houndlove
Posted : 10/12/2006 10:07:09 AM
I was holding off on this one until I figured out just what was being asked, but I think now I'm ready to add my two bits....
Marlowe is highly reactive to squirrells and other fuzzy critters that run up trees. Both dogs are way reactive to outside cats. We're primarily working with Marlowe now, but Conrad is next on the list to deal with the cat thing, but here's what I did....
First, I trained for attention while walking. I noticed that Marlowe rarely if ever looked back at me when we were walking together and that was something I wanted to change. So, I began to carry treats with me on our walks. At first, if he'd just glance back at me, he'd get a reward. Then I upped the ante after he was looking back reliably. I'd only reward when he walked closer to me and looked at me. Once I had him in the habit of giving good attention, we tackled the squirrell situation. He's a former hunting dog, extremely prey-driven, so I had to lower my standards a bit. I came up with a behavior that would be still rewarding to him without pulling my arm off and injuring his neck.
When I see him go into an alert posture, I stop walking. This gets his attention pretty fast because we're no longer approaching his target. I actually use the cue "stop" when I'm walking that lets the dogs know we're about to stop moving as a unit (at a cross-walk, in order to wait for other dogs to pass, whenever we need to stop moving). So, I say "stop" and I put Marlowe into a sit. At first, I'll admit, there was some mild butt-pushing. With a highly prey-driven dog who is staring straight at potential quarry, the brain kind of shuts off and a reliable "sit" on vocal command just was not happening (any more, I just have to touch his bum gently with a finger to remind him of the "sit"). But once he sat, he got to stay as long as he wanted and watch the squirrell quietly, from a sitting position. That is his reward. No, not as fun as actually catching and eating the squirrell, but better than nothing, and definately better than a food reward. The very manic nature of squirrells generally means that we are in this position only for a few moments, as the squirrell has soon left the general area and is no longer visible. Before moving on, I make sure I have Marlowe's full attention, I talk to him a little, then I give the release word ("Ok!") and we walk again.
I do not expect Marlowe to ever not want to chase and tree small game. Ever. This sitting and watching behavior is for life and is one of the compromises I make for having a working dog as my pet. However, as the months have gone on, the frequency with which we have to do this has gone way down (and we take our walks in a section of town called "Squirrell Hill"!), to the point where I only have to do it once every few walks. We've gone from him literally dragging me and having to be walked alone because of his unpredictable reactivity to being able to walk twice a day every day along with our other dog, quite politely. It seems that the amount of stimulation he needs to trigger his drives has increased quite a bit, but I don't have enough understanding of that phenomenon to really say what has caused it.
Right now, as we've not begun working with Conrad on the cat thing (the problem there is we encounter outside cats very infrequently so training opportunities are hard to come by), I just turn around and walk the other way.
I think "watch me" is a fine command to teach, and you can also come up with a command that means "walk nex to me and stare at me" so the watching doesn't mean that motion ceases.