Training Thresholds: A Strategy For Balancing The Emotions Of Anxious Or Over Excited Dogs
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- How many thresholds does your dog cross a day? It could be a physical or emotional threshold. Training thresholds are important to understand, and thresholds can explain why some dogs seem anxious and refuse to budge, and others get way overexcited. I’ve got tips to help dogs with balancing emotions to cross any type of threshold with calm, thoughtful focus. You’ll also get a peek at what I discovered about my puppy Prophet’s excitement with a see-saw and how I'm counter-conditioning the stimulus.
📝 Read the transcript: dogsthat.com/transcript/episo...
🐾Key Dog Training Points:
00:00 Dog Training Thresholds with Susan Garrett.
00:43 What a threshold is - shift from one set of antecedents to another.
01:52 Different types of thresholds: positive, neutral, and unpleasant.
02:46 Thresholds can be real or imaginary.
03:43 Potential triggers in a competition ring.
04:35 Intentional triggers - enter thresholds in a calmer state. • Training Plan For Hype... 258
05:16 2 extremes in dog behavior- look for change in T.E.M.P. and watch your dog’s body • Dog Body Language: Und...
06:44 What is your dog saying to you? • The Thing Before Your ...
07:58 Start training where your dog is calm or neutral. • Get Your Dog To Calm D...
08:21 Write down: What we don't want from our dogs.
09:06 Write down: What do we have and when is the first threshold crossed?
10:10 What does your puppy love - rewards to create calm behavior.
10:42 My puppy Prophet’s See-Saw (Teeter) obsession and counterconditioning the stimulus.
14:10 Be present - have a plan for new thresholds.
Resources:
1. Podcast Episode 258: Training Plan For Hyper Excited Dogs: Play The Threshold Game For Calm Focus - • Training Plan For Hype...
2. TH-cam Playlist: The Emotional State of Dogs with Susan Garrett - • The Emotional State of...
3. Podcast Episode 245: Make Dog Training Easy! Quick Guide To Antecedent Arrangements - • Make Dog Training Easy...
4. Podcast Episode 132: All The Things Your Dog Hates And How To Fix Them - • All The Things Your Do...
5. TH-cam Video: Vet Visits For Dogs: How To Create A Positive Experience For Everyone - • Vet Visits For Dogs: H...
6. TH-cam Video: Understanding Your Dog's Reinforcement Zone (RZ) with Susan Garrett - • Understanding Your Dog...
7. Podcast Episode 63: 3 Easy Tricks Every Dog Should Know - • Why Some Dogs Just Don...
8. Podcast Episode 4: T.E.M.P. (Tail, Eyes/Ears, Mouth, Posture) - • T.E.M.P. (Tail, Eyes/E...
9, Podcast Episode 157: Dog Body Language: Understanding Canine Communication Signals And Emotions - • Dog Body Language: Und...
10. Podcast Episode 165: Why Do Dogs Bark In Cars And How To Stop It - • Why Do Dogs Bark In Ca...
11. Podcast Episode 191: Get Your Dog To Calm Down With This Common Sense Protocol For Relaxation - • Get Your Dog To Calm D...
12. Podcast Episode 266: Hot Zone And Stays - How One Dog Training Nuance Can Fix Anxiety And Duration - • Hot Zone And Stays - H...
P.S. Subscribe to our TH-cam Channel so you get notifications of new videos!
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Dogs That is brought to you by Susan Garrett and the Say Yes Dog Training Team.
Susan Garrett’s interest in animal behaviour started at the University of Guelph where she earned a Bachelor of Science majoring in Animal Science. Since then she has developed into a preeminent dog trainer and canine sports instructor and competitor. Susan is one of the most successful agility competitors of the last three decades. She has won multiple Gold Medals at National or World Championship events with every dog she has ever owned over the past 30 years.
A natural teacher and an entertaining speaker, Susan is world renowned as a leading educator of dog trainers. Her understanding of how to apply science-based learning principles to both competitive and family pet dog training has been pivotal in changing how dogs are trained.
Susan is now helping many thousands of dog owners in 132 countries have the best relationship possible with their dogs. The real joy for her comes from bringing confidence to dogs and their owner through playful interactions and relationship building games that are grounded firmly in the science of how animals learn.
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🐶 Watch Podcast Episode 258 where I talk about “The Threshold Game”: th-cam.com/video/1bIBG2B7p1o2/w-d-xo.html58
⭐ Check out the relaxation protocol to create calm for dogs in key moments: th-cam.com/video/FRmLd4k5qGk/w-d-xo.html
Discovered yesterday that the calm greeting we’ve been practicing for weeks at home doesn’t count when the threshold is the gate to the holiday kennels and the dog is loose playing with his kennel pals. His recall was spot on when I called, but oh my did he jump!! Need to look at the training plan😂😂😂
Thanks, we need this so much. My foster dog goes bananas when I release him from crate games or when I open the bedroom door in the morning.
My 2 yr old is over threshold for a number of different expriences daily, I'm so thankful hearing this one ...now the planning to help him relax in these situatons begins
This really helped me to manage some over-excitement when I reach for toys, thank you!
Yes, I have my work cut out for me. Emma- Resse, my 3 month old Australian Shepherd runs ☺️ this large house and large land. I'm thankful she has space and her energy is amazing. She's smart and I'm going to work with her daily and make it fun for her while she's learning. If the evening comes and I don't feel like going out back and run with her, I instantly get up!! Before the sun goes down, she has a blast and learns. I love her♥️
Awesome video Susan!! I foster herding breed dogs and I'm so glad you mentioned laughing at the antics of dogs. I still on occasion make that mistake with Heelers as they are absolute clowns. Once I laugh at something, I'm hard pressed to not have the behavior escalate and it is very difficult to undo the behavior to which I had given value. I try really hard to think before I laugh but sometimes, I just can't help it!!
Totally agree!!! Once is all it takes!
Great podcast as always! Thanks Susan. Now I just have to figure out how to apply that to my situation.😂
this is very helpful. Thanks
I've struggled with transitions all my life. I unfortunately understand instinctively about thresholds in dog training.
... and yeah, my puppy turned out to struggle with thresholds, too (way worse than me). It's been a long haul, but she's leaving adolescence behind now, and she's at least getting a little more calm and focusable, so I think we're finally going to make a bunch of leaps and bounds with the problematic threshold responses that have been the most difficult to help her with. ❤
Edit - something you put words to for me elsewhere in your TH-cam library was the concept of trigger-stacking. I was observing it with Ceilidh, but the only way I could explain it to anyone was with a million words.
Then along you come and give me one compound noun that brought such clarity of comprehension that it was breath-taking. And the second I obtained the new term, my breath whooshed out of me and I went "omg, I go through trigger-stacking, too" (had not understood that before, not clearly).
This helped me start to recognize what dynamic was at play when *I* was being hit with too many transitions too fast to "recover" between them. I developed a protocol for *myself* to help *me* de-escalate... the first step of which is "invite Ceilidh to go to her crate, even if she's obliviously snoozing on the couch" because if I'm already struggling and she sees a squirrel flitting around in a tree 20m away and goes from 0 to crazy town (likely influenced by *my* rising anxiety/distress/frustration), then her outburst adds to my trigger-stacking while simultaneously being more difficult to train her through *because* I'm overwhelmed.
And actually, in Ceilidh's situation, the sequence is
- probably calm dog, hanging out in the house
- dog senses her human becoming distressed
- the human's emotional distress doesn't lessen
- dog starts to feel uneasy/agitated/hyper-vigilant
- trigger-stacking event happens (dog sees motion in distant tree) and dog, already anxious, goes crazy-town
I'd understood for a while that my own behaviour/mental health *must* be causing at least *some* of Ceilidh's behaviour, but when you put a name to trigger-stacking, it helped me see my own trigger-stacking which then nearly-instantly allowed me to see that my trigger-stacking was prone to creating trigger-stacking situations for my dog.
It allowed me to see all the way back to where Ceilidh's behaviours *started* (in however many cases, with her observing *my* anxiety).
Now, I've been in therapy for 20yrs because of my situation, so my behaviours aren't just something I can put a stop to; I'm working on it, but I am where I am in the process, so recognizing that Step 1 in my own de-escalation process was "get Ceilidh settled in her crate" was HUGE.
I see it as "if you couldn't give your 10 month old baby your full supervision, you'd put them in their playpen while you dealt with whatever was requiring your attention be significantly diverted."
Anyway, thank you so much for helping me help my dog, and thank you so much for the role you've played in my progress in therapy. It's a long game indeed, but it's clearly going to help minimize my own struggles, wherever they're minimize-able.
@rebeccaburnell9318 thank you for sharing that ...
I experience something that I can only describe as autistic like, so sequencing things, especially which I have little to no familiarity with, can put a monkey wrench into my own learning and taking action.
Playing is something for me to make a point to do ... keeping my environment highly organized is greatly necessary if i'm to develop any consistency, any element of routine.
Now, my current canine companion, Mack, will play all by himself. It's one of those 'adorable' things that can grate on my nerves, so I have to stop and remind myself - thank God he does this because he has me as his human that only just a few weeks ago 'met' Susan Garrett and this past weekend joined Recaller's!
In DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) and Mindfulness - I am doing the best I can, while also working towards doing better/improving.
Mack and I are a work in progress TOGETHER 😆🥴🤗
@@feelthepeace - yep, I've come to the realization that I'm autistic (after being seriously confused for 18 months that I seemed to keep discovering that I had significant similarities with other autistic people), though I have no way of accessing diagnosis at the moment. Which is fine; my therapist, while somewhat bewildered (she has no professional contact with providing assistance to autistic people & the only autistic person she knows has a significant learning disability involved, so the idea of an autistic person without a learning disability is surprising to her), seems happy to help me re-examine my life through this lens to look for clues about what my personal set of "accommodations" for myself might be, to make life less of a struggle to manage. None of that requires a formal diagnosis and it's nothing but good for my mental health, so it works for her. ♥
Cognitive behavioural therapy has been something in use for the last 20 years in my therapy, of course, since no one had any idea they were working with a highly masked person who had no idea she was masking so completely. Looking back now, I can identify that CBT helped my *mask* cope, lol? Which only goes so far. Progress with it has always been incredibly slow (behaviour/belief change is a slow process but I'm talking *glacially* slow, even by that measure), and there's an underlying subconscious "yelling at myself" dynamic to make it work, which of course is not actually good, but even though I've been clear about that aspect in therapy, it was never addressed except "well, you shouldn't do that, stop it." DBT is already feeling... more like home, and also far more similar to things I'd already been trying in my own head that had seemed to cause less damage. Since it's actually autism at play, it makes sense why CBT was so difficult for me to make progress with & why all that inner yelling kept getting involved.
Anyway, thank you for chiming in with your experiences, and about Mack! I'm sure he'll continue to be the catalyst for learning new things about yourself, and maybe you can find a way of organizing the home environment or his play, so that the play doesn't grate on your nerves so much! When something's *really* not working for me, I keep turning it around and around in my head until I find a way to change something that enables it to work with less friction. Sometimes it's my mindset that's able to change and look at it from a different angle, but often it's switching something in my physical environment, or my schedule, that makes all the difference.
Good luck in Recallers, though I'm sure neither you nor Mack need it! I'm so happy you found Susan.
I have hit plateaus with my dog for her triggers (usually other dogs but she’s part herding breed so fast moving activity at a distance is highly distracting) 😢 I’ve done the relaxation protocol, various trainers in-home, conditioning inside and outside the home or car, managing distance, etc…and we hit a point where we can’t progress without the excitement. Fortunately she’s a happy-go-lucky dog so it’s not fearful or aggressive excitement, but her serious case of FOMO is still an issue obviously! I’ve been thinking we need to go back to the drawing board and create more value in her focusing on being with me but it’s difficult to imagine I’ll ever successfully compete with what’s clearly the world’s most fun and entertaining party of the century that I won’t let her attend each time we round the corner 😂 I’ll also note that she is well controlled *physically* while on the gentle leader, but the whining, vibrating emotional state is not just annoying (and it is!), but I’m more concerned about that stress must manifest physically too- ie can’t imagine it’s healthy for her heart rate to be that high for so long, etc etc…this is all my long way of saying “what do we do when we’ve hit a plateau with, say, distance from excitement for example, where we haven’t been able to get closer to the trigger for months?” 😅
Have you considered altering her diet?
@@DogsThat well I’ve also been considering that since watching your videos! I’ve ordered some probiotics specifically tailored for dog with high anxiety (that’s the claim at least) so hope to see some results, however small, and if so I will need to get serious about her whole diet as well 🤞
Protein, carb and fat ratios for sure @@mmcreads
What do you recommend for dogs that have a low food drive or, like my 19 month old 6.5-7 lb Toy Poodle, have a very limited capacity for food rewards in a day or session? So far, I've limited training to only one new skill at a time taught in 5 minutes at a time repeated throughout the day. I would just feed her entire meal by hand thru training exercises but she's on The Farmer's Dog and it's loose and messy. I give her Stewart Beef Liver treats or small pieces of baked or boiled chicken breast for training treats but being so small she can only eat so much in a day and puts on weight easily. She has a high ball drive and I've used that as a reward for attention and would like to know if there are more ways to use that instead of so many treats. We're starting a foundation class for agility in a couple of weeks and it would be helpful to have more in my bag of positive or negative (like removal of toy/ball) reinforcement. Thank you for all your very excellent insight and instruction.
Oh! This is perfect timing for me!
As I was watching the idea of "what behavior I don't want from my dog" was talked about, but later the "behavior I do want from my dog in that situation" seemed much more on point. Yes! That makes perfect sense ... work on calm and healthy behavior. Decide what I want and set up the environment to create that. My dog loves the vet office ... she recognizes the building after 1 visit and begins excitement pulling into the parking lot. So maybe I take a few trips to the parking lot and treat/reward a calmer state. Then when another appt rolls around plan for a slow approach. Hope that's what you mean. Thank you.
Great thinking, thank you ❤️
Hey! Love your channel all the way from Spain. I have a 10 month old Ibizan Hound who goes ballistic with excitement when out on walks with other dogs. It’s a bit over the top when the other dog does not want to play so struggling and need to work on this… do you think this gets better with age? He just stops and has no focus except for the other dog…
Picking up the leash - lol.
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We cant control our dog when we’re holding the chuck-it and ball and walking to the park to throw the ball. Our dog cries and jumps in an emotional state the whole walk. I have no idea how to train this out.
One of our dogs was like that. I started carrying the ball or Chuck it in hand and making it visible whenever practicing stuff like doorway attention, thresholds, getting in the car, out of the car, and playing a lot of its your choice with the ball. She is still excited but able to look for a sign it's time to run. It took a lot a lot of time, but it did help
My dog has never eaten food with that sort of gusto & he especially isn't interested if there's something like another dog doing something like the seesaw. If her pup wouldn't have taken any food or high value treat what would she have done?
There's many ways to reinforce other than food- Premack would be what i would use in that situation (Letting the dog access what they want if they perform a certain set of behaviours)
And moving further away.
I'd head straight to Susan's recent video with something about "Bubbles" in the title. Uploaded to TH-cam within the last week, I think.
How to get a not-food-motivated dog to become food motivated.
(and it's possible it could change the food motivation relatively quickly! But if you free-feed your dog, it might take you changing that up... the video also explains what free-feeding is, if it's not a term you know yet)
My dog is a born shopper. Her threshold challenge is any shop we haven't been in. 😆🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪