Gryffin update: 23/9/19

Gryffin has been learning how wonderful it feels to be calm. His lovely rescue person is slowly expanding his world in a carefully controlled way to avoid flooding him with stimuli. He is also learning impulse control, how to self-calm, and is slowly being desensitised to household noises and situations that would have provoked over arousal. 

Like many young dogs, Gryffin may sometimes try to jump up or even on things such as cupboards, people and window ledges. His rescue lady has been working on this and he now responds to his name being called in a happy positive way and leaves what he was about to do for a reward. It is essential not to punish or shout at dogs when they do things we don't want them to. 

In the past Gryffin had been quite stressed by household noises but he is now able to cope with various household appliances running if he has had sufficient mental stimulation/enrichment beforehand.

Gryffin could cope with the sound of a television but not with the moving images. In the image below, Gryffin chose to go to the bed and chew on his toy when the TV was turned on. 

The moving images (including a dog) provoked a fear response and Gryffin tried barking at it to see if he could make the scary monster go away.  Therefore, a little desensitisation and counter conditioning is needed around moving images on the TV. In other words:

When the "scary monster" comes on (TV): a prepared licki mat with pate appears like magic!

After a number of repetitions, the TV coming on predicts the appearance of the licki mat. After just a few repetitions today he was already looking to see if the mat was coming when the TV was turned on!

Over arousal is often mistaken for happiness but it can actually feel rather stressful. Whenever Gryffin's arousal levels increased, afterwards he gave a number of full body shakes.

People often say "I wish my dog could talk and tell me how he feels."

Dogs DO talk - with their body language. Have a look at the two images below. The first one was taken during desensitisation and counter conditioning with the TV on. Look how high his tail is and how alert his ears are. 

Now compare them to the image below. This one was taken a little later, after the desensitisation work had ended. Can you spot the difference?

Gryffin is waiting for his forever home with Terrier SOS. If you would be interested in adopting him, please contact the rescue - Terrier SOS website

Coco the wonder dog aka The Ginger Ninja

Met up with this stunner again today to progress his loose lead walking. What a star. He did so well especially with a kamikaze squirrel running around in one of the trees.

I'm already using less treats this week but reinforcing his behaviour with praise now. It is so important to avoid bombarding our dogs with cues - let them choose to follow us and reinforce this when they do. We need to make sure we are relaxed and calm too - dogs pick up how we are feeling and if we are impatient or stressed - it will affect their behaviour and responses.

After a few repetitions in the familiar area we moved on to the car park. A difficult task for Coco as he thought he was going off in one of the cars.

Next, out onto the street. Although Coco is choosing to follow me and to interact, he is not sniffing or interacting with his environment. He is still on alert for any possible "threats" (or squirrels)! Calm, relaxed sniffing will come next as he starts to feel more comfortable.

It is essential to set dogs up for success and to work at their pace. Coco is coming on leaps and bounds but if we try to rush it or take him somewhere too busy, he will struggle to concentrate. First we teach the connection and then we slowly introduce more and more stimulating environments.

Remember the four C's 

• Calm
• Connection
• Choices
• Confidence

This is how we finished our session - snog and cuddle time ;)