The more workshops I go to, the more private behavior or training sessions we schedule, and the more training classes I sign us up for, the more the notion that there are many ways to train or address any one dog behavior becomes more clear. I love learning about all the options and experimenting with the one that works for us, but I am also finding relief in realizing that because I can't swing the-best-option-for-fixing-this doesn't meant I can't use a different method for now and get the same results or go back to the-best-option-for-fixing-this later.
When we first got Shadow, he was a wild child just winding up for the full swing of adolescence. Everything was hard. EVERYTHING. To sleep quietly in his crate, he needed a clay heating pad, NPR playing, a clock making loud ticking noises, a stuffed kong, and a crate full of toys. There were months when we had weekly visits to the vet and daily phone calls just to get his digestive system sorted out. To walk him, I brought along treats and toys to reward him for loose leash walking, practiced our rally tricks, coaxed, coerced, and dutifully played stop and go to the point that we could be gone for half an hour and barely have made it around the block. Yes, there were times when I sat down on the side of the road and sobbed while he sniffed the grass and lowered his head glaring at an ever-so-fascinating-garbage-can-monster.
He bolted through doors. He pulled so hard I went through four different types of harnesses because he had bleeding armpits. He played too rough at the dog park. He howled and spun in the car. He knocked down displays and stole treats out of bins at the pet store. He snarked at dogs who came near him in our training classes. He lost his mind in ecstatic jumping/licking/mouthing when guests came over. He paced and panted in the house. He ate everything remotely edible (luckily he has an affinity for natural/outdoor items and a really good vomiting routine). He howled and barked and stuck his head in our pant legs when we tried to get dressed. Our dog walker, saint that she is, left us notes like "he behaved as well as he could" on our table.
He had only two things going for him: iron clad house training and an ability to cock his head with his one folded ear and look really, really cute.
In the midst of all of that, Mike and I sought professional help (and lots of it). One of the issues we wanted to work on was him losing his mind barking his head off and scrambling around on our wood floors any time we remotely looked like we were going out. When our trainer presented the "wait him out" routine (extinction I think is the fancy word for it), it only took Mike and I two or three tries before we realized that Shadow truly did have the upper hand in this situation and we were in no way prepared or able to actually wait him out. (Much less intentionally set him off by reaching for his halter randomly throughout the day to desensitize him to us picking it up).
We did not have the mental and emotional stamina at that point and time to wait Shadow out on this issue.
Luckily for us, our trainer was sympathetic and talented and had other options for us. So we trained a really good "go to your place." We learned to hook him up/put him in a down stay before we reached for our shoes. We put plastic tupperware containers of treats near the door and near his mat to convince him it was in his best interest to shut up and hold it together. We snuck into our bedroom and closed the door so we could get out of our pj's without him seeing. It was a lot of work, and perhaps the extinction route might have gotten us to our goal faster. But addressing it this way was what we could handle - to us, the management routine was better than stopping the behavior by showing him we wouldn't respond to obnoxious demand barking.
Fast forward two years, and we have a dog with a good leave it and a solid GI system. We have walking options that work for us: putting him in his joring harness and letting him haul us around the neighborhood or putting him in a regular harness, taking the walk at his pace, and enforcing a pulling = human-stops-and-waits-for-obnoxious-puller-to-reconnect/make-eye-contact rule. We have a dog with an automatic down stay when we put our shoes on to go out the door. We have a dog who has been trained to politely ask if he can come up on the couch. We have a dog who's compromised with us and will jump up on our bed and lay their tail wagging while we put our pants on instead of trying to squeeze into them with us.
So now, when he gets over excited and loses his mind barking, we have the emotional and mental grit to sit back down on the couch and ignore him until he shuts up and offers a polite behavior like going to his place. Because most likely, on that particular day, he's only done 5 obnoxious things and we're still under our threshold.
This is just one example - there are many more compromises that we've made with Shadow. Or conscious "we're going to work on that later and focus on this now" choices. I still struggle with this sometimes. I think that if I was 100% perfect and consistent in my interactions with him everyday, we'd have all the wrinkles in our relationship ironed out much quicker. I can't wait for my second, third, fourth dog when I have more perspective on the roller coaster of canine development and training. But, for now - for today - I'm celebrating learning a little wisdom in realizing that "good enough for now" truly is good enough when balanced with everything else we're working on and training through.
