Boogie's blog

The “crazy old lady” session (more dog training theatrics!)

May 9, 2010 at 3:49 am 4 comments

Today’s decoy was Irith (also a dog trainer):  dressed up as an old lady with a baggy floral dress, glasses, multiple bags and a shopping cart. She rolled the cart back and forth, acted like a weirdo, and spoke to Boogie in a creepy shrill voice: “Hello little dog! You are so cute!”

A big thank you to Irith for being a part of this BAT training session! (our 5th)

It could not have been easy doing this, and believe me, our street was hustling and bustling this evening with all kinds of people walking by and wondering what the heck we were doing.  One guy stopped to chat about his boston terrier. Another stopped to ask if we were filming!

Interestingly, even though our session was frequently interrupted by passing black-clad hipsters, kids, dogs, old people, delivery people, you-name-it,  Boogie was awesome. Not surprisingly, he alerted to all the triggers  with ears and body upright, staring – even more so than to “crazy Irith”,  but it was impressive to see how quickly he turned his head to look at me and then follow me away, whenever I marked with either “Yes!” or the clicker. We went through the BAT protocol 3-4 times with each person who appeared on my street. Boogie got the drill! He knew what to do.

Sarah wondered if the session was too intense for Boogie  with so many triggers everywhere, but Boogie remained under-threshold the entire time, which made it a wonderful opportunity to practice BAT in a REAL LIFE situation….

In real life, people show up all over the place, unexpectedly, anyway. The key is making sure that there is enough distance between Boogie and the trigger to begin with…Also, I have to remind myself  NOT TO PULL him away, and let him look, then reward him with “distance” for his good behavior. And he was a very good Boogie!

At the end of our session, Boogie was able to walk past Crazy Irith and her shopping cart calmly;  as well as look at her, then DROP HIS EARS and look at me. 🙂

Let’s hope that we can keep this up every other day of the week!

Entry filed under: BAT sessions, Training.