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| The girls wait patiently in nice "sits" for the new treats I am handing out. |
It's been about 3 weeks that the girls have been here with us. The longer I work with fearful dogs, the more I learn to appreciate and celebrate the baby steps and to not let setbacks dishearten me. For a linear, process-focused person you can trust me that this knowledge has taken years to acquire and I still have plenty of moments where I struggle with just focusing on and celebrating the moment. I suppose it's one of those lessons that takes a lifetime to truly learn. Pretty sure I still have a lot to learn but at least I'm trying.
Anyhow, I've been working really hard to just focus on the moment and not what my long term goals are for Chima and Salinas and by doing that they've made some great strides this week.
Sweet Salinas tends to turn into a wild, crazed, jumping beast when she is first out of the crate and we've been working on the concept that the attention she's craving doesn't come until she can keep "four on the floor". A couple days ago I witnessed that awesome lightbulb moment when she caught herself mid jump and then stood there calmly and looked up at me, awaiting the pets that she's learned always come after she slows her self down and keeps four on the floor. I never forced her down, or put my knee up to stop jumping. I just didn't give her the reinforcing reward of pets and attention until the moment she stood on the floor. She made the choice to change her behavior based on learning that jumping up on her foster mom gets nothing but standing calmly gets pets and kisses. Good job, Sal!
With Chima, I decided to slow down and use a trick I learned at a T Touch seminar and use a long handled artist's paint brush to help Chima get desensitized to touch. Of course, at first she was wary of the paintbrush even so we made the paint brush a great thing by ending play sessions with brush touches on her sister Sal, and then her getting to eat treats off the bristles of the brush. In fact we did that for two days, about 5-6 times a day. Pretty soon the brush wasn't scary and then quickly she was willing to allow touch behind and between her ears with the brush. As she gets more comfortable then we'll work on doing brush touches on her body, but I'll wait until she lets me know she's ready for that.
Then just yesterday we had what felt like a massive breakthrough. After working on the brushing a bit and seeing that she wasn't bothered by it, I decided to try using my hand again and see if she was willing to take that step without discomfort. She allowed it and I kept it to just about 5 seconds worth since I wanted to stop while she wasn't bothered. She got a jackpot reward after that and since then seems to be warming up pretty fast with the brush. I only do 2-3 reps of the ear touches with my hand if she seems comfortable enough for that and she remains pretty comfortable. If she seems uncomfortable or moves away, I let her and we stop. While I certainly have an end goal of her being more comfortable being touched, we are doing this on her terms. And each time I respect her in this way, it builds a trust in her that I'm not going to force her to do something that makes her uncomfortable.
One of the things that I think has kept things moving forward, is that the training we are doing isn't in a once a day set training session. Instead it has become part of every play time that we spend together. After every potty break when we come inside and have some freetime playing in the living room, the training is just part of that playtime. We keep things short and sweet - lots of play with several little 1-3 minute training times worked in that are always followed by more play and fun. The girls stay engaged and Chima is starting to learn that interacting with a human can be a pleasant and rewarding experience. Salinas is learning that she doesn't have to approach each play session like it will be the last time someone ever pays attention to her. She's learning from experience that after her crate nap, the fun will just happen all over again.
So that's what I mean by stupendously, amazing, wonderful baby steps. Each one of those steps forward is a tiny bit of a journey away from fear. And that my friends is worth celebrating.
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1 comment:
My Toy Poodle became fearful of me and didn't like my hand over his head and would bite me. I started to pet his head lots when he was in my arms, and would call him to come to me instead of me going to pick him up and he gained the trust back that he lost with me.
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