a reactive dog and as
a result been very vigilant about possible problems, I love
that phrase. In fact, this is why I eventually stopped taking Maisy
to trials for awhile. As hard as it was, I couldn’t control the
environment and was exhausted trying to constantly prevent her from
going over threshold. Worse, I failed, meaning that the reactive
neural pathway in her brain was constantly activated. Truly, going
slow was actually much faster in the long run.
What have you done to set up your dog’s
environment- and his life- so that he could be successful?
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