We've been working hard on our mat work as well as a new trick which is a headshake that we are still working on shaping. All fun stuff. :)
My poor BC has been acting like a bit of a stress head recently (he can be quite easily stressed generally). One particular thing that he doesn't seem to like recently is his harness being put on- he'll run into another room, with his ears flat and tail low and look at it with wide eyes, showing all calming signals possible and being very appeasementish. He'll come to me for cheese and let me pop it on him (and then he run to the front door ready to go)- but he definitely isn't 100% happy with it. Alot of signs of conflict there. Think he wants to go out but isn't 100% with the harness. He has no anxiety about going out, as he'll happy run to me when I get his lead out and will go and sit by the door. He'll also fetch his lead (I taught this as a trick for fun). He used to show similar behaviours with his old harness, which I realised was uncomfortable for him to wear as it rubbed. This one certainly doesn't so my feeling is that this is rehearsed behaviour?
I'm going to have a go at reconditioning his emotional response to it appearing and then gradually being put on. The harness will become a predictor for lots of cheese. I'll eventually raise the reinforcement criteria once he realises that harness appearance= food so that he has to offer me his neck/head to pop it on with, before he gets his cheese. I found a great video, featuring Jean Donaldson and her dog Buffy, which shows how she taught her dog Buffy to LOVE wearing her gentle leader headcollar.
"If you're good I'll let you wear the Gentle Leader!"
Watching and looking for the video, reminded me of a fantastic website that I found a while back which has been designed for people with fearful or anxious dogs, to give them ideas and resources to help their dogs.
Just thought I'd share the link in case it's of interest to anyone.
www.fearfuldogs.com
Going to get my camera out and film some clicker work and post it on here at some point.
ETA: Our first harness clicker session from earlier today. What a transformation! It took him several minutes to decide to come towards the harness (I put it on the floor). At first I clicked him for just looking at it. Then I raised the criteria to sniffing and targeting of any sort (holding with mouth or just nose touching)- that way I could be 100% sure that he knew what the reinforcement was for. I free shaped the nose target behaviour through the loop of the harness! He even started offering me duration! All in one session! Clever collie :D
(I couldn't hold the clicker whilst filming so am just using a verbal marker in the vid)
:)
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