Monster Vs. The Stick

Hello. It's cold outside.

No freaking kidding...

Honestly it's not too warm indoors either.

Hey, at least there aren't icicles in my eyebrows in the house!

I usually mock the southern winters, but this time I'm keeping my mouth shut. Not that it's really all that cold, or all that much snow... But a little honestly goes a long way down here! Monster, who looooooves snow, is getting over the initial excitement too. This morning out on a walk he actually started showing discomfort at the cold, trying to walk on three legs and being unable to stand still. Time to find some winter clothes for him too...

While I do that, you can watch this video from back before the cold came. Impulse control training with Monster:

Today's Sunshine

Today Monster and I have been spending some time on focus and attention, hanging out in the somewhat sunny Sunday weather and trying to ignore all the neighborhood activities. I've basically only been asking him to focus on me, although sometimes also requesting some fairly simple behaviors. About 50% of the rewards were play rewards, getting him pretty worked up...

I'm gonna get you!

All the same, it seems to me that it went pretty well. In spite of screaming children, hammering neighbors, passing bikes, barking dogs, and whatever else was thrown at us, he did mostly pay attention to me. On occasion he'd react to something and look away, but he'd quickly return attention to me. He also seemed to be enjoying the training itself, not just the rewards.

This... Is... MINE!

Monster is absolutely hilarious to play tug with (as long as you don't mind the odd scrape or bruise...), he'll growl and stare and tackle and really fight for the tug. At the same time he has pretty bad control, and has zero confidence in his grip so he keeps shifting. Inevitably he either loses the tug completely or grabs something else entirely, to his confusion.

Wait... Why is the leash in my mouth!? Are you trying to trick me?!

I usually let him win, he's just too adorable to disappoint.

Let me?! Hah! Just wait until I get my breath back...

Alright, I admit it, he is a little strong. Not to mention inexhaustible. I've managed to tire him out once in his life. When he was a puppy, perhaps five months old, we went into town one morning and hung out in rush hour with traffic, noises and hurrying people all around us. When we got home from that he went straight to bed and took a nap. That's the only time he's had enough, from either mental or physical activities. Don't get me wrong, he's not a stressed out basket case. He'll go lie down if I'm boring, but he'll always check first if we're going to do something else. Tracking, training, playing, hiking, learning, new environments, new people - nothing wears him out.

OK, I won. Let's go again!

I wonder what he could achieve if he had a better owner... Well, we'll never know, because I'm not giving him up!

Today's Sunshine

Monster had a lot of focus outside today. I placed him in a stay and wandered off and hid a toy somewhere in the garden. In spite of him nearly vibrating with excitement, he stayed in place every time. I wandered out of sight, came back, disappeared again, showed him the toy, etc. The longest stay was a little over three minutes, and he didn't budge. When I returned I praised him, petted him and talked to him, and he stayed through that too, waiting desperately for me to say...

-Where's the frisbee!?

Wooohooo!

(Monster works buck nekkid in the garden of course, I just don't have a lot of photos of him at full speed - cameras risk going airborne - so I'm using what I've got. Deal with it.)

Hiding toys in the garden is of course not track work, since a scent trail needs time to sink. Instead he uses air scenting for the toy (as opposed to checking where I went). It's great fun to watch him search. He'll always head first to the last place he saw me holding the toy (I usually pretend to hide it somewhere within sight, but tuck it away in a pocket or up a sleeve instead), but when it's not there he doesn't get stuck. Instead he'll begin the search in earnest, working the wind from different angles, climbing up trees to check, making big loops around the perimeter to pick it up and close in. While he's searching I remain quite passive, although I do tend to sneak after him a little around corners and bushes so I can watch. When he finds the toy he'll come racing back to me so we can have a reward tug of war.

He really loves it, and I try to make sure to vary the difficulty so sometimes he'll find it easily and sometimes he'll really have to work for it. I wish we could do it other places too, since he knows all the tricks in the garden pretty well by now... Maybe one day.

What "maybe"? Quit whining and get to work!

 

Hot On the Trail

I like to do nose work with Monster (not the plastic surgery kind). It's fun and challenging, he loves it, and we can do it pretty well all on our own. So I figured, why not show off my pretty boy at work!?

Now, I'm no expert tracker, and we haven't taken any classes - yet (you know why...), so if you're looking for how to train your dog to become an expert tracker you may want to keep looking. I think Monster's pretty good, but I have no real clue how much we're doing wrong if we're talking competition level...

Anyway, I brought the camera along on Monster's latest tracking mission, so let's go!

First of all, I take the car to where I'll lay down the track - you'll see why shortly - and walk a distance, this time it was about 1200 feet I think. I let the track cool for at least an hour, and this time I think I left it for perhaps four hours. I then take Monster for a walk, heading towards the tracking area.

And the tracking begins at the front door...

Aha! She got into the car here!

This is why I drive. Monster will track me from the front steps as far as he can. When we have guests over and he doesn't get to come outside and watch as they leave, he'll track them as well once we go out, trying to find out where they went. Even after he finds where they got into the car he'll continue searching, I don't know if he's trying to find the trail again or if he's actually trying to track the car...

Anyway, we go for a walk, and once we get to the start of the trail (which I've marked just by kicking up a little patch of dirt or something) I give the command to track and Monster sets off.

Don't bother me, I'm working.

This trail wasn't really meant to be all that challenging, mostly I wanted to take some photos. However, nature decided to play with me...

When I first walked the track, I did notice a slightly funky smell in the area, but I didn't pay that much attention - it's nature, stuff smells. But when Monster and I got there, it reeked! The smell of a thousand incontinent and horny cats would be a close description, I think. My first thought was fox, but I don't know. Something appears to have become upset at my blundering through their territory and decided a thorough marking was called for. I walked through around 9 am, so I may have disturbed someone who was sleeping. We quickly came upon this:

Uh-oh...

Now, I'm not from around here originally, and where I grew up we didn't have these things, but I'm pretty sure this is the calling card of Mr. Boar. I know there are boars down here, and I know they attack and kill dogs from time to time, but I've never seen one. And do boars make a big stink? This appeared to have been left pretty recently, anyway.

Still, Monster just sniffed this and moved on, completely undeterred. As we kept walking, I saw more signs of boar around (disturbed earth, more droppings), but Monster never veered.

I don't use any markings for our tracks, mostly because from the first time I tried him Monster worked very confidently and I didn't need to make sure he was keeping true to the trail. Instead I just set up sight markers, like "walk to the crooked tree, turn left 45 degrees and aim for the fallen stump", and the trails aren't planned out, I simply walk as I feel like and try to vary the terrain a bit and include some angles.

What, is this supposed to be hard?

This time, however, not only did nature mess with us, I did it myself too. I'd lost focus as I was wandering around and (apparently) thinking about other stuff, and walked into a snare of something sharp and snagging. Not thinking about it I backed up and walked around it instead. I didn't even realize/remember I'd done it, until Monster got there...

Hang on... I know she went in here...

I know this is in no way impossible for a dog to handle, I just hadn't meant to add backtracking just yet - and certainly not without even thinking about it! Monster didn't waver for long though, but set to tracking again after a moment's thought, and was soon back on track.

Which is when I discovered I'd been even more unfocused than I thought! Maybe I should start drinking coffee again? Because I had stepped right over this:

Unnecessary difficulties...

Apparently, a deer carcass is very well camouflaged, to the point where a Monstermom will actually lay a track across one... I thought all things tracking were now over and done with, but Monster stopped and smelled it, regally peed on it to make sure everyone knew it was his, and continued on.

In all honesty, I think my dog is amazing.

There is one thing, though, I just can't get right. Monster will not stop. I don't know how to make him accept that tracking has been completed. When I decide to make the end of the track, I kick around some dirt and leaves, and leave a reward of some kind. I've tried treats - they don't get eaten, he'll just track right across them. I've tried various toys - same reaction. I've cheered, clapped, rewarded, played tug, brought an audience to help cheer and clap, and still nothing. If I react with a big fuss as he finds the toy (I've given up on treats, they barely interest him when he's bored even), pick it up and play with it, have a tug of war, pet him and praise him, he'll accept it, he'll play with me and focus on me, and he'll move away from the track with me. But the instant I stop rewarding him, his focus is back on the track...

After a track's end, I make a sharp turn and walk out of the area in a way that will not disturb the trail and in a direction we will not be moving in once we've done the tracking, but Monster cannot let it go. He becomes anxious at being forced to abandon the track, and will continue to focus on it. The track work itself appears to be too rewarding, nothing I do can measure up to it... I need to make a clean break at the finish, but I am so far unsuccessful.

Either way, though, Monster really likes doing this, and once home he'll conk out nicely.

Whlrrrghzz..?

Oh, and the next day we were close to the area again, and I decided to go check if there had been any more activity. We (well, Monster really) found this:

Yup.

That would be a dead fox... It appears to have died during the night as nothing has been touched, even its eyes are intact. I'm guessing a traffic victim, although there were no visible injuries to it. So was I right after all, was it fox smell? Or did the boars and the fox work in tandem, and then the boars turned around and (literally) backstabbed the fox?

Either way, who needs TV when you have nature?

Oh, just in case you think Monster is the only one with any tracking talent, let me show off my skillz.

Aha!

This is unmistakably the tracks of a young animal, male, a little over 100 pounds, and about... two - no, make that three miles away from an urgently needed washing of the paws. How about that!

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...

So, What Have We Got To Show For Ourselves?

Our current situation, as the year starts to wind down (while the blog is just starting) is as follows:

• Monster is 1.5 years old, weighing in at about 100 pounds, and as far as he will tell me of sound mind and body.
• We can go for walks even when other dog owners are out, but I must be alert to make sure we don't get too close (at around 100 feet away Monster will begin to focus overly on other dogs making it difficult for him to follow commands or pay attention, at around 30 feet away he will display aggressive behavior such as barking and lunging).
• If allowed to reach a point of aggressive behavior, it's still possible to get some minimal moments of attention from him, he can be brought away from the situation, and he doesn't redirect his aggression towards me.
• He no longer reacts just towards dogs, his behavior can now be triggered by people, cars, cats, bikes, blowing leaves, etc...
• He is starting to show more enthusiasm about training, no longer avoiding eye contact or refusing to try.
• He is in a higher level of stress than before we started our current method of training. He has difficulty focusing for almost any period of time, on almost any activity (does not show when tracking, although he has trouble giving up the "hunt" once he reaches the target). He constantly tries to pull on the leash when out walking.
• He is becoming more interested in food rewards, although it's still not very important to him.
• His behavior towards dogs he considers friends (those he grew up with) is becoming ruder. He will play more intensely, with gestures of dominance and some resource guarding.
• He is showing insecurity towards sudden surprises, like things falling down or sudden noises.

So, it's mixed results, I suppose... Certainly, we're nowhere close to done - or even acceptable. For people reading this for the first time, the fact that I'm willing to keep at it with a method that's showing a worsening behavior in some aspects probably seems insane. I understand where you're coming from, the increase in stress and the expansion to all things being a trigger is not a pleasant result. But the overall result is still positive, for us.

I'm starting this blog when we've had aggression issues for a year already. I can't bring you up to speed in just a few posts, unfortunately, so let me just say it's been a lot worse. And I suppose I have faith in where we're headed. Some results are undesireable, but I think I understand why they're cropping up (maybe), and I think they'll die down again if we just keep at it.

But hey, I've been wrong before... At least it will feel familiar if it turns out I'm wrong again, then.