If you can't beat 'm join 'm

I have begun rewarding George for baying...once...

My evil plan is to use a counterconditioning protocol (Dr. Pamela Reid- Excelerated learning) to change his motivation behind the machine gun barking when he feels the need to be vocal...to bark once.

In a seminar that Leslie attended of Dr. Reid's, she mentioned that she used this technique to countercondition a lip snarl with her resource guarder...and in turn, because the dog was reinforced for the lip snarl...it changed the emotion behind the snarl...That's it! I taught Daizy to bark on cue when she was a puppy, but never George for whatever reason....

He's done it naturally for in other situations; bark once if he needs to go out, sit/down bark once to "show me" a toy or something he can't get at, so I know he can use it to communicate without the anxiety that comes with the machine gun bark. There's too much anxiety behind it, I prefer the one bark better...he is less stressed once he gets it out of his system.

So far so good! Tonight we tried it out (chips as a reward) and it was very well received..mind you he had a look on his face with his lip stuck...almost as if to say.."you want me to ....bark?"

I parked the car close to a low traffic store...then sat in the car to wait for the bait....then....person in this case.


1-bark, then "yes" in an impressed voice but not over the top excited as I want him to remain calm.
2-then chipsss, a handful of them actually....until he stopped barking and continued to enjoy his chips (crunchy and takes time to eat...plus...he LOVES CHIPS!)..
3-then I said "thank you" for the quiet and him looking at me...

*important they CHOOSE to focus back on you so you can give calm biofeedback...and praise and cuddles of course.
** If they don't then you need to work further away from the trigger.


Then I got out of the car but rolled the window down a bit and waited again for 'bait".....then repeated the same thing above........then we left.

1-bark, then "yes"
2-then chip.sss....until he stopped barking and continued to enjoy his chips (crunchy and takes a long time to eat...plus...he LOVES CHIPS!)..
3-then I said "thank you" for the quiet and eye contact, gave him the sleepy eyes, calm biofeedback and we left!

I was only there for about 5 min tops...just a couple times, one in the car next to him, one outside the car. I always start off in very short increments first off to build value for the game...then they look forward to playing it again!

1-building value (one bark = rewards! treats, toys, fun, snuggles, whatever goofy things your dog LOVES BEST)
2-transferring value (raise criteria....one bark + then quiet for a couple seconds 'thank you" before the rewards...so you've now transferred the value of the one bark to being quiet.....)
3-balance for the bahaviour rather than the reward.....(one bark + quiet "thank you" = calm happy state, mix in rewards on occasion to keep life interesting)

I was reminded of that from Control Unleashed book. She just put out another dvd and it's on it way to ME :)...I like the first clip to reorient to owner when going out of the door.


http://www.cleanrun.com/images/productvideos/CUGamesPreviewClip.wmv

My plan is to get back to the one alert bark rather than this machine gun bark.