Pushing the envelope.. ?

[Ari_RR]

This has been brought up many times in many threads - the need to train the dog under different conditions and in different environments. Simply put -  "sit/stay" in a quiet living room is very different from "sit/stay" in the middle of a street with moving humans, loud cars, strange dogs, noises, scents, etc around.

Now - a particular case with Ari, where it seems that we are failing somewhat.

When we don't drive to a park, we take long walks (1 hr or more) through the neighborhood. It's a fairly quiet neighborhood, but we do routinely meet people during our walks. 

Some times Ari ignores them and just keeps walking/sniffing the ground as we pass them. He is never very friendly with strangers (which i don't really mind), so ignoring them is as good as it gets. 

But at other times, he becomes defensive when he notices an approaching human. This manifests itself in him stopping, ears perked, watching intently, then low warning growl, which gets louder as the person gets closer, and when this happens I have to either distract him (with treats, mostly), or we have to avoid the approaching human.
This can be the very same person, whom Ari sometimes ignores, and at other times reacts to.. And it can be at the approximately the same place.. Which leads me to believe that other environmental factors play a role. I am sure, for example, that time of day is a factor. Ari is a lot more suspicious of everything and everyone early in the morning and late in the evening, when it's dark. So, as much as I would rather have an easy and fun walk in the afternoon when the sun is still out, I think I should start having more late night walks.. Which initially will be a bit of a pain, because of his state of high alert when it's  dark, but hopefully over time he will gain confidence and will be desensitized to all the strange evening shadows and whatever else makes him a bit uncomfortable.

But besides time of day and lighting conditions, there may be other things at play, although I am not sure what.. This probably requires paying more attention and essentially analyzing every tense encounter - was it dark? Windy? Was there a loud noise somewhere? Etc etc...  And then proceed to exposing him to those conditions - wind, noise, whatever else...

So, essentially, this becomes constant pushing the envelope a little, venturing deeper and deeper into uncomfortable situations with the intent of desensitizing him to a wider and wider spectrum of environmental factors.

Is this a general approach that others take with their dogs? Or do folks tend to find some kind of "comfort zone" and stay within? I realize that a lot depends, of course, mainly on the dog..   But still, any thoughts on this would be helpful..

cheers!

[JudyN]

Not that I'm an expert but my feeling is that if you can walk him when he's comfortable, I'd keep doing that, and treat him when a stranger approaches even (or especially) if he is calm. If he's sometimes wary of strangers in the day, then it's going to be a lot harder to convince him that they're OK at a time of day when he's less comfortable. Aim for the stage where if he sees a stranger he looks expectantly at you and is 100% comfortable. Then gradually move towards dusk, and dark.

If there's somewhere you can walk him where you can guarantee not meeting anyone, you could take him there when it's dark - so you're working on 'scary dark' and 'scary people' separately rather than trying to deal with two stressors at once.

I can't remember - how old is he? Could this be a developmental issue that will get better with time?

[Ari_RR]

He's 17 months old... That's a great idea - separate "dark" vs "dark and strange humans" !!

[jakesmom]

We avoid walking Jake after dark if we can. We think he's got to realise that there are more likely to be cats around at night, and he is on constant alert, walking very deliberately and ready to pounce in an instant, and as his eyesight is far superior to ours after dark, he can catch us unaware. He took my OH clean off his feet when he took him totally by surprise after a fox.