Term of the Day: Conditioned Emotional Response

Caleb and I met with our individual trainer, Kathy, at the beginning of the month. She came to our house, but naturally as soon as we headed outside for a walk to look for dogs so she could observe Caleb's reaction to them, we only found one at the end of the hour. After interviewing me and observing Caleb for an hour, however, she was able to answer the questions that had been plaguing me since this began: Why did Caleb suddenly start being reactive to other dogs? Fear? Aggression? Poor parenting? What happened?

Caleb has a conditioned emotional response (CER) that is essentially a 'YIPEEE I GET TO PLAY CHASE NOW OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY' gut reaction to any dog he sees. This came about from all the fun he had at Downtown Dogs on a weekly basis. At Downtown Dogs, Caleb gets to play all day long off leash with lots and lots of dogs, a few of which will always be up for a wonderful game of CHASE, which is his MOST FAVORITE GAME EVER!!!! Once the CER was formed, every dog we saw along our daily walks triggered it, and he would run to the end of his leash then bark like a fool. Then he would get frustrated when we didn't play CHASE with the doggie, because CHASE is THE MOST FUN GAME EVER, MOM, WHY WOULDN'T THIS DOGGIE WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?!?!?! When you factor in his heightened emotional state at just the sight of another dog while on a walk, it makes sense that the obnoxious barking schnauzers send Caleb over the edge causing him to bark like a fool right back at them.

So what does all of this mean?

1. Caleb isn't crazy / aggressive / fearful
2. Caleb can be counterconditioned to have a more moderate response to dogs
3. Poor parenting is not to blame (Read: Not my fault! Yay!)

Now when we see another dog, we get far enough away so that he can still see the dog, but there is enough distance that he can focus on me. Then I ask him to sit or look at me. The goal is to keep the distance between us and the other dog so that Caleb never gets to the point of extreme hysterics and can still obey commands. Eventually he will learn that when we see another dog on a leash he has to look to me for a cue, either we go say hi or we keep moving, but he takes his cue from me. This is hard to do sometimes, and occasionally another dog will surprise us by coming around a corner, or down the same portion of the street we're on where we can't cross, and whenever Caleb completely melts down I feel like a complete and utter failure. But then we have days where we see a dog across the street, and Caleb calmly looks right at me, then looks at the dog and looks back at me (Exactly what he's supposed to do) and I'm clicking and treating and praising like a fool and I think: Hallelujah! He's getting it! I have the smartest dog ever!

Continuing our training theme, we started Level 2 Obedience this month at Downtown Dogs. This helps with counterconditioning, as Caleb has to focus on me in the presence of other dogs. He did much better than I thought he would, honestly. I was afraid he'd get super excited, bark, and otherwise carry on so much we wouldn't get anything accomplished, but even though he was obviously distracted during parts of the class, we did make progress (and did not completely embarrass ourselves)! Jen was our trainer for level 1, and I was really happy to see she teaches the Wednesday night level two classes as well! She suggested the book Control Unleashed which deals with dogs that are easily aroused or reactive, or have a hard time focusing. It was written with agility dogs in mind, but Jen said the techniques are applicable for all dogs. I ordered it a week ago and just checked, it's out for delivery today! Hooray! I know what I'm going to do this weekend!