How to handle dog when it's gotten into "red zone"

Wouldn't this be considered information instead of a correction?


With my fosters, I do use a low degree of correction such as furrowed brow or a stern NO.

ORIGINAL: nfowler

From Kim: ... true management indicates that you have thought ahead and prepared for different things. If you know your dog is dog-aggressive, you walk in the evening or early morning, you frequent places other dogs don't, you use closed-in tennis courts rather than dog parks. That is management. You aren't changing behaviour, you are preventing unwanted things from happening.

Wonderfully put! Thank you so much for this. (Not to mention the off-leash for heeling tip, too!)

Just to add - there will be times, even if you walk your dog at midnight, when a trigger stimulus might suddenly appear.  That would be the time to "get outta Dodge" and when you areat a safe distance (i.e., when your dog will take food), start to ask for "watch" or "sit" and feed, feed, feed.  The quicker you can do this the better, because you are, essentially, pairing the food with the sight of the other dog and the default response you want your dog to have.  But, good management would dictate that you are always aware of your surroundings so that any surprises are kept to a minimum.  The first thing I tell my students to do if a trigger appears is to "create a party" and do what they do when they want to play with their dogs at home - it could be get out the tug toy, or talk happy talk, but it has to be done excitedly to get your dog's attention quickly.  All the while, you are backing away from the stim, and tossing treats to your dog.

But, good management would dictate that you are always aware of your surroundings so that any surprises are kept to a minimum.  The first thing I tell my students to do if a trigger appears is to "create a party" and do what they do when they want to play with their dogs at home - it could be get out the tug toy, or talk happy talk, but it has to be done excitedly to get your dog's attention quickly.  All the while, you are backing away from the stim, and tossing treats to your dog.

 
And this is so exhausting for owners/handlers, Anne! Not that I'm a wimp about it, but just saying, it is really hard for humans to be totally aware and prepared. I feel like a defensive driver (thanks to Driver's Ed) when I'm dealing with my male out and about.
 
It works. It really works, and it gets easier in time. Still--being totally prepared has not been the easiest thing for humans and I think that's why a quite correction seems so much more appealing--because having the eagle eye AND the physical quickness to manage things perfectly is very hard to do.
 
That said, I know of no other way than this way to manage and desensitize the dog to obtain reliability.

And this is so exhausting for owners/handlers, Anne! Not that I'm a wimp about it, but just saying, it is really hard for humans to be totally aware and prepared. I feel like a defensive driver (thanks to Driver's Ed) when I'm dealing with my male out and about.

It works. It really works, and it gets easier in time. Still--being totally prepared has not been the easiest thing for humans and I think that's why a quite correction seems so much more appealing--because having the eagle eye AND the physical quickness to manage things perfectly is very hard to do.

That said, I know of no other way than this way to manage and desensitize the dog to obtain reliability.

I agree with this sentiment, and not because I'm looking for an excuse not to pay attention, but because I have found that the more alert I'm trying to be, the more nervous and anxious I get, and the dogs feed of off this.  If I lighten up a bit, they tend to not even react to the stim I should have been concerned about if I was really focused on what might be a trigger or a threat.  I think that I do have to see the trigger before the dog, but don't necessarily have to react by hurridly moving the dog in another direction.  For example, if I'm walking a dog and see another approaching, if I was all hyped up on assessing potential threats, I'd get a bit nervous ("oh no, what's Fido going to do when this dog gets closer?  oh gosh..."), turn away, and the dog would most likely start pulling to resist me and get all worked up because I got all worked up.  Now, if I lighten up a bit, see the dog coming, and just cross the street in one fluid motion but still allow my dog to pass, they tend to glance at the other dog and then keep going along, no big deal, because it wasn't a big deal to me.  I'm not very good at having to be super aware and assume the worse on the inside while remaining calm and composed on the outside.  I'm either anxious, or I'm chill.  When I'm anxious, the dogs just get nippy and jumpy at every little thing.

that if your dog is truly in limbic mode (and this refers to any emotionally-based reaction - fear, anger, etc), your dog will not even notice the correction. Therefore, your dog will not learn from the correction, and since "corrections" are meant to change behaviour, you are not "correcting" anything. And corrections that don't "correct" becomes manhandling, nothing more

 
Actually, I agree with your entire post but this part is important. And yes, there are times when Shadow was keyed to where I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to correct and I'm a big, strong guy. And so, I learned it is better to be proactive. To train the responses I want with motivation and to work with the range of non-reactivity. And by doing so, keep it in his mind what listening to me is rewarding, that I will not lead him into bad situations and then, I must follow through and not lead him into bad situations. One of the problems I saw with the Dog Day is that they moved it to a nice shady park with cutesy little walk ways that were perfect bottlenecks for lots of dogs with minimal training. So, as best I could, I avoided those stressful situations. I did my job of not leading him to a stressful or bad situation. Add to that, the rewards for being calm in public and heeding my directional commands and you have a different response entirely.
 
I think a dog is always learning. Sometimes, you don't know what they are learning from a correction and they could be learning exactly what you described, to learn to quit growling rather than learning to be calm in public. With positive motivation I know what he is learning because it is in my direction or in the way that I want to go.

...give a man a fish and feed him dinner, teach a man to fish and feed him for life

 
give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day.
 
teach a man to fish and he will spend 8 hours in a boat, drinking beer.[]

For the dog that I know, I choose to stay in the situation by keeping the dog at the outer edges of the trigger stimulus.  I want the dog to be aware of the stimulus but at a safe enough distance where the perceived threat is minimal.  I believe dogs know good behavior versus bad behavior and if they don#%92t they surely know how to read my body signals.  I also want the dog to know that I am going to take care of the threat and it is not the dog#%92s place.  I don#%92t want to play games, its too serious of a matter.  I choose to use a direct learning approach rather than indirect association.  

For the dog that I know, I choose to stay in the situation by keeping the dog at the outer edges of the trigger stimulus

 
That's what I mean about working with the range of reactivity. Far enough away and the stimulus is not overpowering.
 

Yep--I stay far enough away and then test it periodically and move closer.
 
But, David, I DO play the games and give food and stay relaxed and use my happy voice and that's mainly because it works and it works well for my male. I haven't come across such a food-motivated dog like him before, but there he is and oh yeah, I'll use that and our tricks (he doesn't know the difference between tricks and obedience, thanks to his clicker and FOOD []) to manage him and keep him focused on me.
 
I realize I'm pretty lucky with this dog. He's very much into me and he's into food and those two things, combined, make my job soo much easier. He can learn a new thing with a handful of clicks. Period. And it sticks. He learned to retrieve in a matter of minutes (still trying to interest my female enough to do that and I've had her 3 years). He's learned to "bow" and "open it" (the gate) in about 6 clicks and can now do them without clicks. If it weren't for his disability (which most people can't see) and his iffy genes (sigh), he'd be a perfect working dog--even a service dog. His ability to focus and stay focused gets better each day and I know it's not all me--but between him and me, we're doing it.
 
So, here's to us, day in and day out, learning to better work with our dogs!

ORIGINAL: ron2

And by doing so, keep it in his mind what listening to me is rewarding, that I will not lead him into bad situations and then, I must follow through and not lead him into bad situations.because it is in my direction or in the way that I want to go.

Yes, I saw similarities in our approach but I thought the above quote might be missed.  I believe it says you will stop the reactive behavior.

I believe it says you will stop the reactive behavior.

 
I also wonder if you're trying to imply that by keeping him away from or leading him away from scenes that may engender reactive behavior is a correction. In which case, having the leash on at all is a correction, though, as pointed out in another post, the leash is management, not training. In which case, we will get into semantics. So, to clarify, I won't lead us into a stressful situation if I can avoid it and I will do so by leading him with commands trained in a positive manner. I may also shorten the leash length. But I will not pop his collar, especially since I walk him in harness, and I will not scruff and pin him and I will not reward any reactive or fearful behavior and I will take him to a distance and spot where can be calm and then reward that. And then, closer into the range of reactivity, reward continued calm behavior and attention to my commands. Until we're in the middle of it all and I can command a sit and get it.
 
Once, in the Petco, a lady was trying to contain her Beagle and Husky/GSD and not having much luck as they were both bounding around Shadow. I called "sit" and Shadow sat and I didn't even have a treat in my hand and I didn't have to physically assist, such as light pressure on the rump. But sit was trained with treats and sit was counter to his natural inclination to join the fray.

Not implying anything at all.  Just trying to find out for certain if you stop the reactive behavior when it is in front of you and then work on teaching the good behavior when at a safe distance, in 2 threads now.  Yeh or Nay?
 
I recognize the difference between Management mode and Training Mode.  If you disagree with my post where I have assigned techniques to each of the modes, then let me know and I will correct.
 
Again, as I said in the other thread, you are at the finished behavior and I am at the beginning of the behavior.  A previous post did indicate that applying a “stop the bad behavior” was ok within Management mode.  Dogs learn from repetitive occurrences but can learn from as little as one occurrence.  Another previous post said Management is not Training.  There is ambiguity here.  I am not trying to get you to say you use corrections in this situation.  I am trying to ascertain if you are proactive to stop the behavior by directly addressing the behavior and not countering, whether it be Management mode or training mode.  It doesn't matter to me.

only the dog's subsequent behavior can tell you whether your behavior was perceived as a correction, a reward, or "just management" with no impact on subsequent behavior.
Emergency management interventions should never be harsh. If you don't usually go around nagging your dog with "corrections", screaming NO in an emergency can often stop your endanged dog in his tracks.

Nicely laid out posts above ... especially Kim and DPU. Very clear in your thinking! Well written. Thanks for sharing. When we write with accuracy, we can see that we#%92re not looking at "semantics," and we can get to the real meat of it all. The results of our analysis, of each packet of impulse/behavior/response, carries significance in how we chose to work with our dogs. This is how we divide ourselves into different value communities.

ORIGINAL: ron2

...give a man a fish and feed him dinner, teach a man to fish and feed him for life

give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day.

teach a man to fish and he will spend 8 hours in a boat, drinking beer.[]

Lol ... this is why I also gave my dog flooding. Ixa's reactivity was off-the-charts frustration, wanting to "get to" the so-called "scary thing" (mostly dogs, but also cats and squirrels). Desensitization helped me teach her some impulse control ... then graduated flooding (introducing her into dog groups) gave her the immersion to apply that learning in interactions with other dogs (or "learn how to fish").

We all develop our own ideology, here#%92s my own mutli-faceted approach (this is for today only ... check back with me next week when I#%92ve already learned a bunch more that makes my current learning out-of-date ):
~ Maintain and establish good relationship with dog (leadership/nilif/life) - ongoing, persistent, 24/7
~ conditioning/counter-conditioning to particular trouble spots (desensitization/flooding) - temporary, controlled contexts
~ "training" (classical/operant) - temporary, controlled contexts
~ Crisis management - be ready!
~ Context approprateness - ongoing, persistent, 24/7

That last one, context appropriateness goes beyond "one size does#%92t fit all." For me, it's evaluating each situation we're in, when we're in it. It's crisis? Do management. It's training? Do training. This is why I don't do counter-conditioning on a walk - walk is leadership mode - it's a more appropriate mode for disallowing escalations in the first place. Similarly I don't do trianing in crisis mode, though I do seek to embed the physical experience in my dog that I would most like her to retain (safety and calm vs panic).

I can#%92t emphasize enough that sharing various ways of assessing good outcomes doesn#%92t make some of us right and others wrong ... it makes us human ... and civilized enough to live with our differences.

You might want to take into consideration the possibility that just because your dog wants to get to something, doesn't mean that it is a scary thing to her.

Sometimes they just want to investigate...sniff, say hello...maybe chase for the fun of it.

I think the key here, is knowing your dog well enough to know the difference between fear and excitability.

. Ixa's reactivity was off-the-charts frustration, wanting to "get to" the so-called "scary thing" (mostly dogs, but also cats and squirrels).