Jumping Thru Hoops

Here is how I created (and solved) an off-leash issue for one of my dogs, Lila, when she was an adolescent.

Lila, as some of you know, is estimated to be a Labrador x Weimaraner. Her hunting heritage really seems to show: Although she is generally a cautious canine, she throws caution to the wind when it comes to the great outdoors.

Lila would attend work with me at PetSmart and spend the day basically off-leash. Even leaving other dogs (she loves dogs) was no problem.

Lila & the crew & I would go to various undisclosed wooded NC locations where we would break the law & have lovely off-leash romps together. Not the fastest recall, I'll admit, but still, basically, no problem.

Home backyard? Different story. We had no fence, just a pen. When she would get the chance, she would hightail it around the neighborhood. "Tour of the county," I called it. She was never terribly far away, but it would typically be 40-60 minutes before she would return. THIS is a problem.

I didn't want Lila to get hit by a car. I didn't want her to spook the chickens who lived next door. Although she would never fight with another dog, I didn't want other dogs to feel frustrated behind fences and on chains (yeah, it was rural NC) while they watched her live it up. I didn't want the neighbors to be annoyed.

When she got back, I would be scared, stressed, and frustrated. I tried to take the advice I had been giving. I'd always feed her a giant bowl of kibble, even if she'd already eaten. I'd give her treats if I had them.

That should do it, right? I mean, I strongly doubted she'd encountered as much deliciousness on her "Tour of the County", even if there was some roadkill and cat poop here and there... She'll figure it out.

She didn't. The problem persisted weeks with absolutely NO CHANGE. I'm a pro trainer, and a sharp one at that. I knew it couldn't be a dominance issue. At the time, I was seeing dominance-related problems with one of the other dogs (who turned out to be my one in a lifetime dog, Ginger). Lila was (and still is) never defiant. It was like she didn't even see or hear me!

Lila had learned that when she got back AFTER the food and/or treats something unthinkable would happen -- slow motion action movie "No-o-o-o-o. . .!" -- she was going back into her pen. And no amount of food was going to change that.

She had broken my trust and caused me stress, not to mention the risks... I just couldn't deliberately expose her to danger, neighbors & neighbor dogs to irritation, and myself to more stress.

Or could I?

Eventually, I took what is now my own advice: The next time it happened, I fed the treats and the kibble... and released her. She was very likely going to do it again tomorrow, anyway... Nothing bad has happened to her so far... I recalled, waited, rewarded, released --several times.

What do you know? The "backwards", "counter-intuitive" strategy worked. Lila found the release MORE rewarding than an obscene amount of food -- a reward I had leveraged to convey what I wanted. That hefty reward was now working to reinforce the behavior I wanted, instead of the one I didn't. Recall didn't mean I wanted her to go to the pen, like she thought, I wanted her to come to me.

What finally made her not leave at all? What could trump the stimulation of the "Tour of the County"? Interesting training.

No more boring down-stays and sit-stays and heelwork and retrieves on the flat. Bleh. Jumping! Retrieves over jumps. Jumping over other dogs on down-stays.

MORE! More and more specific behaviors -- foldback down. Speed drills. Tricks--crawl, hi-5.

"What are we going to do now?" Long chains of behavior that changed constantly. COME-SIT-release to jump over hurdle to retrieve item-jump back over hurdle-place toy in my hand-release word-reward. THAT is an interesting exercise!

I cursed my lack of creativity -- I could hardly keep up with her appetite for learning. While _I_ was not exceptionally rewarding, at least not as compared to the "Tour of the County", figuring out what I wanted, discovering what got her the treat -- problem solving WAS rewarding!!

But the best-of-all bribe, the one that would eventually bring her sprinting to the yard no matter what, even when neighborhood cats and rabbits appeared? Jumping through a hula hoop. I suspected the hula hoop became an extreme sport thing: oh-god-so-scary but that makes it so much awesomer when I actually do it. I'd raise the hoop over my head, and always followed thru on my hula hoop offer when I bribed her with it. It never failed to work.

Lila taught me the importance of allowing our dogs to show us what they value, of clearly identifying rewards & punishers. And, ... what should have been obvious -- the value of hula hoops.

I felt horribly guilty when I realized how I had underestimated her. She had been (and still is) capable of so much! We had spent so much time on her feelings: preventing her from being a fear biter -- not fleeing from people, accepting touch & handling, approaching scary objects -- that I had neglected to stimulate the emotion-free side of her brain. It was like food to a starving man.

What food might your dog need? Brain food? Heart food? Social food? Muscle food?