Making contact and shocks

[Valerie]

Ok, I have finished the book and I'm feeling a bit lost. I think I'm slowly coming to understand the concepts behind the energy/emotion idea better. Interesting idea that it's one thing, one drive really manifesting in all things a dog does.

And I was wondering if the 'making contact' he talks about was having the dog jump up on you, or did he mean pushing? He talks about making contact quite a bit.

Also not sure I understand how the 'shocks' work or when to use them. And maybe I'm just far away from that.


Is there a step by step guide in the works? I could really use something that is for more of a step by step plan/guide a la Ruff Love by Susan Garrett. Is that compatible at all?

[neilsattin]

Yes, Kevin's book was actually written back before he had developed the technique of pushing. So where he talks about "Hup" or making contact, you can, generally, substitute "pushing".

As for a step-by-step...that's pretty much what my videos were designed to be. You can also click on the archives section of the blog and read the articles starting at the beginning (bottom of the page to the top) - generally they stay true to a "step-by-step" progression through the techniques.

As for shocking - I wouldn't worry about that right now. Here's an article that I wrote about it though, to help add to your understanding:

http://www.naturaldogblog.com/blog/2...at-is-a-shock/

[Sang]

I can totally endorse Neil's DVD as a good way to get you on the right path. It will totally walk you through all the basics. I have a copy myself, and even though I had been studying NDT for a while before I got it, the DVD really helped crystallize things for me.

The fundamentals of Kevin's book are still spot on, but he has developed his theories and techniques quite a bit since that time, and Neil's DVD will bring you up to date on what's been going on with NDT since then.

[Lee Charles Kelley]

Originally Posted by Valerie

I was wondering if the 'making contact' he talks about was having the dog jump up on you, or did he mean pushing? He talks about making contact quite a bit.

Also not sure I understand how the 'shocks' work or when to use them. And maybe I'm just far away from that.

Hi, Valerie,

When Kevin talks about contacting in the book he's referring to all the ways that you get the dog to come into your space and push against you physically, which in effect causes the dog to plug her energy into you in a rewarding way. As Sang and Neil pointed out, the book was written before Kevin crystallized the principle into the pushing exercise. But if you look at some of videos available on his website, and look at Neil's DVD, you'll see that getting the dog to jump is sometimes part of the pushing exercise. The fundamental principle though is to get your dog to plug her energy into you as much as possible, and to make it very rewarding for the dog.

As for the "shock" Kevin talks about, that has nothing to do with using a shock collar. It's about providing a shock to the dog's nervous system. On my Psychology Today blog I talk about dogs either being an in "us" state or a "me" state. (In his book Kevin refers to the 2nd as the "group mood.") When a dog is locked-in to survival-based feelings, she's in a "me" state. Sometimes you have to give the dog strong stimulus -- leash correction, loud noise, etc. -- to "shock" her nervous system momentarily enough to create a kind of emotional and behavioral vacuum. The shock should always be followed immediately by something that gets her to redirect her energy into you. (Both Sang and Neil have had experiences doing this with their own dogs, both of which had aggression problems.)

To give you a perhaps clearer idea of how this works in the day-to-day, when my dog Freddie was going through his adolescent phase, he had a tendency to hump some of the dogs at the dog run. So I did an exercise from Kevin's book where I put him on the leash and as soon as he jumped up to hump the other dog, I ran away, shouted a happy, "Ho!" sound, praised him enthusiastically, and got him to jump up on me as I backpedaled away from the other dog. This was done to co-opt the attraction Fred had for the other dog at the moment, and redirect it toward me in as powerful and positive a way as possible. (People at the dog run thought I was nuts.) But the initial movement of him being on the leash trying to jump up on the dog, and me running away before he could make contact (essentially popping him really hard on the collar and forcing him to chase me) was the "shock" in that equation. And it was always followed by some very intense contacting so that the initial attraction he had for the other dog was now focused on me.

This isn't something I'm suggesting that you do with your dogs. I had already built up a backlog of contacting and redirecting with Freddie. But when he was in the humping mood, he couldn't be pulled out of it in any ordinary fashion. In fact, pulling him off the other dog only made him more committed to doing the behavior (due to something called the "opposition reflex").

I did this exercise repeatedly over a period of several weeks, then one day, out of the blue, while I was talking to someone at the dog run, Freddie came running over to me, and jumped up on me and started licking my face wildly. I had no idea why he was doing this until I thought about it and realized that another dog had just come into the run, a dog that Freddie had a very strong desire to hump. But instead of following up on that impulse, he ran over to me, on his own, and practically knocked me down! Once I realized what was going on I praised him profusely, picked up a stick, got him to chase me for a bit, then threw it for him to chase. He caught the stick, then settled down to chew on it, feeling totally satisfied, and I went back to my conversation with the other dog owner.

I hope this clarifies things for you a little more.

LCK

[donnieo]

I know this is an old thread, but my Natural Dog Training book finally arrived and I feel some mixed messages between the book and the DVDs.

As you may know from some of my other posts, Jinxsie has become quite an enthusiastic puller on the leash since we started this journey. To me, it feels like her inhibitions are starting to melt away (when I first got her she was very much a puller). I've started to incorporate the obedience training into our play-train sessions and done a lot of focussing on the heel. I've also taken her on training walks where we do the heeling and stop for some pushing and play breaks. Her heeling isn't very solid, but I'm not worried about that. However, I like to run with her in the mornings and using food isn't really a practical thing for that so I decided to use a shock technique from the book. Just before the leash got tight, I gave her a moderate shock - just enough to get her attention on me - and started back-pedalling, giving her lots of praise, then falling on the ground. Then I pulled out the tug toy and had her chase me around and jump on me before engaging her in tug and letting her win. We did this a few more times (once when she was distracted by her nemesis: one of the black squirrels that live in the park) and for the majority of our run she was way more in the group mood on our walk than she had been previously.

Was I using an outdated, or harmful technique? I know Neil says to not worry too much about using shocks, but in some ways they seem to be another piece of the puzzle. Obviously I'm going to focus on the pushing technique so I can get 100% of her energy focussed on me, but can someone give me a bit more guidance here?

[Lee Charles Kelley]

...you did this the proper way. As long as you see an increased drive to connect to you, the "shock" was administered properly.

It might be a good idea, though, to make sure you're not skipping ahead. Kevin has laid out the exercises in a specific order for a reason. For instance, there's a counter-conditioning exercise that's supposed to be done before applying any shocks on the collar. So make sure you're doing things in the right order. Sometimes you can skip steps, but you have to know more about the purpose and effects of each exercise, and where the dog's energy is focused, etc., before you can go "off book."

I hope this helps,

LCK

[donnieo]

I re-read the chapter that first talks about using shocks and I feel like I was administering them properly. However, I am certainly going to proceed cautiously. I was also using a martingale collar as opposed to a prong so I think that she still felt uninhibited during our play but I could still get her attention when she slipped out of group mode. While I was doing it, I was thinking about working the strike pads with my boxing coach (this was years ago). Whenever I wasn't keeping my elbows in in my boxing stance, he would throw a jab at my ribs - not hard enough to hurt, but it certainly helped me feel my body more and be immersed in the immediate moment. It seems to me that this is what the shock is meant to do. Actually in writing this, I feel like I have a better understanding of how drive is different from instinct (little brain v. Big Brain).