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| 2 years |
Coco is a 2 year old pet Miniature Pincer who is working on confidence. Her owner contacted me to help with improving their daily walks and relieve Coco's overall stress to improve her life. We have been working with Coco for 2 months now.
Coco has fears of sounds, dogs and people. She was so worried about her environment she couldn't focus on her handler, tended to try to back out of her harness and was worried all the time. Her owner knew this was not good for her, so we began with basic focus work and giving Coco coping skills in new locations. This was achieved by using Leslie McDevitt's Pattern Games and focusing on the ones that easily could be used on walks. We introduced the Up/Down game, Look At That (LAT) game and Ping/Pong game. We also started basic skill training with Sue Ailsby's Training Levels: Steps to Succss to continue improving their relationship and help Coco learn to learn.
We progressed from working in the home to her front yard and then to the sidewalk before her home. Each time I brought one or more of my trainees and/or my personal service dog Max to introduce Coco to neutral safe dogs.
Coco has made remarkable progress due to the hard work and dedication of her owner. She is focused on her owner, who practices Coco's homework with the household cat and local wild turkeys in the neighborhood to help her understand that all good things come from checking in.
Coco wasn't only happy to see me, but ecstatic. I have built a foundation of trust and respect with this tiny mite and I am truly loving seeing her graciously welcome me into her home with bright eyes, body tall and stubby butt wiggling in joy. She was having mild fear issues dressing in her tiny (TINY) no pull harness, so last week I showed how to lure her into it. She is 90% improved and dresses with a lot less stress now.
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| Coco and Malcolm walking. |
Coco was worried at first at the edge of the park, so I instructed we go at Coco's pace and let her do all the sniffing, watching and exploring she wanted. We had no set destination nor time limit outside of our appointment time and if we hadn't gotten 10 feet in 45 minutes I was good with that.
Coco quickly decided she wanted to sniff every blade of grass and check out every pee post, so we walked with frequent stops and rewarded her for passing people, seeing dogs, bicycles and cars and listening to children.
She is now curious about strangers and leaned out to sniff several passing people. We rewarded that new curiousity. She saw dogs and didn't worry about them. She never was bothered by the bicycles or cars, even when a pair of bicycles passed right behind her.
She settled by a picnic table and just watched all the people in a distance and we waited until she could focus on her handler more than on the activity before moving on.
On our way back to the van she was strutting! Head up, little body moving like a reigning queen and a pure look of confidence and pride in her body carriage. I wanted to cry with joy at how much she's improved!
Whenever something worried her she looked to her owner without hesitation and was rewarded for it.
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| Coco and Malcolm checking pee mail together. |
What is truly lovely is in the home she wanted me to pet her, gave me a kiss on the nose and followed me with anticipation of a dropped treat as I walked out.
She escorted me to my van and cried when I went to leave. She was looking at me intently and it was clear she didn't want the Treat Lady to leave.
We will revisit Manito Park a couple more times and then find a new park with a new level of activity to continue to improve her confidence when out on her walks.
Her success is due to her owners dedicated work on the homework. Coco is learning to be a confident girl and her long term health is bright with the reduction in the level of stress she's been experiencing.
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| 6 months |
Since Malcolm had a public access outing with Coco and did very well, it was time to take Buddy out. Buddy has hit a developmental stage in which he barks at things that he is uncertain about. With careful work on rewarding good behavior and helping him make the right choices he's improving rapidly.
I asked that Jack, one of our graduates, to attend with Buddy as a backup for our outing. Jack was there to help demonstrate proper behavior when seeing strange dogs and give Buddy someone to model his behavior off of.
Buddy lives with a handler that uses many types of mobility equipment, including a power chair and walker. He had no problems working with my power chair as we did our walk, which made focusing on his dog issues much easier.
The advantage of roadwork, in this case working in a park, is many things can happen which the dog needs to adjust to and helps them work toward working in an ever changing working environment. Buddy has had a lot of experience working in buildings, but his problems reside outside of them, so we are bridging that gap by giving him the tools he needs to become a solid working dog. He has the ability, just needs the training at this time.
Each time we saw a dog, especially one coming toward us, I would stop and feed him several treats as the dog passed and then we'd continue our walk. He did very well with this and was able to ignore dogs up to 40 feet away. He has a threshold of about 35 feet, but with careful management he'll learn to let dogs pass directly beside him and not respond.
He is not fearful of bicycles, cars, people or sounds. He was curious about the ducks and turtles in the pond, but didn't display a high prey drive regarding birds. He was relaxed and curious about his world and enjoyed his sniffs and trotting along. He works well with Jack present and is very good with the power chair.
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| Buddy practicing sitting in a tight space. |
We explored much of the park and Buddy did well, only barking a couple of times at other dogs, but quickly stopped when redirected and allowed to play LAT. He's improved rapidly with his issues at barking at sights he doesn't understand or dogs he doesn't know.
Please understand, Buddy is not aggressive toward other dogs. On the contrary, he likes them too much and his excitement leads to barking to start play. He needs less time with other dogs on a weekly basis and more time learning to ignore them when out.
After exploring the Maze at the top of the park and the Conservatory by it, we went to the Rose Garden. It is still very early in the season and none of the roses were out, but it was a nice spot to work around anyway.
Jack's handler recently had surgery and needed to take a shortcut out of the Rose Garden which I couldn't take in my power chair. We split up and I went around to meet back up. On our way back to Jack Buddy began barking at him as we approached. Once we got close enough for Buddy to meet him he quieted. We will have to do more splits and returns to help Buddy learn not to bark at dogs, both known and unknown, when working.
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| Buddy watching the ducks. |
Then our worst nightmare, for both service and pet owner, arrived. A man with a small dog on a flexi lead made a beeline for us from his car with his small dog a good 20 feet before him while calling out, "He just loves dogs."
I told him we were training and didn't want to meet his dog. He kept coming toward us and once he got within 10 feet of us Buddy lost his brain and was pulling and barking at him. This upset me because we had a Golden resting not far away and Buddy had looked at him and not reacted and then tuned him out. We had been making great progress when this man arrived.
Personally, I don't care if your dog "just loves dogs" the dog you are approaching may not and it's rude to just walk them into another dog's face. Buddy had been fine, even with the tiny mite tugging our way, until the man refused to believe our dogs didn't want to meet his dog and he set Buddy up to fail as a result. I was not in a position to easily move Buddy away, I was blocked by water on two sides and a bench on the third and the man was coming on our only exit - I couldn't get Buddy away from the oncoming dog.
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| Buddy in the Conservatory. |
I do want to mention a man was jump roping near us and Buddy watched with German Shepherd, Malcolm but didn't react. He's a solid, nearly bomb proof pup who just needs direction and given the tools to do his job as he grows. I truly enjoy working with Buddy.
