Prong during desensitization - does this make sense to you guys?

[sheep]

I've found this:

http://www.positivelytrained.com/edu...t_Training.pdf

Is this the Abandonment Training you are talking about?? It seems insane! Although I can see the logic here. I wonder how my dog would do with this method... He would run to the trigger and he seems to forget about our existence (we never tried to run away of course).

The method I've heard before is a it different, it was about having the dog tied to a tree, and if he reacts to a dog passing by, both the dog and the owner would walk away and leave him there. I can't remember where I've read that thought.

[jocoyn]

Ok when we did it with her (and she is from Marin Humane Society) we had two people and two leads because the fearful dog will realize you are not there to back them up and look to escape. THe rank agressive dog will start the fight so you need a way to prevent that. I really think you need to do this kind of stuff with someone who knows. The tree tie out is a test......from what I know.......which I have said is limited to personal experience.

Time to find someone, a trainer who has good references, to actually help you with this.

[sheep]

Originally Posted by jocoyn

Ok when we did it with her (and she is from Marin Humane Society) we had two people and two leads because the fearful dog will realize you are not there to back them up and look to escape. THe rank agressive dog will start the fight so you need a way to prevent that. I really think you need to do this kind of stuff with someone who knows. The tree tie out is a test......from what I know.......which I have said is limited to personal experience.

Time to find someone, a trainer who has good references, to actually help you with this.

Yeah I actually contacted a positive trainer already. Now I'm just waiting for the reply, hopefully we can get a transparent check on the methods as well as going to see how the classes are before we start. The previous trainer didn't allow us to see a class first and he was also vague in what he intended to do (he said that each dog is different so he couldn't tell what method we would use).

[Cassidy's Mom]

When we did it, Trish held the long line, and we had Cassidy on her regular 6 foot leash, so when we threw the leash at her back, she was still under control via the long line. There was a 3rd person there in charge of bringing the bait dog into view (one of Trish's own dogs actually, that she said she used with reactive dogs all the time because Ariel read other dogs very well) from around a corner across the field from where we were.

In 5 or 6 tries and a period of about 20 minutes we went from Cassidy reacting to Ariel as soon as she came into sight on the other side of the field (a large grassy area that they use for agility classes), to being able to walk them towards each other and past, with about 3 feet between them, and NO reaction.

I agree with Nancy though, you don't want to try it on your own if you only have a vague idea of the concept - it worked so well with us because we had a skilled and knowledgeable trainer directing us.

[sheep]

Originally Posted by Cassidy's Mom

When we did it, Trish held the long line, and we had Cassidy on her regular 6 foot leash, so when we threw the leash at her back, she was still under control via the long line. There was a 3rd person there in charge of bringing the bait dog into view (one of Trish's own dogs actually, that she said she used with reactive dogs all the time because Ariel read other dogs very well) from around a corner across the field from where we were.

In 5 or 6 tries and a period of about 20 minutes we went from Cassidy reacting to Ariel as soon as she came into sight on the other side of the field (a large grassy area that they use for agility classes), to being able to walk them towards each other and past, with about 3 feet between them, and NO reaction.

I agree with Nancy though, you don't want to try it on your own if you only have a vague idea of the concept - it worked so well with us because we had a skilled and knowledgeable trainer directing us.

And this kind of fast result beats the myth that positive methods necessarily takes centuries to get results. For this trainer to have come up with this method, she must be very knowledgeable about how aggression really works, and she's also understanding of dogs and not just focusing on getting results without thinking much of the dog's emotional state.

[Cassidy's Mom]

Trish was the Director of Behavior and Training at the Marin Humane Society, she's since retired. She's written at least one book, and does seminars around the country.

Keep in mind that this technique, or any technique for that matter, still needs to be generalized to a variety of different dogs in a variety of different situations, the behavior is not just suddenly "fixed" that quickly, but we were very surprised at the dramatic results.

And this particular technique wouldn't be suited for all dogs, it just happened that Cassidy was pretty much the textbook dog for abandonment training - as Trish said about Cassidy, she really "gets it". This session that I described above was an initial evaluation that was required to get into the Difficult Dog class at MHS.

[Cassidy's Mom]

Originally Posted by Cassidy's Mom

When we did it, Trish held the long line, and we had Cassidy on her regular 6 foot leash, so when we threw the leash at her back, she was still under control via the long line.

I should mention that while we walked Cassidy forward, Trish was off to the side and ahead of us, so she had a good view of Cassidy's face and could pick up very subtle signals that we could not see from our angle walking next to her. Timing is very important, you need to catch the dog AFTER they've noticed the trigger, but BEFORE the reaction. When we worked with Trish she actually cued us as to when we needed to throw the leash and bail, by saying "go".

The more you can observe your dog and learn to recognize the signs that he's about to blow, the better - you can't work under threshold if you're not sure exactly where the threshold is. Once you do, you can start to change that threshold through counter-conditioning and desensitization.

[sheep]

Thanks for sharing this, I can sort of picture the method, but I wish that I could observe in the real life to understand it better. I've been checking Trish King's blog and only have read a few posts, but so far I'm becoming a fan.

[jocoyn]

If you can find someone who can help you through this that would be great. I went to the seminar but when we went back the trainer I went with, it just wasn't the same (she was new to the method) and we could work up to about 10 feet. I did close the final gap with the obedience as discussed above but only for necessary closeness (sometimes you just can't avoid dogs but he was not taken to petsmart or dog events etc...as it stressed him and why do that)

[Chicagocanine]

Originally Posted by sheep

But then why did it work out in our case? Why did my dog end up feeling more secure towards other dogs after a few sessions?

What was the context here? Was this in a group class where you saw the same dogs every week?