A Huge Breakthrough for Shyla

Something extraordinary has happened. Shyla, who was so afraid of strangers and most of the world when she arrived with us 14 months ago, has become a rambunctious outgoing dog!

We went to a training class yesterday, one that we haven't attended since before the floods. As soon as we arrived at the park where the class was being held, I could tell that Shyla was happier and more outgoing than I've ever seen in her in town. She didn't shy away from the screaming children in the parking lot or the stroller that we passed as we exited the car. In fact, she handled many of her former fear triggers (even skateboards!) incredibly smoothly throughout our time in that park. Unbelievable!

Then, when we arrived in the training group, Shyla acted like a rambunctious Lab puppy, desperately wanting to meet every person. When a person paid attention to her, she almost wiggled out of her skin with happiness. In fact, my biggest training issue was preventing her from jumping on people!

It was truly incredible to watch Shyla. I knew that she was acting goofy and out of control. However, honestly, I didn't care that she was being "badly behaved". I was too busy being thrilled to see the real Shyla finally shine through. I always knew how loving she is but I was never sure, until now, that she'd find the courage to show her true nature to people who she didn't know well.

I give my trainer tons of credit for this breakthrough. My trainer taught me about never forcing Shyla to "face her fears" but rather teaching Shyla that she always had the choice of retreating if she felt scared. It's a whole new way of training fearful dogs, and it really works! It lets the fearful dog decide how fast they want to learn about the world. It puts the process in their control.

We went to town again today for my physical therapy appointment, and I saw that yesterday was no fluke. Shyla was a social butterfly, wanting to make friends with everyone in the waiting room. I started the "next phase" of training which is to teach Shyla how to have "appropriate interactions" with people. Because she hasn't wanted to approach strangers until now, I haven't yet taught her how to behave when she meets people. It seemed today as if she will learn fast. Sitting earns her lots of pats while acting like a wild puppy makes people back away. She was sitting like crazy by the end of today, wanting people to pat her!

I am so proud of my girl. She's faced her demons and she's come so far. And, in the process, she's won my heart completely.

Last, but not least, I want to send the Power of the Paw to our friend Tweedles. She has been very sick, and we want to lend our hearts in support of her and her family. Stay strong, Tweedles, we are all with you. We took this photo especially for you...

Coping with fear

It seems that Shyla has hit a serious fear period, and I'm not sure why. She had a couple of skittish visits to town, in places that she seemed to have "mastered" in recent months. At first, I thought that her fear was just a fluke and would pass easily. After all, she was still doing wonderfully at home, with our training and with life in general.

Then, I took her to one of her very favorite places, my physical therapy clinic, thinking that it would be a fun way for her to ease back into the outside world. She was not her usual outgoing self there, either. She exhibited great caution as she approached her long-term human friends there. Usually, she greets them with huge enthusiasm. At the clinic, she wouldn't even consider approaching strangers (usually, she's the "clinic mascot" who makes all the patients laugh and relax), and she visibly startled at the slightest noise in the clinic.

I'll admit that I hate seeing her regress like this. However, she's taught me some important lessons over the past nine months. The biggest one is that trying to "push through the fear" is not the right strategy. My personality is one that confronts tough things, and keeps confronting them until I conquer them. In the past, I've transferred that strategy to our dogs. It worked okay with our dogs, even if it was a tough-love approach, until I met K. K's fears were minor compared to Shyla's but confronting them was absolutely the wrong strategy. With the help of our great trainer, I learned about how to teach K to try new things by rewarding her for any sign of confidence.

With Shyla, the same lesson, that pushing her to confront scary things is a bad idea, has been cemented into place. Fortunately, training methods for fearful and reactive dogs have evolved hugely since the days when I was training K to cope with her fears. Everything needs to be at Shyla's pace, and she always is given a choice as to whether to approach something scary or not. So, even though I don't understand the reasons for Shyla's current setback, I do know that she needs to go slowly right now.

We're taking a little break from town training and letting Shyla live in the comfort of her home and our trails without the stress of town training for a little while. We skipped our training class today to enjoy the mountains and the wildflowers.

At home (that includes everywhere except town), she is happy to greet strangers, to learn how to do scary agility obstacles like the teeter-totter, to remain sound asleep while we vacuum right next to her, and even snooze on the deck while the Runner uses a chain saw to drop huge trees by the house. It's amazing how calm and confident she is at home.

I guess that you could say that we're taking the time to smell the flowers while Shyla chills out before our next visit to town!

What an amazing girl she is... I am grateful beyond belief that she's come into my life. I'm learning so much from her - about the importance of being patient in the face of adversity. That's a good lesson for me to apply to myself - I am not always so kind to myself!

Thank goodness that we both love nature so very much, providing us with refuge from the bustling insanity of the human world.

P.S. I found evidence today that Milton is still here (albeit limping). There may be some conflict underway, between limping Milton and the stronger new male bear. More soon....

Shyla's Socialization: An Update

I have been continuing the rewarding process of socializing Shyla. Since I never take out my camera in town when we are doing our training, I'll pepper this post with some photos taken near our home.

She's been with us now for about 9 months or about half of her life. She's come a very long way in those 9 months, reaching a point where I sometimes forget that she is much more sensitive (to the point of being fearful) than any dog I've had before. She wears a Thundershirt almost all the time when we are in town - and it seems to help her immensely.

Over those 9 months, Shyla has come to truly understand that she's part of our family. She loves her brother, and she adores the Runner.

Since our trip to the desert, we've been to town a bunch of times for training. "Town" is a very different place in the summer than the rest of the year. The sidewalks and parks are teeming with people, and many more children are out during the day than Shyla has ever seen. However, as long as I stay focused on her and helping her through the tough spots, she has done amazingly well in adapting to the mayhem.

We recently went to a park that where I've done socialization training with her many times over the past 9 months. Sometimes, I feel silly about it because there are so few people there. When we visited last week, insanity had erupted. Children ran screaming everywhere, scooters and bikes zoomed along the paths, older kids played lacrosse and ultimate frisbee, and men walked around talking loudly on cell phones (an odd trigger for fear in Shyla).

When I first saw the scene, I almost turned out of the parking lot and went someplace else. However, my trainer's advice has been to start challenging Shyla more. Shyla now trusts me enough that she bounces back rapidly after "losing it" in a fit of fear. A "fear fit" consists of darting movements, lowering her body, pinning her ears back, and hiding behind me. Fortunately, Shyla doesn't seem to have an aggressive bone in her body. Many dogs handle fear by being aggressive. Instead, Shyla shrinks and tries to be invisible.

On that day in the park, we "warmed up" by walking side streets near the park to let Shyla get used to the noises of children playing and screaming. Then, we started circling the park, gradually getting closer and closer, using our BAT techniques to let Shyla control how fast we approached. Believe it or not, we reached a point where we walked into the middle of the mayhem, ever so briefly, and Shyla was FINE!!! It was a proud moment.

Due to successes like that one, I find myself occasionally forgetting about Shyla's sensitivities. Yesterday, we went to a dog training class in town - and Shyla was a star. We attend the classes for socialization (the class is held in outdoor locations around town) - and Shyla was exuberant despite lots of potentially scary things like a rowdy off-leash dog (not from the class) who charged her.

After her happy-go-lucky demeanor in class, I swung by the vet's office to weigh Shyla - and she seemed happy to visit the office. Then, I decided to do a quick errand at a dog-friendly hardware store. I took Shyla in with me but forgot about her "issues" as I grabbed a few items quickly. As I shopped, she became skittish and scared. In my rush, I'd accidentally taken her too close to loud children, hand carts, and other scary things. My mistake... After I realized my error, I felt that I'd put her too far "over threshold" to make it into a good experience so I simply ran her to the car and forgot about the shopping.

The difference between the Shyla of 9 months ago and the Shyla of today is that we returned to the same store today, and she was fine. Nine months ago, she would have remained wary of that store for weeks. Of course, today, I was more careful than yesterday to let her "warm up" to the scene by approaching it at Shyla's pace, and I was much more generous in rewarding confident behavior. But, the fact that yesterday's bad experience was already erased from her memory banks was a huge victory!

I'm now fairly sure that Shyla will never be "bomb-proof" in town. I'll always need to be aware of her demeanor and how she's reacting to the world. However, she's come an incredible distance since I met her. Sometimes, strangers can't tell that she's a sensitive/fearful dog. In contrast, 9 months ago, everyone who met her could tell that I was rehabilitating a fearful dog.

It certainly has driven home the importance of socialization as a young puppy. We systematically socialized all of our previous puppies, and they have all been able to handle the bustle of town without problems. That includes R, who only visits town occasionally but handles it without a hitch every time.

Shyla missed out on that socialization program when she was young, and, having missed that window of time when her brain was primed to learn about a broad array of things, it's hard to make up for it. But, both she and I are doing our very best, and I think that she's become an incredibly happy dog!

Even if she doesn't continue to improve (which I think is unlikely), I am now comfortable with Shyla's level of confidence as she navigates the world, and that says a lot!

Shyla's Socialization

I have been continuing to work on socialization with Shyla multiple times per week. I do some of the training alone, some of it as part of a group class, and some during one-on-one lessons with our trainer. As always, I have no photos of Shyla during our in-town training, so I'll pepper this with photos from our outings in the mountains at home.

Although we still have up days and down days, Shyla is generally moving in a good direction. Until a month ago, her demeanor in town changed only gradually. To sum up where she was a month ago, everything on Earth still seemed foreign to her but she was gradually learning to cope with the alien planet that she'd landed on. However, she still seemed scared the majority of the time. At that time, she got diarrhea after every trip to town, telling me about the very high level of stress that town placed on her.

Then, about a month ago, she changed. It looks to me and the trainer as if Shyla no longer views the majority of our world as foreign. She walks along on sidewalks in town like a happy dog, observing the world but usually not bug-eyed and on the verge of a meltdown like she was before. She tries to meet most people, as long as they don't do certain scary behaviors like squatting down and looking her in the eyes. She no longer gets diarrhea after trips to town.

Because her demeanor is generally happy in town, I now can identify the exact things that still scare her. Prior to this, Shyla was constantly scared to some degree in town - so identifying the "triggers" was very hard. Now, she'll walk along happily until a sight or sound spooks her, and she immediately looks less confident or even spooks (i.e., darts backwards with her ears pinned back and her body low to the ground).

Apparently, Shyla's current state is a step in the rehabilitation of a dog who missed her puppy socialization that my trainer sees frequently. The dog finally (8 months later, in Shyla's case) accepts the world for what it is and knows what is normal. So, the dog functions beautifully until "abnormal" things occur - and then the "spook" is quite obvious.

The bottom line is that this change in Shyla is expected and good. Now, we can work on the specific things that Shyla is still afraid of - like men talking on cell phones, women with gravelly voices, construction equipment, skateboards, people squatting down to look in her eyes, etc. She now truly trusts me - so she'll literally look at me when she gets scared. I back her away from the scary thing, until she is at a distance that is comfortable for her, and then we watch the scary thing from a distance, using the principles of BAT (Behavioral Adjustment Training).

I never dreamed that this journey would take so long - and that the evolution would still be underway 8 months after Shyla joined our family. When Shyla first arrived, I thought that if I worked super hard, we could "solve" her fears very rapidly. I believe that an important step in the process was that I accepted that Shyla would have good days and bad days, and that she may or may not ever be really comfortable in the human world (but I love her regardless). When I adopted that attitude, I took the pressure off of both Shyla and me.

I'm still not sure of the final outcome in terms of whether Shyla will ever be totally comfortable in town. But, I do know that Shyla can navigate the human world without much fear if I guide her.

I also know that the journey has been incredibly rewarding. My trainer observed that Shyla's bond to me is much stronger than a "normal" dog's bond would be just 8 months after arriving in a new home. I feel very lucky in that regard, for my bond to her is just as strong. She is a gift.