So What's The Secret?

I keep saying I've stopped correcting, and things are getting better with our new method, but what exactly are we doing now then? Well, let me tell you, I've discovered this amazing, brand new and groundbreaking method! For just $19.99 you can learn it too!

I'm gonna eat well tonight!

No, of course not. What we're doing is following one of the very first things you come across when you start looking into the "softer" side of training. Positive reinforcement methods mean that you reward your dog for doing something good, and if he's behaving badly you try to address the reason behind the behavior. In our case the reason can be boiled down to "Dogs are bad!". Instead of correcting the behavior and telling him "I don't care if dogs are bad, you just shut up!", I'm telling him "Actually, dogs are great!". The way to do that, simply put, is to reward him for seeing another dog. If there are dogs around, you're in candyland!

I see a poodle!

But if it's that simple, why did I waffle back and forth, trying this and that, abandoning positive reinforcement for stricter corrections?

Because it's stupid, that's why! Or possibly because I'm stupid, I'm a little fuzzy on the details... No, see, I didn't really get it. I thought I did, I was willing to try it (even though I wasn't entirely convinced it made any sense), but I really didn't. Eventually I found a great instructor who could show me exactly what I needed to do. It was the same things I'd read about, but she could make it make sense for me.

A few things which tripped me up:

• When do you reward? When your dog experiences something to which he associates negatively, a Bad Thing.
• But what if he's too busy acting like a Monster? You've made it too hard for him.
• Alright, see a dog, get a treat. Then what? Then he looks again, and he gets another treat.
• But he's looking the whole time, should I just keep mashing sausage into his maw? You're still doing it wrong. Give the reward for Bad Thing so he has to look away to take it. Then you'll get a defined moment for his next reward - when he looks back up.
• But he wont look away to take the treat. If I give to him while he's looking, he'll eat it, but if I hold it away from the Bad Thing he'll just ignore it. Again, you're making it too hard. If your dog won't stop looking, you're too close. Increase the distance to where he'll look away to get his treat.
• Actually, he won't accept any treats at all. Even if I shove them into his mouth he won't chew, they just fall back out again. He looks ridiculous. I don't think this is working. Listen, Ive said this before, but you clearly weren't paying attention: You're too close! Work at a distance where your dog will show interest in Bad Thing, but has attention to spare for you and your treats. You like chocolate? Do you find eating chocolate a pleasant experience? What if I walk up to you while you're folding laundry and shove chocolate into your mouth, would find that a pleasant experience? No, give the dog treats when he wants them, otherwise it's not a reward. If he doesn't want them you're doing something wrong. Knowing you, I'd say you're too close, but that's just a guess...
• All right, I'm getting the hang of this now! See a dog, get a treat, see a dog, get a treat, lather, rinse, repeat. But we are out on a walk after all, eventually we'll need to pass that other dog. That means getting closer to it. In fact that dog is getting closer to us as we speak. No! Why won't you listen? You do not have to pass the other dog, you're not even out on a walk, you're training! When you're out walking with no other dogs around, you're just out on a walk. When a dog turns up, your walk becomes training. Keep your working distance to the other dog, reward your dog for being around Bad Thing for maybe ten reps, then turn around and walk away! 
• I'm not sure what's happening here, but now he wont even look at the other dog! He just keeps begging for treats. Now what? Now you move closer, until you find the distance where he starts becoming interested in the other dog again. This is the whole point, he's begging for treats instead of focusing on the other dog because he now feels comfortable with other dogs at this distance. So you make it a little more challenging aga - no, not that close you moron! Oh, for the love of...

My Mom's an idiot!

As you may have picked up on, it was nearly impossible for me to accept that we had to keep a working disance. Part of it was that I wanted to push it, just a little more. If the lesson was harder, he'd learn more, right? No, the point of the training is to form a positive association. If I put him in a situation where he feels uncomfortable because a dog is too close, treats won't suddenly make it better. We need to be where he's aware and interested in the other dog, but no more.

Another thing I just couldn't grasp was that the working distance really is how close we'll ever get to other dogs. I was fine (eventually) with training Monster at a distance where it wasn't too hard for him, but then I wanted to stop the training and just continue on with our walk. No matter if that meant passing another dog 10 feet away, he'd just have to suck it up and deal with it. It wasn't like running away from the problem was going to solve anything! All right, training him when we're too close to another dog won't work, fine. But that just means we won't train when we're that close!

Yeah, that's of course not how it works. Monster can't learn that being around other dogs is great if he freaks out about other dogs all the time. There's no point telling a dog Bad Thing is good for five minutes, and then spending five minutes telling him Bad Thing is bad (which is what he experiences when he gets too close to something which makes him feel bad). You may as well just give up on the whole thing, it won't work. I did.

But like I said, I did find a trainer who could speak Idiot. She managed to get me to understand what I was doing wrong, why I couldn't get a result. It didn't take that long either, I knew all of it already - it just wouldn't come together in my head. We are now using only positive reinforcements, and while I'm not very good at it (I'm clumsy and slow, and it still doesn't come naturally to me), it's working. When we started, we needed to keep other dogs far, far away (around 1200 feet, maybe). Today our working distance is about 100 feet. If we have an accident, where we perhaps meet a dog unexpectedly around a corner, Monster will certainly react and behave badly - but at his worst he's still nowhere near the frenzied maniac he was before, and he winds back down again much faster once it's over.

(And that's another thing I had trouble grasping. You must not let your dog get too close to Bad Thing, but you can't actually control the world! There could be a Bad Thing around any corner. What then? Well, you accept you screwed up/had bad luck/wasn't paying attention, and you move on. You should be prepared for possibly needing to make training a little easier again, but it's not the end of the world. Don't let it happen too often - that's not unfortunate, it's careless - but don't stress about the occasional accident. Shit happens.)

So, what I think you should do to help your aggressive (or just frightened) dog stop his bad behavior:
Figure out what his Bad Thing is, and start rewarding him for being around it - without letting him get too close!

And read something written by an actual expert, or look up a good trainer... Cause I'm kind of an idiot.

You should see her trying to screw in a lightbulb...