What are distractions and how do we train for them?
Distractions come in many different forms for dogs and owners. We may see that the obvious distractions can be other dogs and cars but it can be as simple as a leaf blowing, children from a distance that could be occupying your dog's mind. This an build up to anticipation over time and soon your dog will have explosive lunging and outbursts that can cause damage.
I've had owners undergo facial surgeries from being pulled so hard on the leash where they couldn;t control their dog before it was too late. Arm injuries, dog fights, hit by cars....all these can happen in a blink of an eye. I'm not trying to come off sounding paranoid but these are real life factual situations that happen every day.
So how do we help our furry friend to acclimate to these situations? Well, first we need to gain thier trust and engagement to prepare them for this step by step process. It takes low levels of threshold to walk them through this so they have normal regulations and healthy coping mechanisms to prevent them rebounding into fight or flight modes. Fight or flight modes is when our systems react to a threat and we need to defend ourselves or get the heck out of there in order to survive. Untrained dogs can do one or the other or sometimes both depending on the situation.
Once we have successfully trained them to not react to low levels of distractions for short periods of time, then we can increase the level but keep the time to a minimum. We ' want to over do theri threshold and overstimulate them by making it an unpleasant experience. In fact I try to leave before something bad happens or before the dog becomes too exhausted. Leaving on a good note is key. This will increase the mood as time goes by.
In the video below is an owner/ livestock guardian breed that has been known to have a wide girth of spacial awareness and a very calm but demanding presence to him. He is absolutely not aggressive but very respected of his space and demands respect as well. There is a point when another dog lunges in his face and they team kept composure as trained. It could of been a very scary situation had training not happen. In fact, this whole walking through a Farmer's Market never would of happened has training not happened. This team did a great job keeping up the great work.