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Over protective of my disabled wife?

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  David Winners 
#1 ·
Hey,

I'm just looking for peoples advice, Our boy is almost 4, we've had him 7 months now after he was rescued from a abusive family.

He is happy go lucky, cuddly and playful .. does what he's told is always pleased to be around us.

Only myself and my wife pet him, given his background, we thought it was the best approach, incase of any fear.

Last week a friend of ours came into our house, he was bouncing around happy as can be, tail wagging, tongue out, was doing fine with the ''stranger'' Until my wife lost her balance (she is deaf with cochlear hearing implants). our friend reached out to stabalise her and the dog ran the length of the room, got inbetween them and snapped at her, no growl, he was there in a shot to stop any contact.

He then ran into the kitchen and hid behind me, as if he knew he had done wrong?

Our friend wasn't hurt and she is fine with the situation, she knows his background and understands how he is with my wife (if they are out walking, he won't let anyone he doesn't know near her, good thing in our case)

I have decided the best plan would be to limit who comes into our house, let the dog out the back to play when people come round? basically eliminate the chance of this happening again.

Has anyone else had anything like this? I really just want to make sure he's OK and knows not to be threatened by our friends coming into the house.
 
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#2 ·
I would recommend controlling the behavior instead of trying to change the dog's mind. A solid down stay or place command, that the dog will not break, combined with repetition will change how the dog behaves.

After the place or down stay is trained and proofed, you set up a scenario where someone comes over, dog is put in a stay on a drag line or leash, and then the person reaches out and touches your wife. Dog does good, it gets marked and rewarded. Dog breaks stay, it gets punished and put back in the stay. Rinse and repeat until the behavior is what you want.

Note: when I say punished, that is totally dependent on the dog and your training system. It could be a negative marker, finger poke, verbal correction or a slight prong / e-collar correction. Whatever you use to proof the stay.

This does a couple things. First, it gives you the behavior you want. Next, it shows the dog that it's job is NOT protecting your wife from interaction with strangers. If by chance the dog doesn't change it's mind, at least you have changed the behavior.
 
#8 ·
To proof a behavior there must be consequences for failure.

To keep this relatively short, I will just explain how I proof a down stay. There are varying opinions on what types of punishment is acceptable in dog training. That topic could (and does) go on forever. I will leave it to you to decide what you find acceptable in your training.

I teach positions (down, sit, stand) using food lures and markers (voice or clicker). After the dog is following the lure reliably, I transition to a hand signal that resembles the lure. When that is reliable, I add a command before the hand signal. Once the dog is reliably responding to the command (100%) in a distraction free environment, I move to proofing the command.

I use an e-collar for proofing. I follow Lou Castle's protocols in general. The dog understands how to turn stim off, and we work at very low levels.

I will take the dog outside and get into training mode by running through some known commands with marks and rewards. Then I give the down command paired with stim. When the dog downs, the stim goes away. We repeat this several times with marks and rewards (variation from Lou's protocol) for successful behaviors.

Next, the dog is put in a down and distractions are added. If the dog begins to break the down, it gets stim. Success = mark. Failure = stim. The distractions start out very low level and gradually increase to throwing a favorite toy right in front of the dog / another dog / a cat / whatever amps the dog up. Mark and reward for success. Stim and reset for failure.

This can be done with any type of correction. You just have to be sure that the dog can not self reward by breaking the down and reaching the distraction. A long line and helper works well for this if you run out of hands.

If you decide that this training method is interesting to you. Please check out Lou's web site. There are detailed instructions there for your information.

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