So dog class is tomorrow.
Aug. 23rd, 2011 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sciatrixThe thing about me and Dog Oliver is that, as a team, we're a dog with anxiety and overstimulation issues working with... a human with anxiety and overstimulation issues.
This can be useful, as when the trainer was telling me last week that an excited whining pulling Oliver is not necessarily a happy Oliver, and I thought "duh, I've been in that state before, of course highly stimulated isn't as fun as being relaxed is." Drawing Oliver out of spiraling anxiety barking attacks isn't actually that difficult for me, because I can draw on past experiences of my getting overstimulated and distract him before it gets to that point. I'm pretty good at anticipating what is going to happen with his behavior based on my own experiences. (And, well, based on the fact that I have lived with him since I was fifteen and we know each other pretty well at this point. It can be interesting working in classes with people who have had their dogs for only a few months--there's an understanding of each other's respective body language and habits that you develop over time that's just not there yet for the newer people.)
And then it can be pretty awful, as when we've fed into each other's respective issues: he'll whine and bark and lose his little furry mind, and I'll freak out and become anxious because people are looking at me and that will reinforce his anxiety and make him worse, and that makes me worse--well. Training him, working on Oliver's issues, is good for me too. Because it forces me to confront my level of social anxiety and work through it. I can't focus on working through his issues if I'm wrapped up in mine, after all.
The frustrating thing is that outside of specific situations (in public, on leash, with strange people and especially with strange dogs around) Dog Oliver is the most low key, relaxed, unflappable dog I've ever met. The most exciting thing he's done today is get up and waffle about where in the general vicinity of my feet he wants to sleep, and maybe howl a bit when the alarm clock goes off for too long. When he was tested for the scary unknown things when I was contemplating getting his CGC the first time, at age three, his reaction to the scary sudden noise and the unexpected umbrella was to glance around, maybe jump once, and then immediately get on with whatever he was doing. He didn't even startle much. The difference between Oliver's behavior in public on lead and his behavior at home or off-lead in the park is like Jekyll and Hyde.
This was brought home to me recently when I was practicing clicker training. I've never used a clicker before, since I figured I was fast enough to catch the behavior I wanted with the treat without one and I didn't want to deal with the initial habituation process. But the class I'm taking uses clicker, so we've been building him up to learning clicker now. The first few days the sessions were all about click + treat; I'd make the clicky noise and drop the treat. Then for a couple of days every time we started a session, he had to sit to get the clicky noise and treat. Today we switched it up, as we were told to; now he has to lie down to get the clicky noise and the accompanying treat.
My dog opted, in a display of stunning apathy, to sit in the center of the room and stare patiently at me to get the treat. Seriously, he sat there for two minutes staring quietly at me. Every so often he'd essay a little huffing bark, but mostly it was just "okay then, I'm sitting but it's not working, so perhaps if I sit a little longer...."
I really, really hope he decides he cares more about treats tomorrow. Otherwise, I'm going to have one hell of a shrieking dog on my hands.
This can be useful, as when the trainer was telling me last week that an excited whining pulling Oliver is not necessarily a happy Oliver, and I thought "duh, I've been in that state before, of course highly stimulated isn't as fun as being relaxed is." Drawing Oliver out of spiraling anxiety barking attacks isn't actually that difficult for me, because I can draw on past experiences of my getting overstimulated and distract him before it gets to that point. I'm pretty good at anticipating what is going to happen with his behavior based on my own experiences. (And, well, based on the fact that I have lived with him since I was fifteen and we know each other pretty well at this point. It can be interesting working in classes with people who have had their dogs for only a few months--there's an understanding of each other's respective body language and habits that you develop over time that's just not there yet for the newer people.)
And then it can be pretty awful, as when we've fed into each other's respective issues: he'll whine and bark and lose his little furry mind, and I'll freak out and become anxious because people are looking at me and that will reinforce his anxiety and make him worse, and that makes me worse--well. Training him, working on Oliver's issues, is good for me too. Because it forces me to confront my level of social anxiety and work through it. I can't focus on working through his issues if I'm wrapped up in mine, after all.
The frustrating thing is that outside of specific situations (in public, on leash, with strange people and especially with strange dogs around) Dog Oliver is the most low key, relaxed, unflappable dog I've ever met. The most exciting thing he's done today is get up and waffle about where in the general vicinity of my feet he wants to sleep, and maybe howl a bit when the alarm clock goes off for too long. When he was tested for the scary unknown things when I was contemplating getting his CGC the first time, at age three, his reaction to the scary sudden noise and the unexpected umbrella was to glance around, maybe jump once, and then immediately get on with whatever he was doing. He didn't even startle much. The difference between Oliver's behavior in public on lead and his behavior at home or off-lead in the park is like Jekyll and Hyde.
This was brought home to me recently when I was practicing clicker training. I've never used a clicker before, since I figured I was fast enough to catch the behavior I wanted with the treat without one and I didn't want to deal with the initial habituation process. But the class I'm taking uses clicker, so we've been building him up to learning clicker now. The first few days the sessions were all about click + treat; I'd make the clicky noise and drop the treat. Then for a couple of days every time we started a session, he had to sit to get the clicky noise and treat. Today we switched it up, as we were told to; now he has to lie down to get the clicky noise and the accompanying treat.
My dog opted, in a display of stunning apathy, to sit in the center of the room and stare patiently at me to get the treat. Seriously, he sat there for two minutes staring quietly at me. Every so often he'd essay a little huffing bark, but mostly it was just "okay then, I'm sitting but it's not working, so perhaps if I sit a little longer...."
I really, really hope he decides he cares more about treats tomorrow. Otherwise, I'm going to have one hell of a shrieking dog on my hands.
