I promised I would update this and I've just not had the time yet. I have oodles of videos I've not edited yet, so hopefully I'll get onto that this weekend. Anyway, here's a bit of a recap.
The session before last, Shadow and Katie were bimbling about as they had previously. Shadow was off his line and unmuzzled, and they were quite happy together, as before. Suddenly, he went for her. You can see it in this video. Note: it is very short but it is not pleasant to watch at all. I have put it on twice, once without sound and the second time with.
Katie ended up with a superficial puncture wound to her eyelid.
**NOTE**: I reserve the right to delete any comments, now or in the future, that I deem to be unhelpful. I know you lot wouldn't, but who knows who else might join in the future
So, obviously this was very worrying, because neither of us saw it coming, other than in that short moment, and both of us were baffled as to what caused it. We were going on the assumption that Shadow was unhappy with proximity of unfamiliar dogs, but at this stage, Katie was no longer unfamiliar, and they had been in very close proximity several times in this same walk without any signs of discomfort. My initial thought was that he felt trapped by the wall, but it left more questions than it answered.
Anyway, moving on to the next session. I took Squidge with me because she's got such good body language, and I thought she might help him to relax, if Katie was more occupied playing with her. We would just be walking as a slightly bigger group, with lots of lovely natural doggy body language to see. Obviously, Shadow on a line and muzzled the whole time.
This is where it got interesting and N and I had a bit of a revelation. Shadow's issue appears not to be about his proximity to other dogs, but the proximity of those dogs to his family. He's resource guarding us! No matter the distance from us, as soon as Luna approached Katie (who was also on lead), Shadow reacted in some way; either by outward displays, or by actively looking away.
Looking back at the video, this fits. It was when they started back towards us that Shadow snapped. Thinking back to previous encounters where I've said I've stayed back and let the greetings happen naturally and they've been OK, maybe it wasn't just that they were natural encounters, but that I was far enough away that he felt he didn't need to guard me!
So, this is the supposition we're working with now. I have plan for tomorrow's session.
Bless N, this is really hard for her, as she's not used to having a pain in the butt like me saying what they will and won't do with their dogs. It's interesting, though, as it puts me in a position of having to explain (very politely and respectfully) why I don't think that things she suggests are ideal.
For example, knowing that I wasn't going to use any physical corrections, she suggested that we have Luna and Katie doing their thing. Every time Shadow reacted, I would give him a firm "No", put him in a down-stay and then go over to fuss Luna and Katie. He would learn that the consequence of his behaviour was that the opposite of what he wanted to happen, happened.
It totally makes sense from a behaviour point of view - the dog learns that the thing he's doing makes things worse for him not better, and so he stops performing that behaviour.
My argument is that this approach isn't going to make him feel better about the proximity between Katie and Luna (and me). In fact, quite the opposite. So, whilst I agree that it probably would suppress the behaviour, it doesn't address the root cause of that behaviour. Not only that, I can see it punishing my down-stay. If you teach compliance through the use of corrections, then things like the down-stay would be less likely to degrade in this situation than when they're trained using pure R+. It's interesting to think about.
No N-bashing, please - she isn't from our world and so this is a new way of thinking for her. We have to give the humans as much support as we do the dogs when they're learning new ways of doing things. I don't have all the answers, for sure, so we're trying to work out together how to progress and get the best long-term outcome for Shadow.
I've come up with a plan for tomorrow morning that I hope works for us all. Resource guarding a handler and/or other dogs is a tough one to think of practical ways to address. Most of the RG protocols are based around food and/or objects, spaces etc, which are far easier from a practical perspective to address than this, so rather than telling you what I have come up with at this point, I'd be really interested to hear any suggestions you may have because this may not work and I might need other ideas! Anything and everything welcome!
As an aside, I do get a bit tired of the "them and us" attitude.
