Quote:
Originally Posted by yorkietalkjilly  I forgot to add that the morning of the training, you want to set him up for success to focus on that chicken. After that light dinner the night before & your busy fixing the warm, boiled chicken with the scent drifting throughout the house, your hungry little dog will be FOCUSED on and ALERTED to that chicken cooking. He'll be constantly looking to you and asking you for it. He'll be expecting to get some. When it's done cooking, take it out, show it to him just above his nose and allow him to look at it up close, smell it, drool over it and develop a mad passion for it but never get a taste of it. It will drive him mad wanting it and you WANT that drive in him fully developed before your walk outside. Drain it, cool it some on the cabinet, saying over and over, "Mmmm, smell that chicken! You can get that soon, boy!" You are building up his focus and desire for the thing that is going to take the place of the passing dog's in his brain when outside on the leash.
Let him see you put the chicken in your treat pouch, tell him "You will get a bite soon!", hook it on your belt and leash him and walk him outside very slowly, you preceding him out of the front door always. Get him to stay focused on your hand on the treat pouch when you get outside by touching it and saying, "Mmm, want to get some chicken? Learn to focus on the chicken!" or whatever you want to say to keep him thinking about that chicken you have. Keeping him thinking about and focusing solely on that chicken is a huge part of the process at this point.
Now, take his leash up, place him beside your left leg and begin your walk and once you see another dog approaching, cross the street with him, take out the chicken(Finally!) from the pouch and place it in front of his nose and begin your very fast circle walk with that chicken taunting him in front of his nose. If you've prepared him by keying him onto that chicken earlier that morning, he'll now be very excited and VERY determined to get that chicken!!! He'll do anything to get his breakfast and learn to ignore everything else in the process. I'd just try it once or twice a day and then bring him back inside to eat his normal breakfast before he has a chance to encounter more dogs when he's not so crazy to get that chicken.
After a few days, you no longer need to withhold his breakfast the morning of the training as he'll have learned how good the chicken is, remember how badly he wanted it when he was soooo hungry and work to get it just as hard now that he knows the drill. |
Well thank you for taking the time to compose your reply, to my post [that was a mammoth effort] thanks again [phew I here you say].
Ok, I see what your indicating and will indeed try this that you mention, what therapists in the UK call loosely 'distraction therapy.' Historically I have tried many distractions with him, but we do not live in the past, my Yorkie walks with me on or off the lead by my side, rarely in front, he is a wonderfully well trained dog and never until he was two years old following this attack had I, well my daughter actually who owned him then had this trouble. Toby lived with two big dogs and never troubled them or them him.
We walk to my garden allotment and if I can see well ahead of me I let him free from the leash, if he sees another dog I click my fingers twice and call toby 'sit' he does this no problem, and allows me to put his lead on, however should this other dog come past him or near him [even without invading Toby's self space] he will attack it, then I have the explaining to do.
Toby has been to professionals for help, and more than once, it is nearly seven years now that has elapsed since that attack] albeit the common mode of thought is they can do little for him. At one such school they tried training him to do things that were not alien to him insisting I stay away, which I had no problem with, then reporting he was/had no problem with basic training, and disattending other dogs .
No, no problem at all following basic commands, this little Yorkie picks things up so very easily and learns so very quickly but not when it comes to other dogs, despite what therapists assert he attacks them with a ferocity that would maim them and seriously I would never venture to pick him up when in confrontation with another dog, that would, depending on how things progressed, endanger me, as previously,actually this is what I did instinctively when that brute of a dog was roaming ownerless, it then attacked me when I was busy smashing it to an inch of its life to save my little Yorkie, one of the reasons why I would never have a retractable lead again as one forgets in such instances to snap it shut, then of course your tied in knots as Toby tries to evade this other dog chasing him.
He has not been /was not just physically scarred, more than 100 stitches in his back end and rear paws, a torn open nose requiring stitching, a rip across his tummy which endangered his life and needed emergency vetinary intervention but mentally too he is scarred, and hundreds of pounds spent on rehabilitation has not helped this little dog. Is it me, well maybe but he is the same when my wife or son takes him out, and really they have no where near the control of him that I have. Please read my other post[s] thread to see my ethos here in training Toby, even the best trainers who have wrote books have stated that retraining after dog attack is a long and arduous process, they are not kidding. Seriously if I were to give you this little dog, he is a [for want of better wording] a proper Yorkshire terrier [not a toy or miniature tea cup or anything else these breeders bring to the fore], he will teach you things, he finds a way of communicating his wants to you, there is little one needs to assume for Toby, this is notably one of the things absent in all other dogs I have had that endears me to him. It is not what I can teach Toby but rather what he instinctively' intuitively knows [which is the basis of all IQ tests]this is what makes him so clever, so bright a little dog.
On a separate note . These little dogs were ratters, as you probably know they were bred to kill rats in the mills in middle England widely rumoured but not known to be crossed with a Skye and Manchester terrier and inherently it is in their breed to kill rats and despite the different, for want of a better word 'nuances' of their owners buttons bows and the like, Yorkies, true Yorkie terriers cannot be prevented from doing what is innate in their breed, whether the smaller Yorkie type terrier tea cup or whatever will try and kill rats I do not know, but neither do I think these are true Yorkies either. Regards Rob