the recovering reactive dog

We recently moved, and while talking to someone on the phone, I mentioned that Maya hasn't been out for a walk in the past week.  The person was shocked -- dogs need walks!  And besides, they added, "haven't you trained Maya out of that?"

"That" was reactivity, or anxiety, I guess.  Which I've never claimed to have eliminated with training, but it's a common expectation.  People expect training to effect cures, otherwise what's the point?  And besides, stories of marvelous behavior reversals abound.

When you are beginning the complicated task of living with a "dog with issues," inspirational stories probably help with motivation.  Stories about dogs who had serious behavior challenges, but who were helped with training, time, treats, love, medication, and so forth, and are now normal.  It is very encouraging to think that all your hard work will pay off with a cured dog.

If I crack open the pages of any of my numerous books about reactive/fearful/aggressive dogs, or go online, I can find half a dozen similar stories at my fingertips.  The details change, of course, because these are largely true stories.  People really do adopt dogs with issues and then find ways to help the dogs function normally.  Sometimes, the dogs even go on to do therapy work, help a special child, win blue ribbons, or other heartwarming and remarkable achievements.  Their stories get told because they are inspiring, because they are often beautiful, and because we love a story with a happy ending.  

I love a happy ending too, but I have come to distrust this story.  Because if these are the only stories we tell about "dogs with issues," we are being neither fair nor truthful.  And if a total cure is the only outcome that we understand as a success, many of us are doomed to perpetual failure.  I have owned Maya for four and a half years, and spent much of that time trying hard to help her feel safer in the world, but she is far from being cured. Maya can walk down a quiet residential street and appear "normal," she cannot walk up to a stranger and sniff them while giving the same impression.

I suppose it's possible that I really have failed, and am trying to make excuses...that I am simply not the trainer Maya needs, and that with someone else she would be cured.  It has also been suggested to me that Maya is a particularly challenging dog, a suggestion with at least a sliver of truth.  Mostly, I think it's just that real life is a lot more complicated than the simple "cure" narrative: there is more than one kind of journey that we take with our "dogs with issues."

Maya will never be a therapy dog, help any children, win ribbons, or otherwise fit into an inspiring narrative.  She may not ever be comfortable greeting strangers, or making new friends, but she's still a very loved dog.  She is currently curled up in a ball with her nose pressed firmly against her anus, which I'm certain is a happy ending by any canine standard.

And, for the record, Maya will get to go out for walks soon enough.  She has a huge yard, things to chase, things to chew, and an entire new house to explore: her need for exploration, exercise, and novelty are likely being met in full, without outings.  Walks can wait until her confidence rebounds and she is ready to handle a little more.

it's not all smiles

Maya's primary emotions: happiness, worry, curiosity, and wanting me to throw it right now.

chilly morning walk

I hope there are cookies in Mordor

fall

trust

All relationships require trust.  I think that it is futile to try to change the behavior of our dogs without building a trusting relationship with them, and I think it is essential that we form trusting relationships with the people helping us with our dogs too. 

At an event a few weeks ago, a friend presented information about helping reactive dogs.  I attended (and assisted), and answered some questions during the seminar, so several people approached me afterward to chat.  Some of these people were looking for training advice, some were trying to understand the material better, some were just wondering how I got involved.  I did my best to refer, elucidate, and answer what I could.

I like meeting other people who own reactive dogs.  It is often affirming, usually interesting.  One person in particular reminded of myself (some years back) as she told me, with tears standing in her eyes, that this seminar had finally made her feel hopeful about her own dog.  I understand how much it hurts to have your heart bound up in an animal who seems likely to shatter under the slightest pressure.

Since she was asking me questions about finding a professional trainer, I took her over to a trainer I knew in the room.  I wanted to make sure she got an in-person introduction so they could see if they hit it off, and so that she'd be more motivated to give the trainer a call in the future.  And then I did a really stupid thing.

When I introduced them, I tried to give the woman a little compliment.  It was meant to be clever, but came out awkwardly, something about how I wanted to introduce them because my trainer friend "deserves good clients."  Or maybe I said "fun clients," yikes...that's even worse.  And instantly, I knew I'd blown it.  Because the introduction wasn't about the trainer's needs, it was about the very real needs of this woman, but I'd framed it all wrong.  Worse, I'd made it sound like we were evaluating her for "good client" status (or entertainment value)...not the reassurance or empathy she needed, in her obviously sensitive state.

The first time a trainer betrayed my trust, I waited a year and a half before contacting another one...not wasted time, but time that could have been better spent.  Come to think of it, that trainer called me "fun" too.  I hope I didn't do something similar to this woman, rendered vulnerable by her love for her dog.  I wish I had her contact info so that I could make a better attempt...I apologized in the moment, but the whole conversation got off on the wrong foot as a result, and I don't know what her take-away emotion was.  Probably mixed, at best, which may just be inevitable sometimes.

Owning a dog with serious behavior challenges is hard.  Not everyone ends up nakedly fragile along the way, but a good number of us do.  I never forget that, but I wish I had a more nimble way with words when it came to actually talking to people.  Or maybe I just wish that when I opened my mouth, my first instinct was to try to sound kind, rather than trying to sound clever. 

Oh well.  Nothing to be done right now except learn from the experience.  It's not like I don't live with a daily reminder that mistakes are an inevitable part of learning.  Or, in Maya's case, something cute you can do for the camera.

Under?

Edible?

Irrelevant?

 Am I getting closer?

Ta-da.

a dog for all seasons

This was Maya on Monday:

And this was Maya this morning:

Maya is a happy girl in any season, but especially so if I am outside goofing around with her.

Monday Maya

relegated to the backseat

Maya had a very boring week.  That is because I was recovering from a cold, so that all my available energy was caught up with the things I'd let slip while sick.  Sometimes, that's how it is -- the endless quest to keep Maya entertained has to take a backseat to other things in life.

Here is Maya in an actual backseat.

But I did do one fun thing last week: I bought a cheap lunge whip at a local feed store, tied a toy to the end of it, and thus made a giant lure toy.  The official term is "flirt pole."

I tried to take some photos of Maya galloping after it, but they all came out like this.

I guess you get the idea.  Maya thinks it is wonderful, at least for a few minutes.  Then she abruptly loses interest.  I have some ideas on why this is, and what I can do to change it, but in the meantime, I'm just working on enjoying those few minutes.

This is what Maya looks like after she has lost interest.  No one can ever accuse Maya of hiding the way she feels about anything -- she is a wonderfully transparent individual.

 

sunrise Maya

talking to strangers

Maya can sometimes eat cookies that strangers toss her way.  I should be more specific -- Maya almost never has an issue eating the food, it's just that this particular game runs into some problems, so we only play it sometimes.

The first problem has to do with distance.  Right now, Maya feels comfortable around a stationary human at conversational distances, but not closer than about 8-10 feet while she is sitting or lying down (this is huge progress for Maya, of course).  If the person has treats and accidentally drops one inside that zone, Maya will still want to eat it, but going to get it would push her beyond her comfort zone.

That's not a huge problem, because I can simply walk her away while the decoy recovers the treat.  The real problem is that Maya chooses to squirm too close when she knows the person has treats.  Maya knows that when I have treats, she can lie at my feet and gaze at me and expect to get her share (I reward this shamelessly).  Being a clever dog, Maya has decided to see if this works on scary strangers.  This means she zips ahead of me, lies down, and then crawls in a wiggly fashion toward them until she is far too close for her own comfort.  This conflict between desire and discomfort produces inner turmoil.

I have more trouble managing this problem because if I physically stop her, Maya will still crawl forward until her leash is at maximum tightness.  Which means that the closer she gets to a scary stranger, the tighter her leash is, which is all kinds of counterproductive. We can avoid that issue by using barriers (strangers feeding Maya through fences or car windows), or by using a mat (giving Maya a target spot at a safe distance), but I think the best solution is to continue to do other things that increase Maya's comfort level at close proximity to people, so that as she wiggles closer she simply feels safer.  We're working on it.

The other problem with the cookies-from-strangers game is the one that actually fascinates me, because it tells me something about my dog that I didn't already know.  This problem has to do with barking.

Maya barks when getting cookies from strangers for three basic reasons: fear, habit, and internal conflict.  Fear is what happens when she gets way too close or the decoy does something unexpected, and the barking looks/sounds very aggressive (for lack of a better term).  Habitual barking tends to happen when Maya temporarily can't think of something better to do, or when she is walking away from something and has gotten in the habit of tossing one last insult over her shoulder.  It tends to be brief and lack emotional investment.

Internal conflict, such as the situation I describe above where Maya voluntarily crawls too close to the source of her fascination/fear, produces a different kind of barking.  It looks and sounds exactly like demand barking (AKA attention barking), which is what dogs do when they are being pushy and trying to get a treat by yelling.  Higher in pitch than other barks, but not as high as a panicked scream (such as those Maya emits when she thinks I am going hiking without her), and with a very insistent tone.
Seeing this, a light bulb went off over my head.  OH!

One of the things that has always puzzled me about Maya is that her fear of other people seems to be very profound -- it is incredibly difficult for her to interact with them at all.  But she managed to interact with me and Brian pretty much from the beginning, and I saw very few signs of anything like that level of discomfort.

But Maya spent 3-4 months after coming home barking at us, usually when we were sitting still.  At the time, I thought it was attention barking.  I had good reasons for doing so!  Attention reinforced it, for one thing, and it clearly looked & sounded like attention barking -- it was never, ever threatening.  Maya had no impulse control or frustration tolerance, so I thought she was just endlessly screaming for attention (or any reaction, really) from me.

Now I get it.  Maya was conflicted.  She desired my presence and my absence (and could cope with neither).  She wanted attention but found it difficult to handle.  It was almost exactly the same emotional dynamic that underlies the fear/fascination dilemma produced by a stranger with cookies. No wonder it took so long to extinguish, and no wonder none of the recommended means of halting attention barking helped.  Everything I did just made Maya more conflicted!

I love sudden insights.  As weird as it may sound, it makes me feel a lot better to see clear signs that Maya was afraid of us.  I've always assumed she must have been, but the scarcity of evidence puzzled me.  Realizing that the barking had mixed motivations is reassuring, because if Maya can find a way to balance her attraction and fear when it comes to us, then there's even more reason to think that she'll continue to find that balance with other people too, even if the process looks a little different. 

One of these days, getting some treats from a stranger isn't going to be such a big deal.  That would be good if my goal were for Maya to make more friends, of course, but what it is really good for is the ultimate ambition that my dog and I both share: more cookies for Maya!

Monday Maya