Glindy and I had another
desensitization session in the park yesterday with Monica and Jody.
As usual, Glindy's eagerness to go forth and do her own thing
resulted in a lot of frustration barking, penalty yards, and
stopping every few feet until she settled enough to walk forward
again. So, it took us an extra five minutes to walk into the park,
but we did manage it; that's definitely progress for us.
Once Glindy realized we were there to work, she settled down
quickly, but not before knocking my treat bag off my hip and
dumping its contents all over the dirt in her exuberance. This
ended up paying off for her in the long run, though, as I was then
forced to replace the Grizzly NuTreats that had been in the pouch
with
Buffalo
Bites, which she absolutely adores more than anything
else.
One of the cooler things we did was work our dogs in very close
proximity by putting them next to each other up on the picnic
tables and asking them to perform tricks. Glindy stole the show
with her beautiful rendition of "wave," which prompted Monica's dog
Stanley to copy her every time she did it in hopes of getting more
treats.
I learned something interesting while working on wave with Glindy,
though. She has a beautiful wave when up on a table, or when I
kneel down in front of her, but she has trouble waving from
ground-level while someone is standing in front of her.
My guess is that paw-lifting is a calming signal, and having
someone looming over her is too much pressure on her at this time.
She tends to use both paws in a leaping-up motion
instead—probably in an effort to reduce our height disparity.
We'll work on getting the wave stronger, and then try to generalize
it a bit more.
We also did something fun. After watching Jody and Monica (who've
both done some agility work before) coax their dogs down the
playground slide, I decided to see if Glindy would try it. I led
Glindy up to the top of the slide, and asked Monica to call her
from the bottom of it. I wasn't sure Glindy would try it, since
she's never done it before, but Glindy slid down the plastic slide
nose-first with only a moment's hesitation. Woohoo!
Glindy and I also worked on a few socialization tasks. I clicked
her for appropriate glances at the other dogs, and found that I
could reduce the likelihood of rude "proctology exams" by clicking
Glindy for less invasive butt-sniffs. By rewarding the right
moment, I not only reinforced conflict-free sniffing, but also
encouraged her to shift her attention back to me before the
greeting escalated into a canine colonoscopy that set off the other
dog. This is definitely something I think we want to work on more,
though, so that we can really ingrain this new behavior.
Overall, the only problem we had during training was Glindy's
tendency to take treats less-than-gently while aroused. While
normally very careful, she managed to bruise the base of my
fingernails more than a few times during training yesterday. I'm
rethinking whether I should use the "lure hand/treat hand" method
I've read about while doing desensitization work with her; it would
certainly make things a little less painful for me, at the cost of
accepting that dog-slobber will coat the palm of my treat-delivery
hand.