Naughty Dog's Day: Gully: Being OK 101, the work continues

Well, I haven't written about Gully in a while, not because anything is wrong, but because we haven't really added anything new. There's a saying about working with fearful dogs: "If you think you're going too slow, slow down".

And so we continue with what we've started. The progress shows in little ways. Gulliver now occasionally wags his tail, or rolls over for a belly rub. He knows the routine and anticipates what's going to happen, which is very comforting to a fearful dog. Yawning in humans has been shown in clinical studies, to indicate feelings of inner conflict; does it apply to dogs? Well, I guess no one really knows, but many concur that it seems to. I agree. When Gully first arrived he yawned a lot. Now he does it very rarely. As he progresses and is ready for new things, I'll be watching for those yawns, among other things, to indicate his level of comfort with what is happening. These are the little signs of progress that I have to celebrate. You just want to say "Get a grip, buddy! You're fine." But you can't. You have to let them tell you when they're ready for something new, and it can take a long, long time.

We continue with the little games (they aren't really games, but then Gulliver isn't really ready to play) we started with, and have added a new one. Our "games" are pretty darned tame, but Gully loves them, and they are just right for him. He hasn't figured out that they are boosting his confidence and ability to ask for things he wants, but they are. He doesn't have to move, he doesn't feel he has to "perform" and I don't ask him to do these things, but if he does, I reward him. If he likes doing whatever it is, and is rewarded for it, he'll do it more often because he wants the reward. If he doesn't want to engage, he doesn't. Easy. He very much enjoys "targeting" which means he touches my hand and gets a click and a treat. I also use click and treat when I'm petting him and brushing him. It increases his enjoyment of both. The other game we play is "Which hand is the treat in?" which he instituted one day when I was holding a treat in one hand but wasn't quite ready to give it to him. He started nosing my hand, trying to get it. Then he checked the other hand. Darn, that was just some of his hair I'd brushed out. Then back to the treat hand. Okay! You win, here it is! Glory be, he wagged his tail! So now it's a little game we play every day.

Someday, we'll be able to use this fun work we're doing now to help him with things he is afraid of. Right now, to him, the click just tells him a delicious treat is arriving. Here's a good explanation from Karen Pryor, the "mother" of clicker training, that I think explains quite well how we'll use this later: "We often train a behavior in animals that was initially a symptom of emotion. A horse may rear spontaneously because it is frightened, or in an aggressive display. But you can shape rearing, put it on cue, and the horse does it willingly and calmly as a trick or a learned behavior, with no agitation resulting at all. Dolphins and whales use a loud slap of the tail in fear and as a warning signal, but I've trained tons of dolphins to tail-slap on cue with not a vestige of emotion attached any longer." This is classic shaping, where you take a tiny little indication of a behavior and expand on it. Someday Gulliver will be ready to move on to some of this, but not yet. When he is it will be perfect for him, because if it's done right, it's the absolute least stressful method of training, in my opinion.

So if you're working with a fearful dog too, don't get discouraged. It seems like the dog doesn't remember anything it learns. I think, and other behaviorists I've spoken to concur, that it's not that the dog forgets, but that it's been conditioned to react in a certain way for however long it was previously in a situation. It's far easier to change the behavior in a 6 or 8 month old puppy than it is in an older dog. I'm sure if you think about it, you've experienced this yourself in your own behavior. Ever gotten in your car intending to drive to a certain place, but out of habit turned the wrong direction, maybe the direction you drive when you go to work? You didn't forget how to get to the place you were going, for a moment you just reverted to a learned behavior that you engage in frequently. A friend called me the other day, upset because she had gone out to lunch and ordered food she shouldn't have been eating because she "forgot" she was on a diet. It's not really that she had no memory that she was on a diet now, she just reverted to a learned behavior - ordering the lunch she likes at a restaurant she frequents regularly. So don't let a seeming lack of progress get you down. Sometimes the progress is so small, you can't even really see it. But inside, that dog is changing. He's rethinking, he is learning, and just when you think you should give up - something good happens. Like a few hours ago, when I was handing treats out to the day care dogs, and Gulliver actually got up, wagging his tail, and took a treat. Just as suddenly, he reverted to his learned behavior and quickly retreated to his bed. But there it was, a little bright spot in Gully's and my day. Another tiny indication that he's beginning to thaw.