Panic Down

[David]

Hi, I saw in one of the threads that forum member Rudy mentioned a hard Panic Down, where the dog drops instantly. I was wondering how do you actually teach a dog to do that? Any advice is great, thanks

[Sang]

The panic down is something you don't want to do until you've done all the other work to build the dog's emotional capacity to handle it. If you already have Neil's DVDs, he walks you through the steps to building up the dog's emotional capacity through the pushing, heel, biting, settle/boxwork, etc. Once he's giving all his energy into these exercises, you can then channel that into the panic down. The important thing is that the dog shouldn't shut down when doing the exercise. If he is, then you went too fast. It's better to take it slow and not worry about the panic down until you're fairly certain the dog is fully expressing his energy.

I don't know if that answers your question or not, but hopefully it gives some insight into what needs to happen beforehand.

[rudy]

I agree with Sang.

It's a great "tool" the panic down, but it's not a stand alone tool. And, it's not one that can be taught via the written word or even on a dvd. It's one for the pro's to teach face to face - you and the dog.

The dvd's, blogs and this forum and really super great, but, there really is something to be said for getting thyself to natural dog pro. It really really is worth the time and effort.

[David]

Thanks for the response. I would really like to learn with a pro, but unfortunatelly that is not an option because I live in Croatia and there aren't any natural dog trainers here, I would be surprised if more than two or three people even heard of NDT. So for now all I have is the internet...

[Sang]

Hey David, I certainly think you can build up your dog’s drive to a point where he/she can handle the panic down. I just caution people to not put the cart before the horse in regards to training it. The “panic down” is an important part of the learning process for sure, but don’t feel like you have to rush to get there. In this work, slower is better.

So just keep on building your dog’s emotional capacity and his attraction to you, and everything else will start to fall into place. Because in all reality, if your dog is attracted to you at high levels of energy and intensity, then he’ll learn to align himself around you and what you want in all situations, which will in turn make him feel safe no matter what’s going on. And once that happens, the “down” will smoothly integrate itself into the process.

Hope that helps.

[David]

Thanks for your replies everybody.

I understand that panic down isn't something that should be rushed, just the word "panic" is a good sign of that . I was just curious about the actual training process for that, couse like I said, for now the internet is my only resource for NDT (hopefully I will be able to get Neil's DVDs soon), so I'm trying to get as much information as possible about the techniques of NDT.

Sang said: "Because in all reality, if your dog is attracted to you at high levels of energy and intensity, then he’ll learn to align himself around you and what you want in all situations, which will in turn make him feel safe no matter what’s going on. And once that happens, the “down” will smoothly integrate itself into the process."

I was wondering, from your experience, when could that happen? Of course, I understand it depends on the dog and on me, and you should see the dog and the work we do to be able to assess where we are at, and how much more we need to do, but I hope that you can give me an estimate from your experience with other dogs. Below is a description of my dog and where we are at with NDT, so hopefully that will help.

My dog is a great dane and probably labrador mix. He is 22 months old. I got him from a shelter when he was 3 months old. When he was about 10 months old, he started getting aggressive with other male dogs. No problems with females ever. We started doing NDT when he was one year old, after he really started to show aggression towards other male dogs (not all, he is big friends with my neighbours' male lab, and a couple of other dogs, but most of other males he just can't stand). We mostly did pushing, and did some work with balls that Kevin describes in his book. He likes to chase balls, but likes to chase dogs more. We really got into pushing about two months ago, when I started feeding him only by pushing. We also try to do as much pushing around other dogs as we can, and so far results are good. He is much calmer when we see other dogs. But if they get to close, he is still agressive. Should I let him off leash, there is nothing I could do to stop him from going after another dog if he sees one. He is generally good with people, but sometimes will bark at strangers or try to lunge on them if we cross paths on a narrow trail in the woods. Also, if a stranger just comes up to him with no fear and tries to pet him, he will sometimes get frightened (I guess that is why he sometimes tries to lounge at them on a narrow path where he can't go aorund them). As far as NDT goes, he loves pushing, and is pretty focused on me when we do it, but after the food is gone, the focus gets a lot weaker. Tug of war is something that we are working on for quite some time, but not much progress there. We tried all kinds of toys, but nothing really worked. He will sometimes give a few tugs, but lose interest very quickly. He will gladly tug with other dogs, but not with me. Same problem with barking on command. Still not a single bark. He also really loves to harass hedgehogs (barks at them and tries to bite them), and to chase lizards. And cats, but only if they run, if they don't, it's a perfect example how the prey controls the predator, he get's completely focused on the cat that isn't running away from him, and get's completely under cat's control. Sometimes I wish I was a cat.

I just hope that if you had experience with dogs of similar description you could give me some pointers, or clues what to expect in terms of time that it will take to get him to be attracted to me, and just how much attraction to expect from such a dog.

Sorry for the long text and bad english. Any clues and comments would be great.

Thanks

[Sang]

Like you said David, every dog is different in terms of how long it takes to build their capacity. The phrase “You’ll know it when you see it” is very appropriate.

Something I’d like to address right away based on your description. I would stop the ball chasing as it’s actually over stimulating him. When Kevin wrote Natural Dog Training back in the 80s, people weren’t over stimulating their dogs the way they are now. It was a big deal trying to convince people that dogs needed to get out for exercise at all. And the temperament of dogs in general was much different than today. Since that time dogs have been bred more and more to be “friendly”, which is essentially frying them, and making them much more susceptible to neurotic behaviors. Using a ball to help induce a dog’s drive was very appropriate at that time, but not so much anymore, because the ball doesn’t offer enough resistance to ground the dog’s energy. So wherever Kevin talks about using a ball in the book, substitute pushing or tug/bitework instead.

As far as trying to get him to play tug, how have you been going about it? If you can share how you’ve been going about it so far, it will be easier to give you some suggestions. First thing though, is that I would try to reduce the amount of tug time he gets with other dogs until he can give that energy to you.

I know that this may not be the answer you’re looking for, but there really is no timeline for how long it takes to build a dog’s attraction to you. Some dogs don’t have a lot of resistance so it doesn’t take very long, while others have so much resistance built up inside them that it can take quite a long time. But believe me, persistence does pay off. He sounds like he has a good amount of drive since he has so much desire to chase things. And I have no doubt that you’ll be able to channel that and attract it to you.

So share with us what your training process looks like, and I’m sure that myself and the group will be able to offer you some suggestions in what you can do to attract your dog’s energy at a higher level.

[David]

Thank you Sang, I will definitely describe our training process so you and others can give me suggestions which I know will help us a lot. But for now I have a question which I belive is more important and it concerns a panic attack that my dog had the other day, but I will put it in "Solving Problems Using Natural Dog Training" section of the forum because I think it's more appropriate to put it there. So tanks again and I hope you'll have the time to help us on that issue as well.