Dog Trainer Day

So yesterday was the day we met with the dog trainer / behaviorist that we hired. If anyone reading this is in the Guelph area, we are using the services of Emily Fisher, Scratch and Sniff Canine Services (http://scratchandsniff.ca/).

The first session was scheduled for 90 minutes and we spent the first 60 minutes discussing Jake's history and prioritizing the issues we wanted to address first. Our top for issues we'll be addressing are as follows:

1. Barking at people/dogs when they walk by the house
2. Helping reduce Jake's arousal/excitement/frustration/fear
3. Jumping on people
4. Counter surfing / stealing things he is not supposed to have

As it turns out 5 made it onto our list because we added pulling on leash as another issue. Only because we can use many of the same methods we will be practicing to resolve the above issues.

Also as part of the conversation and discussion about Jake's one display of "aggression" we came to the conclusion that the incident was more of a result of over excitement/arousal and frustration/fear as opposed to a true aggressive response.

Once we started working with Jake, we met Emily outside a few doors down from our house. She wanted to meet Jake for the first time off our property. That is when she started discussing a classically conditioned attention cue which could be used to direct Jake's attention away from something and towards us. So we chose the cue word "here" to use in this situation. She advised us to wait until Jake's attention was elsewhere, then use the cue word "here" and click/treat. After 10 - 12 repititions Jake started to catch on. Both my husband and I did some repetitions of this exercise. We are to practice this in various situations outside of the house and in the house.

Then we moved to our front yard and she advised us how to use the "here" cue to direct Jake's attention away from people/dogs walking by the house. We started at a distance away from the sidewalk to try and judge Jake's threshold. We had to move backwards to start seeing some success. We were advised to let Jake notice the person/dog walking by the house and become alert. But use the cue word "here" and when Jake looks towards us without barking we click/treat. Again we both practiced this. Since I get home each day when the kids are coming home from school, I am to take Jake out to the front yard for a 5 - 10 minute session every day and attempt to move his threshold closer to the sidewalk.

In our next session which is scheduled for 2 weeks, we will review the cue word "here" and how Jake is doing in front of the house. She also gave us some tips, articles and videos to watch on how we can start addressing Jake's jumping on people. We can have Jake restrained on a leash to prevent the jumping and reward with a click/treat when Jake behaves the way we want him to. Or we can a baby gate so Jake doesn't have the opportunity to jump up and then heavily reinforce with high value treats when he makes the right decision not to jump.

So in trying to digest all of the information, I was armed with a pouch full of Jake's food and the clicker while I was making dinner tonight. I rewarded Jake with a click/treat when he came beside me and sat. He made the good decision not to jump on the counter. While it took me longer to prepare dinner than usual, I would click/treat Jake every 15 seconds to help him understand that he gets rewarded when displaying this behavior as opposed to jumping on the counter. By the time I was half way through preparing dinner, Jake was lying down on the mat beside me in the kitchen and not even bothering with what I was doing. I rewarded this with click/treat at a more frequent rate to reinforce the behavior. By the time dinner was ready, Jake was asleep on his bed in the living room. A few weeks ago, I would have been completely frustrated by the time I finished dinner and Jake would have likely been barcaded out of the kitchen or put in his crate.

I'm definitely seeing the value in positive reinforcement / classically conditioned training / clicker training. We still have a lot of work to do, but I am confident if we keep up with the training we'll be able to resolve the majority of Jake's behavioral issues.

Over the coming days I will share some of the videos and articles I read while doing the reading homework that was assigned by Emily.