Training Azza 9

Azza is still too young to begin any jump training (with larger breeds and especially with fast-growing leggy breeds like her, the cartilage growth plates at the ends of their long bones usually don’t close until 12-24 months of age; such dogs shouldn’t be doing repetitive jump drills until then because it can damage their joints) but that doesn’t mean that I can’t start some agility-flavored training with her.

Since she is so scared of everything new or different (simply moving furniture around can cause her to freak out for a couple of days), the big challenge is to find ways to reward her for any interaction with agility equipment. Actually doing the obstacle is a secondary objective right now. While it has been extremely successful for her, the “what is that?” command only takes us so far. Set up a jump or the tippy board in the living room and she won’t go near it. She drops to the floor, tries to slink away (hide in her crate or the kitchen), whines or growls, hackles up, and usually pees all over everything. I tried her with the tippy board back in April and it was a complete disaster. Panic doesn’t even begin to describe her reaction.

But I’m just as stubborn as she is so I decided that it had been a long quiet summer and it was now time to try her again. I started with a jump since I happened to have one out. And this time, rather than try to create a separate training session as I normally would, I thought I would ask her to work for her dinner. The dinner routine is a sacred one at CircusK9. The cats and the dogs make sure that I don’t ever forget what time it is (half an hour to dinner, 10 minutes to dinner, 5 minutes to dinner, feed us NOW!). Maybe you think it isn’t quite fair to mess with dinner time but I am convinced it is the only way to get through to dogs like Azza in a positive way.

I set up the jump, put a collar and leash on Azza, prepared their meal, and blocked the terriers in the kitchen with a baby gate. The first time I set up the gate blocking her from the kitchen, I had to physically restrain Azza from running away…to where, I don’t know, but she wanted to run and hide somewhere. Even with the bar on the ground, it was extremely difficult to convince her to approach the jump then pass through the uprights. I fed her the dinner meal by hand, one handful each time she walked over the jump bar.  

I continued this routine for the next several days for both morning and evening meals (except that I stopped feeding her by hand [too messy] and starting letting her take a mouthful or two directly from her bowl). I even used the bowl on the ground as a target.

And after four days of this new routine, I am happy to report that she will now clear a 12” bar when I am on the same side of the jump as her and when I am on the opposite side of the jump (a send over the jump versus a call over the jump). And she will do it with me on either side of her. And she will now do it off leash (which implies that she will hold her position in front of the jump and not try to run away). She doesn’t “know” a jump command or what jumping really is or even what the point of this activity is yet, but the bigger victory is that she showed willingness to work with me for a food reward. Most super stressed dogs won’t take food in that state so this suggests that even though she shows hesitation and signs of stress (ears back, panic if she ticks the bar, god forbid that she knocks it down), she still does what I’m asking her to do. (She’s not stupid; I think she knows that I wouldn’t feed her at all if she didn’t give it a try, and she’s right.)

Encouraged by this, I dragged the dreaded tippy board out. To give her credit, she showed a lot of ingenuity by jumping over the board (it is long and rectangular because that is the shape of the piece of wood that I had; it isn’t like I can pop down to a Home Depot and buy more) instead of stepping on it. After all, I’d just spent four days rewarding her for jumping over that progressively higher bar. So it is perfectly logical that she’d try to jump over this thing too. I rewarded her for jumping over it (because in the world of “you need to interact with this thing,” jumping over it certainly counts for at least the first few times) but then insisted that she had to put a paw on it. I had to use her food bowl to lure her close to it but at last she did put a paw on the board, making it move and causing her to drop to the ground in a panic. No matter! Huge praise party and she got to eat the rest of her brekkies in peace.

It took me two more days and Azza missing two dinners (both times she crouched on the floor next to the board, only close to it because I had her on lead and she had no choice, and kept her head turned away from it; wouldn't look at the board, her bowl, or me) before I discovered a remarkable trick. She is terrified of the tippy board but she is less terrified of it if I put a light blanket on it. She paws at the blanket, in the process putting a paw on the board, and is fairly willing to step onto the board with two paws (I'm stepping on one side of it to keep it from moving).

With a fearful dog like this that can fall into a panic/flight mode so quickly and display unpredictable and aggressive responses, I have to redefine the meaning of training success. But on the other hand, the breadth of possible successes is quite large. It isn’t just about jumping the jump. It is about approaching the jump without fear. It's about not slinking away when I pull the tippy board out.