Meet Sebastian, the Miniature Schnauzer

Article and photo submitted by Linda and Brian of Arlington, MA

Sebastian joined our family in March of this year. He started out as a timid little puppy that was pretty much afraid of everything. He was a breeze the first few months as he was house trained in 2 days, enjoyed obedience and learning tricks, and still to this day doesn't play with anything in the house that doesn't belong to him. He absolutely loves people and has so much fun playing with other dogs. If you saw him at home with us, you would think he was the most mellow dog in the world.

The Dog Training Challenge:

Ever since we've had Sebastian, he's had a hard time controlling his excitement around new people and dogs. The first few times we took him to socialize with other dogs, he got so excited that he vomited and had stomach issues the next few days after that. We knew that he needed socialization, but didn't want him to make himself sick either, so it was difficult trying to figure out what the best approach would be to help him. As he got a little older, he began barking more and more at dogs passing by during our walks. Miniature Schnauzers have a wide range of barking noises, but the one he does most often is the high shreaky ear piercing bark, and that makes it difficult to enjoy a peaceful walk with him.

After trying many different things, we joined the Level 1 puppy class at Picture Perfect pets, and had a really hard time the first few weeks. We felt that he was disrupting the other members of the class, and that he was not going to be able to relax enough to learn anything. We are so thankful that Bette and Shannon were so patient with us. That class gave us the initial set of tools and exercises we needed to get started in the right direction. I have also learned a lot from watching how Bette works with the dogs in class. It's not easy staying calm when your dog is not listening and doing the behavior that you want him to stop, but I've noticed that Sebastian is much easier to work with when I am not tense or frustrated by the situation.

Dog Training Progress Report

Sebastian still has issues with his excitement level, but the techniques we've learning in class and during PAC Classes (Picture Perfect Pets Alumni Club Drop In Classes) have really helped to reduce the amount of time it takes to get Sebastian to calm down in situations where he's normally uncontrollable. It used to take 20-30 minutes to get Sebastian to relax around other dogs, but now it just takes a few minutes or so for him to settle down and get to a state where he can calm down and interact peacefully with the other dogs. Bette and Shannon have really helped us to read Sebastian's calming cues and get our clicker timing just right. With the most recent technique that Bette recommended, "Find it", we have had numerous occasions in the past month where a dog passed by, and Sebastian didn't even make a single noise! He was just so focused on the task I had given him (to find the meaty treat on the ground) that he didn't even bother to look at the passers by. He still goes into high gear some days, but we (at last!) have one method that can distract him. We finally feel that Sebastian understands what we want, and that he's trying to do it even if it's hard for him sometimes.

Dog Training Summary by Bette Yip, CPDT

To Linda & Brian, I extend my sincere thanks for taking the time out of their busy schedules to share Sebastian’s story! It’s such a pleasure to see all their hard work and dedication to Sebastian’s training paying off, and I’d like to emphasize that it really is work. All I can give my clients is the tools, the steps of the dance, if you will. Since we all know that dogs don’t generalize very well, if it’s only me who does the work with a dog, it is unlikely to stick in situations where I am not around. Linda and Brian have done and excellent job of repeating the “steps of the training dance” with Sebastian in varying situations, helping him to apply what he’s learning outside of class, as well.

This Training Triumph makes mention of the “Find It” training activity, a tip I picked up during a presentation at the Association of Pet Dog Trainers Educational Conference I attended in October of this year. Those of you who know me also know how fond I am of taking an idea and making it my own, feeling free to modify it to suit my own goals. After some experimentation and testing, I’ve decided to add this training activity to our entry level dog training curriculum, in the form of “Check It Out,” with slightly different rules than the game as you may come across it in other dog training forums.

Here’s the scoop on “Check It Out”:

WHAT?

The finished project is for your dog to sniff the ground and then turn its attention to you when you instruct “Check It Out.”

WHY?

Teaching “Check It Out” can actually teach your dog to check in with you often even around distractions. I notice that the effect of this exercise can be that your dog does take a moment to note something in the environment, and then look back at you. By delaying our click longer as our dog gets the hang of the game, we can help our dog learn to focus on us better—and a dog that can focus better can take direction better, making it easier for our dogs to “listen” to us even under pressure.

This can be an effective way of putting sniffing on cue. Why would we want to teach our dogs to sniff on cue? This has many uses!

• We can use this activity for building the power of our reward marker while also teaching our dog to pay better attention to us around distractions.
• Rather than try to squash a dog’s interest in sniffing the environmentüsing this technique, we can allow our dog some time for checking things out while still encouraging our dog to check in with us frequently, so that it is less likely to miss our requests when we give cues.
• One strategy for helping a dog to stop doing a behavior we don’t like is to train the dog to perform a behavior that is incompatible with the undesirable behavior as a response to a certain “trigger” that normally elicits the unwanted behavior. By way of example: When my dog, Toffee, was younger, more agile and a good deal bouncier than she is these days, I wanted to be sure she wouldn’t knock down small children during greetings, so I trained her to lie down when approached by a small child. She couldn’t be knocking a child over and lying down at the same time—these are incompatible behaviors. When a dog is excited or frightened by something (the “trigger”), asking your dog to “check it out” (look for a treat on the ground, and then turn to you) takes the dog’s attention off the trigger. If there is another dog in the situation, having your dog turn attention away from the other dog in this manner may have a calming effect on the other dog as well as your own.
• If you have a dog that feels the need to sniff the ground a great deal causing it to ignore you when interesting sniffable things are around, doing this activity can help your dog learn to pay better attention to you to earn a chance to “check it out” as a reward. If you effectively get sniffing on cue in certain situations, your dog will be more likely to only sniff when asked to. This can be a great trick for our scent hounds, in particular!

HOW?

1. Get your dog’s attention by using a smelly treat. Now toss the treat on the ground. Your dog will look for the treat, eat it, and very likely turn to you in bewilderment and wonder to see if you’ll be crazy enough to do it again! When your dog looks at you, CLICK! Now taker out a treat, and repeat the exercise.
2. As your dog gets the hang of this, you can delay the click longer, requiring longer attention from your dog to get you to click and repeat the game.
3. When you are SURE your dog will find the treat and then focus on you, you can begin to attach your verbal cue. This differs a little in methodology from what we normally do with our lure method process, so just trust me this time! After you click and before you toss the next treat, say “Check It Out!”
4. When your dog is 90% reliable with this activity in a certain setting around those specific distractions, occasionally try to fake your dog out…don’t actually toss the treat. If your dog even glances at the ground and then back at you, click and repeat. You can shape an actual sniff the ground if desired. This is also great entertainment! (Or maybe this just means I need to get out more—but I find it lots of fun to see Toffee look back at me as if to say, “You goofball! You forgot to toss the treat! That’s not how you play the game!”
5. As with all our cues, we move on to random rewards. Sometimes we toss a treat, sometimes not. As long as the behavior is still strong and getting stronger, we can gradually get stingier with our rewards. If the behavior falls apart for any reason, go back to step one and start over! Also inter-mix other sorts of rewards rather than just food. Sometimes when your dog looks back at you after a Check It OutĂĽse play or other real life rewards instead of food.