Engage the disengage!

Harnessing the power of choice.

My appreciation for the courses on offer from Canine Principles is well known, and links to the courses I have completed can be found on the 'Courses Completed' page of this blog. The lovely folks at CP have launched a new different style of course for them, that comes in the shape of a 30 day program of video lessons and tasks to think about and complete. The course can be found at Inspiring Resilience In Fearful & Reactive Dogs - 30 Day Program

It is named for and tackles the same subject as Sally's best-selling book - helping our complicated fearful and anxious dogs to exist easier in their world. So far I have reached day 3 (yes, I started the moment it became available to me!) of the videos. The information and knowledge in the course builds day by day, expanding on what has been introduced in the days before, and this got me thinking about the whole path of how we move forward with behaviour modification and helping our dogs that display reactive behaviours,

Starting out on this journey of working with a fearful, anxious dog, the tendency is to get locked in on looking at the end of the process. We are so hoping to reach that other end of the journey, to reach the more relaxed, happier life that we want for ourselves and our dogs that we get stuck looking at the big picture. That final image of us striding out content and confident and not bothered by anything. Beginning anything by anticipating the end can be rewarding for a lot of things we might be trying to do, but behaviour modification - especially involved a scared, anxiety-filled dog - is not a situation where this is a beneficial approach.

The difficulty with looking only at the end picture is that we are dealing with living organisms that have brains of their own - us, our dogs, and others that we encounter while out in the world. Any one of those brains can have something on their mind, be keyed up from something that happened earlier in the day or in the days before, be worried about something they think might happen, and so on. While behaviour modification and showing our dogs they don't need to be so scared of the world is indeed a process, we cannot always expect the steps to be linear, or to make equal progress every day.

This means that we need to know what to look for to make the progress that we can. Look for the little things that are better than the last time. Getting too close and seeing your dog react might feel like you have failed them, but then you realise that they recover much quicker, so that in 5 minutes they are looking more relaxed again, rather than being hyper-vigilant and on edge the whole way round the walk. Looking for the small positives in any situation means that they build up as time goes on and then you can see the progress. Keeping a journal of things that have happened and observations from your walks is a great way to look back and see the improvements made that might otherwise be missed or forgotten. It means you can also see that, even if your progress has taken a couple of steps back, overall you and your dog are still moving forward.

A situation on a walk last week with Finn illustrates the point nicely. He has been making fantastic progress with ignoring people out on walks but on this one morning he starts to stare at a person unloading their shopping from their car up ahead. Staring is an early precursor to lunging and so I start making plans on where to cross the road to avoid the person, making sure there is nobody else around that we will then end up too close to for anyone's comfort, and working out how close we can get without Finn becoming more anxious and likely to move to the bouncing and grumbling that is his next step up from staring, before the full growl and lunge. I am looking around and making my plans for dealing with the situation while ensuring I keep a loose lead to avoid making him more tense when all of a sudden the lead goes tight. Finn is not pulling ahead though - he is stopping to sniff a popular pee-mail spot that all the dogs in the area tend to use. Is he distracting himself from the thing that's causing him stress? No, his body language has now gone completely relaxed and he is just doing the dog thing. He has chosen to disengage from the thing he was focused on and relax. Yay - jackpot time! I throw a whole handful of the yummy treats on the verge under his nose, which he hoovers with great enthusiasm.

Finn chose to disengage from a potential trigger. This is a big step forward, as he is showing now that he understands he can choose not to focus on the scary things. They are not going to chase him down and get him if he is not watching them and telling them to go away. By then rewarding his choice to disengage it becomes a double whammy of goodness as his stress levels drop and he also gets a dopamine hit in the pleasure and reward centre of his brain from the positive reinforcement. This is what I mean by engage the disengage, to take Finn's choice and reward it to help show him that making the choice to ignore triggers is a great thing and no harm is going to come to him because of it.

They also learn to focus instead on where the good stuff comes from - you!

Choice is absolutely one of the most important things we can give to our dogs, the less confident ones most of all. When your dog knows that they can choose whether or not to pay attention to something, and know that their human will respect their choice, they become more resilient and more able to handle encountering the world. Confidence and resilience are the absolute cornerstone of a happy, relaxed dog.

If you are sharing your life with a dog that needs help and understanding, take a look at the new video course linked above, and the other courses that Canine Principles offer involving the subjects of fear, anxiety, and reactive behaviours.