The struggle is real. I have been trying to find a good time to take Ricochet for a walk/run. 5:30-6:15 AM super dark outside, 6:15-7:00 AM rabbits and squirrels galore, 7:00-7:30 AM school busses are out and Ricochet freaks out. Any time after that the day has started and I need to get my own kids ready and get set for the day. It’s frustrating. Keep in mind this isn’t him cowering, or even just pulling at the leash. This is full on barking, lunging, springing from the ground., and causing a fair amount of mayhem.
My first instinct with these behaviors was that Ricochet had high prey drive because he is a high drive working dog. I don’t think this is true anymore. The more I get to know him the more I recognize his behaviors as fear, anxiety, and insecurity. He isn’t the dog who can play fetch for hours because he is crazy focused and needs a job. He gets excited, runs after the ball and then gets hyper focused on something in the yard (usually a critter) and then ignores everything else around him. In the house he will spend hours looking out the window just waiting for some woodland creature to bark and stare at. That doesn’t seem like high drive to me. I think he is a rescue dog that was not properly socialized as a puppy and now has a ton of anxieties.
This realization of high anxiety versus high drive has really changed how I work with him. I have been focusing a lot more on keeping the environment calm and introducing experiences to him slowly.
This means our runs have really changed. They are shorter and often when it’s still dark outside. Even further, I have taken to running him up and down the same two streets. These two streets are low traffic and pretty uninteresting (for people and dogs). I carry treats with me and reward him when we have to go past something that I know will steal his attention. This means that whenever there is another dog, squirrel, bus, rabbit…gust of wind…we stop. I stop and get his attention on me so that he can learn that these situations don’t have to be fearful and that he can pass these things peacefully without having a full freak out.
This makes our runs and walks incredibly boring and he will still have at least 2-4 reactions on the quiet streets. It’s frustrating. It makes me sometimes feel like maybe this was a mistake. I am still enamored with my mistake. He is such a sweet, quirky, loving, funny dog. Ricochet is a lot of work. He requires an enormous amount of consistency and effort. Nothing is easy with him. Luckily though, there is no training deadline. I said that I was going to commit to 45 minutes per day of training for a year but, realistically, that was to keep myself focused. Ricochet’s fear and reactivity could take years of effort and, even then, he may always be fearful of these situations. Teaching him that he can be unsure or anxious but not need to react to such extremes is going to be a long road. At the end of it all Ricochet has his own personality, experiences, and demeanor. He’s not going to just magically turn into the perfectly behaved dog that I created in my mind. What I have to do is embrace him, appreciate him, work with him, encourage him, be patient, and know that I got exactly the dog that I needed.
The Heralding Hound 