Fear stage? It’s actually a thing!?!!?

[Leanne]

So.. I hope I’m not alone in going ‘oh yeah we have cracked that’.. and then moving on.. forgetting to reinforce it.

Our current targets are:
1. Stop making my ears bleed by barking like a banshee every time your not having 100% of my attention/Relaxation aka chill the f*ck out.

2. Pulling on the lead is increasing slightly.

3. Recall (which is brilliant but I always keep as a target)

Today the little sod has woken up (at 8am!!!!) like a demon. I’m not joking. My cute adorable angel has morphed back into biting puppy and he HURTS. I shrug understandably and do some training and then think I will take him for a lovely road walk.

Now I’ve got lazy. I admit this. We have a MASSIVE field opposite our house. He’s on the lead for 2 minutes maximum and then he can run and play and we practise heel work and recalling from dogs. It’s amazing.

But I forgot about cars. He travels in a car at least 5 times a week. He looks out of the window. Cars aren’t an issue.

Until they are.

My god he was awful. He was lunging, barking, biting my legs. Every single car.

So we sat on a grass verge and I got him into a down and then we sat for 30 minutes, treating every single car that drove past until he stopped reacting. Then we moved a bit closer and then we crossed the road repeatedly... and then he was fine again, the cars went passed and he barely even glanced at them.

Then we went barking batshit at a woman with a carrier bag. So we did it again. We sat, we watched and we treated every person that walked past.

Then we walked home and he was calm as you like. Sat at the roads, didn’t even glance at the cars.

WTF happened? Is this the fear stage? Just an off day? It was so absolutely bizarre. Literally everything triggered him this morning.

He had a busy day yesterday but not in a stressful way I wouldn’t have thought.

 

[Leanne]

He’s absolutely sound asleep now! (Throws self on the sofa to recover)

 

[snowbunny]

Yes, developmental fear periods are a thing. I bandy this article round all the time because it's useful for so many things, but here's some geeky learning if you're interested: Sensitive Periods in Affective Development: Nonlinear Maturation of Fear Learning

Sarah Stremming (a behaviourist who works with performance sports dogs and FDSA) talks about how to handle these in her Cog Dog podcast. Her advice is to avoid the dog's trigger if at all possible. It's in this episode(starts about halfway through, but the start is good too): https://soundcloud.com/sarah-stremming%2Fdid-you-know-barking-is-a-reflex

 

[HAH]

After a very active (squeaky, whiny, not settling) morning, I have literally just sent OH an email saying pretty much this 'I know we probably should have reinforced X, Y and Z, but I thought it was sorted...' [just had a v sensible reply saying it's not a catastrophic collapse in our hound's behaviour, or a permanent change; just how he is at the moment. Thank goodness for a cool head!]

Rather than barking, Kipper has an initially-subtle reedy little whine that slowly grows (occasionally masked by yawns - cunning!) until he's all out yowling - but I really feel for you on the ear-splitting barking.

Hopefully there'll be sage advice along shortly (there it is, phew!), it sounds like you're doing the right thing with the reactivity.

Enjoy the sofa time, we're off for a turn round the block...

 

[snowbunny]

With the attention noises, I tend to work on it the same as I do for toilet training. Luna was a bit of a pain for this. So, I figure, when she's pestering me, it's my fault that I've left her too long without attention, just the same as if there was a puddle with the puppy. In the same way as we have to build duration with the wees, we also have to build duration for how long the pup is expected to do without attention. I try to pre-empt it, but when I get it wrong, I just rack it up to experience. I don't withhold attention at that point because it was my bad and to continue ignoring would exacerbate the feeling.

People might be concerned that this is reinforcing the behaviour, but if we appreciate that the behaviour is born of how the dog is feeling, if we address that aspect of it, the behaviour will diminish. This is one of the ways I've changed my approach in recent times; I always try to find and address the why rather than the what.

 

[Boogie]

I agree with @snowbunny.

I also think the fear comes with age and the feeling ‘I can look after myself’, then they get a little too bold and are not sure what to do.

I let them move away from the worrying thing, then watch from a safe distance - just for a few minutes. Then the next day I do a more ‘organised’ training session with the thing. Always keeping at a distance where the pup is completely comfortable. I had to do this a lot with Mollie and traffic.

Now look at her! She can deal with anything.

*proud*