Dog park car park training session with Julia
Did you know that you can achieve a lot by doing a training session where your dog never even leaves the car?
Using the safety and comfort of their car you can help provide safe stress free training sessions for you both. Depending on what the triggers are you wish to work on you can select an option to work one actually getting a state of calm in the presence of their triggers!
Examples:
Stranger Danger Reactivity: I can go to a grocery store parking lot or parking area for a park or athletic field.
Children: I can park near a playground or school.
Skateboards: I can park near the skate park
Bicycles: I can park near a bike path
Dogs: I can park near a dog park, pet store, groomer, vet clinic.
Just be sure you park at the distance your dog can observe without already being over threshold! You might be waaaaaaaaaaaaaay far away the first few times and that’s ok! When I started with Butters I was parked the length of a football field away from a pet store.
Pull your car so you can sit near your dog, it works best if they are in a crate, because you can more easily keep the car door open and still have control of the situation and not have to worry about your dog bailing. If I did not have a crate I would tether their leash to a seat belt or somehow secure them so they cannot jump out. If you do not have a crate you also might need to sit with them with the car doors shut the first few times. If your dog is barking, you are too close!
I am using a mix of treats that is mostly kibble with some Ziwi peak (it’s dog food that is sort of like jerky, but you can add just a bit of anything your dog finds a little more tasty than kibble) so I can give her a bunch and not worry about that. I am just giving her bites whenever she: looks at a dog, sees people walking their dogs to and from the park, hears dogs barking. Basically I am just reinforcing her for watching quietly.
What I am personally focused on is her mood! I am looking to see if she can calm and relax in this sub-threshold environment. Not all dogs are going to achieve calm the first few visits and that’s ok. This is not meant to be flooding! Flooding is when we keep dogs over threshold and hope they will just get over it. Habituation is where we expose a dog at a low enough stress level they are able to normalize the situation.
I would leave earlier or try to move further away if I see:
Increasing signs of stress. It is normal for a dog to do what she does early in the video where she releases some stress energy by yawning a couple times after getting heightened by a little dog barking. But in normal stress response, they throw a couple signals and that’s done and they go back to looking more at ease. So if she would have kept yawning and looking stressed I would have left and not waited for calm.
If she had escalated and gotten agitated or frustrated. She was alert and interested, but never frustrated or agitated.
At one point not on the video a car parked directed across from us and was going to get their dogs out, so when they pulled in, I stopped the camera, covered her crate with the window shade, shut the back door of the car, and then went to the side door and fed her treats as she could hear those dogs but stayed under threshold because she could not see them. So if the environment changes if I cannot adapt and prevent an over threshold moment I would leave.
But if I see my dog is becoming increasingly less intense I will see if I can wait until they reach a state of bored and calm. Because them learning these environments can be chill can help you be able to arrive for reactivity training with a calm dog rather than one that is already trigger stacked before you even get them out of the car!