Sean's story

9-10 months after we adopted Sean, we hit a frustrating plateau in his reactivity training progress. He has improved, but not sufficiently, and it was still difficult to manage his daily walks. We still walked at ungodly hours, and he still often had a short fuse if a dog looked or barked at him, and he would 100% lose his mind if a dog ran up to him. Our trainer gave us a plan and more or less signed off on our case. I knew exactly what skills I needed to teach, but could not get much progress. 

After a lot of reading and reflection, I figured out that it did not work because I could not reward good behaviour promptly when my dog was always 3 meters ahead of me and not coming back when called (zero recall, remember?). By the time I managed to attract Sean’s attention to the treat, it was too late and he did not know what he was rewarded for. In addition, I was having problems with offering Sean sufficiently high value treats – he was on a strict hydrolised diet because of his sensitive stomach, and absolutely all of shop-bought treats (and also such training staples as cheese and sausage) disagreed with his digestion. He would work for his kibble in low-stress environment, but would literally spit it out if I offered it outside of the house.

Eventually, I decided to focus on building recall from the end of the leash – something that other dogs, apparently, do automatically, but which my dog had absolutely no inclination to do in any circumstances. I started in the quietest residential street at 5am in the morning, to minimise the amount of distractions and would do it 2-3 times per walk, using dried bread (which he loves and his stomach tolerates) as a treat. I would just stop and wait for Sean to figure out that he has to come back, and I would not move until he did (because recall is not optional). Since I was doing it in the middle of the night under people’s windows, I would not use verbal commands, but would use the “touch” hand signal (open palm as a target for nose touch) and very soft “tsk” sound to attract Sean’s attention. Since those early days of 5am trainings, I learned to rely on hand signals and speak to Sean in very low voice rather than shout commands at him – he does understand some words, but saying them louder does not make them more convincing, he has excellent hearing, so you might as well whisper them and keep the calm energy in the interaction.

Within weeks, Sean understood what is required and began coming back. I would also reward any attempt at check-in (looking back at me) and any eye contact, even a fleeting one. Before, I tried to teach “look at me” command, which worked fine at home, but did not work outside. Clearly, capturing existing behaviour (what is called “shaping” by trainers) worked much better for Sean than learning the commands. He has to figure it out on his own – then it sticks. And once he figures out what is expected, he needs to repeat this enough times to build a strong neural pathway in his brain, so consistency is super important. I trained relentlessly, every day, at every walk. This does not mean that you do long and boring drills – I would not be able to commit to this, especially at 5am on a cold and wet day. Instead, I did a little bit, literally, 1-2 minute worth – but every time we were out, just to remind Sean what this is all about.

Bolstered by this success, I increased the intensity and complexity – asking for recall more frequently and in busier places. It was not 100%, but it was definitely getting better. He started paying attention to me! About a year later, when Sean was doing million times better relative to these early days of recall training, I came across a book “When Pigs Fly” which FINALLY contained training advice that aligned with my experience. I was almost crying happy tears when I was reading it, because I have never felt so seen and understood. The author, who traines bullteriers and other non-biddable, independent-minded breeds, explains that, with dogs which are not hard-wired to work with you, you need to pay for attention and make it worth their while to listen to you, because, unlike herding dogs, terriers are not getting warm and fuzzy feeling of fulfilling their innate purpose when they do what their human says. For terriers, whatever human asks them to do is a side quest, a distraction from their main purpose of independently tracking and hunting prey. These neural pathways are strong and you need to respect them. Trying to train a terrier like a golden retriever leads to frustration and the labeling of terriers as stubborn and untrainable, and overall – not good family dogs. I disagree with this. Terriers are very good dogs, but they are different and have to be trained and managed appropriately (perhaps not every family can do that, but then not every family can manage a golden retriever with their resource guarding and bottomless appetites for all things edible and not).

Anyway, I was paying for attention now, and suddenly the training began to work exactly as it should have. I started with counter-conditioning – every time Sean met a dog, regardless of his behaviour, he was getting a high value treat (roast beef became the solution, because bread was not sufficiently high value). There were no conditions: dog=amazing treat, and nothing else, except dogs, could bring about this bounty. For several months, I would carry two treat pouches: one with beef, just for those meetings with dogs, and another with dried bread for continuing recall and attention training. The progress was very rapid – Sean started looking at me whenever he saw a dog and coming back to me for as many treats as were needed to keep him busy while the dog moved away. The more he has done that, the less he was rehearsing his reactive behaviour, and gradually his ratio of “good choices-to-violence” has become much, much better. Suddenly, “treat scatter”, “mark and move”, “observing dogs from safe distance with reinforcement for staying calm” – all these things started to work as they were meant to. We were given good advice from the very start, but without breed-specific understanding it did not work, which is why I had to troubleshoot it myself. In fairness, our trainer had some experience with Patterdales, but I guess it takes living with one to truly understand how their mind works and how different it is from human-oriented breeds.

Another cornerstone of our success was taking Sean’s agency seriously. Giving dogs as much agency as safely possible is one of the key ways to give them enriched life (see Allie Bender and Emily Strong’s book), but I feel that it is particularly important for independent-minded breeds, because we remove more agency from them when we ask them to be a family pet when we do from dogs that are specifically bred to be home companions. Dogs like Sean have not been bred to live a quiet suburban life among cars, kids on scooters, lazy indoor-outdoor cats and hundreds of small dogs. They were bred to roam the rough rural terrain, hunt vermin, get in fights with other farm dogs, cause hilarity and mischief, and come home in the evening to curl in front of the fire next to their humans, looking cute and innocent. For further details – see “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome, whose description of the fox-terrier Montmorency can be easily applied to any terrier:) But, fiction aside, working terriers do need opportunities to make their own choices to be fulfilled and urban life severely restricts these opportunities. I feel sometimes that I am not able to give Sean what he needs (free-roaming in the nature), but DogsTrust tried to find him a rural home for 6 months and has not succeeded, so life with us is the best option this dog has.

How do you give agency to a dog who cannot be off-leash and has to be closely supervised around cats, footballs, and any animals and birds larger than a robin? For a start, by having a longer leash (around 4m) and by giving him an opportunity to lead the way (as long as it is safe) on walks. He decides where he wants to go, and I will follow him into the long grass, zigzag across the lawns while he follows a scent, allow him to dive into bushes (keeping an eye for footballs and hedgehogs), and ask him at the crossroads “Where do you want to go?” If he stops, I wait for him to process information and to make a decision where he wants to go. If he slows down, I look for signs that he wants to turn back or cross the road. You can almost sense his relief when I figure out where he wanted to go and say “this way? sure, let’s go”. He gets extra spring in his step and is usually more relaxed and responsive after that. Alternatively, if you try to rush him or only steer him where you want to go, he will resist and get progressively more stressed.

Indoors, he decides where he wants to sleep (the only off-limit places are human beds) and has a bed in every room of the house. He has an on-demand access to the garden, and decides when he wants and does not want to go there. He can ask for attention and I will often give him at least several minutes (unless I am in a call), trying to figure out what he wants – to play, to train, or to do a food puzzle. As his reactivity improved, I also became more flexible about feeding and walking times, trying to give Sean opportunity to sleep if he wants to sleep, and to feed him when he leads me to his bowl (he has a fixed ration for the day, so this does not mean that I give him more food, but I might give it 15 minutes earlier if he really wants). When he barks at something outside, I come to him and ask in a genuinely curious voice “What is it? Ah, it the delivery van! Yes, how dare they come here bringing us parcels” – this shows Sean that he is not being ignored and he does not need to bark louder or longer for me to acknowledge that he is doing his job (it also possibly reassures him that there is nothing concerning outside that he needs to scare off with his barking). These are all small things, but they collectively contributed to a much more confident and calm dog, who – it seems – knows that he is being listened to and, in turn, is more likely to listen to me when I say “Sean, I am busy” (he will go to his bed and wait).