Seven is a great little terrier however, as I've mentioned he has a good dose of leash frustration. This frustration appears when he thinks he hears or sees dogs and creatures in the environment - birds & critters. Because of his behavior we've avoided walks until I had a better idea of how to help him work through this behavior.
The dog class that we attended was beyond helpful and our instructor gave us a plan of action to work through Seven's leash frustration. So with our plan in place we started our work together!
For now we are trying to avoid seeing dogs if we can, focusing on working on our new skills in the outside environment. Keep in mind we've built up to this work with our 5 week class and work inside our house around impulse control and relationship building. Here's the post Seven has graduated from class if you missed it!
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| Seven loves to be out walking! |
I would describe Seven as a boy who loves to be a part of an active environment. He's curious and wants to watch what's going on around him. We are going to take advantage of this in our training plan!
There are a lot of videos in this post and you can see how alert Seven is when he's outside. He's taking in a lot of information and making choices.
Below you can see that Seven is a mover and he walks very well on leash - I'm a fast walker so we do well together!
However, he is amping up the faster we walk so, I want to slow him down and start to work on some on our new skill. By slowing down that will help him focus on me, work on impulse control and start practicing our new skill.
So what is it that I'm looking for? I want Seven to make a choice to look at me (disengage from the environment). And for him making that choice, I will reinforce that behavior with a high value treat AND then let him go back to watching the environment.
Where I was getting jammed up before was the last step of letting him go back to watching the environment. What I was doing (which was not helping) was getting him to move away from whatever he was watching. By doing this he was getting more frustrated, he was unable to engage with me which resulted in an increased intensity of his whining, barking and scratching of the ground.
Going back to talking about reinforcers - what's most reinforcing for Seven is for him to watch the environment - that trumps everything else. So as long as he stays calm, he can do this and man did we start seeing great results once we adjusted to this plan. This plan was a direct result of the guidance from Ruth our trainer - again so many thanks to her and this reinforces why having a trainer can help us so much when we get stuck.
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| watching the trees move by the wind |
And here's a video of us starting to do what I described above. He's actually getting two reinforcers - he's given a high value treat for making the choice of looking away from what he's watching, looking at me. Then he's reinforced again by watching the environment. Seven as you can see has a lot of choice in this training plan and that has also made a big difference for him.
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| "Got my eye's on you and that jerky in your hand!" |
And we start moving and repeat...
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| "Looking at you again!" |
And now we get distractors in the environment - he see's birds! As he pulls to the birds I rapidly slow to a stop and then he checks in and he is reinforced for his choice. And no barking or pulling to get at the birds - a HUGE improvement.
Again, lots of choices he's making here and the reinforcers of food and being able to go back to watching the environment are working and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!
This is a long video but, you can see that in the beginning of this work, Seven spends a lot of time watching the environment. I'm fine with this as long as he stays calm. As we practice more, his time of needing to watch is reducing.
The difference in Seven is amazing when he's given the choice to return to watching the environment after he looks at me. All that frustration we were seeing is dissipating.
More choice and opportunities to reinforce Seven's behavior!
We need to work on the game of "find it".
You can see in Seven's face, ears and eye's that he's a pretty intense and we can't expect his leash frustration and environmental excitement to vanish overnight. But, with ongoing practice, clear communication, lots of reinforcement for good choices and environmental management by me - I think we are off to an amazing start!
Way to go Seven - you are a super little guy and a whole lot of fun to work with!
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Here's a great blog post talking about Expectations of our dogs
Stay tuned to watch more of what we are working on when we are outside!
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