The Katzke Dog Diary

With the help of a experienced behaviorist, we have localized Eowyn and Henry’s issues down to two treatable areas.

Eowyn’s main obstacle is called “high reactivity.” When she sees something that triggers a reaction, she loses conscious control of herself. It’s equivalent to a panic attack in a human.

Henry is a charm to train for obedience, but his separation anxiety is a beast to deal with. With a human child that was afraid of being apart from someone, the most common methods of dealing with it are to talk it out and demonstrate how the child is going to be OK even if mom or dad isn’t home. But Henry can’t talk, and I’m not sure that he would understand it because his fear is so deep rooted that he doesn’t have any control over it.

With Eowyn, our training plan is to first practice getting her attention consistently in a controlled outdoor and indoor environment. It’s a constant process to ‘dull’ her reaction specifically without triggering it… because triggering it would reinforce it. So the first step is the classical “click and treat” step — get the dog to look at you, and reward them. One of my friends who competes with obedience had an awesome idea — she holds the treat in her mouth when she clicks, because the dog will always watch where the treat comes from. Then she spits it out and the dog will grab it. This will be ongoing and I’ll record progress here. The behaviorist also recommended this Book about training reactive dogs, which I’ve got on order at Amazon and plan to buy as soon as I’ve figured out what else I need to buy in this order.

With Henry, the behaviorist I’m working with has developed a training plan that has a first step that I’d never heard before. Basically, I’m to ignore Henry when he’s in the house with me. Don’t give him extra attention outside of training exercises. This breaks my heart. I’d prefer to have him cuddled up asleep on my feet or in my lap, and I enjoyed that he sought attention from me (where Eo’s much more like a cat and would rather be off sleeping somewhere soft… … unless she’s hungry). The behaviorist might be right, though… and I’d try anything at this point to find a long-term solution for Henry. Ignoring him is HARD, though. Tonight he was curled up in the corner of the kitchen. I watched him lay down and his legs were shaking, which he does when he’s close to panic. Rough. They’re my kids, damnit!

More progress posts and details as time allows…