Mostly Dogs

Bowser and I are working to mold certain behaviors right now. Thanks to my mentor, Holly, and the wonderful other trainers at Pup Scouts, we have been doing our homework every night and working very hard. Molding is essentially perfecting a desired behavior. For instance, “sit”, does not mean, “put your butt on the ground and keep your front feet still, but also take your leash in your mouth and play with it”, or “sit, but also bark at me or turn your back to me”. “Sit” means exactly what you mold it to be.

In our case, we are working a lot on “down”. Ever since I can even remember, Bowser has hated “down”, and bears his teeth in the brattiest of all manners when prompted to do so. He “down”s wonderfully and immediately, but he always has to put his own little bratty attitude spin on it. He also gets up immediately if treated for it, and even worse, will try to lick my hand for the treat or snatch it out of my hand on the way down. He has really awful bite inhibition and a very hard mouth, so this can be obnoxious, but also pretty painful. We started working on positioning (where he was in relation to me) and snatching the treat up. This meant that as soon as I asked him to “down”, if he was not in front of me, or if his foot/leg touched my foot as he was going down, OR if he licked or tried to touch my hand (which was holding the treat) AT ALL, I stopped him immediately and started over. I always hear an “AHHHH” incorrect answer buzz in my head while this is happening. As soon as he shows ONE sign that I don’t like, he is stopped/interrupted and we start over.

At first, this made him pretty stressed. He started to sneeze, shake off, and even talk back a little. I ignored it and let him throw his fit and just stayed consistent. Every time he did it right, he was calmly praised and got his treat. The first round took FOREVER and he really frustrated me. It took between a week and two weeks to weed out the positioning and treat-sneaking. Then I decided to address the thing that REALLY annoyed me - the bratty snarl. Like I said before, he has literally ALWAYS done it. I actually reached a point where I just accepted it and thought he would always do it. That was so defeatist of me, and I’m so happy I’ve worked on it.

We just started molding the “down-snarl” tonight. Like, as in, the past hour only. We have already defeated the snarl! This doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever, but at the very least, he doesn’t do it EVERY time, and he has started to notice the pattern. I took this video while we were working, and even though he’s not perfect (who cares - I’m not looking for perfect) he is so much better. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I actually teared up the first time he didn’t do it. I love pushing my dogs and pushing myself and getting wonderful results. Bowser is INSANE, difficult, and over-excitable, but he was so calm after we worked on this. It was something he’s done his whole life and we actually saw results in less than an hour. THIS is why I love what I do, why I love working my ass off, and why I LOVE constantly learning. No more mean face! :)