Weekly Training Update (Nov 28)

Last week, I finally got brave enough to email neighbors/friends to ask them to play the “stranger” in Lilly’s people desensitization work. As I’ve mentioned before, this is particularly tough due to our somewhat remote location. Of the 16 people I asked, 4 people volunteered and even scheduled an encounter right away. So, first of all, our most sincere THANKS to Sheila, Heather and Patrick, and Carol. Here’s how it went:

Each time, I put Lilly away so that she could not see the person/people arrive. I’d leash her up, once they were in place, and I’d start feeding her every time the person/people appeared and moved toward us. Keep in mind we have relatively few visitors to our home, so anyone other than me or Tom around the house is a pretty big novelty.

Thursday, Nov 20
Inside the house
Rox and Lilly in the hallway
Heather appearing from the kitchen
(This set up is the same as we often did with Tom.)

Lilly did a great job. The extra challenge is that Heather is nursing a foot/ankle injury, so she wasn’t just appearing out of nowhere. She was kind of clomping around due to the therapeutic boot on her foot.

Lilly was a little sharky with the food, but after the 13 tasks, which conclude with the person bending down to see if Lilly will approach, Lilly took food from Heather and even played a little with her stuffed duck. As we were chatting afterwards, Lilly stayed in a perfect, relaxed down. And, when I walked Heather out, Lilly sat inside the dining room windows and howled at us because she was so sad to see her go.

Friday, Nov 21
Inside the house
Rox and Lilly in the other end of the hallway
Sheila appearing from my office

This threw Lilly for a loop because she’s not used to seeing anyone come out of my office except me. So, she barked the first couple times Sheila appeared. It was more of an alert bark, like “What the heck?” She did not get up. The barking did not escalate beyond a few surprised noises.

I was going to take photos of all our helpers, but Sheila was NICE ENOUGH to come over before she went to work and still had curlers in her hair, so no photo. :o)

Saturday, Nov 22
In front of the house
Rox and Lilly outside the front door
Heather and Patrick appearing from behind our cars

By day three of our Crash Course in Strangers, Lilly understood the pattern of me putting her away, her hearing people arrive, and me leashing her up for the SIT-STAY work. So, she didn’t even flinch when they popped out from behind the cars. She still was a tad bit sharky wtih the food, but she totally understood the routine and happily played fetch with Patrick after the 13 tasks were done.

She even did a little jumping and weaving in front of Heather and Patrick, after we’d played quite a bit. She was too tired to be super-speedy, but she did what I asked.

Sunday, Nov 23
Out behind the house on the back deck
Rox and Lilly outside one of the sliding doors
Carol appearing from the side of the house

I don’t think Lilly has ever seen a stranger appear from the side of our house, but she didn’t react when Carol did. Again, I think it’s because she recongized the pattern and knew what was coming … and maybe that’s the point of this admittedly tedious work.

Afterwards, Lilly played fetch with Carol and happily walked together with us back up to the gate when it was time for Carol to walk home.

Victory?
So, I’d say all in all it was a success. Technically, the protocol we’re using has us doing these same 13 tasks with every manner of person you can imagine — short women, tall women, older people, younger people, men with deep voices, really tall men, older children and finally very young children. I honestly have no idea how people do everything the protocol requires/recommends. Who knows that many people? And, even if you did, who could get them to say yes to helping?

We might eventually work up to older children, like our niece I mentioned a while back, but I think it will be a LONG time before I try really little kids because they are just so unpredictable.

The materials our behaviorist provided list 9 different indicators your dog is upset  — ranging from stiffening up to biting. I’m happy to say that I only saw two indicators that Lilly was a bit tense:

1) She leaned forward more than usual.
2) She grabbed the food with more intensity than usual.

I’ll continue to work on people as I can schedule them or the opportunity arises. We’ll likely resume regular trips to town so that she has access to novel people, dogs, locations.

BUT, I’m also going to look at our dog interaction protocols and see if I can start working on those. Between them, the four volunteers have 8 dogs … three of whom might meet our criteria for control that’s required for Lilly’s upcoming exercises.

And, if we’re not ready for those, we might just start taking short walks together — me and Lilly, one person and one dog — and see how that goes.