Unleash the Madness

Caleb and I finally started our Unleash the Madness class last night! I hemmed and hawed over this class for a long time because I was afraid putting Caleb in a class with a whole bunch of reactive / frustrated would lead to him becoming MORE reactive and frustrated, but I am very pleased to report that after I saw how the first class is run, I can see how this can help our situation.

Dogs are brought in one at a time and set up in corners of the room. Your corner consists of three or four barriers made out of pvc pipe and sheets. You go to your corner with your dog, arrange the barriers so that the dogs can not see out, and get them settled. This was the first lesson yesterday. Some dogs were so stressed out from just being in a new room and knowing that there were dogs somewhere that you could hear them panting and whining from their corners. Caleb just gave me his typical 'concerned face'. They taught us a few tricks to help settle the dogs, but I knew them all. Which is totally ok, because it gave me the chance to practice them in a situation where I could get instructor feedback, and feedback is always good. I was surprised to see that Caleb remembered 'Place' (As in go to your mat and stay there, please), because we haven't done much crate work the past few months.

Once the anxiety level in the room got down to manageable levels, we started practicing 'Look'. The idea behind Look is to have the dog look at what has got them worked up, but then look back to you for a treat. Some dogs don't know what to do when they see something they don't know what to do with, so this gives them that thing to do. I should note here that there is an instructor and a helper in this class. The helper had a neutral dog, meaning one that doesn't get all worked up if your dog gets all worked up, that they use for various exercises, like this one. The instructor walks to each person's corner and pulls back the sheet enough so the dog can see out into the center of the room, while the helper brings her dog out and just has her stand in the middle of the room. Once your dog looks at the other dog, you say Look and then lure your dog back to looking at you. Caleb looked a little too long, but not long enough that he started to get worked up, actually he even kept his down during the whole thing.

Then we all took turns practicing emergency u turns, which Caleb did ok on, except he was much more interested in cataloging the new environment rather than following my lure. But I expected as much. Caleb tends to shut down in new locations, unless he has something to focus on (hence the Nose Work classes). Actually the instructor told me that Caleb seemed pretty calm throughout the whole class, but I explained that 1: He shuts down in new locations, so his tolerance for things that would usually rile him actually goes up a bit, and 2: His problem is not with hearing or being around other dogs without seeing them, he is a herder so it's the moving doggies that get him worked up. My instructor said: "Just wait, we have all sorts of things planned for future classes to deal with that specifically."

Over all, I am pretty excited about this class. All the dogs were kept under threshold for the full class, and I certainly do not think that Caleb is worse of for having attended. He was definitely concerned about the new environment in his stoic corgi way, but I think as class progresses, he will get over the environment and get focused on modifying his responses to other dogs. I am already prepared to sign up to take this class a second time if need be, because I want to make sure we get to a point where we are working on the problem behaviors, not just staying shut down due to the new environment.