A Reassuring Success

This was actually written last week, on September 11th, but I'm posting it now, since we had technical issues.

All right...I haven't actually blogged here before, but tonight was so incredible that I've decided to start, so that I can look back on this entry when I need some encouragement. My dogs are Caspian and Kaia (there are pictures here, if you're curious). Kaia is a 6-7 year old female who I think is probably an Australian Shepherd/Chow mix. I've had her since January of 2004, and we've done a ton of work with her. When I got her, she was afraid of people and aggressive toward most dogs. She's now gotten her CGC certificate, raised a puppy, and generally done some really impressive stuff, due to the clicker training classes we offer where I work. But, this is a brag for Caspian, so talking more about her will have to wait.

Caspian is my baby. He'll be 3 at the end of September, I've had him since he was 5 months old. He was pretty seriously traumatized before that, he'd been to the animal emergency clinic multiple times before he came to me, all due to attacks by adult dogs in his original home. We've lived with several other dogs since then, and with careful introductions he does well under most circumstances. He has great bite inhibition, but he's extremely reactive, and our progress slowed a little because I got scared after a bad experience and stopped taking him to classes.

Fast-forward to tonight, which was week six of our reactive dog class. Class has been a bunch of ups and downs, but last week was all right, which gave me more confidence about tonight. Confidence that was well-placed, because he did better than I could possibly have hoped for.

Reactive dog class tonight was outside, which is always easier for us. The other dogs were working on a lot of movement, but I wasn't sure how Cas would do with that so I set up his mat on the sidewalk, about twice as far away from the other dogs as the other dogs were going to be working.

We started out doing pretty much nothing but clicking and treating for reorienting toward me, and for looking at the other dogs without reacting. It was actually difficult to do the latter, since he wasn't any more interested in looking at the other dogs than he was in exploring his surroundings - that's huge, for us! It's a displacement behavior with him, which is still stress, but he used to be able to do nothing but stare at the dogs.

He was doing great at the mat, so we added in some movement, working on reorienting and LLW - he becomes less responsive to the clicker as soon as we're moving, and has a tendency to yo-yo between me and the end of his leash. He was doing so well that we actually incorporated him into the class exercises, with other owners and dogs moving between him and a dog on the other side, with about 10 feet of distance between each dog.

The crowning glory for today could actually have been a huge problem, and I'm thrilled it turned out all right. Another of our instructors, who's a good friend of mine, messed up. She didn't keep close enough tabs on a class that was heading out of the building, and someone walked out with a dog, almost straight into Caspian. Both dogs ended up at the ends of their leashes, with only about 2 feet of space between noses. I yelled "Please move back, he's not friendly." I clicked Cas, but (not surprisingly) got no response.

Here's the first amazing thing: he looked like any friendly-but-stressed dog, curious to meet another dog. Here's the second amazing thing: as soon as my friend ran out to help, he focused immediately on her. She's a frequent visitor to our house, and one of his favorite people. And as soon as she was in sight, he didn't even care about the other dog anymore.
He wouldn't take treats for about 5 minutes after that, so we did some t-touch and let him socialize with a few humans - my friend, once her client was gone, and a few of the kids who came with another of the dogs in our class. After that, we tried a little more movement work and called it a day.

I think we could have kept working, but he was being picky about treats. Of all the weird things, he'll work for tortellini, but not much else. I had 5 different types of treats, but he was only eating 2 of them, so we had to call it when I started running low.

Since he was doing great, and Kaia was in the car, I brought Kaia out for a little while. She was begging to go back to classes: within 30 seconds of coming out of the car she was doing heels, giving me beautiful focus, and listening to every cue I gave. This used to be my serious distracto-dog, so I was thrilled. We did almost every trick she'd ever done, hung out with my friend for a bit, and then all three of us headed home.

I couldn't be happier. Both of my dogs have clearly proven to me why it's worth it to continue working with Caspian, and that Kaia deserves much more credit than I've been giving her. I need to get back into advanced classes with her, and keep Caspian in classes. I've been letting myself judge both dogs by our lowest moments, not by the incredible improvements they've both made since I started with them.

I'm completely thrilled, and it's been a long time since I've given my dogs the opportunity to thrill me. I got scared, and we've been staying in the house. We still train, but not in classes or in public, and that's because I've been being over-cautious. I'm actually excited to come to class with Caspian next week, and I'm looking forward to putting Kaia in class, too - that's a new thing, I spent so long dreading class because something might go wrong!

I'll try to back up at some point and give more of an introduction. I realize i've very much started in the middle, here. But tonight was just too exciting not to share!