We've continued our desensitizing and counter conditioning work over the last three months and I'm pleased to say we've continued making baby steps that whole time. And three months of baby steps adds up to some great progress.
At first when we were working on this I had to have treats in hand and she would work at the treat in my hand while I gently stroked her neck with my hand, releasing the treat after I marked the behavior.
Next we worked on her receiving touch while she saw the treat in my hand but not needing to have her mouth on it to tolerate the sensation of touch. She started to show more pushy terrier like behavior with me, putting her paws up on my lap and standing on her hind legs trying to get a treat. I talked about that in the post When it's good to be bad. Not saying that's great behavior, but in a dog who didn't want to approach me, acting like a typical demanding terrier is a good sign that trust is building. I was turning from a scary unknown into a benign treat dispenser. Exactly what I want to be to Chima.
And now here we are after three months of training. I now don't have to have a treat in sight for Chima to allow me to touch her. She knows from experience that touch = delicious treat from all our counter conditioning work. When we are doing long touches, like in this video below from yesterday where she gets a full on ear scritch and head rub, I'm still always marking the touch and following with a food reinforcer. We are still not to the point where touch has become something she desires or tolerates for long. I want to lengthen the time she tolerates it and help her become more desensitized to it. We want to move from tolerating to enjoying and that is going to take some time.
But for the occasional short touch she allows when she comes up to me on the deck, she doesn't always get that food reward. I'm trying to vary the length of time the touch happens before she is reinforced, and also vary the type of reinforcers she gets - sometimes a verbal reinforcer, sometimes food, sometimes a favorite chew toy... My goal being to really make this behavior - seeking out touch and physical interactions with humans - become an everyday habit that is part of her normal behaviors, not something that she will only do when a piece of food is present. That is the part of training that people who poo-poo using food as a reward don't understand. The food makes the learning speed up and happen pretty fast, but then that food is faded out for the most part, as the dog begins to use that desired behavior in a habitual way.
And that is working too. Chima likes to check in with me and we have this little check in touch that we do - I hold out my fingers she touches my hand and I wiggle my fingers a bit, touching just the side of her snout as she licks my fingers. She rarely gets treats for this anymore and it's just become her little check in routine that we share - something that feels safe to her. And if I'm honest with myself, it's probably less about the checking in with me and more about checking in with my fingers to see if I've touched any dog treats recently and if there are residual crumbs she might be able to lick off. But that's okay. It's a great behavior and one we both enjoy.
Since physical interaction with humans started out as a huge struggle for Chima, I do believe that this is something that she'll need to work on and practice for quite awhile. It's not a huge commitment of time - more like keeping treats available so you can do little one minute touch sessions occasionally through out the day. Making the commitment to 5 one minute sessions a day will keep this progress going.
So a big round of applause for Chima's continued hard work and well deserved success. She's an amazing dog who with the right people will continue to blossom and show what a goofy, fun girl she can be.
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