Champion of My HeartA real-time memoir about life with a fearful border collie, by Roxanne Hawn

The protocol, as I understand it, comes from a big clinical behavior book designed for PhD type behaviorists and veterinarians. That’s intimidating enough, even though I often interview board-certified veterinary specialists and other smarty-pants experts from various fields for the magazine articles I write.

The book is somewhat expensive, and it’s hard to find at your usual public library, so I went searching online for details about the protocol. It’s a very regimented thing, so without those details, it’s impossible to do. Thankfully, Leslie posted a Control Unleashed Yahoo Group.

I’m really boiling things down here, but essentially the protocol teaches a dog to settle and defer to you in no matter what happens. And, while the instructions say SIT while this happens, while that happens, the goal is to get the dog to relax, lay down, whatever, rather than sitting at crazy, training attention.

For example, if Lilly thinks she’s going to learn something new or “train” in a formal sense, she gets very, very excited (at least at home). Generally speaking, a learning Lilly is NOT a relaxed Lilly. That’s one characterization I’m hoping to change since Lilly stresses out when that learning is made more difficult by being somewhere or near something that makes her nervous. As we’ve discussed before, she either shuts down or gets reactive toward (mostly) other dogs.

In the protocol, the dog can shift positions some, just not get up and wander around or misbehave. And, she gets rewarded after each little thing. You don’t ask her to get up and sit again, or lay down again, you just reward her for staying put while you do various things.

It’s very easy (and I’m guilty too) to look at this and think it’s just an obedience thing … like it’s a really, really reliable or really long stay, but it’s not. However, my first thought was, “That’s a LOT of sitting.” And, that’s all it is.

Well, if I’m being honest, I’ll also add that I thought it would not work. It made no sense to me. Intuitively, it just felt weird. And, even my trainer said she’d never tried it nor did she know anyone who had. In a way, she challenged me to be the first to really give it a spin and report back. (Now that I’m nearly done with round one, we both wonder how many people stick with it.)

So, in order to take on a training protocol that requires daily effort for 15 days in one location, then 15 days in another, then 15 days in another, etc., I had to suspend my disbelief. I had to tell my inner critic, my inner skeptic to shut the heck up. I had to believe that Dr. Overall in all her wisdom had a scientific basis for this protocol. I had to believe (or at least pretend to believe) that the pace and repetition and structure of the exercises had some quantifiable effect on a dog’s brain.

But, here’s the problem: on the page, the protocol is visually overwhelming. The list of exercises swam in front of my eyes as I tried to keep my focus on Lilly so that I could reward her at the right times. Since my own brain could not hold more than a couple of instructions at a time, I kept consulting the page, losing my place, and breaking my connection with Lilly. Not good.

So, I had an idea … what if I recorded each day’s protocol so that I could listen to it on my iPod while I worked with Lilly? I asked around, and others who are working hard on the protocol liked the idea, so I did it. And, it’s helping a TON with its timed exercises and quiet gaps for things that require leaving the room, etc.

I’m not naturally an auditory learner, but I can be very task oriented when things come at a pace my brain can process. Plus, I tend to be more self-contained and calm when I’m wearing ear buds and using the iPod. I often wear it while running errands to block out noise and other people’s stress energy. So, I figured it would help in Lilly training too. And, it has.

I uploaded the MP3 files I made to Leslie’s Yahoo group, but for those who do not have access to that file storage online, I’m putting them here too. Each one is about 5-10 minutes. I believe if you right-click each link that you can download them to your computer and then put them on your iPod or MP3 player. (Ask a teenager you know to help, if you can’t figure it out.)