I'm a bit behind with blog post so, the below video was from Torii's first week with us. As of today, she's been in our care for 3 weeks and each day we are seeing progress with her sweet self.
Torii presents as a skittish/fearful dog and who knows why that is. There could be lots of reasons but, all we can do is work with what we are seeing each day.
We continue to reinforce/reward Torii for making choices to interact with us. Here you can see one way we are doing this. I don't care that she is putting her paws up on the chair next to me. In fact for now I'm encouraging and rewarding this engagement that Torii CHOOSES to make.
By giving choice based options, we set up cooperation rather than coercion. By giving choice, we lay the foundation for learning and relationship building. By giving choice, we also increasing confidence and reduce stress. If we don't allow choice but, instead use force - we are in for 10 miles of bad road and this brings about lots of defensive behaviors by the dog. Humans often find these behaviors problematic. For a dog like Torii, if she doesn't have choice and if trust it's built she will do everything possible to stay away from you.
It's not a surprise that she is choosing to engage while I'm seated. My motions are slow and fairly predictable. I keep my hand still, purposely go slow and as she takes the treat, I hold my hand open for longer than I normally would.
And here we are starting the foundation to build to hand targeting or as I call it "touch"
Stay tuned to watch Torii's "touch" work!
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