A catalyst for crossover

A declaration - I am a crossover trainer.

The greatest teacher I have ever known

As much as I might try to deny the aging process (I saw something the other day referring to the turn of the century and was utterly shocked to realise they meant the year 2000 rather than 1900!) I was born in the mid ‘70s and so, in terms of clear memories, am a child of the 1980s. Even I can no longer remain in true denial of just how long ago that really was, and that is definitely reflected in the differences in dog training methods in popular usage between then and now, some forty-something years later.

Growing up in the UK in the 70s and 80s, the major influence that we saw popularised on TV was Barbara Woodhouse. An entire country, it seemed, walked their dogs using choke chains, administering ‘corrections’, proclaiming ‘Sit!’ in a staccato fashion accompanied with a hand gesture that involved raising the hand sharply upwards, palm skyward. I was very young, and the methods ‘worked’ (as much as anything thanks to the wonderful, patient nature of my childhood dog I think!) and, to be entirely honest, we engaged in the minimum amount of training necessary. Our lives were spent roaming the countryside with one or two particular friends, in wonderfully free and mutually enjoyable agreement of what was important in life.

As life continued and I grew older, different dogs entered my life, with different purposes. Working sheepdogs came along. We always believed in letting our dogs express their characters, and never knowingly treated them unkindly, but I now realise that there was a better way than we realised at the time. We used positive reinforcement in our training, with fuss and play, but never food. ‘I don’t want my dogs to obey me for food; they should obey me because I’m the boss!’ There were regrettably times when punishment came into play as well, in the form of raised voices. Our working dogs were fortunately, just like my original childhood dog, extremely resilient of temperament, and never seemed unhappy at their treatment. Deep down I knew better, but this was the way things had always been done and why should that change? After all, why should I bribe my dogs to do things? I put the roof over their heads; they should obey me through respect for me. I am happy to say that I never subscribed to the full 'alpha roll' and other rubbish from the dominance theory, and there has always been an element of positive reinforcement in my training, so there is that at least that I can look back on with slightly less shame.

My second to last dog, the late and very lamented Red, was a slightly different matter. You see stories from other people about how easy their dogs were to housetrain, and how they would very rarely do anything ‘wrong’ and you never believe them because dogs are, well, dogs! They do things wrong (that we don’t like), they try different behaviours to see what works and some of them seem to exhibit an ‘interesting’ sense of humour and appear to some to do things to deliberately annoy. Red was one of those dogs that housetrained within days (and had a complete horror of soiling inside in any way, despite never being punished in any way for it) and rarely, if ever, did anything to test patience. On the very rare occasions that he did something ‘wrong’ and anyone raised their voice, he would answer with a growl. He growled a lot – an unfortunate hangover of an illness he had as a pup that involved medicine syringed down his throat four times a day meant that handling was unwelcomed from that point on. Although at that point, I still had not actually made the switch to positive training, I was still heavily on the positive side, and fully felt he was entitled to tell me he didn’t like things (although now I acknowledge that I would approach giving the medicine differently in the first place). We came to a compromise – he would grumble all the while we did what we had to do and, once we were done, he’d leap up, give an almighty ‘WOOF’ in our faces and fetch a toy, before accepting an apology in the form of cheese.

My beautiful opinionated old man who I miss more than I can say

Looking back now, I think Red, in part, started preparing us for the entry of Finn into our lives. Finn is again a Border Collie (all the dogs in my life have been pure or part Border Collies – you can take the girl off of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl!) and so we had a pretty good idea of what we were likely to be taking on. At least, so we thought. Finn proved us utterly, utterly wrong.

Finn is the reason, the catalyst that has shifted me to being a positive reinforcement trainer. He is fearful, anxious and displays reactive behaviours in a number of situations. His response to anything new, anything outside of a very small bubble of 'safe space' is to shy away from it and then to try and drive it away. He has been with us since the age of eight weeks, and the first few weeks went much as you'd expect with any puppy, but then things started to go a bit pear shaped.

To easiest sum up Finn, here is a quote from a previous blog post that has been seen in a number of places now, ‘The Emotional Toll of Reactivity’: “Finn is the most adorable goofball of a dog at home with the people he knows and trusts. That extends to a grand total of 5 people. I had never heard the term ‘reactive dog’ when we picked up the little ball of fluff at 8 weeks old and brought him home. I knew that some people had ‘aggressive’ dogs but I would never have one of those. Surely aggressive dogs must have been abused, or poorly raised, right?

Finn is somewhat of a perfect storm of what can cause reactivity. His mother is a very nervous dog, and he himself has definitely inherited that. He’s very jumpy around strange noises and the unfamiliar. He missed out on socialisation during the critical learning period through illness. When we were then later playing catch up, I will admit I pushed him a bit hard to meet new things, having never had a dog quite as nervous in nature as him and not knowing what I was risking. And lastly, just to really put the nail in things, he was bitten by another dog out on a walk.

I had no idea what I was looking at as he started to shy away from things. I tried my best to reassure and encourage him to check out the new things but nothing seemed to work. And then, finally, it happened. He full on reacted, lunging and barking at some other people walking their dogs. I will never, ever forget the look they gave me.”

I had absolutely no idea in those initial stages what to do. None of the dogs in my past had displayed anything like what Finn did. Any hint of a raised voice had him cringing and made him even worse. In pure desperation I hit Google in an attempt to work out what was going on, and discovered some resources that gave me some information on what was going on and advice on methods to help Finn cope better with his world. After a while of digging into those, and the community I discovered on Facebook at Reactive Dogs UK, I saw a friend’s comment on a post advertising a course on Canine Reactive Behaviour, and I decided that I wanted to learn more.

This led me to discover the existence of the wonderful Canine Principles, (found on FB HERE)and changed the course of my life utterly. Through working through their coaching course, I tried clicker training for one of the modules, and a whole new world with my dog opened up. With a simple clicker and a few treats within reach, Finn will try anything I ask of him, all with a joyous expression and happy tail. Thanks to having taken the time to study, I can now understand what his body language is telling me and work with that. Thanks to studying positive coaching methods, I have been able to work on improving his relationship with the world using a combination of approaches, from counter conditioning and desensitisation to LAT (Look At That) training. We have recently managed to introduce this extremely people reactive dog to the sixth human being that he can relax with in his life. He can now watch children and other dogs (not always, but mostly) walk by on the pavement and the end of the drive from behind the safety of the back gate. Without having crossed over to using positive methods, that would never have happened.

Thanks to seeing the link for that first course, I am now several courses in and working on more. I have gone from flailing helplessly to studying canine behaviour. I have gone from that lost dog owner that had no idea where to turn, to having written a book on the subject. With some hunting on the Internet and some nice people to point you in the right direction, many resources can be found advising how we can help our fearful and anxious dogs. I found a serious gap, however, when it came to providing support for the people in the relationship, the people in the same position as I was in. I decided to do my part to help fill that gap.

Thanks to discovering how much more effectively I can work with my dog using positive methods and reward based training, I have shifted life focus somewhat. My purpose now is to provide support for the people struggling to cope, and unsure how to help their dogs cope in what they view as an unfriendly world. I have so far written one book, ‘Fight or Fright? A Reactive Dog Guardian’s Handbook’, available on Amazon (the link is to the UK store, but the book is available on Amazon stores worldwide), that aims to help the reactive dog guardian through those stages of isolation, dismay and discovery and am working on another. I now work as a freelance writer on canine subjects, and am located in both capacities on Facebook: the reactive behaviour element concentrated on Blue Merle Minion, with the writing page being Jay Gurden (complete with new website!) and none of this would have happened had I not come across the concept of reward based training