Monday, August 26, 2013

"Hubris Calls for Nemesis...

... and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."
(Mary Midgley)

We're enjoying the (comparative) freedom up here, Monster running around free of the leash every day - something he never gets to do back home - and me laughing at his antics and finding pleasure in how responsive and focused on me he is. But... The reason he gets to run around off leash is because there's a much (much!) smaller risk of encountering anyone else on our walks (animal, human or vehicle). The reason is not because I think he's magically "cured" here. In other words, I'm relying on the environment to accommodate his issues. But how does it affect me that it does? Because Monster has been off leash daily since we got here, for hours, and every time all goes well. I find myself expecting it to go well, taking greater and greater risks. And naming the beast ("hubris") does not seem to grant me control over it...

Woohoo, why would you want control!?

 


Last night Mom (my mom; Monstermom's mom - this alias business can get confusing if you don't think things through before you set them apparently) wanted to go out and pick some berries. Since she has trouble with her hips and can't negotiate off road terrain very well we needed to stick very close to civilization. We brought her dog Dory and Monster along (I shouldn't have agreed to this, she has zero control over her and while Dory's quite friendly to others she will approach them, and Monster tends to follow her around everywhere). I kept wanting to move further from the road - Mom could stay where she was, a mere two-three meters from the road, but I wanted to take the dogs further into the forest so I could have some time to react in case someone turned up on the road - but Dory would stay with Mom and Monster would drift back toward them over and over again. Instead of realizing that the situation was out of control and calling it quits (leaving or putting one or both dogs in the car), I just muttered, rolled my eyes, or something equally constructive, and just kept at it. I picked berries and kept half an eye on Monster, calling him back to me if I felt he strayed too far but accepting that he was quite a bit closer to the road than I was. And eventually what I knew/ should have known would happen, did happen. A man who walks his (reactive) dog along that road every evening, walked his dog along that road this evening as well. Who'd a thunk it!? I noticed both dogs perking up and taking an interest in the road, Dory setting off for it with Monster close behind. I couldn't see what they were reacting to but let out a loud "YIP!" (my sadly halfassed "emergency recall", nowhere near as well trained and religiously reinforced as it should be, as well as being way, waaaaaaaay overused) to call Monster back - and he turned on the spot, thundering back to me with ears and jowls flapping in the wind! Perhaps he hadn't realized there was someone on the road, simply following his friend's interest rather than being interested himself? But no, when I recalled Monster the man approaching us called out to us too, to inform us he was coming up on us with a dog. I saw Monster notice his voice, but while he glanced in that direction he didn't hesitate for even half a step. He ran straight to me, and sat down at my feet when asked. Of course, as soon as I clipped the leash on him he lost the plot completely, lunging and raging at the man and dog passing by (by then visible from where I was standing too). So what does this mean? Was it a good thing or a bad thing? Well, good things:
  • Monster showed a near perfect response to recall, to the point of leaving his friend who was running in the opposite direction
  • He showed zero aggression while off leash
  • Even with a fairly strong distraction (the man calling out to us) Monster remained focused on me
  • While he was by then tense, staring at the man and dog visible on the road, he allowed me to clip the leash on
  • ... I suppose it could be a good thing Mom got to see Monster's bad side, as she generally tends to think I'm exaggerating the problem (and takes him out for walks if I'm not looking!) ?
Not so good things:
  • As soon as he was on leash he tried really hard to live up to his name
  • My complete lack of judgment, putting us in the situation to begin with
  • It took some time to calm him back down again
  • The good points above
Wait, what? Why are the good points bad? Well, here we return to the point of this post: hubris. It all went well after all, right? Even in this potentially disastrous situation it was an utter piece of cake to control Monster! Surely I can relax and allow us both greater freedoms - what problems there may be, I can handle. Right? Right, let's go for that date with Nemesis right away, shall we?

Bah! I ain't scared!


But the problem is as I've already said, even though I can see my own hubris I can't control it. I think it's driven as much by desire as success, in that I want Monster to have more freedom so what successes we find have a squared effect on me. A lot of people with a fairly limited experience with reactive dogs (as in they used to have/know a dog who lunged on leash, they tried something or other and the "problem" stopped - they must be masterful dog trainers! ... I used to be one of those "helpful" know it alls...) will claim that the greater part of the problem is the handler's expectations - you expect the dog to react negatively and convey this with your body language, thus causing the dog to react negatively. I'm sure there's some truth to this, but with so many other things it's greatly exaggerated. I expect Monster to do splendidly, I really do. Every time we have a failed encounter of some kind, I'm surprised. The (or at least a) definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result; this may be slightly different in someone else (Monster) keeps doing the same thing in the same situation (reacting with demonstrative aggression to triggers) and I never expect it, but I think it could work as a definition too... I've been aware of this ridiculous optimism before (I consider myself a skeptic by nature while those around me describe me as a gloomy pessimist, so it's rather glaringly out of character), but now! Things just keep going well, even in situations where I find myself breathing a sigh of relief afterwards when I think about all that could have gone wrong, nothing does go wrong. So this stubborn streak of overestimation of chances, underestimation of risks just gets encouraged.

Good!



Maybe you're wondering why that's even a problem, since things are after all going well? See the quote up top. While I'm strangely optimistic in the moment I am aware of Monster's issues being quite real when I'm not in the moment (and usually about .0001 seconds into the moment as well). He is insecure around strangers, he does use aggression to get distance from triggers when he's restrained, and I don't have sufficient control over him to safely have him off leash around strong distractions - he's barely even trained at all around distractions, after all. So I'm taking risks I shouldn't. And I do it anyway. Admitting you have a problem may be the first step towards solving the problem, but it's not a very big step, is it?

I think you're exaggerating these so called "risks". And MonsterGran's with me on this!



I've been meaning to film a walk we take daily, a short one around half an hour, along a fairly deserted road (from the cottage where we're staying to my parent's house) - I realize it's about as boring a film as anyone (other than me) could ever see, but hey, my blog remember? I want to see/show how well he listens to me off leash, how far he ranges from me, how well he responds to recall and other commands, and, perhaps most of all, how well I pay attention to him and encourage good behavior (like checking in). Today I did, and of course it turned out not very typical at all! For one thing Monster was quite bad at keeping the "by me" command (a very loose "heel", where he just needs to keep kinda, sorta by my side), something I've been very happy with so far. But today, nope, wouldn't stay by me for more than a couple of seconds at a time... Maybe that's just because I had to make a more objective evaluation of his behavior, now that I have video evidence? But I don't think so, Monster has truly been performing "by me" in an exemplary way up here, I've been using it a lot (instead of leashing him around blind corners or cross roads, where I usually would) and I've been paying close attention to his performance. On this point I think we were simply having a bad day... Or!? Idea... Perhaps I wasn't communicating with him as well as usual, with my attention (at least partially) on the camera all the time? Was he simply responding to/mirroring my distraction?

I can't see you!



Another thing I reacted to was how much I used corrections with him, and this may genuinely be something I'm guilty of and didn't know before I found a new way of observing myself... Or, possibly it's another effect of being unfocused, defaulting back to old behaviors? Maybe a bit of both. Something to pay more attention to, in any case. (The corrections I'm talking about are simply verbal corrections, lowering my pitch slightly if he doesn't listen or breaks position, sharpen a command to stay if he doesn't stop right away, that sort of thing. From what I can tell it didn't have much of an effect but they were automatic and not something I was doing deliberately. At no point did I use anything stronger than verbal corrections, but I did natter on with those quite a lot...)

I tell you to: STOP! that nonsense...



I also meant to show/see how often I missed Monster seeking contact with me, by a glance or simply by angling his ears back to check for me (he spends most of the time ranging ahead). I mean to encourage all such contact, but I think I miss a lot of it. But today there were few glances (and I think I caught most of them - although I was quite late on many of them), and he kept his ears trained on me more or less nonstop! Perhaps this also was due to the activity of filming him changing my general behavior?

Hellooooo? Anybody home?!



On top of this, we wound up with a couple of surprises along the way. First it turned out there were people picking berries beside the road, Monster was behaving a little "off", showing me he was picking up on something, but I didn't figure out what it was until we came across their ATV parked on the side of the road. Monster didn't leave the road and seek them out, which is of course great - I've wondered if he'd be confrontational if we'd come across pickers ("gatherers"?), especially in areas we visit every day where he can be expected to feel slightly more at home, since there are quite a few of them to be found in the area at this time of year (I've been picking mountains of chanterelles myself, yum!), so I'm happy to see he stayed with me. Maybe he didn't notice them? No, I think he certainly did, as I knew he was reacting to something before I spotted the ATV.

There's something going on over there...



And immediately after we'd inspected the ATV (I let Monster walk up to it and take a look, as all changes and new things are a problem for him) we met a woman walking a dog coming toward us. I don't know if Monster noticed them, I'm fairly sure he didn't (I haven't watched that far on the video yet, maybe I can tell from that), but by then he was on leash already - I leashed him when we spotted the ATV - and he turned immediately when I told him we were going back. We headed off road slightly and let the woman and dog pass by, by then I know he at least saw her (we also called out a greeting to each other) but I don't think he could see the dog over the tall ferns. Either way he handled it very well, calmly curious more than anything else, although he was a bit eager to sniff their trail as we moved up on the road again.

We should be walking in the other direction if we're to catch up with them...



So not our regular walk after all. But probably not an interesting show for anyone (else), I do realize that! Still, that wouldn't keep me from posting it... But it turns out to be completely impossible, since it would take about a day - or more - to upload it, and would use up a lot more than the monthly GB allotment this Internet connection allows! So, you will tragically have to wait for this riveting watch until we return to civilization.

Poor you! I'm so photogenic!



And on that note, it's time to leave you. (Apparently the cows have gone through the fence again. How fun.) A final word of wisdom: enjoy your Internet connections - you don't know how good you have it...

The cows? They're loose!? I'm staying right here until you've fenced them in again...


(Disclaimer: this is a fairly long text - sorry about that - and I haven't the time to read through it for mistakes or off topic - hah! - so it's quite possibly even more unreadable than usual. And there aren't even any new Monster pics to sweeten things up, thanks to the dearth of Internet here. But, you know, the cows are loose, deal with it.)

2 comments:

  1. Really, this is great. You write about quite serious stuff, but you do it in a funny way. This is exactly my kind of blog!

    ReplyDelete

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