#ecollars

Got some good pictures of the Noodle a couple days ago! It was the first sunny and dry day we have had in a while so we spent a few hours at the park and he found a ball!

I have really been thinking about how I am training and the techniques I WANT to use versus the ones I have been PUSHED to use by people I have been training with. So naturally I started testing. What does my dog really know in the absence of pressure? How does my value hold up under distraction without the threat of correction for a wrong choice? I am not happy with the answers that I have and have decided to largely put aside any sort of sport/trick training (aside from what he needs to get his mental energy out) and really focus on my relationship with my dog and getting some focus back without pressure. Most competitions require nothing more than a flat collar collar to be worn so it is useless if my dog can only focus under threat of pressure and my heel position has no value. I absolutely hate that some of my foundation with this dog is built on the overuse of tools that are made for very specific purposes. This overuse means that a lot of his behaviors crumble when these tools are absent. I do know that some of his intense distraction is from being a puppy/teenager (and not really knowing how to regulate his feelings yet) and I need to be careful to not put him in situations that are so intense he cannot learn from them as I move forward in relationship building and focusing exercises. The first things I will be working on are heeling on a flat collar and refocusing with distractions.

UPDATE: i was scrolling through the early posts on this blog and wow guys. Just wow. I remember i felt so disheartened when i posted this. Like i had failed my dog. Just really let him down and damaged him beyond belief. It was at the point where he would growl at me if i had to lean over him because he was so concerned because of the shit they had me doing. To some extent i did fail my dog. He had to go through all of that bullshit for me to learn how to advocate for him (and myself) and i will spend the rest of my life making that up to him. Every dog i own after him will be trained and raised differently because of him. However i did not completely fail my dog. Because i did stand up for him and his well-being, to myself and to the people i trained with. I will never do something another trainer told me to with my dog ever again without fully evaluating the impact that it might have on him. I will also do my utmost to approach training with him 1) in the most considerate way possible and 2) as a partnership. I owe him far more than that but this is what i can give him since i cannot take back anything that has already been done and i can only work with the dog that i have in front of me. Could i have had a drastically different dog in terms of confidence and reactivity/adjustment if i had supported him the way he clearly needed when he was younger? Yes. Is that the dog i have now? No.

So it has been a while since I posted this and let me tell you, we have come a long way. I still loose my patience/temper ever now and then because it is such an ingrained reaction at this point, but it is a rare occurance. My dog will actually wrestle with me now without getting so aroused that he bites me too hard. He has not growled (always because I walked towards him too quickly or something equally scary) at me in I do not know how long. His resilience to frustration is higher and we have actually had a few shaping sessions because he is willing to just offer behaviors now (i think he was too afraid of being wrong before to try anything new)! He actually is enjoying mimicry now which used to stress him out. He can informal heel without pressure in a variety of environments and on any flat collar. He is able to re-engage in a variety of environments too! We still have a ways to go before i call this one done but we sure as hell are getting there.

My list of things to do is smaller and in the absence of pressure I can actually see some things he was having issues with that I previously could not see because he was stressing low so often. Like he has a reactivity issue (which fluctuates wildly but with a strong relation to how much exercise he gets). He has a confidence issue. His relationship with me had been crumbling but is now strong enough that if he is nervous or suddenly frightened he comes over to me and stays there until he is calm and then goes back to investigating. Other things we have made progress with are dremeling with his consent, getting calm baths (he flips a shit over running water so he now gets legitimate baths lol), blow drying with consent, tooth brushing with AND without consent (cause some things still need to be done lol), ear cleaning without consent (we are working on the WITH consent part but that is going to take a long time), and touching him with consent and with descriptive signals (so i will tell him "face" before i pet his face and if he moves away then i do not pet his face and i do not ask again).

It is incredibly clear that he feels a hell of a lot more comfortable with me and that this has generalized to other people as well. He has always been a social dog but he is very sensitive so he used to not know what to do with his feelings about that. Now he just gets crazy excited to see people he knows and i love that for him. I have also found that i have a passion for training cooperative care behaviors and working with consent-based training! It really has been a journey to this point but i am excited to continue it with him!

[alternate link]

Emily Strong & Allie Bender & Ellen Yoakum

We’re wrapping up season 8 with another Q&A episode! In this episode, you’ll hear Emily, Allie, and Ellen talk about:

E-collars, and vibration collars, and what’s the difference

Nuance