Shyla in the forest

Shyla is continuing to make huge strides with our new training. To be honest, it's not really all that "new" - it's primarily that my trainer reminded me that Shyla is so sensitive that she needs me to focus on reinforcing good behavior rather than reprimanding her for "bad" behavior. Otherwise, her fearfulness dominates her personality, making her more prone to misbehave.

So, I continue to act like it is tons of fun when she finds random wildlife body parts in the forest. I don't mind the hooves and foot bones as much as other parts. Shyla seems to find an incredible number of hooves next to the trails.

At the start of each ride, to prime Shyla's state of mind, we've been doing fun tricks. Shyla loves to add a tongue flick to "waving", which always makes me laugh. But, I do remind myself that tongue flicks are a sign of low-level stress. She usually stops tongue flicking after a few well-rewarded waves.

Another "trick" that Shyla loves is picking up things that I drop. This morning, she "found" my neck warmer that I'd dropped on the trail (yes, it was cold enough for me to wear full winter gear!).

This is a skill that I've been grateful for quite a few times this summer. I've had a few severe exacerbations of my spine pain, during which it is agonizing to pick up items from the ground. At those times, I am so glad that Shyla adores picking up things that I drop. When Shyla hears something hit the floor or ground, she comes running, hoping to have the chance to pick it up for me. What a wonderful girl!

In general, with the change in my approach to training, Shyla is behaving about a zillion times better when she's off-leash than she did a few weeks ago. It shows me how much my "attitude" affects her behavior. Reinforcing good behavior is much more fun than reprimanding bad behavior for me too so it's a win-win situation.

I know how much wildlife is around, so her re-found love of staying close to me in the forest is a huge relief. To emphasize the wildlife being all around us, my wildlife camera captured photos of a coyote right next to a mountain biking trail that we use regularly. In terms of my dogs' safety, coyotes scare me more than any other animal. I am thrilled that coyotes are flourishing but I am very cautious about my dogs encountering them.

Isn't that a handsome coyote? I think so but I hope that my dogs never tangle with him and his pack-mates.

Recalls - the most exciting kind of training!

Today is the first positive training bloghop. It's been a long day but I really want to participate because I love training my dogs using positive techniques. By positive training, I mean training that mainly involves rewarding good behavior and involves very little "punishment". Thus, I train a dog to come when called by giving them incredibly great rewards for sprinting to me at top speed. I've used other training techniques in the past, and none of them work as well as positive training, especially for off-leash work when I need my dog to have very high motivation to listen to me.

Every time my dogs and I go for a hike, I practice recalls with them. At the start of their off-leash time, I leave them in a "stay", and I walk far away to call them. The Labraduo is in a "sit-stay" in the photo below.

They both learned "stay" very soon after arriving at our home and can stay reliably.

R literally shakes with excitement before I call the dogs to me. I can see him shaking from a distance. So, when I call, he bolts toward me like a rocket.

At the start of a hike, I do a number of these structured recalls, getting the dogs mentally ready for more freedom. Sometimes, I have them stay a distance apart from each other before a recall, which seems to be harder for them. In fact, if Shyla is in a stay behind R, she sometimes tries to sneak closer to R while my back is turned. Fortunately, her bell alerts me to her sneaky move!

I motivate them for recalls by having a treat bonanza when they get to me. Both dogs get lots and lots of treats when they arrive, and I praise them excitedly. I think that you can see from these photos that both dogs are very motivated to get to me fast when I call them.

I find that practicing recalls is really fun! It feels as if the dogs and I are playing an exciting game rather than doing "onerous training".

After the opening series of structured recalls, I let the dogs run around together as I hike but I periodically throw in a recall, to help keep their focus on me.

Of course, my dogs are not perfect in real life situations but they're pretty good. R will recall away from wildlife with almost 100% reliability - I still smile with glee when I see him turn away from a deer to come to me. Shyla is not as good as R yet but she's doing very well for a young dog. If one of them ignores a recall, I repeat more structured recalls like we did at the start of off-leash time. Usually, that works to sharpen up their responses.

But, I do accept that there are situations that are simply too difficult for a dog to be off-leash and obedient. For example, if wildlife like coyotes, deer, bears, bobcats or elk are close enough that I can see them, I think it's prudent to rely on a leash rather than on the dogs' training! I also tend to leash the dogs when their body language tells me that they've caught scent of something extremely exciting. Around here, that "exciting scent" could be a mountain lion eating a dead deer, and I sure don't want my dogs barging in on that!

However, those situations are rare. Normally, I can count on a very enthusiastic response when I call the dogs, like Shyla leaping a small rock to get to me this morning!

Shyla's Winter Training Plans

In the winter, our agility course is swamped by snow. It never melts until April so I am thinking about my training goals for Shyla this winter. I love training her, and she loves it too. That's the main reason why I plan to continue some training this winter.

I've been mulling over the socialization issue and discussing it with experts. At one point in the fall, I posted about an incredible trip to town when she was afraid of no one and excited to try new things - it seemed as if she'd been "transformed". Unfortunately, it didn't last - within 2 weeks after that, we'd had a string of trips to town during which various little things spooked her. She's still leaps and bounds ahead of where she was a year ago but I've decided to modify my approach.

Over the first year that she lived with us, I tried to take Shyla to town multiple times per week - in an attempt to overcome her lack of socialization as a puppy. It worked to a huge extent. Remember that, on the first occasion that I tried to take her into town, she collapsed onto a sidewalk, paralyzed by fear, and lost control of her bladder. Now, her signs of fear are far more subtle, and I know them well so I can help her when the fear starts to creep up on her.

She can get spooked by the most mundane things - and she remembers the places where she was scared with great precision. If she gets scared on one street corner in town, she will cower past that corner for a long time thereafter. So, I've learned to stay away from the "spooky" spots for months afterwards - and then she seems to forget.

After much thought, I've decided that I'm going to accept Shyla's socialization where it is right now - with the knowledge that she'll probably continue to slowly improve just from everyday life experiences. She's generally a very happy dog. She's a mountain dog at heart - but all of our hard work has made her capable of going to town when needed without it being traumatic. I'm happy with that situation. After all, I don't love going to town either!

So, for the winter, I'm planning to work on Shyla's greetings when we see people on our mountain trails. She still sometimes gets scared of people on the trails - and I simply encourage her to "go around" those people without greeting them. However, the opposite extreme happens too - she decides that someone seems very sweet and she jumps on them! To deal with that, I've been trying to closely supervise her interactions with people who she appears to like, requiring "four on the floor" for her to be petted. I think we're making some progress. It's a tricky issue because I don't want to discourage Shyla from being outgoing, given her history, but I think it's doable.

For the winter, I want to teach her some more tricks plus a few things that will be useful in agility. The next photo shows a trick that I taught her last winter, and she adores doing it! I don't even have to ask her to do it... she just "offers" it.

This is another trick from last winter - taking and holding an object.

So, what shall we do this winter? Hmm...

We'll definitely keep practicing recalls every single day. They are so important around the wildlife in our world. We'll also keep working on her "stay". She now will "stay" with me out of sight for extended periods (without any people to distract her). I plan to add more distractions to her extended stays.

This winter, I've already starting teaching her two new tricks: balancing a treat on her nose and spinning. She's not ready to show either of them for a camera yet!

I'm also thinking of teaching her to heel on either side, and to switch sides either in front of me or behind me, depending on which I ask for. That's something that will help us when we play on our home agility course. She already knows how to heel on one side but the rest of it will be new.

Do you have any suggestions for other fun tricks?

It looks like Shyla is getting tired just thinking about all this training. But, the truth is that she loves it as much as I do!

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...

Building Confidence

As I've talked about many times here, I use positive training techniques with my dogs, rewarding behaviors that I like and ignoring ones that I don't like. With Shyla, I never deviate from this reward-based system because she's so sensitive.

I'm what professional trainers call a "cross-over trainer" because I first learned about dog training back when the predominant technique for training a dog was to use aversives, like "corrections" with a prong collar or a shock collar. Indeed, I trained a search and rescue dog using primarily negative techniques. Fortunately, that dog was afraid of nothing, and she flourished despite heavy-handed training.

I shudder to think what would have happened with Shyla if I'd tried to train her using punishment-based learning. As many of you know, Shyla is sensitive to the point of being fearful. Indeed, when I first met her a year ago, she was afraid of many normal aspects of everyday life, partly due to her sensitive nature and partly due to lack of socialization to the real world. If I'd tried to "force" her to take on her fears, I suspect that it would have been disasterous. She wouldn't have gained the confidence that she now has.

Even now, if I use an angry voice in Shyla's presence, she slinks away. For example, the other night, R was up to mischief. He knocked over my water glass while I ate dinner. Then, as I tried to quickly clean up the water, our black "puppy" tried to steal my dinner. I yelled to stop R from inhaling my entire dinner in one fell swoop. A quick yell is something that I can do with R that I'll probably never be able to do without really scaring Shyla.

Over the past year, I've spent innumerable hours with Shyla, using positive training techniques, to help her learn to live happily in the bustling world of humans. It's been so rewarding.

Recently, I've noticed another change in her that shows a trust that is new. She likes to look me straight in the eyes. I took this photo at sunrise this morning, and her trusting eyes warm my heart.

I feel confident saying that, if I'd used the old punishment-based training techniques on Shyla, she wouldn't trust me so much now.

And she wouldn't be so thrilled to "offer" tricks that we've worked on together!

Shyla is a poster-dog for one who would have wilted under the pressure of old training techniques. I'm so glad that I learned about a different approach before Shyla sprinted into my life!

Life Marches On

We've had a deluge for the past few days, a huge contrast to the recent hot and dry weather that had the locals scanning the horizon for smoke plumes. I know that I should be grateful for the rain, but on this day, waking up to gray skies and rain was not what my spirit needed. Do you want to guess who showered me in canine love and helped me get moving? Yep, it was this girl - my gift.

On rough days, my motto is one pedal stroke at a time... just get on my bike and pedal into the mountains, and life will look better. It always works, at least to some extent.

We avoided the worst of the morning deluge by using the time-honored technique of procrastinating. When we finally exited the dry house, the world was still drenched so Shyla was quickly soaked. Then, to my delight, the sun shined for about 30 seconds between rain showers, just long enough for me to take one photo of Shyla in it.

Mother Nature had some beauty for me to discover. I spotted a bumblebee finding nectar on a Monument Plant (a.k.a., "Green Gentian"), a member of the Gentian family that lives as a leafy rosette on the ground for 50 years or so before its one big hurrah - the year that it sprouts to about 3' tall, blooms, and then dies. An exceptional number of Monument plants are blooming this year. The bees adore them.

Purple flowers are starting to take over the world as we progress through summer. These rain-drenched flowers caught my eye during our whole morning ride. They seem to be blooming everywhere.

After our ride, we headed into town for Shyla's socialization training. Wonderful R joined us to be a calming influence, after a rather long hiatus from training for Shyla. His presence helped her immensely. It especially helped her with meeting strangers. R has never seen a stranger who he didn't want to meet - and that attitude seemed to rub off on Shyla.

I feel like R is our link to the past - he knew and loved K - and now he's helping raise his little sister. That makes him a link in the chain from our past to our present. Recently, I've come to believe that R has become less of a cracker dog because he has felt the need to rise to the role of big brother for Shyla. I love the new noble R, although I also love seeing him go wild, every now and then!

Today, my heart has been with sweet K but I've also realized how much I've grown to love Shyla. K's unconditional love helped prepare me to be Shyla's rock. And, today, Shyla reversed the relationship, and she was my rock. Life marches on.

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!

Springtime Sunset

We went directly from winter to spring in a few days. Look at the green grass!

We were all out for a sunset hike yesterday evening. It was cold (it snowed here on Thursday) but the sun sets so late. It's a wonderful time of year.

A huge variety of flowers have burst into bloom since it suddenly became springtime. This is a Plantain Leaf Buttercup (Ranunculus alismifolius) blooming in the moisture of an aspen grove.

These flowers are blooming despite cold temperatures at night (almost freezing) and cold winds, like last evening. Shyla smelled something in the wind.

I asked her to look at me, which she did (barely) while continuing to sniff. R was acting mature, for once in his life!

Shyla continued her multi-tasking, peeking at me out of the corner of her eye while scenting in the wind.

Then, just as the sun set, she turned reddish in its glow. It's not the same red as in the desert but I still love it.

It's springtime, but not quite summertime here yet. We love the long days, and we can't wait for the warmer weather!

Since it's become springtime, our agility course has finally emerged from under the snow. I've started teaching Shyla how to negotiate the obstacles, and I'll share some things about that soon. The short story is that she's learning very fast - she's even doing a modified version of the teeter-totter already!

Also, Shyla's socialization training is continuing to move in the right direction, one small step at a time. It's been a long road, and it's not over yet. But, I've learned so very much about how to look at the world from her point of view.