He's blossoming! He's ready!

Einstein has been here 2 weeks now. During that time he:

Adapted to a household of 3 new dogs he didn't know-- never a growl or an argument from any of them. Wonderful.

Adapted to me and my husband, and has learned to not only trust me, but also to climb into my lap, look to me for reassurance when he's scared about something, and he's following my training direction like a champ.

Learned the general toileting area in the yard, and has not had one accident in the house at all!

Enthusiastically begun his obedience training using the "clicker training" method. This method allows me to communicate to him exactly what behaviors I want from him. He is food-motivated and takes the food with a polite, gentle mouth. He is solid on "sit", and is now working on "down", "come" and target training with a target stick.

He's consistently allowed me to push him, in baby steps, out of his comfort zone. He is growing in trust and confidence every day. Yesterday morning we walked down the street and watched a construction project from 2 houses away. Yesterday evening I drove him (with his sitting in the seat, not a crate) to the local market and coffee hangout, where we sat on a bench and watched the cars come and go, the people walk by, etc. So many new experiences. I'm careful to go slowly, and each time, he's been initially scared but with my gentle guidance he settles in. We went over to a quieter lawn in a park and practiced some obedience training in that more-distracting setting. He did beautifully, controlling his keen awareness of (and sometimes concern about) people walking by, traffic, etc.

This dog is blossoming. I am so thrilled to report this because what I'm seeing is that he is not a "permanent wreck" as some dogs can be. This is not a dog who will always be permanently timid. This is not a "special needs" dog-- a "special needs" dog has permanent disabilities. This dog is overcoming his traumatic past. Each time he moves to a new home, he has to rewind a bit and rebuild that level of trust and confidence. Frankly, that's appropriate. But each time, he rebounds a bit faster. His traumatic past is being replaced with enough "positive experience" that it's teaching him how to regroup again. His new owner must not be discouraged by his need to regroup again when he moves to a new home.

The reason I'm keeping this blog is to overcome people's general tendency to make a snap judgment about a dog. I want you to see his progress, and how simple it is to achieve. Trust me, what we're doing here is not rocket science. And we're two busy people who work full time so it's not like I'm dedicating my life to this. Anyone can do this, it's simple, and it's compassionate, and it's effective.

I can see this dog excelling at obedience with the right owner. I can see this dog doing therapy work someday, with the right owner. I can absolutely see this dog being a bright, happy and affectionate pet in a relatively calm household, which is exactly what he is at this stage in our own home.

We already have three dogs, or we'd definitely be keeping this guy. We can honestly say we love him and we are ready to wait for the right permanent, loving and responsible home to come forward for him.

Is that you? Is it someone you might know? We welcome inquiries. Einstein is ready to meet his new home.

Sunday-- houseguest arrives

Sunday was a bit of a bust because we had a houseguest arrive, a woman from Japan. Most of our day was spent picking her up and helping her get settled, and E was uneasy with the new person in the house. Because of the language barrier, she wasn't able to take a lot of direction from us about giving him space and going slowly so we basically let him have a day off, and we didn't do much with him on Sunday. He got a good run on the bike before our guest arrived, but no training.

Saturday evening....

E was inundated with guests Saturday evening. Paris was back (and he warmed up to her quickly again), but we also had a couple (Ethan and Nancy) and their 3 year old daughter, Zada.

Zada is the biggest dog lover in the world. Despite her attempts to be still and quiet, the urge to go kiss him was overwhelming and fortunately it happened about 10 minutes after she arrived so E had some time to get used to her. He was not happy with the new people, and asked to be held. He allowed Ethan to pet him, but didn't enjoy it. He would look at Ethan, though, which is good (ie, he's not so scared that he can't even look). Also, he continued to accept treats (including from Zada). When he's extremely stressed, he won't even accept his favorite treats.

So we're pushing him a bit, making him move out of his comfort zone, but not, as they say, "pushing him off a cliff" in terms of his fear. It's clear he just needs more of all of this.

All else continues to go well, including his inviting both me and Dennis to play (though we have not yet figured out how to play with him-- he doesn't know what to do with toys, and we don't want to encourage barking and "keep away" games.) When he does this, his whole body is energized and inviting, it's very endearing. His facial expression says, "Let's go!"

The different elements of a behavior

It's helpful to think of any behavior as having the following elements:

Distraction in the environment (birds chirping, traffic noise) or in the dog (stress)
Distance (how far away from you can he be and still obey the command? How far can he carry the tennis ball?)
Duration (how many seconds or minutes can he do it?)
Intensity (how hard does he have to push the jingle bells to get them to ring?)
Speed (how quickly does he perform the behavior?)

When we talk about "raising the bar" on a behavior, the truth is that we've got 5 bars, each with their own range of difficulty. So we have to be careful to only raise the criterion of one bar at a time, and when we do, we temporarily relax our requirements for the other ones. Once the new criterion is solidly established, we then work on getting those other elements back where they were. Generally, we want to shape the element of speed last. We want to get the other stuff right before we ask the dog to speed things up.

These concepts apply to all learning situations, by the way, this is not just about dog training. So if you want to improve your golf swing, work on one aspect of it and give yourself a break on the other elements of it while you're learning the new part.

Studying this stuff is fun, it's fascinating, and its immensely applicable in life.

Day 6? Morning..

I'm getting my days mixed up.... since we got him last Sunday today must be our 6th day. Sorry about that.

We noticed he had tapeworms in his stool (which happens if they swallow a flea) so this morning he had a full vet exam and a fecal test and we left with deworming pills. His health is great. He doesn't have fleas, so he must have ingested a flea before last week? Just to be sure we're putting some Advantage on him this weekend.

At the vet, he was terrified in the lobby and tried to crawl under any low table or chair. I held him, which helped. In the room, on the table, he was better until they took his anal temperature but his only reaction was submissive shaking and a "please help me!" look. No attempts to snap or bite, ever. Everyone at the vet's office loved him, and they let me put up a flyer about him. Another flyer is up at Moore's Market in Lunada Bay.

Got him home, and he was still upset about the vet visit and would not come out of his crate in the car. He was insistent, he did not want to come out. I think he wanted to make sure I really got the message. I was not going to force the issue, that isn't a good idea. So I securely tied the end of the leash to the car, and got one of my other dogs to come out to the lawn by the car. That did it, he was suddenly happy again, willing to take a treat. He just needed some reassurance that we were back in a happy place. But it does go to show that he has not been out in public much so I need to get him out more.

Took him around on the K9 Cruiser, and he trotted along beautifully. A neighbor was walking her two dogs, and I did NOT want to pass them, I don't think we're ready for that yet. (It's an unpredictable sitaution, and if her dogs barked and lunged at him, it could ruin his confidence in those situations for a very long time. This shaping stuff is fragile. Better to introduce that kind of risk slowly).

I said hello from about 30 feet away, and made a slow U-turn so we didn't have to pass them. He was a bit concerned about their being behind us (even though they were WAY behind us) and he touched my ankle twice as I was pedaling. He was clearly signaling me, and I was delighted at this clear communication. I talked to him and told him it was OK, good boy. He glanced back once or twice but settled back into the trot. We passed a group of 5 people walking along, no problem (still they were a good 25 feet away). Cars went by. He did really well!

So after the vet visit I wanted to see if he retained the training we'd done this morning and yesterday. He'd been sitting on command (verbal and hand cue combined) 100% of the time. Ears up, happy. After the vet visit, we would expect a regression because he had been stressed. So with my other dogs milling me (a new distraction for a training situation) I cued E to sit, and he seemed to forget. We tried it 2 more times, and voila, it was back. We went inside to a hallway, again, with dogs around, and he sat on cue the first time. Beautiful. We're already working on adding duration to the sit behavior.

All this training of E has resulted in 3 other dogs who are reminding me constantly that it's THEIR turn to be trained, so now I'm having to do short sessions with them too to keep them happy. I'm tuning up their "wait" and "leave it" behaviors. Having dogs who love to train and work is a good problem to have. Thank goodness I have a few books that give me ideas of new tricks to keep them busy. Our latest is "Namaste". I say "Namaste" and put my hands into the yoga-prayer position and bow slightly to the dog. The dog does a deep bow back to me, as if returning the "Namaste".

I've introduced the "come" command to E, in its very beginning phase. All the food he's getting is via training, he is not having meals in addition. This is because I'm doing so much training with him! It allows me to do lots and lots of repetitions but not overfeed him. He weighs 25.3 lbs, by the way.

We're making great progress breaking his pattern of keeping of reach, making it hard to catch him. Keeping him on leash more has helped since that pattern cannot happen when he's on leash, so it gives us the chance to build a new pattern in its place. But even in the toileting area, where he is off leash (in an area now fully enclosed with ex-pens) he comes right up to me when he's done to have the leash put on and to leave the area. Part of this is because the area has small smooth rocks, and he doesn't like that surface. He's wanting to leave as soon as he's done. I'm also clicking and treating when he comes up to me proactively. All of these things combined are creating the new pattern.

Now that his confidence has grown, he's less interested in retreating into his crate every five minutes. So I actually have to lure him into his crate with a treat now when I want him in there. When we first got him, you couldn't keep him out of the crate!

Day 6: evening- Progress!!!

Wow, what a day. I went outside and created an enclosed training space with 2 ex-pens. We worked on "sit" which took him awhile to get (it's a behavior he usually only offers when he's not sure what you want and he's sort of sitting in submission). I saw the lightbulb go on! Soon we were doing it again and again and again. Hooray! So I moved to a new location, which distracted him a bit but he caught back up again. So we moved to another location, and did it some more. Each time you move to a new location you raise the bar a bit. All locations were in the back yard, all only slightly distracting (distractions included a breeze causing the sun umbrellas to rustle and move, background noises, etc).

So I sensed we were on a roll. At the same time, I didn't want to overwhelm him! It's a big training mistake to go too fast. I wanted to try him on my bike with the K9 Cruiser. I clipped him to the short light tether, and slowly walked the bike around the back yard, encouraging him. He was fine! We went out front, and I tried riding slowly. He was fine! We went around a bit in front of the house, and he was doing great (he goes fast!). On my bike I have a rear-mirror positioned to let me know if the dog is happily going as fast as the bike, or if he's falling back in position a bit. This alerts me before he falls into a position where he'd be pulled at all by the bike. He loved it. We went all the way around the block, with cars passing us and everything. The only hiccup came when a neighbor wanted to say hi to him and even though the man was 12 feet away, he started to pull back and panic. He asked to be held, and I held him and he was fine (but we did not move any closer to the man, I didn't want to undo all our progress to date by overwhelming him). We said goodbye and I clipped him back up and we went on our way. He really impressed me with his progress, and frankly he showed a lot resilience in the presence of huge SUVs passing us. Good boy!

Day 6: morning

Einstein has had a history of keeping his distance from the people in the house, which is understandable given the chaos in his original home. But even in K's home (for 10 months) he would not come when called. So I'm working to interrupt that pattern. This morning, I put him on leash and brought him into the bed/bath area and closed the door so he had to hang out nearby while I showered and dressed. He was very polite, and it's just a habit, a routine, a pattern that has to be developed with him consistently over time. We had a 10-min. snuggle session on the sofa. He loves to be held, he looked truly blissful.

When he has the ability to keep his distance, he hangs out at the back of the group but won't come near, and if you try to approach him he'll run the other way. This is not a game. However if I grab a treat and say "kennel" he'll trot right into his crate. Then I can just clip a leash on him. It's important to break this long-held pattern he's had of being chased. I can call him to me with a treat, but he will not always stay near long enough for me to touch him and leash him. I hope to teach him a "sit on command" soon which ought to help.

His comfort level with the environment and with us is increasing rapidly. He's also barking enthusiastically when we come home. My neighbor (who's home during the day) has assured me that he is not a constant barker, the dogs have been snoozing each day unless someone comes up to the gate (and we do have a few dogs in the neighborhood who like to escape their yards and come visit my dogs through the gate).

If we could find an adoptive home that is really willing to be coached on how to integrate him, he would be adoptable right now in my opinion. We need someone who is willing to learn about dog training, and who is willing to work with him slowly.