Learning from the Best
Last week I tagged along with a friend and fellow trainer (a well-known, published, famous kind of fellow trainer) to watch her work her magic using an emerging dog training technique. It’s called “C.A.T.” (Constructional aggression treatment), and it helps surly dogs deal with their on-leash aggression issues. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that surly dogs and I go way back – it was a very timely tag-along!
Our subject, Ethan, has been incredibly reactive with the dogs in his neighborhood, which is a nice way of saying that every time he sees a neighbor dog, he looks like he wants to kick lots of ass. He barks, growls, and leaps at the other dogs, and embarrasses the heck out of his person.
Like most surly leash guys, he had me fooled, when I first met him – look at that sweet face!
The method is way too long to try to describe here, but in a nutshell, the surly dog goes through an exacting process where he learns that if he offers non-reactive behaviors (looking away from other dogs, sitting or laying down, giving a gentle tail wag) the “scary dog” on the horizon will go away. The beauty of this method is it actually changes the dog’s emotional state when it sees other dogs, with no collar corrections or “shh!”-ing required.
Ethan had already gone through a few training sessions before this one, so he had an understanding of how things worked. He was rarin’ to go.
We had a variety of “victim dogs” to help out that had worked with Ethan before:
I saw some really impressive stuff during the lesson, which can be best summed up in pictures:
Nice work, Ethan!
While the process is amazing, it’s definitely cumbersome due to the number of other non-reactive dogs needed. I won’t be able to use the exact C.A.T. technique with my clients, but I’m adopting parts of it already.
Yes, you can teach an old dog trainer new tricks!
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Comments (1)
Robbin April 10, 2009 12:03 AM
Need help. Have a rough Collie (Lasie kind) 10 months old.
Attacks when brushed (no there are no mats). I barely get the brush to her hair and she tries to bite me. What should I do? I put a muzzel on her so i can brush her but she still tries. My goal is to brush her with out her acting this way and with out a muzzel. Please send suggestions robbinmoede@yahoo.com
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