So the focus of today (besides cleaning up the mess from Christmas) was to tweak the walk. When we set out, Juneau really remembered what she was supposed to do. Today you could really see it click that when I stopped walking she was supposed to sit next to me an look at me. By the end of our walk that happened every single time and lots of treats were had. (Today I just used dog food and it wasn't good enough "value"-wise. I think I'm going to try hot dog bits, those are pretty tasty and cheap.) Now she just needs to figure out that I stop walking because she is walking faster than me. :-)
A new family moved into the house at the end of our street and they have a very territorial pitty who barks like a fierce monster. I didn't know it until we were next to his chain link fence, but he was outside today and he charged us while barking (behind the fence.) Juneau panicked and started flipping out so I made her leash as short as possible and walked away as quickly as I could. When we were far enough away for her to calm down I gave her treats for relaxing. (It seemed like the right thing to do.) If I wasn't certain already, today I saw that fear of other dogs is her aggression trigger. Later, when the other dog went inside, it was very difficult to get her to walk past their yard again. She kept looking around and sniffing the air to see if he was going to charge us again. Then every click or bang we heard on the walk made her jump and look around.
Tomorrow I'm back to work, so we will probably try some indoor type training. Maybe targeting or something fun.
iPhone comment. :). The other way was a lot less likely that you were gonna get spam comments though, so if it happens, feel free to switch it all back. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd now, relevant to the topic (lol) - it sounds like Juneau did very well with the walking technique, but the fear seems much bigger and more detrimental and therefore more important to fix. There's a lot of literature and research on how to cure phobias in humans, is there a similar body of work for canines? :)
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean the dog food wasn't a good enough value? It sounds like she responded well with it.
ReplyDeleteDan, I mean that it was difficult to get her to pay attention. She was getting more fun out of sniffing the grass and looking around than trying to get more treats out of me. When she did something right and I gave her dog food she was like "oh. dog food. cool." but when I have hot dogs or something it feels more like "what exactly do I have to do to get that hot dog?!?!"
ReplyDeleteI wish something was lower value with Twinkie! She's so motivated by anything that could POTENTIALLY be edible. It's like the excitement of eating makes her more neurotic.
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