FEARFUL AND ANXIOUS DOG TRANSFORMATION

And welcome back to Fenway guys and welcome back to the Rescue Diaries. Today we're back at one of the shelters that I volunteer my time at and we are getting a few dogs out to try and help them find their forever homes. The first dog that we've been asked to work with today is a beautiful Saluki cross we believe she is called Pepper and we want to make sure that we can get her a wonderful forever home and do whatever it takes to help her achieve that. So as is always the case what I want to do is do an initial temperament assessment with her. I then want to do any kind of behaviour modification that's relevant to try and fix any issues as quick as possible. Then we're going to hand her over to Joe to do some training stuff with her and see if there's anything that we can do to help prepare her and find her forever home quickly. Now as is always the case when we go and get them out the kennels from the second I meet them I always want to make sure that I am promoting positive assertive leadership so my body language is is nice and big and assertive but yet calm and relaxed. I always try and maintain that and then from the first second that we meet I'm always observing so when I'm getting them out of the kennel have we got any territorial aggression towards the kennel any territorial reactivity towards the kennel none with Pepper whatsoever. Then we wanted to assess have we got any reactivity towards other dogs and bringing them from the kennel into this little training paddock we've got here is a really good time to assess that because we have to pass so many dogs that are barking none of that whatsoever either. So now we're into the paddock I've got a little bit more time to really work out what's going on and I can tell you that straight away we have an incredibly fearful and anxious dog on our hands here and what you'll notice is that she's very skittish her ears are pinned back her body language is exuding fear and anxiety she's going for number two as is always the case never film with children or animals but uh that in itself could be a response to fear she might just need a number two or she might be so overwhelmed with fear that is a behavior that happens quite commonly so what I want to be assessing here is where is that fear and anxiety stemming from and what I will usually try and quickly assess is is there any form of engagement with myself and that's what I'm noticing straight off the bat that there just simply isn't any she's anxious she's fearful she's skittish she's moving around she's looking around but at no point is she looking up to me for guidance and direction so the last thing I want to assess with her is after she's finished doing a business is do we have any resource guarding type behaviors to be concerned about I'm 99% sure that we're not going to have any based on just my experience and what we already know about her but what I absolutely need to do here with her is give her someone to look up to for guidance and direction in myself the mistake that far too many people make and it would be really easy with her just because she's a beautiful glorious small dog and she is very clearly afraid and anxious would be to to really start to baby her to want to cuddle her to want to just get down and just and just be with her but all that's going to do is just going to reinforce that anxiety and fear and it's not going to help address the anxiety and fear to address the anxiety and fear I need to rather than come in and pander on her and love on her too much I need to come in and give her some really clear assertive guidance and direction have her understand she can look up to me for guidance and direction and then that anxiety and fear will start to come away and when that comes away at that point then I can start to pour on the praise the reinforcement some physical touch some physical talk and let her know she's doing a great job but only when she's starting to work with me only when she's starting to engage with me so what I'm going to try and do first of all just for the resource guarding type situation we're going to see if we've got any toy drive or food drive there is no food drive we tested it when we were coming out but that can often again result from fear and anxiety because when you're in that fight or flight based response when your anxiety is up when your fear is up your appetite soon diminishes and you're not bothered so we're going to see if we can get any attention on a ball so straight away we've got a little peak of interest there oh yes and quite quickly turned off I think that once I build that relationship with her once I start getting her working with me and start to de-stress her and remove some of that anxiety I think we could get her playing with that ball because it did definitely peak her interest but then the anxiety kind of squashed that interest so for me there's no point in messing around here what I'm going to do is I'm going to dive into my tune-up drill what that tune-up drill is going to do is utilizing a balanced approach there is going to be some corrections I am using my slip lead I need nothing more than a slip lead to definitely address this is we're going to do my tune-up and that tune-up essentially is a directional change tune-up in which if she isn't working with me and paying attention and focusing on me my simple act of me turning and moving in another direction will create a little bit of lead pressure that lead pressure will inherently correct her not paying attention to me and by wanting to avoid the lead pressure and that lead correction she'll start to engage with me and pay attention to me when she's then engaging with me and paying attention to me I'll start to pay and praise that and that is what I'll really quickly come in and instill some leadership on my part which will build a relationship based on leadership which will then allow us to communicate and then we'll really be able to help her overcome whatever it is that's causing this anxiety and stress. I started my basic kind of directional change tune-up drill and what we did was we went straight into it with no food no reinforcement just going and using nothing but calm assertive body language and already you can see that I'm starting to get just much better engagement she's starting to be in tune with me and from the dog you saw earlier that was skittish and all over the place she's now starting to look up to me for guidance and direction obviously there's traffic going by and I'm going to wait until I get that better there we go yes good good girl good and I've built this purely with no food nothing more than leadership and you can start to see now that she's going to naturally become more relaxed let's go yes good girl oh good girl thank you oh good girl the tail starting to wag and she's starting to become a happier dog now this is a good opportunity good good yes thank you good girl oh good girl yes thank you so what a beautiful example there of how to teach a dog not to jump up so yes I utilized a physical correction there and I paired it with my verbal correction what you're probably going to find is when you work with dogs like this you don't know what kind of behaviors that they struggle with until you start to get them out now from that little bit of correction alone the dog's going to start to learn that what she wants is that physical praise I gave her some physical praise and I removed it and she followed me up by jumping up but then what I did was I instilled a little bit of a verbal correction with just a little bit of lead pressure just to let her know hey no that's not acceptable that's not how we get my praise that's not how you earn a reward from me whether that's physical praise verbal praise or even if I want to pay that with food or with toys but again straight away you can start to see that look she's just locked into me now again a dog that was wouldn't even look at me when we first brought her out won't leave my side now and is ready to be engaged and work with me now you can tell she's not scared of me because every time I want to give her some praise the tail starts wagging yes oh you're a good girl oh you're a good girl now what you might find here is another example of when I remove this she might follow me up and this time it didn't what that is is a testament to correcting bad behaviors when they happen don't feel bad about letting your dogs know that that's not acceptable you just have to correct them fairly so when she jumped up me I showed you how I quickly calmly and assertively through good leadership let her know hey that's not acceptable but when you're paying attention to me when you're relaxed then I'm going to pay you and I'm going to praise you and you're going to get the nice scratches behind the ear that you've always wanted and a little bit of fuss and praise when she's displaying the right behaviors and that's all it is it's just that principle of balance of when you display the wrong behaviors we quickly address it and say hey no that's not acceptable when you display the desirable behaviors we're going to let you know that that is acceptable and now at this stage is when I'm going to start to bring a little bit of food into the equation so pepper let's go it's a good example so she's ignored so I'm going to correct this with a bit of lead pressure yes so oh good girl yes so then when she makes the desirable behavior I'm going to let her have a little lick on the treat she doesn't have to have the whole thing because she's so gentle I'm letting her just have a little bit of a taste and then it goes away now she's displaying yes the desirable behaviors good now this time pepper let's go oh yes good girl oh thank you good girl so again in in the matter of seconds you've seen a bad behavior of ignoring me be dealt with with hey no no you need to pay attention to me and then we go to replicate out that same behavior then it does happen let's go oh good girl yes she's not upset she's not offended I've not scared her you are seeing the more I'm correcting the bad behaviors the more I'm instilling calm assertive leadership the more I'm offering a good balance the happier she's becoming and now when she's displaying these correct behaviors now is the stage where I'm bringing food out when she's displaying the bad behaviors and not engaging with me at the start of the session I'm not dancing around with treats trying to bribe that attention I've demanded that attention as a calm assertive leader now when you offer me that naturally at that point I'm going to start to pay you for it so again oh good girl thank you yes oh good oh good thank you and again we can start now bringing food in so again she was pulling it all over the place but now let's go oh yes good yes oh good girl now I'll pay it because I didn't have to use any correction she's in tune with me she's engaging with me let's go oh yes oh good girl again the essence of balance being able to come in and quickly say hey no not acceptable brilliant that's really acceptable it is at rocket science and you've seen that with a dog like this that again it was it was minutes ago she was anxious she was fearful she was skittish you could see from the body language that she didn't know what to do she didn't know where to be whereas now I talk about the weight of the world coming off the dog's shoulders when you come in and instill some calm consistent leadership I don't need to say any more the proof is in the pudding calm consistent leadership always wins because you are displaying such beautiful calm well-mannered you can have the whole thing and that's it I'm going to wrap this video up there because that couldn't be more of a beautiful example of coming in providing a dog that is riddled with fear and anxiety nothing more than calm assertive leadership for the first half of the session with no food reward we've built relationship and engagement and then I've used that engagement to start working on what it is that I do want from her built on that foundation of leadership I've got her to a point where I'm super happy with her now I've built engagement I've tested the temperament there's no significant behaviors for me to be concerned about the only one was pulling that we've addressed through assertive leadership I'm going to hand her off to Joe our resident trainer now who's going to now come in layer up some obedience tricks and in the next video you're going to see how he's probably going to be working on making sure that her name is rock solid some sit work some more formal heel work potentially anything else that we've got time for just to put as many things in her arsenal as possible so that when somebody does come to look around the shelter they go oh she's adorable she's gentle she's kind she's paying attention to me she's engaging with me oh and she knows all these tricks and walks beautifully yeah I'll take her home today that's our job is to come in and in a short space of time be able to give her those things through calm consistent leadership because we love her we want to see her find her forever home because as always leadership is love