Encounters of the Couch Kind: How Video Can Help Our Dogs

Maisy has always been cautious of new objects, especially those that suddenly appear where they shouldn’t. I recently got a great example of this on video:



I recorded this on one of our daily walks a few weeks ago. Although I didn’t set it up this way, I got lucky that the day I was taking video to prepare for Maisy’s appointment with the veterinary behaviorist was the same day that someone decided to put a couch out on their curb.

I really like this video because it clearly demonstrates just how nervous it makes Maisy to encounter something unexpected; she startles several times throughout the video. This is a long-standing trait of hers. She’d lived with me for less than three weeks when she first expressed her displeasure at something changing. In that case, she barked with all of her puppy might at a soda can that I had carelessly left sitting out. Since then, she’s grown up, and more importantly, she’s grown braver. A lot of this is because we’ve worked hard on dealing with environmental changes, so I’m very proud that she was brave enough to investigate an object she clearly felt unsure about.

I also like this video because it’s a nice example of what I’ve previously called the conflicted nature of reactivity. Even though Maisy’s not lunging, barking or growling here, you can clearly see the conflicted feelings that often lead up to such reactivity. (And, in fact, later in this walk, she did lunge at a biker- a trigger that she has largely overcome. You can see that video here.)

But what I really find fascinating about this video is the way she startles. Although it initially seems more like a double-take, later on, her jumpiness coincides with road noise from cars, something that doesn’t normally provoke a response from her. This suggests to me that relatively benign changes have the effect of increasing her environmental vigilance. In turn, this increased vigilance probably contributed to her reactivity towards the biker.

Beyond the insight I gained into Maisy’s behavior, this video also showed me that there is a clear advantage to studying a recording over assessing a dog live. Being able to watch the same event several times allowed me to see more nuance to Maisy’s behavior. It allowed me fully concentrate on what she was doing without needing to worry about what was going on around us, or trying to manage the situation. And good video always helps me see ways I can improve the way I interact with my dog.

Of course, this last bit can be difficult- no one likes seeing what they do wrong. For example, my handling skills are not great in this video. I should have offered Maisy treats as she first began to interact with the couch in order to reinforce bravery. Instead, she didn’t get a treat until after she moved away from the couch, which was, at best, ineffective counter-conditioning, and at worst, reinforcing the retreat rather than the approach.

I don’t like to make excuses for my mistakes- I prefer to learn from them. However, in this case, the excuse actually offers a really good lesson. You see, I thought that it would be better if the veterinary behaviorist saw videos of Maisy “how she really is,” so I didn’t offer her as much guidance as I normally do. Unfortunately, my hands-off approach meant that vet behaviorist had less to work with when advising me. Considering how valuable I found her suggestions, I wish she could have seen more of how I normally interact with Maisy.

Still, I found that taking videos of Maisy in everyday situations was incredibly enlightening. Although I’ve been recording formal training sessions for a long time, I never realized before how much I could learn by watching videos of my dog outside of training. Doing so has allowed me to see new pieces to the puzzle that is Maisy- pieces that, when put together, have allowed me to see just how anxious my poor dog is… and it makes me feel confident that my decision to put her on medication was the correct one.

But enough about me. I’m curious to know how you guys use video. When do you take it? And if you haven’t, why not? Have you learned anything interesting about your dog? About yourself? How have you adjusted your training strategies as a result? I can’t wait to hear about your experiences.

CU Seminar: Reorienting

This dog does a great job of reorienting to Alexa.
Photo by Robin Sallie.

One of the first exercises we worked on at the Control Unleashed seminar was reorienting. Although Leslie talks about reorienting in the book, I’ve never really thought about it as a CU exercise, mostly because it is deceptively simple. Simply put, reorienting means that any time your dog passes through a boundary- a door way, coming out of his crate, walking into the obedience ring- he should turn to sit in front of you, all while making eye contact.

There are lots of benefits to teaching a dog to reorient. It creates a routine for the dog, which pretty much all dogs like. For reactive dogs, though, it creates a sense of predictability, and helps them know both what to expect, and what is expected of them. This relieves some of their anxiety.

Reorienting also teaches the dog impulse control; instead of rushing off to check out the exciting new environment, the dog learns to contain himself and check in with you first. This, in turn, leads to increased team work and attention to the handler- skills we definitely want in our performance dogs!

Finally, reorienting helps mitigate some of the sudden environmental changes that happen when you move from one location to another, largely because the dog becomes patterned to look at you automatically instead of scanning the environment for a potential trigger.

Ironically, after Alexa discussed the value of reorienting at the seminar on Saturday, I experienced first hand how valuable reorienting can be. Maisy and I were walking out of our hotel room, and as we headed into the hallway, an older man was walking towards us. Because Maisy has not learned to automatically reorient to me, she shot to the end of her leash and barked and growled. She was truly over threshold; nothing I said or did was able to get her attention. Although I’m quite sure she would have been nervous about the man no matter what, I believe that if she’d been conditioned to automatically turn to me, there is a decent chance I could have prevented that reaction. Needless to say, I’m going to teach Maisy to reorient!

So, how do you teach reorienting? Alexa had us start with the dogs exiting their crates. In turn, we each opened the crate door and fed a constant stream of treats as long as the dog remained inside the crate. If he tried to exit without a release cue, we calmly shut the crate door and then tried again. Pretty soon, we had a group of dogs that really enjoyed being in their crates! This step helped create some impulse control in the dogs.

Next, we stood next to the crate so that we were facing the same direction as our dogs, and called them out. As they did, we watched for the tiniest movement in our direction. Even an ear flick or a slight head turn earned the dog a click and treat. Each time, we waited for a little bit more of a turn in our direction. It really didn’t take long for the dogs to rush out, make the u-turn towards us, and plop down, watching us expectantly. (The sit, while not necessary, is nice. It is an added demonstration of self-control, and it also means that if your dog is feeling especially wild, you have a better chance of catching him if he's loose.)

Astute readers will notice that we didn’t give any cues, verbal or otherwise. We didn’t ask them to “wait” before getting out of the crate, and we didn’t call their name or otherwise ask them to pay attention to us. This was a deliberate choice, because we want the dog to learn to reorient to us based on environmental cues. The cue to seek out the handler is the transition from one location to another, not anything we said or did. This gives the dog the ability to think and make the right choice, which creates both confidence and self-control. It also means that you don’t need to be constantly nagging your dog with commands, something that I find mighty appealing.

Once the dogs were easily reorienting while coming out of their crates, we worked on reorienting while walking into a box made out of ring gates. Again, the process was similar. We would approach the opening to the ring, and stop and wait. Some dogs automatically reoriented, while others would take a few moments before they turned back towards their handlers, impatient about the lack of movement. At the first sign of turning towards us, we clicked! We repeated the process again as we moved through the gate into the interior of the ring. After only a few repetitions, the dogs were offering up the reorienting behavior on their own.

This is something that would be easy to practice at home. Practice it when your dog comes out of his crate, as you let him into the back yard, or as you go through the gate to your fenced in yard. All of these are pretty low-distraction environments, so it should be easy for your dog to learn. Once he gets good at the game, you can make it more challenging by putting a toy or bowl of treats on the other side of the boundary.

Reorienting a simple behavior, but it’s a powerful one, too. Like I said, I’ll definitely be working on this one with Maisy. But I want to hear from you guys. Have you taught your dogs to reorient? Has it ever helped you and your dog? I’d love to hear your examples!

I'm Beginning to Think I Shouldn't Call Her Reactive Anymore...

Last night, I took Maisy to a Performance Dog Conditioning class taught by Lin Gelbmann, a vet tech with thirty years of experience in equine and canine rehab. The class is designed to do structural and gait analysis of your dog, and then provide exercises to get and keep your dog in the best shape possible. I signed up because I really wanted to get a structural evaluation on Maisy, mostly because I wanted to know if there was anything there that would preclude starting Maisy in agility classes.

And it was awesome.

The class was held at held at On the Run Canine, a local agility school. When I signed up for the class, I didn’t really think about what that meant, so when I walked in and saw all the motion, heard all the barking and teeters slamming, and realized that it was basically just controlled chaos (in the way that agility is, not because of anything this school was doing), I was pretty sure that this was not going to work. Even worse, the classroom area was not blocked off with visual barriers (let alone sound barriers), and I began to silently panic.

Still, I’d paid good money to be there, so I figured we’d try it. I figured the worst thing that could happen would be that we’d be have to leave, in which case I’d try to schedule a private consultation. I picked a spot on the edge of the class area, as far away from the agility ring and the rest of the dogs as I could, and set up my mat and treats. Then I went out to the car to get Maisy.

We walked in, and I fed her lots of treats. She pulled a little bit on the leash because she was so excited, but it was happy excitement, not stress excitement. When we walked into the class area, she spotted her mat and promptly flopped down on it, and offered her “flat dog” behavior.



We were there for 90 minutes, and during that time, she did not have a single reactive episode. Not one! There was one soft “wuff,” and one very low and brief growl (quieter and shorter than another dog, even). She even had a fairly soft mouth throughout the evening. After we’d been there about 20 minutes, she did have a short period where she took the treats harder, which usually indicates an escalation of stress, but that abated after five or ten minutes, and she returned to taking the treats softly again.

Even cooler than that is the fact that there was a point where something clearly upset her, and she began to lunge for it. She got about a foot off her mat, and suddenly stopped herself, turned around and slammed her body down on the mat. It really seemed like she realized, “I’m not supposed to be doing that! Mom likes it when I lie on my mat instead.” Needless to say, I jackpotted that.

I was pretty proud of my handling skills, too. Throughout the class, I was constantly monitoring her body language, and when she was more nervous, I increased the amount of treats I gave her. Then, as she calmed down, I reduced the amount of treats she got. It was difficult to shift the criteria that rapidly, but I think I got it right. It helps that I understand her triggers well- last night, fast moving people, loud dogs, and the sound of the teeter were all stressful for her. Understanding that, I was able to use the treats when those things were going on, and then could back off when it was quieter.

By the end of the class, Maisy was pretty relaxed, and was far less jumpy about noise and motion. We even got up and did some light obedience work! I put her in heel position, did pivots, and had her heel on both sides. And she worked beautifully! She was heads-up attentive, completely focused on me, doing ten foot stretches with turns with no treats. She looked like a real obedience dog!!

I was absolutely elated. You know how you feel at trials when you get a really great score, or a new title? It felt like that. I was so proud of her, and just thrilled to see all the hard work I’ve put into her is paying off.

Look out world: Maisy has arrived!

Maisy's reactivity

A four month old Maisy and the elliptical. Although you can't tell from the picture, she was barking and lunging at this scary new thing.

In my last entry, I told you a bit about reactivity in dogs. I think the easiest way to sum it up is in an equation:

anxiety + poor impulse control = reactive behavior

Today, I’m going to tell you how that applies to Maisy. Let’s start with the first component: anxiety. This is probably the largest contributor to Maisy’s reactivity. I’ll talk more about this in the future, but I believe her anxiety is the result of both genetic and environmental factors.

Anyway, Maisy was always a fearful puppy. Although I didn’t know it at the time, there were several incidents during her early puppyhood that I now recognize as warning signs of what she would become. I wrote this in my journal when she was four months old:

Maisy isn't a barker at all, but once in awhile, something will totally get her going. For example, a soda can. Seriously, there's a soda can next to the bathtub (left over from my hot bath), and that totally freaked her out. Also, the elliptical. That scared her so bad [the first time she saw it in use] that she refused to go in the living room for several hours.

When she took her Canine Good Citizen test at 10 months old, she passed all of the elements with flying colors. However, the evaluator wrote in one comment: “Seems a little worried.”

These days, she tends to be worried about a lot of things, but she has two main “triggers”: sudden environmental changes, and new or unfamiliar things. The latter is likely due to insufficient socialization as a puppy. The former, though, is something that has always been with her; that incident with the soda can is a classic example of an environmental change (which likely seemed sudden to her, since it wasn’t there when she left the room, and it was when she returned).

Sudden environmental changes are one of the hardest things for her, probably because it is difficult to prepare her for them. With new or scary things, I can give her the space and time she needs to get used to them (and I’ll discuss how I do that in a future entry). But when things suddenly change, there isn’t much I can do to prepare her. Some of the things which might startle her include people or dogs “appearing out of nowhere” (typically coming through a doorway that she hadn’t noticed), or loud and unexpected noises.

The second component is poor impulse control, which is a classic hallmark of reactive dogs. Maisy has this as well, but it’s gotten better with time. Unlike genetics and a lack of socialization as a puppy, I can fix my mistakes a bit easier. We spend a lot of time working on relaxation and impulse control.

Because Maisy is a corgi mix, almost all of her impulse control issues are about movement. More specifically, it’s about wanting to chase something that is moving, and being unable to do so, resulting in frustration. Typical things that makes her want to give chase include bicycles, skateboards, children playing with balls (she loves balls), and selected other dogs.

When you put these two things together, the end result is reactive behavior. Maisy’s reactivity is very typical: She will lunge, growl and bark at things. The interesting thing is that I can usually tell if her reaction is coming from a place of anxiety and fear, or if it’s an impulsive, frustrated response.

When Maisy is reacting out of fear, she tends to freeze first. This is often a very quick thing, making it easy to miss, with almost an air of uncertainty about her. It’s like she’s trying to decide what to do. Once she does, she almost always chooses to lunge towards whatever is scaring her. If she’s on leash, she will hit the end of it, but if she’s off leash, she will lunge towards the scary thing while keeping a safe distance- usually 10 to 15 feet. Depending on how scary the thing is, she will either growl or bark. If you rank things by how scary they are, for the least scary thing, she will lunge and give a soft “wuff” as a warning. For scarier things, she’ll lunge and growl. For the scariest things of all, she’ll lunge and bark loudly and repeatedly.

It’s a different story when she’s reacting due to frustration and impulsivity. It may seem like a fine distinction, but instead of lunging, she’ll rush forward. If she’s on leash, she’ll strain and pull, but if she’s off leash, her reactivity diminishes (probably because there’s less frustration involved), and she will give chase. Either way, she may growl, but it takes on a different sound, becoming more playful in tone. And, she’s quite likely to bark, perhaps more likely to bark than growl.

Interestingly, other dogs seem to fit in both categories for her. Some dogs are scary for her, and while it’s hard to predict which dog is going to evoke a fearful response, they are often large and dark-colored. They may have erect or cropped ears, as well. And, regardless of size, any dog (or person, for that matter) that stares at her is guaranteed to provoke her. But some dogs intrigue her, and she will want play with them, which is evident by her use of play bows and/or a “helicopter tail,” my term for a tail that goes in wide, loose circles. These are also very brief signals that can be difficult to see.

When I set out to write this entry, I knew that both anxiety and impulse control issues were contributing to her behavior. What I find fascinating is how her behavior differs depending on the emotion behind her response. The differences are very subtle; so subtle, in fact, that I wasn’t fully aware of them until I began writing. Previously, I’ve always responded the same way, regardless of what was going on. But, upon further reflection, it does seem that I can either prevent or interrupt her behavior easier depending on why she’s reacting.

Going forward, I will be very curious to see if I can identify her emotional state during the heat of the moment, and then adjust my responses in a proactive and ultimately more helpful manner. This is why I'm so excited about this blog- writing tends to help me organize my thoughts, think through what's going on, and come up with new ideas. Kind of like training, I guess. Anyway, I'll keep you updated on our progress!