Spider Steps

So now I've posted about the who and the why but not about the how. How do you help a fear-aggressive dog? Well like you would if you were an alcoholic you work steps. So Chingu is on what I like to call the spider step program.

We found a great trainer and a great behaviorist and I'm going to explain it like the behaviorist did to me.

Lets say you are deathly afraid of spiders. Then lets say someone puts you in a room full of spiders. Whats going to happen? Well you're probably going to act out in some way such as screaming. Now lets say someone punches you in the face each time you scream. Eventually you will stop screaming but you'll still be terrified of spiders.

Its like that with Chingu. To him people (especially men) are big giant spiders that scare him. His reaction is to bite to make the spider go away. Now in the past this has been an effective tool for him so if it ain't broke why fix it? But if I were to punish him every time he tried to bite he might stop but he'd still be afraid of spiders/people.

So going back to you and the spiders. If instead of getting punched in the face every time you screamed around a spider I sat you down and gave you $100 for just looking at a picture of a spider you'd probably stop screaming. But not only would you stop screaming you might even start to feel ok about the spiders, or at least OK about pictures of spiders. The goal is not to just get the behavior to stop but also how you feel about the trigger to the behavior. Because if how you feel never changes then one day when you know you wont get punched in the face you might start screaming again. Or it might be that even if you know you'll get punched in the face you're just so scared you can't help but scream.

Thats my goal with Chingu. I don't want the behavior to just stop, I want him to feel safe around people/spiders. So instead of a $100 he likes hot dogs. So what our first step was is we'd go people watching. We would stand at a very far distance and every time he looked at a person he would get a piece of hot dog. We would do this everyday several times a day for a week. Then if I felt he was comfortable we'd move a little closer and each week we'd take a step closer.

Now you don't want to move too fast with something like this. Sometimes its hard because you think he's got it, lets keep going. But Chingu has a threshold of whats acceptable and you don't want to accidentally cross that threshold so you need to make sure each step of the way he's been fully desensitized and counter-conditioned. That might mean taking an extra week on a step if you're not sure, but thats OK.

Anyways right now we're at the step where people still don't touch him but instead toss him treats. We've just started this and instead of taking a week on this one we might take two. Ideally after this then people will be able to feed him treats through his muzzle and then eventually pat him on the head while giving him treats and maybe one day touch his body. We might never get there, but we'll take it as far as it goes.

But I'm proud to report that there has been progress also in the additional training we do aside from the desensitization/counter-conditioning. I've been working for weeks to teach him the down command and while recovering from his neuter he finally got it! Not only that but while tossing treats Chris asked him for a down and he gave it to him! Thats huge progress for him as down is a very vulnerable position for a dog and for him to feel comfortable enough to follow the command is real progress. So yay Chingu!