Clean Run Magazine - June 2008 - 42

There are three major reasons that attempts to “make” Quinn play with a toy near the teeter did not work. 1. Bigger Picture: There was a much bigger picture to consider here than Quinn’s instructors simply observing him in class and from that alone saying that tugging when the noise occurred would teach him to like the noise. There was genetic predisposition, Quinn’s age (a common age for sensitivities and “quirks” to escalate), and Quinn’s history of being exposed beyond his threshold to the teeter’s noise at a young age. 2. Pressure: There was too much pressure being put on Quinn to interact with the teeter. The teeter was being made into a “big deal.” 3. Misapplication of Learning Theory: Since Quinn was a very high-drive dog that in almost any context (besides being around a teeter) would turn himself inside out to tug or play ball or Frisbee, everybody remained convinced that his love of toys would trump his teeter fears. Actually the opposite started to happen. By the time I worked with Quinn, the sight of a Frisbee in the same yard as the teeter was a signal that he was going to have to interact with the teeter. Therefore, he lost interest in playing with the Frisbee. The connection, Frisbee = teeter, had successfully been made, and it had backfired. Anything that equaled teeter was the enemy. Quinn was losing motivation to play with his favorite toy! This is a phenomenon that often happens when people attempt to countercondition a dog without simultaneously desensitizing him. Counterconditioning and desensitizing are learning theories that must be thoroughly understood before applying them. Counterconditioning is meant to change the dog’s feelings about a stimulus he finds distressing by pairing that stimulus with something he enjoys. (Every time you see the UPS man, you get a pig’s ear!) Desensitization is a gradual process by which the dog is exposed, subthreshold (below the point at which he will have an adverse reaction), to the stimulus he finds distressing. When you work above an individual dog’s threshold, you are “flooding” the dog. Depending on a dog’s temperament and the circumstances, flooding a dog can work. But in my opinion there is too much potential for fallout from this technique; and it is stressful on the dog, so I choose not to use it. Quinn was accidentally being flooded during the process of teaching him that Frisbee or tug equals teeter. That’s why it backfired. He was still kept close enough to the teeter that he was having a reaction to the sound and was being exposed above his threshold. As long as he was reacting, he was not in the optimal state to learn what people wanted him to learn. Anxious dogs do not learn well. Suggestion #3 Go back to teeter foundation work, such as playing on the wobble board and putting the teeter on the floor. Shape the dog to smack the bottom of it and make it fun. This is a great suggestion, but it didn’t work for Quinn. He was totally fearless on the wobble board ever since he was a puppy. I remember him in classes, jumping up and down on the wobble board and tugging with all his might, while thinking he was hot stuff. Quinn’s feelings about the wobble board had not changed. He still associated it with fun and tugging. He also had no problem with the teeter when it was collapsed flat on the ground. It was the noise and the visual picture of other dogs on the teeter (predictors of the noise) that had started the trouble. Exacerbating this was the pressure he had been under consistently to play near it, and on it, and be walked up and down it by people holding his collar. That pressure was turning the teeter experience into an ordeal to survive rather than a fun game to play. In addition, some well-meaning helpers felt Liz created the problem by showing her anxiety, a gross oversimplification when you step back and examine the various pieces of Quinn’s teeter puzzle. Being human, Liz did start feeling some anxiety about Quinn’s teeter training. After she saw there was a problem she tried various suggestions that didn’t fix the problem. But she didn’t cause the problem. Stepping Back From the Edge Quinn was a little over a year old at the time I worked with him. Taking Quinn’s history and personality into account, Liz and I were able to formulate a plan to help him embrace, rather than fear, the teeter. Since Quinn reacted to the sound, not the movement, we needed to separate that startling banging sound from the rest of the teeter picture. We started the teeter at a low height, hoping to decrease the sound and fury, though ultimately the height was not a concern. We also worked with an outdoor teeter, which made a much softer sound than the one in the noisy training facility. With a padding of blankets and pillows, the teeter made no thudding sound at all. But the teeter still creaked when pressure was put on its pivot joints, so we held the middle of the teeter and controlled the plank’s descent to keep it as quiet as possible. Everyone had focused on the sound, which was in fact the problem, but by doing so had connected the rest of the teeter experience to the sound. We surmised that once Quinn figured out he could operate the teeter without any sound, he would then go back to his “normal” self and be enthusiastic about learning and playing. If necessary, we could record an unmuffled teeter sound and go back to the noise issue later, once Quinn had learned to love the silent teeter. Before bringing Quinn near the teeter I had my Border Collie, Easy, run up and down it. Quinn noticed immediately that it had no sound and I could see him make a huge mental note of that. When Liz and I stood near the teeter, Quinn would run to a certain spot at the other end of my backyard where he could hide behind a tunnel. I let him do that while he watched Easy play on the teeter. He was intrigued and came out of hiding to watch. He was starting to relax because he wasn’t anticipating the sound. There was no sound! Also, seeing a dog on the teeter did not signal the end of the world, as it had before. Again, sound could be added back to the scenario later. Clean Run | June 08 Suggestion #2 Put your hand on Quinn’s collar, make him go up and down the teeter, and play with him at the end. If he tries to jump off, gently keep him on the teeter and make him keep going so that he learns he can’t jump off—he has to do the teeter. This is a popular form of flooding that I do not like to see happen to dogs that have obstacle fears. It certainly was not helping Quinn to “get over it” or “get used to it.” Rather, it was reinforcing his belief that the teeter was the worst thing ever to happen to him. Not only that, he was learning not to trust his handler when a teeter was in the picture. 42

Clean Run Magazine - June 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - June 2008