Milo regressing to previous behavior

[Sosanadeshda]

Milo was a stray, super timid dog when he came into my life 14 months ago. I estimate he is maybe 2 years old terrier mix and has a lot of energy. At first, he didn't even know how to walk on a leash. After much work, we were able to walk on trails without him charging at people when they passed in the opposite direction. About 8 weeks ago, I had surgery and stopped going on our daily walks for about 3 weeks. Then the heat of the summer forced us to start walking early in the morning instead of the evenings and due to time, I have to start work at 8 am, we walked downtown instead of the trail. Downtown is particularly quiet and I am able to change directions to avoid the occasional people we might encounter. As days have cooled off a bit in the evenings, we went back to trail last week and to my surprise, he began to charge at people again, not to every one but he does it when I least expect it. He was also doing so well when we visited the local pet friendly stores but now he seems very anxious. He is an extraordinary intelligent dog. I observed that it takes him 2 days to learn something new but he is also really stubborn when it comes to changing an old habit. He is also terrified of dogs and reacts aggressively and that's another issue we need to work on. How can I help him?

[Adrienne]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

Milo is a cutie and he looks very smart and attentive to his surroundings! This bright and alert boy seems to be showing similar signs of what dog professionals refer to as "suburban dog syndrome." In simple words, these are dogs who live in rural or suburban settings, where things get pretty static overtime. These dogs don't get to see many people and other dogs as dogs living in big towns and cities, so when these dogs see humans under the form of delivery people or when they are walked and encounter a person or other dog in the distance, all alarm bells are set off, as these stimuli turn out being perceived as "superstimuli." 

Now, in Milo's case, he got used to seeing people and dogs in walks, but because his walks were suspended for some time, he has now started perceiving people once again as "superstimuli" to react to. So yes, I agree with you, he seems to have regressed and there is a such a thing as "desocialization," that is, the phenomenon where a dog who was previously socialized, starts to lose some socialization skills due to lack of continued exposure/conditioning. Interestingly, more and more dog behavior professionals are seeing  a surge of cases of reactivity (even in dogs who were super social before!) due to the recent COVID19 lockdowns. 

Three weeks may seem like a relatively short time for us, but for dogs that's quite a stretch of time as they perceive time different from us. So it can certainly play a number on dogs, especially those who had a history of being reactive in the first place. So how can we tackle this issue?

I would start by familiarizing with some basic behavior modification methods based on desensitization and counterconditioning. 

In desensitization, we are aiming to present stimuli (triggers, in this case, people and other dogs) at a level that don't cause your dog to get upset. It seems like Milo would benefit from this since he seems to have become "sensitized" (that is, he has become more sensitive, thus more reactive) to seeing people. You can read more about desensitization here:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/desensitization/

At the same time, we also want to change his emotional response towards triggers, with the goal of making great things happen when he sees people or other dogs on walks, versus him dreading seeing them. This can be accomplished through counterconditioning. You can read more about counterconditioning here:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/counterconditioning/

At the same time, it's important ensuring your dog is kept under threshold as much as possible. This prevents your dog from getting stressed, it prevents rehearsal of the problem behavior and also helps you progress through behavior modification. Here are signs of a dog going over threshold and tips on how to keep him under: 

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/threshold-levels/

Now, we can start laying a foundation of all this through some Look at That exercises. I see you have a lovely large window, so if Milo tends to bark and react as people are walking by, you can try to practice this exercise below several times throughout the day. When you cannot dedicate time for this, it would be important to prevent access to windows. 

 https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/university/look-at-that/

Then once you have a nice response, you can move on to practicing the same exercise in the yard (if you have people walking by the fence) and then on walks. Make a smacking sound with your mouth upon him noticing triggers and feed tasty treats.

 Since he sounds over threshold on trails, I would start taking baby steps, so start practicing this downtown. Feed tasty treats he loves every time you spot a person or dog on walks at a distance. If they are too close, change directions, here is a guide on emergency u-turns https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/emergency-u-turn/

 Go very gradual. Since he seems to charge at only certain people, unless you can identify what these people have in common (walking fast? men? wearing hats? sunglasses or face masks?),  I would cover all basis and just keep feeding tasty morsels every time a person pops up until you can get a conditioned emotional response (happy body language at the sight of people approaching).

Now, on trails, things seem to get challenging so I suggest not walking there until your dog is doing super well on walks downtown. It sounds like on trails he charges as people are walking by and there's not much wiggle room for distance. So we may have to stick to the edge of the trail as much as possible with your dog preferably on the closest side to the edge of the trail. Also, we need a certain continuity here when it comes to treat delivery. So we can try the open/bar closed bar method (link below) where you feed several treats in a row as you walk past the person. The goal is to feed several treats as the person passes by (open bar) and stop feeding treats when the person has passed by (close bar). This gives dogs the clear idea that treats happen contingent upon people being around.

 https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/open-bar-closed-bar/

You can also train lovely attention heeling as you walk by the people. This is more advanced, thus, requiring more time to train, but it would be a nice routine to train eventually as he learns to associate people with goodies being delivered:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/obedience-101/heeling-attention-heeling/

Remember: setbacks can happen in behavior modification. In other words, it can happen that our dog was doing well and then he starts charging again. This is a sign we have progressed too fast and need to take a few steps back (often giving more distance) and work at lower levels of exposure. 

For particularly nervous dogs or dogs predisposed to aggression, please enlist the help of a force-free dog behavior consultant. Skip any dog trainers using corrections, as this is the last thing you want. If every time your dog sees a trigger and barks or lunges, and he's corrected for barking or lunging, he'll be on edge more because now, on top of fearing the trigger, the dog fears the correction that happens when he sees the trigger.

In the pet friendly stores, once again, we need to make sure he's not put to the point of acting anxious and being over threshold. So you may start will very brief visits where you go inside just at the entrance, feed some tasty treats and then exit. Keep doing this until he seems more comfortable. Keep it short and sweet. Then progress to going inside,  maybe buying him some tasty treats and then opening a bag of them feeding some of them there on the spot or feeding him a treat at the register. I don't know how your pet stores are, but most in my neck of the woods have complimentary dog cookies at checkout. 

I hope this helps bring Milo to the point where he used to be before. 

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Best,

Adrienne

 

[Sosanadeshda]

Thank you very much for taking the time to address our issue. I will put your advise in practice and will let you know our progress. 

[Adrienne]

You are very welcome!

Keep us posted.

Best,

Adrienne