#dog courses

Look and Dismiss (or why we don't teach dogs to look at things!)

It can be difficult to know what your dog is really feeling. We only have behavior to look at, and it isn't always clear to us, especially in dogs that have had a lot of experience in training. Sometimes dogs are obvious in their signals, but just as often this isn't the case, and we have to look for more subtle signs that confirm for us whether our dogs are concerned or really feeling ok about what's going on around them. One thing we use in this class is the quality of their play. The other thing we use is how much looking away from you they are doing.

The extent to which your dog has to look at things is a direct way to measure how they're feeling about those things. Looking at something you're concerned with is a natural behavior; indeed it's quite difficult to teach someone *not* to look at something they're concerned about!

So this natural signal is one we can use! Your dog will just do it because she has to, and you can use how much she has to as a gauge for how she's feeling, and you can use how much her need to look is reducing as a gauge for how she's changing her feelings.

When your dog no longer looks at his trigger any more than a very occasional glance, we can say that theyre "dismissing" it. It's not a big feature in their mind any longer, and they are concentrating on their time with you.  Over time, this process will happen more quickly, and they will be able to "look and dismiss" with just a glance or two, or one longer look, and just be done with it! This is your ultimate goal. Imagine your dog just looking at a stranger, another dog, or a new object and then being done with it entirely, preferring to move onto the fun things you're offering!

There are two things you can do to muddy this signal, though:

Don't be so amazingly awesome that it's too hard to look away from you! As you play, you want to make sure that you're not so magnetizing that looking away from you is difficult ("OMG SHE HAS HOTDOGS, MY FAVORITE!!!").  If you do that as a habit, you might correspondingly pick a trigger strength that is too high (because your dog isn't looking away, after all) and then you have a big problem.  If you're easy enough to look away from, you'll keep your natural signal intact, and then when that signal tells you (by its absence) that there's no lingering concerns, you can bring in the more exciting play, now confident that you're not obliterating that signal.

Don't teach your dog TO look at something, on purpose.  When you do that, you have interfered with it being a natural signal, and will have some difficulty knowing whether your dog is looking because he needs to, or is looking because he's been taught to and wants the reward that it connected to him performing that behavior.  You may not get that reduction you're looking for, and it will be more difficult for you to know if things are improving.

If you've already taught this, you can unteach it, but it'll just take some time.  You'll want to reward them for checking back with you, but then reward for continued looking at you to counteract the back and forth they may be offering. You'll want to do this only in absence of a stress trigger though, so just use regular distractions for this work.

Lastly, you don't want to interrupt them if they do look away by calling their name or saying "uh-uh" or touching them or anything else that communicates that they should turn to you instead.  Let that be their choice, and their natural signal to you. The more you teach them to do it on purpose, or the more you interrupt them displaying that signal, the less useful it will be to you.