Shadow's saying 'It's that weird dog again who doesn't move... he's creeping me out!!!"
Shadow's reactivity log
- Thread starter snowbunny
- Start date
- Location
- Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Isn't it about scent, movement, body language etc.? I'm a little confused by this Fiona and how it can work. xx
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
I'm simply getting Shadow comfortable around dogs at a distance. It's surprising how little seems to be about scent and movement. Of course, the movement especially has a lot of bearing if the other dog is interested in him, but when I put Terry out, Willow came with me. I put her in a sit-stay about halfway into the field while I pulled the toy out of a bag and plonked him down. She was riveted. I walked her away, but she was so interested, and I have no need for her to not find out he's not a real dog, that I let her "say hi". She sniffed and prodded him for a good five minutes, and was still very distracted by him after that, even well out of sight. So the fact that he looks like a real dog is a very large part of it.
The fact he's not a real dog means it's easy for me to set up scenarios really regularly without having to rely on other people.
I've seen fake dogs being used really effectively in some of the online courses I've taken, and it's something I can do easily. One thing I will be doing at some point is having J bring Willow in on lead, as Shadow's reactivity is far worse if the girls are around. So working towards him being calm in that scenario will be huge for us.
The fact he's not a real dog means it's easy for me to set up scenarios really regularly without having to rely on other people.
I've seen fake dogs being used really effectively in some of the online courses I've taken, and it's something I can do easily. One thing I will be doing at some point is having J bring Willow in on lead, as Shadow's reactivity is far worse if the girls are around. So working towards him being calm in that scenario will be huge for us.
Beanwood
Administrator
- Location
- Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Amazing, maybe I need a Terry for Charlie 
Next question, how big is Terry? x
Next question, how big is Terry? x
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Terry is exactly the size of your average JRT! 40cm tall, 42cm long.
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
There are a couple of pictures here alongside a young child and a baby, to give you some idea: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melissa-Do...sr=8-1&keywords=melissa+and+doug+jack+russell
- Location
- Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Charlie isn't worried by small dogs at all it's bigger ones so I need a big Terry! x
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
They do Labs, poodles, Dalmatians, huskies, GRs....
- Location
- East Sussex
Like Helen, I also thought dogs relied more on movement and smell to identify another dog, so this has been interesting to read.
(Just remembering how many years ago my parents were given a pottery Westie, about 12 inches high, which they put in the hearth. Their real Westie came in and barked at it the first time he saw it!)
(Just remembering how many years ago my parents were given a pottery Westie, about 12 inches high, which they put in the hearth. Their real Westie came in and barked at it the first time he saw it!)
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
W&S both barked at their portrait when I had it done.... and Alex barked at a picture of a Border Collie in the vet waiting room, so obviously dogs recognise their shape from even a two-dimensional image.
- Location
- Argyll & Bute, Scotland
They do but they are pretty expensiveThey do Labs, poodles, Dalmatians, huskies, GRs....
Might have a look in the charity shops. xMy vet has a sort of pottery dog in the waiting room... Bones once peed on the wall when he saw it!
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Third session, and we moved to a different location. Basically because it's closer and I was feeling lazy. We don't go into this field very often, so Shadow immediately isn't as relaxed there as in the other place. He clocked Terry at 40m, and took a little while to relax. I waited longer than yesterday to see how he did, basically because I couldn't easily move further away without ending up in the bushes or down a ramp into the field below where we wouldn't be able to see him.
You can see in the video that Shadow kept looking over towards the far corner of the field at first. It was a little lingering as opposed to a true "look and dismiss", but I wouldn't say he was fixated. Still too much for my liking, but I decided to work on through and see what happened. He did relax after a while, and turned into his normal liquid dog.
He caught a scent at one point; the far side of this small field is where the fox sett is, and I think he got a whiff of that - he certainly was scenting in that direction, rather than pulling towards Terry, who was at the diagonal corner. My "job" isn't to try and keep him engaged, so I let him go to the extent of the lead. I want him to enjoy hanging out and relaxing with me in the presence of the other dog, rather than me badgering him to do so, so I just use any disconnection as information. In this case, it was nothing to do with Terry, so I didn't feel I had to move away. If it happens again in this location, however, I'll deem it too distracting and not use it again, as I don't want to create frustration or conflict in him.
These videos are going to be very much of a muchness for a while, so I don't expect you all to watch them all - it's more as a record for my use. If I capture any type of reactivity, it's because I've failed, so don't expect fireworks - or even anything resembling a reactive dog!
You can see in the video that Shadow kept looking over towards the far corner of the field at first. It was a little lingering as opposed to a true "look and dismiss", but I wouldn't say he was fixated. Still too much for my liking, but I decided to work on through and see what happened. He did relax after a while, and turned into his normal liquid dog.
He caught a scent at one point; the far side of this small field is where the fox sett is, and I think he got a whiff of that - he certainly was scenting in that direction, rather than pulling towards Terry, who was at the diagonal corner. My "job" isn't to try and keep him engaged, so I let him go to the extent of the lead. I want him to enjoy hanging out and relaxing with me in the presence of the other dog, rather than me badgering him to do so, so I just use any disconnection as information. In this case, it was nothing to do with Terry, so I didn't feel I had to move away. If it happens again in this location, however, I'll deem it too distracting and not use it again, as I don't want to create frustration or conflict in him.
These videos are going to be very much of a muchness for a while, so I don't expect you all to watch them all - it's more as a record for my use. If I capture any type of reactivity, it's because I've failed, so don't expect fireworks - or even anything resembling a reactive dog!
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
You can’t see him in this video and the wide angle distorts the perspective.
On this pic, we’re where the red blob is, and Terry is where the blue cross is.
He’s actually directly behind Shadow for most of it, you just can’t see him. He’s a small target because he’s facing away, and I guess the light isn’t helping.
Here(ish):
On this pic, we’re where the red blob is, and Terry is where the blue cross is.
He’s actually directly behind Shadow for most of it, you just can’t see him. He’s a small target because he’s facing away, and I guess the light isn’t helping.
Here(ish):
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Here's the video I took this morning. This time, without Terry. I took him along on the offchance we could use him, but you'll see that wasn't an option today.
This was our first outing to one of our closest town's supermarkets. I was expecting the car park to be completely empty as none of the surrounding shops are open on a Sunday, but typically as we got out of the car, a man and his two young daughters rocked up, one on a bike. He was talking loudly into his mobile phone for most of the time. The video makes it look like he's miles away but Google Maps tells me it's just under 50m, which is pretty close in terms of asking Shadow to chill out in a loud, apparently angry stranger's presence. I toyed with the idea of going elsewhere, but I thought I'd give it a go and see what happened.
I don't expect anyone to watch all the video, so here are the highlights:
I started off with a "perimeter sweep" - or, at least, two sides of the perimeter. We very nearly ran into the little girl on her bike (0:45) as we did so. The GoPro makes it look like she's a long way away, but this was really close. Shadow was a star; at one point, this would have turned him into a barking, lunging mess.
0:57 I sit down to see what happens and do a little scatter feeding to get him a touch more relaxed. You can see the man in the background in the middle of the big red shutters.
1:22 Shadow is interested in watching the people but seems quite happy to stand still and have chest rubs. When I stop stroking him to adjust myself, he steps in to reinitiate contact. He continues to be alert to things that are happening in the environment; the family, cars driving past on the road above us (behind the camera), cars driving by on the other side of the car park.
2:00 He's interested in sniffing the wall behind us. This was bad planning on my part, but I wanted us to be in the shade and it was quite limited. I had to decide what to do when he went towards it and my first instinct was to stop him. I don't want him to pee on it! However, in general, I want him to be able to disengage from me and investigate his environment within the reach of the lead so I changed my mind and let him to go sniff. I broke him off with food before he weed on it, because I felt that was coming. Again, bad planning as I don't want to be calling him over to interact with me or bribing him with food; I want it just to be something he naturally does when the environment becomes non-threatening.
2:40 As much as he's clearly enjoying being stroked, he's still a bit tense and shows no sign of settling down, so I decide to use food play to help with this. After a few seconds of that, once I've told him "game over", he walks into me and asks for contact. A few seconds later and he looks away to stare at the family again, and keeps watching the environment for a while. I don't interrupt him.
3:55 I think his body language is quite interesting here - see how stretched out his back legs are? He was in quite a natural stance then at around 3:52 he took a step forwards with his front feet, I think just to turn a little bit more to face the family, but his back feet stayed planted. A sign of insecurity, perhaps? It reminds me of dogs who reach forwards to snatch a treat from someone they're unsure of.
4:06 He starts to turn back towards me, so I stroke him again, but he turns away again and I stop. This isn't (intentional) negative punishment, it's because I want to let him focus on the environment if he needs to, without me appearing to be nagging him to engage with me. As soon as I stop, he immediately turns back towards me. This is something I need to be careful of as I want to keep his behaviour as natural as possible; I don't want to be training him to give me behaviours he thinks I want; I want to be able to use his behaviours to assess his emotional state.
As he turns back to me, I make a fuss of him and invite him in, which he accepts for a few seconds before turning away to watch things again - the road at the far end had a bit of traffic on it, and the little girls were running around.
4:50 You can see he's a bit more relaxed and is now giving a few nice "Look And Dismiss" behaviours which I like. This is very different to a trained "LAT" or "LAM" cue. As above, what I want is for the behaviour to be a gauge of how he is feeling rather than a pattern of behaviours he has learned will give him reinforcement. By allowing him to look without comment (hard for me!) and not actually go out of my way to reinforce his disengagement, the behaviour is far more indicative of how he is feeling. If he looks away, it's because he is actually dismissing it. Good stuff!
5:05 No, Shadow, you're not allowed to wee on the wall!
5:38 a bird took off from right above out heads, very noisily! It made both of us look, but Shadow dismissed it almost immediately.
He continues to watch the environment for a while... I fuss at his coat which I shouldn't be doing.
6:33 He glances back towards me and I open my hands in my "Do you want a cuddle?" invitation. He steps in close and you can see he is enjoying the strokes and kisses. Such a soppy dog. He gets distracted by the loud man shouting in Catalan into his phone and walking around.
7:25 He turns back towards me again and I invite him in for cuddles. He puts his head down, which is what he does a lot when he rolls over - he goes down top of head first. Weirdo. He's not quite ready for that, but is still interested in engaging, and stands over me - another thing he likes to do when we're interacting. As soon as I stop, he spins around and asks for the game to continue. Bam, he's down on his back, having chest rubs and being a doofus.
It doesn't last long, someone goes past on the top road and he gets back on his feet, but I called that one a win as I wasn't sure he'd be able to settle enough to get anywhere near that.
I'm going to try a few more sessions like this; either in the same car park when it's quiet, or find other similar spaces that are unfamiliar with just a little bit of something going on.
I heard a good analogy today. Learning to deal with scary environments is a bit like learning to swim in the sea. If you get thrown straight into the deep ocean, you will thrash around, panic, you won't be able to cope and you will be overwhelmed by the water. You can stay on the sand where you're completely safe and nothing will ever happen to you. But nor will you learn to swim. In order to learn to swim, you have to get your feet wet and learn that's safe and OK. You progressively enter the water with your coach by your side, letting you know you're safe all the while. If you start to panic, the good coach will hold you up and take you back to where you feel safe, so you can rebuild your confidence and work on your skills before trying again.
This is what I'm trying to do with this. After too long on the beach, I'm just starting to get Shadow's feet wet.
This was our first outing to one of our closest town's supermarkets. I was expecting the car park to be completely empty as none of the surrounding shops are open on a Sunday, but typically as we got out of the car, a man and his two young daughters rocked up, one on a bike. He was talking loudly into his mobile phone for most of the time. The video makes it look like he's miles away but Google Maps tells me it's just under 50m, which is pretty close in terms of asking Shadow to chill out in a loud, apparently angry stranger's presence. I toyed with the idea of going elsewhere, but I thought I'd give it a go and see what happened.
I don't expect anyone to watch all the video, so here are the highlights:
I started off with a "perimeter sweep" - or, at least, two sides of the perimeter. We very nearly ran into the little girl on her bike (0:45) as we did so. The GoPro makes it look like she's a long way away, but this was really close. Shadow was a star; at one point, this would have turned him into a barking, lunging mess.
0:57 I sit down to see what happens and do a little scatter feeding to get him a touch more relaxed. You can see the man in the background in the middle of the big red shutters.
1:22 Shadow is interested in watching the people but seems quite happy to stand still and have chest rubs. When I stop stroking him to adjust myself, he steps in to reinitiate contact. He continues to be alert to things that are happening in the environment; the family, cars driving past on the road above us (behind the camera), cars driving by on the other side of the car park.
2:00 He's interested in sniffing the wall behind us. This was bad planning on my part, but I wanted us to be in the shade and it was quite limited. I had to decide what to do when he went towards it and my first instinct was to stop him. I don't want him to pee on it! However, in general, I want him to be able to disengage from me and investigate his environment within the reach of the lead so I changed my mind and let him to go sniff. I broke him off with food before he weed on it, because I felt that was coming. Again, bad planning as I don't want to be calling him over to interact with me or bribing him with food; I want it just to be something he naturally does when the environment becomes non-threatening.
2:40 As much as he's clearly enjoying being stroked, he's still a bit tense and shows no sign of settling down, so I decide to use food play to help with this. After a few seconds of that, once I've told him "game over", he walks into me and asks for contact. A few seconds later and he looks away to stare at the family again, and keeps watching the environment for a while. I don't interrupt him.
3:55 I think his body language is quite interesting here - see how stretched out his back legs are? He was in quite a natural stance then at around 3:52 he took a step forwards with his front feet, I think just to turn a little bit more to face the family, but his back feet stayed planted. A sign of insecurity, perhaps? It reminds me of dogs who reach forwards to snatch a treat from someone they're unsure of.
4:06 He starts to turn back towards me, so I stroke him again, but he turns away again and I stop. This isn't (intentional) negative punishment, it's because I want to let him focus on the environment if he needs to, without me appearing to be nagging him to engage with me. As soon as I stop, he immediately turns back towards me. This is something I need to be careful of as I want to keep his behaviour as natural as possible; I don't want to be training him to give me behaviours he thinks I want; I want to be able to use his behaviours to assess his emotional state.
As he turns back to me, I make a fuss of him and invite him in, which he accepts for a few seconds before turning away to watch things again - the road at the far end had a bit of traffic on it, and the little girls were running around.
4:50 You can see he's a bit more relaxed and is now giving a few nice "Look And Dismiss" behaviours which I like. This is very different to a trained "LAT" or "LAM" cue. As above, what I want is for the behaviour to be a gauge of how he is feeling rather than a pattern of behaviours he has learned will give him reinforcement. By allowing him to look without comment (hard for me!) and not actually go out of my way to reinforce his disengagement, the behaviour is far more indicative of how he is feeling. If he looks away, it's because he is actually dismissing it. Good stuff!
5:05 No, Shadow, you're not allowed to wee on the wall!
5:38 a bird took off from right above out heads, very noisily! It made both of us look, but Shadow dismissed it almost immediately.
He continues to watch the environment for a while... I fuss at his coat which I shouldn't be doing.
6:33 He glances back towards me and I open my hands in my "Do you want a cuddle?" invitation. He steps in close and you can see he is enjoying the strokes and kisses. Such a soppy dog. He gets distracted by the loud man shouting in Catalan into his phone and walking around.
7:25 He turns back towards me again and I invite him in for cuddles. He puts his head down, which is what he does a lot when he rolls over - he goes down top of head first. Weirdo. He's not quite ready for that, but is still interested in engaging, and stands over me - another thing he likes to do when we're interacting. As soon as I stop, he spins around and asks for the game to continue. Bam, he's down on his back, having chest rubs and being a doofus.
It doesn't last long, someone goes past on the top road and he gets back on his feet, but I called that one a win as I wasn't sure he'd be able to settle enough to get anywhere near that.
I'm going to try a few more sessions like this; either in the same car park when it's quiet, or find other similar spaces that are unfamiliar with just a little bit of something going on.
I heard a good analogy today. Learning to deal with scary environments is a bit like learning to swim in the sea. If you get thrown straight into the deep ocean, you will thrash around, panic, you won't be able to cope and you will be overwhelmed by the water. You can stay on the sand where you're completely safe and nothing will ever happen to you. But nor will you learn to swim. In order to learn to swim, you have to get your feet wet and learn that's safe and OK. You progressively enter the water with your coach by your side, letting you know you're safe all the while. If you start to panic, the good coach will hold you up and take you back to where you feel safe, so you can rebuild your confidence and work on your skills before trying again.
This is what I'm trying to do with this. After too long on the beach, I'm just starting to get Shadow's feet wet.
Good analogy!! I have to admit to skipping parts of the video, but I can get the gist of what you are doing, and I think it's very much what I would do in your situation as well - if in order to avoid stressful situations for him, you never allow him to experience the bigger world, how is he going to learn to 'swim' in it? On the other hand, too much too fast and he would not learn to relax. He does look a bit tense the whole time, even though he is calm enough to take food and to interact with you, except when he's rolling around on his back playing with you, which is very sweet to watch!
Back to the analogy, do you think you were too long 'on the beach'? And if so, why?
Back to the analogy, do you think you were too long 'on the beach'? And if so, why?
- Location
- Malvern Worcestershire
Maybe if you kept walking and not 'making' it something more special by sitting and stroking etc?? I have had two reactive dogs and found that starting at a distance from their fears and just walking and even singing a happy tune and over weeks just getting nearer and nearer helped tremendously, one was frightened of shot and one was frightened of people!
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Yes, for sure, and I'd say there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, we don't need to deal with this in everyday life. It's actually an effort to put ourselves into this sort of situation because of where we live. We don't see other dogs week to week, we only ever go into town with the dogs to take them to the vet. We have no need to do it for the most part.
Secondly, and I think most significantly is that having my dog react is punishing to me. Having my dog look scared in an unusual environment is punishing to me. And as we know, punishment reduces the likelihood of repeating the behaviour, so I would avoid that situation.
I don't think I am making it more special by sitting and stroking. I'm not asking him to interact with the environment, I'm not pushing him into anything, we're just sitting there and letting him do what he wants (within reason) in a situation which is slightly outside his comfort zone. I understand what you're saying and there is truth in it; habituation will happen if he is exposed to the environment. When we've been in the UK for extended periods, he has become so much better with other dogs because he has been exposed to them more and more. But at this stage, we're not even interested in other dogs - I'm just getting him used to this really strange place. If I were to walk with him, that strangeness would be changing and being refreshed with every pace, every corner we turned. If you saw him walking, you'd see that he is hypervigilant, not able to settle down at all. Using this method, it's breeding familiarity with a very small place, giving him the time to process it. The invitation to come into me for cuddles isn't to make him feel better, it's to judge how he already feels. If he says "no", then it means he's not relaxed enough.
Shadow is also very good at turning on what I call his "work mode". He will behave in a way that can make you think he's OK when he actually isn't, because he's performing behaviours that he knows. This can be useful, but it also does nothing to address the underlying emotional state and make it better going forwards. It means he is suppressing those emotions and merely tolerating what is happening. If he were to be trigger stacked, that would all fall apart around our ears.
Finally, going back to the point about where we live, it's really going out of our way to do this sort of thing in the real world. So being able to use the fake dog on our own land means it's more achievable for us and gives us layers we can add easily. I have to be realistic about what I can commit to doing to address the issue, otherwise it won't happen at all.