If you'd like to read Gilda's background, you can find it On our AgilityNovice.com blog
We have tried many things to deal with Gilda's Reactivity since adopting her in April 2009.
Our biggest struggle currently is that she is extremely reactive to anyone coming onto our property and especially into our home! She has a strong history of nipping and I have no doubt she would bite if left to her own devices. Even worse, she has completely convinced Pico that all trespassers, known or unknown, are to be feared! It is utter mayhem here at times and it is embarrassing to say the least.
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| {The Crazies, Gilda & Pico} |
Veterinary Behaviorist:
We enlisted the help of Dr. Elizabeth Feltes, DVM, a local Veterinary Behaviorist in June, 2012. During our nearly 2 hour initial interview and exam, Gilda was diagnosed with extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Neither of these diagnoses surprised either of us.
Dr. Feltes recommended that we start Gilda on Reconcile, or 'Prozac for dogs'. Apparently Reconcile has a proprietary ingredient that makes the Prozac more bioavailable to dogs than regular ole human Prozac. We started there and then increased Gilda to her maximum recommended dosage. Around this time, the manufacturer stopped production of Reconcile. We then tried a slightly higher dose of human Prozac capsules and noticed an almost immediate increase of Gilda's reactivity. It was very frustrating.
Next we tried a tablet form of Prozac and added Clonidine to the arsenal. After much experimentation, Gilda is now on 20mg of Prozac tablets once a day and 0.3mg Clonidine twice a day. At long last, it actually seemed like she was worrying about fewer things. She would even nap in the morning when her pills kicked in! Gilda never took naps!
Training:
By the time we started seeing Dr. Feltes, Gilda was stressing down during Agility classes and stressing up during Therapy Dog visits (not an ideal thing in the pediatric setting!). I took her out of all of her extra curricular activities!
Mike was still doing the majority of walking with her as we had also determined that her on-leash Reactivity increased when Pico was with her. After each walk, I'd ask for a detailed report and he would patiently give me an accounting. One day, he came home and said, "she was fantastic". I swear I had to sit down and ask if he was joking.
Slowly but surely, he came home with more good reports than bad. Over the winter, they had lots of days to walk alone and as a reward, Mike was able to let Gilda off leash (something we had both completely stopped doing). They had games of fetch and chase-me and more and more often, he'd tell me how good she was.
In January 2013, I hired my friend, Ginger from Fortunate Fido to come to the house and help us with our training. When she arrived, I had both dogs gated in their area and they were quite agitated. We did some click/treats when the oriented toward her voice without barking and soon, we were able to bring Pico out on leash and do some targeting work with Ginger sitting in full view in the living room. Ginger said, it's not good to let 'visitors' treat the dogs because then, if a visitor doesn't have a treat, the dog is left not knowing what to do and may then nip or bite. I had been doing that all wrong for sure! Once the dogs were fairly relaxed even though she was sitting quietly in our living room, we started working on a 'Go say hi' exercise where the dogs were encouraged to go up to the visitor to sniff and then immediately came back to me for a treat. Ginger was here for 2 hours and both dogs probably gained 2 pounds from all the treats but it proved to me that they are capable of being calm with company. The other fascinating thing that Ginger showed me was to let Gilda go to the window to look and then to treat her when she comes away. We had been working so hard to get her to come away from the window/door when it is much easier to let her do the thing she is driven to do with limitations. So interesting learning to think like a dog!
Progress:
As Ginger said, for some reason or another, my training Gilda is 'poisoned'. So, I started all over. I started taking Gilda to the Agility building for classes and training when I go there with Pico. It was a rough start as she was ready to shut down if I asked her to move around in the training ring. Lately though, there have been big big changes in my beloved girl!
I've been taking her once a week for practice for 5 weeks now and each time, she is happier and more willing to work. I am working to be very cautious of meaningless chatter (something I excel at) and especially at not marking errors (oops, whoops, uh oh, etc.) I am working on this with both dogs as they both react badly and do not realize that I am usually marking my own mistakes rather than theirs.
Week 1: I mistakenly tried to play fetch in the building. She loves fetch, however, on the third throw, I managed to hit the Teeter and that was the end of playing :(
Week 2: I asked for some shadow handling. Just simple heeling around the ring. Gilda lowered her head and stayed way behind me making it very difficult to treat in the Reinforcement Zone (RZ). Still, I acted happy that she was with me and treated as much as I could.
Week 3: Gilda was willing to perform shadow handling much closer to me and to my amazement, she CHOSE to take the Tire Jump! I gave her a jackpot for that one!
Week 4: We arrived and 4 or 5 dogs were out in the fenced area. Pico was carrying on the minute I opened the tailgate. Gilda was interested but quiet. As I started walking them toward the gate (which is neared the fenced dogs), she started to lunge and I said something like 'it's okay' and she immediately stopped and looked up at me! I nearly fainted. Luckily, I didn't and had the presence of mind to give her a super high value treat! I kept them both on leash and she walked the entire length of the outdoor Agility ring looking at me for treats! It was by far the biggest breakthrough I've had with her in nearly 4 years. I wanted to cry and scream but I did neither. Once inside the building, I first worked with Pico and then brought Gilda out. She was visibly happy and relaxed with her tail wagging like I've always wished it would. She was still slightly timid about shadow handling, finding things to sniff along the way, but she kept on coming to me and working her way around more of the building than in prior weeks. She was also willing to do some 'around the stool' work with good enthusiasm. Since she was still happy, I asked her for a Tunnel and she took it! Jackpot! And session done. She heeled beautifully without a leash the entire way back to the gate with dogs barking and Pico distracted. It was a great day for me.
Week 5: She once again CHOSE to ignore all the hullabaloo behind the fence and looked to me for treats. I nearly fainted again on the realization that it wasn't a one-time event last week! We covered more of the building with shadow handling and I casually walked past 2 jumps asking her to take them... and she did! I brought her out a second time and working on 'go to mat' behind an obstacle. She happily dove on her mat for treats. She once again heeled sans leash to the gate looking all happy and proud of herself!
When we got home, I was treating Gilda for running to the front window and looking rather than running to the front window barking and lunging. I decided to do a quick training session and was able to have both pups hold a quiet sit while I knocked on the inside of the front door and jiggled the door knob. They were actually looking at me like, 'we know that's you doing that, silly'. I was so proud of our progress!
Later, when our neighbor came over, all hell broke loose however and it seemed as though nothing had changed... <sigh>
Today, I did another session with knocking on the door. I decided they were ready to advance to the door bell... Not so much. Apparently, the doorbell still signifies that they are to bark as loud as possible and run back and forth. That was definitely too big of a step. Back to basics as they say...
