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Our Journey of Trust…..Part Two

August 20, 2018 By Sally Leave a Comment

Our dogs never get to vote about where they live. 

They are born into a world run by humans, and they are completely at the mercy of those humans.  I never let myself forget that no matter how wacky I thought Rugby was, he didn’t get to chose me.  I had chosen him.  I was all he had in the world, and so many other humans had already failed him.  It was a sobering realization, but a good one, because it kept me thinking about Rugby and it was about time some human had! He had been miserably failed, and I didn’t want to be the next human in that long line!  I had to make things work with him!

Naughty behavior is just that:  It’s simply behavior!  Despite some wacky things going on with my little puppy, he really was an absolute treasure!  All dogs are!  But when that treasure of a dog is all tied up in naughty behavior, it’s so very hard to look past the behavior to see the treasure under all of the fur.

This is absolutely one of my very favorite Rugby photos. He was watching for squirrels in our Hickory Tree, but it almost looks like he’s making a wish on a star…..or looking to heaven in puppy prayer.

I really think that this is why so many dog owners give up and surrender their dogs.  I was guessing that’s why Rugby’s previous owners had.  I was convinced that if Rugby’s very first family had hired a terrific professional dog trainer, he would still be in that home.  You can only guess how many times I’ve wished that I could have been Rugby’s first owner.  I’ve always wondered about who he would have become if he’d had a great home from the very start.  Sometimes I wonder if any of his previous owners ever remember him or wonder about him or miss him….

When Rugby first arrived in our home, there were so many new and sights and sounds for him!!  He was so reactive and so fearful of virtually everything new or unexpected!  I often spent my days putting out one fire after another after another when Rugby was triggered by so many of those sights and sounds.  So few owners spend adequate time properly socializing puppies, and it always comes back to haunt a dog months and years later.  I knew that I was getting to see the fruit of improper socialization with Rugby, but since he was still a puppy, I hoped to regain some of what had been lost.  Boy was that an education!!

First Hurdles….

The dogs who lived on either side of us freely wandered the neighborhood and we never knew when they would show up at our house.  These dogs often freaked Rugby out by walking right past our living room windows which came all the way to the floor, or past our sliding glass door at the back of our house.  One of the dogs, a kind old Rottweiler mix, sometimes hung out on our porch or patio, just on the other side of those windows, easily within Rugby’s view, and he would fly into a panic every time that happened.  He quickly learned to recognize their barks, and those barks triggered Rugby into his own barking and running jag that would sometimes last thirty minutes or more.  Over and over and over.  Day after day after day.  Week after week.  Month after month.

Rugby had such a strong reactive startle reflex, and some of the smallest things really set him off. There were so many triggers, that I had a very hard time discerning what they actually were!  Sometimes he reacted just because he anticipated something scaring him and so there wasn’t always a definite trigger involved.  There were days where he simply stayed in a mode of panic all day, and nothing seemed to calm him except quiet time in his safe place….his crate!

When he was in his crate, I could see him calm and I watched the fear visibly drain from his face. It broke my heart that he couldn’t feel that same level of safety loose in the house or with me, but I knew that I simply had to dive in based upon where Rugby was at emotionally and mentally, and just adjust as he made progress forward.

I tried to imagine the anxiety of an older puppy coming into a brand new home and not knowing what he would find day after day. I knew that the very first steps toward working through anything, and also establishing trust, was to create a schedule for his day….simple predictable events that Rugby could consistently expect in his day to day.  These were things like regular consistent meals offered at a set time, regular potty breaks outside, play time, snuggle time, grooming time, training time, etc.  He needed to know that he could reasonably expect these things every day, and the consistency of them would generate trust in me for providing them as well as creating a predictable day for him.

This was one of Rugby’s very favorite fetching toys! It was a little ball with feet and a tail, so it bounced in unpredictable ways, and Rugby just loved it! It sits on my dresser as a much loved token of puppy days gone by….

These things all helped to be sure.  However, the neighbor dogs really were a big hiccup in all of this.  Outside for potty breaks or long line play should have been fun and relaxing for him.  Instead, Rugby looked over his shoulder nonstop to see when one of the neighbor dogs would wander into our yard or come around the corner of the house and startle him.  He often started barking just anticipating that they would show up, so things that should have been fun for him, simply weren’t.  It was stress on top of stress for all of us.

And Rugby looked at me as if I was useless, because I failed to stop the scary things from happening.

The honest truth was that I really was powerless to stop those scary things from happening.  I tried multiple times to explain things to our neighbors, but they simply suggested that I train my dog.  I explained that their ignoring our city leash laws and their dogs’ unpredictable behavior in startling Rugby was really preventing successful training from happening.  Again, I was told that no one else had problems with their dogs, so the problem was at my end and I simply needed to do something about Rugby since he was the one with the problem.  And when one of those neighbors was the president of our HOA, I was left with little recourse except to call Animal Control, and then I still had to live next door to them.

<Insert many eye rolls here>

Video credit: Giphy.com

I couldn’t seem to break through to help Rugby understand that I was on his side and would defend him no matter what.  I felt like I was drowning in a no win situation and I honestly think Rugby felt the exact same way in those early days.  I really do.  I knew he was completely overwhelmed in his new home and I’m sure the only things that made him feel safe were his coping patterns and his crate.  I knew that to change any behavior, there had to be a basis of trust, and from what I could see, that still needed some work.  So I worked!

Using a leash tether….

Rugby has always managed corrections well.  He can tolerate a verbal NO or a tug on his leash without falling apart or becoming aggressive in response.  When dogs are new in my home, I always have them wear their leash a good lot of the time.  They can drag it with them as needed, but I often tether them to me so that I can button down the perfect timing on praise or corrections for their behavior.  It also helps them stay right with me so they don’t get into anything naughty!  When I had Rugby tethered to me, I fully expected that he would bond to me quicker, and learn that I was someone he could trust all the time.

Initially, I let Rugby drag his leash with him, and he didn’t object to that at all.  He figured out how to keep it from tripping him or getting tangled around furniture for the most part.  It just became part of our normal routine, and he adjusted and accepted a leash on him with ease.

Rugby soon learned how to bring me his leash, and it became one of his jobs to do on a regular basis!

When Rugby got triggered by any sight or sound that freaked him out, he would take off like a shot, dragging his leash, barking and running laps through the house.  The leash helped me catch him, but he figured out pretty quickly how to avoid capture, even while dragging a leash with him.  This happened so consistently and frequently, that it became very quickly evident that running and barking was a coping pattern that Rugby had learned which felt calming and safe to him.  In order to teach him a new way to cope with his stress and anxiety, I was going to have to break that old pattern.

So I tethered him to me in order to start the process of breaking his coping pattern.  Rugby loved being right with me because he really is the original Velcro dog, so it didn’t bother him at all to be at my side when nothing tripped his triggers.  He loved getting little tidbits throughout the day when he produced the behavior I wanted from him, and he really loved the idea of working all day long!  He seemed so happy and alert and smart when it came to producing new behavior often without cues of any kind.

Rugby has always had great focus….unless he’s triggered, and then the poor dog just loses his mind altogether!

However, when he was triggered, he wasn’t interested at all in food, no matter how tasty it was, and all he wanted to do was to escape and bark. Because I had leashed him to me, he exploded with absolute frustration and anxiety.  The leash prevented him from falling into his coping behavior of running and barking through the house.  Because he was  unable to run away, his response was to attack his leash like crazy to get free and  escape.  All he wanted to do was run and bark and bark and run.

His trapped response was much worse when the leash was attached to his collar, so I put him on a harness instead, and his responses weren’t quite as frantic. However, I learned early on to keep attuned to him, because I always feared a nasty bite when he was wigging out.  Fortunately, he consistently attacked only his leash, and later, with training, his beloved little polka dottie piggies became his coping tool when things got too much for him to manage and he was free in the house and not tethered to me.

Rugby has always tried so very hard to get things right! He loves to work, and he loves figuring out a new behavior to produce, and that’s made him so delightful to train!

I started trying to train through some of his worst behavior patterns, but quickly realized that it was going nowhere fast.  The more I tried to work through things, the more frantic he became.  I was trying to help him understand that by being leashed to me, I would help him and he didn’t need to expend all of his frantic energy by wigging out.  I hoped he would figure out that a dog barking outside couldn’t hurt him in the house, and I expected to see him learn to adjust and ignore those barks rather than explode thirty times every day.  I also assumed that by leashing him to me, he would learn to trust me.  That just didn’t happen with Rugby.

Video credit: Giphy.com

I was trying to break his coping patterns by teaching him some new behavior, but it honestly didn’t go well for a long time.  Now I can look back and realize that, in his mind, I was taking away his only safety net for surviving the current scary experience.  Without his safety net and without trust in me, he had nothing at all, and I had taken away the very thing that had made him feel the safest….an ability to escape his fear by running and barking.  Chalk up a huge failed attempt to teach him trust or to break his coping pattern.

In theory, this method should have produced at least some measurable success.  We had been training basic commands together, and I had been improving many other behavioral issues before I tackled the big ones.  But because of who Rugby is, and because of his wild responses to even the smallest of triggers, I think that I succeeded only in making him think that I couldn’t be trusted.  I took away his feeling of safety before I had given him enough other tools to cope with his fear and anxiety.  I should have worked more on giving him a stronger foundation with the new tools before I tackled dealing with his coping patterns, since they were huge and deeply rooted.  Epic fail on my part.  But in my defense, living with non-stop, frantic barking was going to make me lose my mind!  I had to do something!!  Even if it was in the wrong order, I had to dive in somewhere and just start working!

Video credit: Giphy.com

After many wasted months where there was little to no progress, I finally just gave up trying to work through anything at all, and decided to spend my time and efforts into building trust, because I quickly realized that unless he really, really trusted me….I’d never see him move out of his crazy coping behavior.  I was starting to realize that he might never change, and I was going to have ten to fourteen years of living with a really cute dog who was completely nuts!

I had to remember to celebrate the victories we had….even if they were small ones.

To be continued…..

 

 

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Our Journey of Trust….Part One

August 10, 2018 By Sally 2 Comments

Living with my first rescue dog has been challenging on just about every single level.  I had so many incorrect assumptions about rescues when Rugby came to live with me.

My life for the previous twenty plus years had been deeply entrenched in the world of purebred Pembroke Welsh Corgis, and I had shown and bred my dogs.  I had become a bit of a breed snob, I freely admit that, but I had truly wonderful purebred dogs who were healthy and had amazing temperaments!  It was easy to become a snob about such terrific dogs!  My last Corgi had died in 2002, and for five years,  I wasn’t sure I was really ready to ever go through the heartbreak of losing a much loved dog again.  At the end of five years, I was starting to think about life with a dog once again.

My little homebred Corgi…..Felicity winning a Group 3!

I had trained so many wonderful rescue dogs for clients, that I really didn’t have too many objections to having one.  Growing up, our family dog was a rescued Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, and she was the world’s best dog!  I knew I wanted to help a rescue dog if i could, and my heart was drawn to find a Pembroke Welsh Corgi rescue.  That seemed like a win/win, and my family agreed.  However, when it came time to consider another dog, I couldn’t look past the steep stairs in our two story home at that time.  I really felt that owning a long backed dog with short legs was out of the question.  I would just be inviting back injuries on those stairs, and I couldn’t do that to a dog.

So I started looking for just the perfect rescue dog, and having long legs was going to be part of the criteria!  After a short search, Rugby ended up being that perfect rescue dog for me.  And now, after ten years together, the old question of who rescued who….well, that’s a question that’s been a head scratcher to answer!  Both of us have come out on the good end of that deal, but it’s been quite a journey to get where we are today!

I just love this photo! It’s truly the only puppy photo that I have of Rugby. I’m guessing that he was maybe six months old. The quality is awful, but this is the photo I saw online that made me fall in love with him. Note his little red collar….

I think the biggest hurdle I have had with Rugby has been in the area of trust.  I really do think that puppies come into the world trusting humans.  I think dogs are hardwired to trust humans.  Unless they are mistreated, I think they naturally like and trust humans.  So as humans, it’s on our shoulders to not mess that up!

In Rugby’s case, I honestly didn’t know how many previous homes he had had when I first found him.  I only knew that a rescue had pulled him at the last minute from a kill shelter and he narrowly missed being euthanized, even though he would have been about six or seven months old at that time.  I knew that he had been in rescue at his current foster home for about two months, but beyond that, I had no information about my beautiful little puppy at the time of his adoption.

To get him interested in chewing on a bone, I would often hold it for him, and once he started chewing, he was good to go on his own!!

At the time that I brought him home with me, I also had no idea how his background would impact his ability to trust me.  I assumed we would have an adjustment period, and he would come to bond with me and learn to trust me.  I knew that training would help speed up trust, and also increase a tight bond to create a team between the two of us.  I expected that things would make good progress and that there wouldn’t be any major hiccups in that plan.  That proved to be a very wrong assumption.  I understand that now.

Because of Rugby James,

I will never look at a rescue again

without understanding

what trust means to a dog!

 

Video by Giphy.com

In those tough early days, I was discussing Rugby’s puzzling behavior with one of my dog training colleagues.  She told me that after 4 precious owners, a dog loses the ability to trust.  She said that at some point, they make a decision that humans can’t be trusted and they just don’t put forth the effort to trust, since they think that they will be abandoned again at some point in time.  I have absolutely no idea if that’s a proven fact or just one dog trainer’s opinion.  But you know how it is when you hear something.  It rattles around in your brain and makes fear seem larger than life!

By this time in my life with Rugby, I knew that I was at least his fifth owner, and the thought of that trust statement being true, scared the life right out of me!  Here I was with a puppy only a year old, and I was hearing that he might never be able to trust me??  And I would have him for probably thirteen more years???

What the heck??? Thirteen more years and a dog who can’t or won’t trust me?? Are you kidding me??

The thought truthfully struck terror into my heart, because as a trainer, I knew that I wasn’t going to make much progress working with Rugby if he didn’t trust me. Trust is really one of the few things that a dog has to give to a human, and when there’s no trust, a dog doesn’t want to work for a human, because he simply can’t.  Trust is absolutely critical to training and moderating behavior with a dog.

As I thought about that and what it might mean for my life with Rugby, it sure did explain some of his odd behavior to me!  There were times with him, where it was almost like someone turned off the lights in him.  It was obvious and it was a pretty consistent pattern with common triggers.

We would be going along nicely, doing life, and something would trigger his anxiety or fearful responses, and immediately he went into his patterned coping behaviors.  For Rugby, his coping behaviors were repetitive, almost OCD behaviors that he repeated multiple times a day for long stretches of time.  As I worked to break those patterns of behavior, I had always been puzzled about why he would look right at me….clearly thinking about things…..pause and consider….and then it was almost like he would shake his head no, and continue right on with his coping behavior and completely check out.

It was clear that humans in the past had failed him in some form or fashion, and it was obvious that he had decided that his coping patterns were what brought comfort and relief to his fear and anxiety.  I’m honestly not sure that he even really knew that a human could or would help him.  He never looked to me for help when he was fearful or anxious.  He just kept running and barking, dodging all help and capture.

It seemed like in that split second….

when he was paused and thinking….

….he made the decision…

that I couldn’t be trusted…

and he was on his own.

Video by Giphy.com

Despite using every training tool I already knew, and learning many new tools to help him, he consistently and completely ignored any and all of my efforts.  It seemed impossible to help him learn a new way to cope with his fear and anxieties.  It was crystal clear to me that he felt as if his coping behaviors were his only safe way out.  I couldn’t calm him enough to help him learn new behaviors, because anytime his anxiety was triggered, he checked out and we were done.  I couldn’t create a small enough trigger to barely get some of his negative response because even small triggers produced consistent huge wild responses just as if something major had happened.  It was all or nothing with my little speckled and spotted puppy who was an absolute hot mess in fur!

Those eyes that spoke so deeply to me, but held such mystery as to how to break through and get him to trust me.

In truth, I have no idea how these coping patterns developed.  There could be many reasons for them.  For example, as a very young puppy, he could have been left alone in a home or yard with scary things going on around him and no human to help comfort him and show him that he was safe.  He could have had humans scold or spank him over and over for being reactive and so he learned to avoid the correction and the humans who came along with those corrections.  He could have been a stray who learned that barking and running away always worked when something scary happened.  It could honestly be a combination of all of those things, or many other contributing factors as well.  I’ll never know, because Rugby spent his first eight or nine months living somewhere else.  What I do know, is that Rugby seemed to act as if he didn’t think he should or could expect a human to help him.  He acted very much like he knew that only he could save himself.

It was absolutely heartbreaking to me.  It made me so very sad to think of what life was like from his perspective.  Here he was in yet one more new home.  Brand new owners who were complete strangers to him.  Brand  new sights and sounds.  Brand new house rules.  Completely new family.  Brand new routine.  Brand new neighborhood.  Brand new neighbors.  Brand new home and furniture.  Brand new food and bowls.  Completely new smells.  No fence at this house, so no fun off leash play for a super high energy puppy.  Sleeping in a crate.  And no other dogs in our home like he’d had at the shelter, rescue or foster, but there were two cats in our home who hated him!

Rugby had known me for maybe a total of six hours at this point: three hours at his foster home, and three hours driving home. When I look back on that day, and I think about my poor little puppy and just how brave he was by coming to yet one more new home with a complete stranger….I can’t help but think that he’s more amazing than I’ll ever understand!  That’s the face of courage staring out at you!  He’s my hero!

He had been well cared for in the rescue.  Really high quality food, and regular meals.  But what if he hadn’t received that in his previous homes?  What if he’d had to skip meals or gone without water for long stretches of time?  What if he’d had to fight to keep from going hungry?  What if he’d been a stray on the streets and had experienced humans chasing him off a garbage can that might have been his only meal in a few days? The thought of just how brave he was in facing an entirely new life for himself brought me to tears more than once.

He had faced more terrifying things in his short eight or nine months than I had in all of my many years of life!  I understood how the world worked and poor Rugby was at the mercy of the humans calling all of the shots for him in his life.  He was just a baby to have already experienced so much “life!”  I couldn’t fail him.  I just couldn’t!

To be continued…..

 

 

 

 

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A Very Special Day to Remember

October 9, 2017 By Sally 6 Comments

Super Denby Dog. An unlikely hero in a red racer cart! Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

This date marks a special anniversary for us every year.  It’s the date that one of our heroes left Earth for the Rainbow Bridge.  That hero was named Denby Dog, and he’s the reason that you’re reading this blog.  I know that some of our readers are thinking, “What?  Who is Denby Dog?  He’s not the reason I’m reading this blog! I’ve never heard of him!”

When I first got acquainted with the online dog community, Corgi Nation in particular, I came across a Blog called “The Daily Corgi.”  I was new to the blog world, but hey, there were photos and stories of really cute Corgis, so I was all in!  And one day, I read about an amazing little dog named Denby Dog!  He couldn’t eat or drink or blink on his own, and he lived in this little red racer wheelchair cart.  Every. Single. Day!!  I had to know more!

Denise always found unique ways to decorate Denby’s Red Racer. He often wore custom license tags. Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog.

He had a FaceBook page, so I started to follow him and his adventures.  Every day, I was infused with hope, with love, with a warm fuzzy, and sometimes even a laugh, as his owner, Denise Baker shared his life with her readers.  Every day for me, Denby Dog was a must read.

For various local parades, Denise and one of her talented neighbors, created unique costumes to bring smiles and warm hearts. Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

Even though Rugby James wasn’t a dog with the physical challenges that Denby faced every day, I related to life with a special needs dog.  The needs were just different.  Rugby is a special needs dog as well, but his needs are all emotional ones.  Rugby is a dog who is emotionally fractured, and like Humpty Dumpty, I can’t put the pieces back together.

I love the depth of Rugby’s eyes. He calls them his “sincere eyes” and they just look right into my heart…and I melt!

Oh I’ve tried.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  Over and over and over until I’m blue in the face, I’ve tried.  But like Denise discovered with Denby Dog, Rugby just can’t be fixed.  His emotions are too broken.  The pieces that are needed to fix him are missing, or don’t fit, and I can’t find the puzzle pieces that do fit and work.

For a long time, I just didn’t know what to do with Rugby.  I had never owned a dog like him.  He was such a cute little guy!  He was so smart! His heart was all in on anything and everything that we did together!  And he really did try so very hard!  But, at the end of the day, he was still a very broken little dog.

Rugby loves learning new tricks and playing games and puzzles. He’s so very smart and brain games are always a big hit at my house!

The colleagues that I knew and trusted were at a loss for help.  They were also devoid of hope.  They scratched their heads about how to fix Rugby. Their solutions all included giving up and getting a new dog.  Believe me, on bad days, there was already a little voice inside of me whispering….”He’s a no hoper.  Move on.”

But I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on him.  I couldn’t.  I couldn’t look at my physically healthy puppy….who was all of eight or nine months old when I got him…and tell him that I was giving up like his four previous owners had done.  I just couldn’t.  I couldn’t fail him.  He was so young.  He was so smart.  He deserved a life with a human who believed in him and who wouldn’t give up on him.  No matter what.  I knew that I’d never live with myself for giving up on him.  I had to try.

This is what all of us need: HOPE!! Denby Dog provided a daily dose! Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

I decided that I was going to be that owner who was all in, but hope was something that was elusive and hard to find.  Enter Denby Dog.  So many times when I hit the wall in working through yet another behavioral issue with Rugby, I found hope flying out the window.  I felt all alone, because no one seemed to understand why I loved my  nutty little dog.  There was no one to encourage me or who would whisper, “Don’t give up.  You got this!”

And there was Denise and Denby Dog.

Another one of Denby’s wonderful costumes….dressed as a real life hero! Little did he know how he rescued this dog trainer and Rugby from a crash and burn! Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

Time and again, I saw Denise hit one awful DM (degenerative myelopathy) milestone after another, as Denby continued to lose one function after another.  But instead of sadly marking those moments, Denise always found a way to approach them with courage and with hope and love!  She never focused on what Denby had lost, but she chose to focus on what Denby could still do in life.  And she was focused on giving Denby the best quality of life that she could, for as long as she could.

When Denby lost the ability to pee and poop, Denise fitted him with “Hot Pants” and found a way to make them fun! Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

Denise and Denby Dog were an amazing team.  The trust that they had for one another was incredible.  The fun that they had together always produced a warm fuzzy and a smile for my heart.  When I was lacking in hope on a given day, it never seemed to fail that Denby Dog provided that boost that I needed to be able to take a deep breath and try again.

Young Denby before he lost his eye and before the Red Racer Cart. Denise dealt with lots of drool, because of Denby’s inability to swallow. Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

That’s the reason I started Rugby’s Facebook page and ultimately this blog.  I’m a professional dog trainer.  That’s what I do.  Six days a week, I’m out in the trenches, training wonderful, but naughty dogs day in and day out.

A proud Willie Bear who learned how to get on the kitchen counters all by himself! Photo Credit: Lynn Goodman

I see all kinds of dogs with all kinds of behavior.  Believe me, I know that there are LOTS of nutty dogs just like Rugby James out there, and there are just as many wonderful owners who don’t want to give up on those dogs.  They feel just as lost as I once did, and they’ve often lost hope that anything can change or that anyone will understand their deep and crazy love for a broken dog.

The tube sticking out of Denby’s neck enabled him to eat and drink several times every day. Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog.

Because of Rugby James, I get it.  I understand.  I can be that shoulder to cry on.  I can be the professional help that knows how to train through difficult behavior systematically, baby step by baby step.  There just are some dogs who can’t be fixed for whatever reason.  But most of the time, even for the really broken dogs, I can make things better for the dog and owner, just like I have with Rugby James.  I can teach clients how to “Corgi On….Corgi Strong” when things are hard.  I can and do dispense copious amounts of encouragement and HOPE!

“Corgi On Corgi Strong” became Denby’s battle cry because of the courage that he used to face every challenge that came his way in life! Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog

Denby Dog and Denise will always and forever be my heroes.  Without even knowing me at the time, they provided the much needed hope, love, encouragement, and the smiles my heart needed to continue on every day with Rugby James.

The world today needs heroes.  It does.  Life is hard.  It’s not fair.  It leaves plenty of broken lives and shattered hearts in its wake.  Being a dog lover in general, and a Corgi lover in particular, it’s no surprise that this hero came to Rugby and I wearing dog fur.  We just needed to know where to look to find him.

This little dog in a red racer cart may always and forever be Denise Baker’s Denby Dog, but believe me….to Rugby James and me, Denise and Denby will always and forever be our heroes.

None of us really know what curves life will throw us. Life is not a straight path at all. But with courage and a good hero, we can find our way. Photo Credit: Denise Baker and Denby Dog.

 

 

 

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Scary Things and Body Language

February 21, 2017 By Sally 2 Comments

I’m big on reading a dog’s body language!  I look back on my early months with Rugby, and I see an epic fail on my part to fully understand what he was communicating through his body language and facial expressions.

As a dog trainer of many years and dog owner virtually my entire life, I had a very good idea of what my dogs were speaking to me most of the time.  I recognized many of the common signals that all dogs use to speak in some form or fashion.

However, until I lived with Rugby, I didn’t realize how many different ways a dog can communicate fear and anxiety.  I didn’t know how much Rugby was constantly speaking with his body and face, and I didn’t realize that I could mimic some calming signals right back to him with success!  If I had known this information in the early days of my life with Rugby, I might have seen him deeply trust me sooner, and I might have seen much more progress from him in those really critical late puppy months when he was sprinting into adolescence and adult behavior!

When Rugby is fearful, he furrows his brow, and pulls his ears up much higher on his head. He often loudly pants when he hasn’t had any exercise, and his body is very stiff.

When dogs are really fearful, and an owner disregards that fear, it’s like throwing your dog under the bus.  When high emotions of any kind hit your dog, no new learning is taking place.  This is why even excited dogs can’t easily comply with known commands.  Think of your dog’s response to a doorbell ring and company coming in. When I arrive at a lesson, I often hear owners telling their dogs to sit and stay on the opposite side of the door, and I know that the moment the door opens, that dog is flying up to jump on me.  The excitement has overruled any thinking taking place in your dog.  It takes time, practice, and maturity for a dog to work through the over-excitement to respond consistently to given commands.

When fear is the emotion, however,  your scared and fearful dog is simply thinking that he has to survive.  His survival instincts kick in, and the situation can quickly morph into fight or flight.  When a dog trusts his owner or handler, he can learn to ask them for help.  But when there’s no trust, your dog will feel very much as if he’s completely on his own in the scary situation.  This is why it’s so very important to read your dog’s fearful, anxious body language.  Dogs will often quickly show anxiety or fear in their body language, which will give an alert handler time to respond in a helpful way, which will engender trust from your dog!

Rugby had been in our home for less than an hour. He was heavily panting, his ears were flat and pulled tightly back, and he was leaning against my leg for support.

When Rugby is overwhelmed, even to this day, fight or flight is exactly the behavior that I see from him.  Once he’s outside the safe parameter of his yard, he is very tense overall.  His ears are high on his head, and his forehead furrowed.  He starts a heavy pant when he’s had no exercise.  He looks frantically left and right, trying to see something scary before it sees him!  He often yips an excited, high pitched yip, and he starts to pull on the leash as he looks frantically around him.

Rugby working on a Down/Stay in our front yard. He is very tense, his body stiff, and his ears pulled tightly back into “bunny ears.”  He’s tightly bunched up, as if he wants to make himself invisible.

Once he sees or hears a trigger. he tries first to bark….to keep the scary things away, and then he runs, as if barking and running will keep him alive.  Because he thinks he’s trying to save his own life, in his mind, he can’t stop either behavior and still survive.  In our early days together at home, this was my daily life….trying to catch my little spotted greased pig who evaded capture like his life depended upon it!  This behavior happened multiple times every day and for twenty to thirty minutes each time.  No matter how much you love your dog, that’s some wacky behavior to live with on a daily basis!

My first step was to stop the running behavior by leashing Rugby to me, so that he would have a safe protector in his corner.  I wanted him to learn that coming to me would always be his best line of defense…not running and barking to escape!  Puppy Rugby did respond well to this training, when the stimulus wasn’t too big, and as long as we were inside the house.  Big issues or moving outside saw a completely different response from him.  I had the opportunity to reinforce the behavior I wanted from him much more easily since he was right next to me. Rugby did continue to bark….only now, he was leashed to my side doing it!  Ugh!  However, he did stop barking a bit sooner than he had when he was running through the house, so I knew I was heading in the right direction with him, anyway!

Outside, because we didn’t have a safe fence to contain Rugby, he was always on a leash.  Instead of running to escape when triggered, his responses included lunging against the leash and wild barking, and when that was unsuccessful, he turned to aggressively bite the leash to free himself so that he could escape.  He usually managed to snag the leash, but there were a few times that he missed and got me instead!  Clearly, he was one scared, reactive pooch, but it has always been puzzling and challenging to know how to help him work through this issue because he reacts negatively in a nanosecond!  I can rarely get enough lead time to set up a successful trial to teach him new behavior.

When your dog is aggressively barking on walks, it’s absolutely terrifying!

When you’re a handler with a fearful, reactive dog, time and distance are your best friends.  Having distance from the stimuli gives both you and your dog time to think of and plan for what to do, and time will give you a buffer to re-direct your dog into new behavior so that he can learn to respond differently.  In Rugby’s case, if he hears a trigger he immediately reacts, and his sight triggers with dogs often start at a football field distance from us…that’s 100 yards!!!  It’s been virtually impossible for me to get the really tough stimuli far enough away that he can stay calm at all.  He often negatively reacts at everything….just in case!

In my early socialization work with Rugby, I missed his early anxious signs:  yawns, whale eyes, heavy panting, lip licking or a tongue flick, etc.  I am sure that he exhibited these obvious signals throughout our walks together, but I was focused on other things on our walks.  When he was showing obvious signs of fear that I recognized, by that time, I couldn’t get him far enough away from the scary thing or help him calm down.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I needed to start much sooner to intervene before he exploded into his meltdown.

A big yawn when the dog is not tired can indicate anxiety
Whale eyes show fear.
This dog is licking his lips and using a head duck to show he’s not comfortable with the human hand over his head

I kept thinking that if he saw a neighbor’s scary garage door go up and down day after day, over time, he would be able to generalize that garage doors do go up and down, but they never eat small dogs on walks!  Instead of helping him work through his reactive fear, all I did was reinforce his fear of garage doors and things that move!  Instead of calming down on walks, he became more and more reactive, looking around him in a panic, wondering what awful thing would overtake him next!  In all honesty, I think that those early days of repeated exposure to fearful things still haunts our relationship to this day….some nine years later.

For many, if not most dogs that I train, this socialization method works, especially when food is used as a reinforcer, and most dogs do sort out something like a garage door, over time.  It often doesn’t take many exposures for most dogs to figure out what it is, and when a yummy treat gets shoved into their mouth, just at the moment the door starts to go up or down, over time, they learn to stop reacting to the movement or noise.  In Rugby’s case, he has always refused all food when we leave home….a huge indicator of his stress, because my little dog is a chow hound when he’s relaxed.

In his early life with me,  I kept thinking that Rugby just simply needed more exposure to generalize things that set him off. I just never realized how terrified he really was, and day after day, I exposed him to terrifying things, without offering him tools to cope.  I wish I had worked more on helping him cope with his fears, but I just didn’t recognize his behavior as having a fear base.  I thought it was simply a lack of exposure, which was likely absolutely true.  However, the lack of exposure created deep fears in Rugby that triggered his fight or flight responses, and I was completely clueless to what he was telling me right from the moment that I leashed him! Rugby became the Guinea Pig to teach this dog trainer a different and better way to recognize and handle fear in a dog!  This is exactly why all young puppies need massive amounts of socialization well into adulthood!!  Doing so will prevent your dog from being socially handicapped as an adult like Rugby is.

More than anything, I had hoped to give puppy Rugby a safe home and a big, big world!

To be sure, Rugby does trust me now, and for the most part, I really do think that he believes that I am in his corner to have his back and keep him safe.  However, there are still times when I see shadows of his old fears surface, and the look on his face and body tells me that he’s going to revert to old behaviors rather than trust me.  I’m not sure Rugby ever would have figured things out….even if I had handled things differently in our early days together.  He had many critical puppy months of improper training long before he came to live with me.  I do wish I could have a “do over” with Rugby, to fix the mistakes I made in our early days together.  Unfortunately, that ship sailed, and Rugby is who he is.  The good news, however, is that to this day, I closely watch every dog’s body language, and when they talk to me, I listen!!  I’m able to intervene so much quicker and help frightened dogs learn to work past their fears.

For more information on understanding what your dog is saying to you, please read a book review I did on a book called, “On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals” by Turid Rugaas.  Here’s a link to the post.  It’s a great read and one I recommend for every dog owner’s book shelf!

http://rugbyjames.com/2015/11/05/book-review-on-talking-terms-with-dogs-calming-signals/

 

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