Chasing Squirrels

Here's another post from the Amazon.com Blog vault. I promised a new client that I'd make this available again; her dog has an obsession with horses. It's much stronger than Freddie's fascination was with squirrels, but the principle still holds true: when you make yourself more relevant to your dog's prey drive, he'll be happy to give up whatever "prey" he's obsessed with, particularly if you let him finish the predatory sequence by biting a toy. It's really that simple (which doesn't necessarily mean it's easy).

Chasing Squirrels

I mentioned in a previous post the need to take charge of the dog’s emotional charge. You want to do this without attempting to become some mythical pack leader, of course (though Cesar Millan seems to be making a good living doing it). I’ve described this process in my work with Boomer, but another excellent example comes from my own dog, Fred, who used to love to chase squirrels in Central Park. At the time he was still having panic attacks on the streets, but was entirely calm in the park. In fact, I’d been trying to find a way to get him to play tug and fetch in order to cure those attacks, but his only way of expressing his prey drive was by stalking and chasing squirrels. I wasn’t as concerned with the fact that he was chasing squirrels—they were always too fast for him to actually catch one. I was more concerned that he’d totally ignore me when he got into his hunting mode. His attitude was, “I know you’re going the other direction. Don’t worry about me, I’ll catch up with when I’m done here...”

So, one day I took some juicy pieces of chicken breast to the park with me. When Freddie spotted a squirrel and began stalking it—which he did by freezing in position, like a setter or pointer—I walked over and put the chicken in front of his nose to distract him; to try to get him to pay attention to me and not the squirrel. He just ignored it. In fact, he kept moving his head around because my hand was blocking his line of sight, so I finally put it right into his mouth (which was open slightly). The damn dog let that juicy slice of chicken just sit right on top of his tongue for about half a second, then dropped it—ptaahh—onto the ground, keeping his eyes on the squirrel the whole time.

I was stumped. If I couldn’t distract him by putting a piece of chicken right into his mouth, how could I get his attention? Then it hit me: I would hunt squirrels with him. Maybe that would solve my other problem too; how to get Fred to share his prey drive with me. So, I put the chicken away, and later, while Freddie was sniffing around distractedly, I spotted another squirrel, one that he hadn’t seen yet himself.

In a hushed, highly emotionally charged voice I whispered, “There he is!” and began slowly stalking it myself.

Freddie picked up on my mood, saw the squirrel and dropped into his stalking stance. We were now hunting our quarry together. He didn’t know it yet, but I was now in control of the game.

We did this for a few days, then I added a new twist. We’d stalk the squirrel together but at some point, I’d pick up a stick, hoot excitedly and run away, waving it for Freddie to see.

Freddie would then be forced to choose between chasing the squirrel or chasing me and the stick. In the beginning he always went after the squirrel. But the thing is, the squirrels always went up a tree, leaving him with nothing to sink his teeth into. That’s the critical thing here.

Meanwhile, I was still enticing him with a stick. If he came to me, I would ask him to jump up on me and play tug-of-war, which I’d either let him win, or I’d say “Out!” and then throw the stick for him to chase, which he did with absolute ecstasy. Once the stick was in Freddie’s mouth and he was able to crunch down on it with his jaws and kill it, he was truly satisfied. He never got that kind of satisfaction from chasing squirrels because he never got a chance to bite one (in other words he never got a chance to complete the predatory sequence). He gradually gave up chasing squirrels altogether. Now if he shows any interest in one, all I have to do is call him or show him a tennis ball and he comes running back to me.

Of course, from the traditional standpoint, everything I did to change Freddie’s behavior was wrong:

1.) I encouraged him to chase squirrels, which squirrel-lovers disapproved of (I told them it was a squirrel aerobics class)

2.) I encouraged him to jump up on me, and

3.) I was not only playing tug-of-war with him, I was letting him win!

These were all huge no-nos in the dog training world at the time. But doing each of these things helped me take charge of Freddie’s emotional energy. That was the whole point.

Here’s how and why it worked: when Freddie saw a squirrel he became filled with an emotional charge. He was so charged up in fact that nothing could get his attention away from his intended prey, not even a juicy piece of chicken sitting on his damn tongue! By immersing (or pretending to immerse) myself in the same emotions that he was feeling, I created a dynamic, magnetic charge between us. Then, by getting him to jump up on me and play tug-of-war, I decreased his resistance to my position as a vertical being and gave him the satisfaction of crunching something with his teeth.

It also helped that Freddie’s m.o. in hunting squirrels was to stalk them; to try to sneak up as close as he could without disturbing them. Then, when they started to run towards the nearest tree, he’d give chase. If he’d been an instant chaser like some dogs, this wouldn’t have worked.

I’m not recommending that you chase squirrels with your dog. It just happened to work with Freddie due to a number of contributing factors that I was aware of at the time, and that you might not be with your dog. What I am recommending is that you find a way to take charge of your dog’s emotional energy, not so that you can always be in control of everything the dog does, but so that the dog can be in control of his own behavior, and doesn’t need you to constantly be telling him what to do (which is something some people—like Cesar Millan—seem to enjoy, by the way).

Okay, so here’s the thing, though: if you don’t have “willing” squirrels as your guinea pigs in your process of teaching the dog to re-direct her energy into something safe to bite, and especially if your dog is more apt to go after children or skateboarders or other dogs, you have got, got, got to be able to get her addicted to tug before you put her in a situation where she’s going to come up against her biggest bite-temptation. Squirrels are wily and can run up trees in a heartbeat. They’re safe (more or less). Kids and skateboarders and other dogs don’t have as easy a time escaping those teeth. So work on taking charge of the charge first, then work on redirecting your dog’s energy into a game of tug, or just on heeling, or jumping up. The more you can do that, the less tempting these other things will be.

LCK