Desensitizing My Feisty Rescue Mutt to Other Dogs Required Existing on a Different Energy Level
But It Took Me Teaching Struggling High School Readers to Learn This
My first rescue dog, Porter, is 45% Rat Terrier, 5 % this, 5 % that, 35% Elkhound, and 100% spicy. Did I know this when I adopted him? NOPE. Could I tell at the adoption fair that he was going to want to throw down with every dog we walked past once I got him out of there? NOPE! He seemed like a pretty typical hyper 1-year-old dude dog while I were signing the paper work.
Once we got him home, though, we didn't even get a honeymoon stage. He just went about immediately destroying everything and breaking out the brass knuckles every time we ambled by another dog. It totally sucked.
Did he at least seem like he aspired to be a Good Boi? To this question, actually: YES! I had a smart dog who wanted to work, and I wanted him to work on being friends with other dogs now, damn it. I had, of course, READ about how to desensitize a grown, reactive dog to other dogs, but, as I have established, I had no idea what I was doing and was running on hopes and vibes.
I did manage to make a tiny bit of progress by myself, though. By carrying around cans of cat food with me while I walked Porter (yup, just like a whole can in my other hand), I managed to get him to look at me whenever we passed another dog. When we saw another dog, I would tell him to "leave it." I had trained him to look at me when I said "leave it" because I had read in a book that that was a good way to manage your reactive dog when passing other dogs. If he passed the dog successfully, I would give him a bite of cat food. If it was a hard crossing and the dog was kind of close, I would give Porter a few bites of cat food as we were crossing to keep him focused on me. We did cope with lot of dog crossings this way, and that was before I had even hired a trainer to help me deal with him
At a certain point, though, as I kept reading about reactive dogs, I knew I needed to try and desensitize him to other dogs-not just manage him. Some people are happy with managing their dogs, and I totally understand that. In this instance, I was hoping to do more hiking and stuff with him where we would come across off-leash dogs, and I thought it would be better if he had a higher tolerance for them.
Enter the Desensitization Attempt.
I knew there was an art to it. Pushing the dog too hard to socialize, as I had been doing, would make them go backwards. Not pushing them enough would keep them stagnate.
At that moment in time, I was interested in Grisha Stewart's BAT methods, which are highly positive and sensitive to the dog's stress. I wanted to see some version of her methods in real life.
The closest company I could find that seemed to be doing this work near my house was FUR GET ME NOT in Arlington, VA. At a minimum, I had to sign up for a package of four, 1/2 hour, 1-on-1 visits with the trainer, so that's what I did.
During our first session, the trainer played some games with Porter to get him comfortable in the training space. Next, I was given instructions on how to handle Porter when he saw his "trigger" (other dogs) and after a few minutes of that, the trainer started placing stuffed dogs around the training room, moving them incrementally closer to Porter whenever he had completed a stress-free look & pass. The trainer was unhurried, adjusting the stuffed dogs to make sure Porter's was not overly stressed by the scenario.
We did our four sessions, continuing on with the stuffed animals until I got annoyed and wondered what I was spending my money on. A few thoughts started a refrain in my head: I could put stuffed dogs around a room and walk Porter back and forth. Why am I spending all this money!?!?!
At the time, I felt the training was too slow, too boring, and too expensive. Since my goal was to get Porter the skills he needed to briefly interact with a real dog and we were already four sessions in and still using stuffed dogs, I wasn't happy; I didn't think I would be able to AFFORD to get him to his goal at this pace. I concluded Porter's training at this facility once I used up my 4-pack of lessons.
In hindsight, I should have kept going because Porter had made some teensy but important progress that I undervalued at the time. I didn't wrap my head around this type of training until wayyyyyyyy later when I owned other dogs even more dog-reactive and anxious than Porter. Back then, I felt like Porter and I were not making any breakthroughs in his training, but that was the point. The point was (is) to build the dog up slowly and steadily and not in one big, overwhelming flash.
Something about the training had clicked for him, even if I, the human, had felt the training was dull. I mean, it WAS dull. This type of repetitive work IS dull. But about six years later, when I started teaching high school reading, I came to appreciate the power and necessity of this amount of calm repetition.
Getting older students to learn the letter sounds they never learned as a little kid requires lots and lots and lots and lots of repetition. When I started teaching phonics properly, it included a bazzillion reps of the letter patterns and their corresponding sounds. As with Porter's training, I thought the reps were boring, but I learned that if I rushed my students, they got angry with me and learning shut down. If I jumped to the next concept too quickly, they got angry at me and learning shut down. The wrath that rained down on me from my students when I botched my pacing caught my attention. I could NOT mess this up.
Having to deal with human students who were way more open about their disgruntlement when I bungled a lesson, I realized that Porter had been way more forgiving of my blunders than my human students. He HAD, through his reactivity, been trying to tell me that I was pushing him too hard, but I couldn't understand that and didn't listen. He liked the Fur Get Me Not trainer's methods because they worked for him. The steady and settled trainer understood him, and Porter responded to that.
Between my job and my dog, I realized that I was going to I need multiple modes of energy. The peppy, pushy, and dynamic teaching style that was my natural default and that I used with my AP students DID NOT work with my reading students OR my reactive dog. I had to take it down a notch. I needed to learn to create a different energy wavelength and exist on it when I was teaching my struggling readers, my emotionally disabled students, or my anxious dogs.
Calm energy, redundancy, and proper pacing WERE THE MAGIC and I didn't have the will yet for any of those things. Most people value thrills, swiftness, and dividends and I was one of them; very few people can sit still and do the plain ol', unexciting foundation building that needs to be done to make progress with older struggling readers and reactive dogs. It's a highly underrated skill. It looks easy but it's not. You have to be extremely consistent-no exceptions. You have to sit with the boring and accept it.
I had been so worried that I wasn't being aggressive enough in Porter's training that I went overboard. I did the same thing with my struggling readers. I feared Porter was going to be stuck forever snapping at every dog in his vicinity. I feared my district would graduate more illiterate students. I pushed hard. This dynamic was a primary driver for the the disconnect between Porter and I and my students and I. There was little trust between all parties as a result.
I came out of this crucible understanding the value of exactly matching the difficulty of the task to the readiness of the learner and not the readiness of the teacher or the handler or the owner or the parent. It takes a strong backbone to defend the needs of the learner against the understandable, yet unreasonable, expectations of everyone else.
My motto right now for teaching phonics and anxious dogs is "dull and repetitive gets it done." I can accept the boredom because I know what is on the other side: ability, confidence, joy. It all comes after the reps when the learner achieves whatever it was that they were reaching for. It comes when we can actually use the ordinary skills we learned to read full-length books or hike calmly, etc.
Porter went far in his training once I took the pressure off of him to Be Perfect Now. Since he didn't have reach Golden Retriever status anymore per the standards of his Mommy Dearest, he relaxed and executed a lot more positive crossings while walking around the neighborhood. Now, at age 8, he can walk by any old dog even if they are having a full meltdown. No Big Deal. He can exist in a melee of up to nine other dogs and mind his own business.
The paradox with struggling readers and reactive dogs is this: you need to go slow to go fast. You can't do nothing. You can't do everything. You need to do some things carefully and slowly.
The money I spent on training was ultimately worth it. It was for facility, the controlled environment, the trainer feedback, the appropriate timing, the encouragement, AND the variety of stuffed dogs. DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE REALISTIC STUFFED DOGS ARE?
Total acceptance of my rescue boi remains elusive. I still put Porter in situations he doesn't enjoy because of my own selfish wants. And sometimes he is such a Good Boy now that I forget there are certain things that make him really miserable. I do this way less than I used to, though, so that's something.
We're both learning-slowly and steadily how to behave around dogs and people.
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