Creating Calm

I work with a number of rescues and had the pleasure of working with two Terrier SOS dogs today. Terrier SOS are a fabulous rescue to work with - they treat each dog as an individual and allow them all the time they need, nothing is too much trouble and...they provide ongoing support for their adopted dogs.

Sir Galahad had a dreadful start in life and is only 3 years old.  He is currently in kennels but will hopefully move on very soon.  He is very worried by new things but through patience, dedication and careful set ups he is coming on leaps and bounds.

He now happily jumps into the car and quickly investigates interactive toys. This video clip is when he had just arrived at the rescue volunteers house - setting him up for success by creating calm and confidence.  Although Sir G was able to investigate on other visits, the tension in his body was evident to see.  Just look at him today.

Sir Galahad then went out for a walk. The dogs we used were carefully selected to avoided pushing Sir G over threshold and setting him up to fail. We began with a female dog with a see through barrier in between. Barriers can often help provide a feeling of safety for dogs that are worried by other dogs.

Sir Galahad did so well we decided to do some parallel walking without the barrier. Sir G was rather interested in Winnie and it was most definitely reciprocated!

Sir G continued to do lots of sniffing, even in the presence of another dog.  However, it is so important to go slowly and not rush things. Although Sir G (and lovely Winnie) were giving all the right signals and we allowed them to be fairly close - see the image below,

you can see that Sir G is overly stimulated and overly aroused.  When dogs are not calm, it can easily tip over into snapping behaviour or even aggression. Sir G is becoming quite "bouncy" and it could be mistaken for play bows or wanting to play.  However, he is just becoming over excited so we move away in a nice calm manner.

Sir G then resumes his sniffing.

I spend a lot of time talking about creating calm to my clients. This is fundamental to changing behaviours and to allowing dogs to be dogs.

Being over excited, over stimulated does not feel good.  Being calm does.

We decided to build on his success with Winnie and introduced a male dog, starting again behind a barrier.

Initially Sir G does not engage with him and both dogs avoid looking at each other. Lovely calm polite behaviour. 

This time they do glance at each other as we pass by, still relaxed and still calm. In the image below you can see Sir G check back in with me. Beautiful!

Sir G did so well today with meeting a new dog.  When doing work around other dogs, the goal should be calm - not necessarily interaction.

So often, socialising dogs seems to focus on meeting and GREETING and PLAY.  It is much better to teach dogs life skills - being able to walk past other dogs without pulling and lunging to get to them (or to run off and play and then forget they ever learned recall)!

Well done Sir Galahad, you are a star.  We then took him back in my car, another first for him.