The Little Bear Dog Blog

I cried when I first read the excellent ‘Click to calm’ by Emma Parsons. Here was a professional dog trainer who’s dog seemed to become aggressive out of a clear blue sky. Just like Little Bear, her dog Ben barked and lunged at a dog one day for no apparent reason. You can see how my brain was working…”Well if it could happen to her and she’s a pro, then…”

That book, in fact even just the introduction to that book, helped heal a gaping wound for me. I stopped looking for the reasons why he was behaving as he was (and blaming myself in the process) and started looking for solutions.

The book offers great practical training exercises and so I bought a clicker and…..ground to an abrupt halt. Even muffled in my jumper behind my back, Little Bear reacted to a click like a rocket had gone off in the lounge. He’d shoot me a ‘how could you?’ look and scurry away upstairs to his bed.

I bought soft clickers. I bought adjustable volume clickers. Super soft clickers that I wrapped in layers of fabric…but even clicking from another room got the same reaction. I eventually gave up and used a marker word, ‘good’ instead, but it never felt the same.

Apparently, what I needed all along was a Labrador. Annie took to clicker training like a duck to water (there’s food involved, she’s a Lab, what more needs saying?!) but what absolutely amazed me was the fact that LB crashed the training session and lined up calmly for his reward on hearing the click. No running to bed. In fact, not even an eyelid batted.

From there we’ve gone from strength to strength. We use the clicker on every walk, rewarding non-reactivity to things he might have once found scary, like screaming children or other dogs. I also mark eye contact with me on the cue of ‘watch me’.

Today we achieved something huge. We went to an agility class. With other dogs! Four other dogs in fact, none of whom we knew.  Reverse a few months and this would have been a recipe for being asked never to come back.

There were a couple of woofs at the start when a huge Doberman started barking and lunging at another dog, but a little more distance and a few rounds of watch me was all he needed to calm down again.

He barked frantically when he saw the tunnel, but this time out of sheer joy! It was a super waggy ‘Is it my turn now? Is it? Is it? Oh boy of boy! It’s MY TURN!’ His delight was unmistakable.

Otherwise he was impeccably behaved, even though at times I’m sure he found it a bit stressful. The real joy for me today was that he looked to me automatically when he was stressed. He sat and gave eye contact without being asked. He leaned into my leg from time to time and so we took ourselves a few steps away and did some simple tricks or a bit of massage.  By listening to him I was able to help him manage his anxiety for a whole hour.  He even met one of the other dogs, both on leads and said a lovely, polite hello.

As we left, incident free, I just couldn’t stop telling him what a clever boy he was and how proud I am. I think he knows it, but it never hurts to remind him all the same.