By Emma Judson
This game is designed to counter-condition dogs to the sometimes innately unpleasant experience of group members leaving the group (or the dog plus a human having to leave the group).
Dogs are pretty much pre-programmed to want groups to stay together. This includes groups of people or dogs they know, like family at home, and groups they don’t know so well, like a bunch of people who met up for a walk, as well as groups of animals, like sheep or cattle.
We took this desire to keep a group together and selectively bred for it in some dogs, hence cattle dogs, sheep dogs, herding dogs, and droving dogs. Some want to keep the group in one place (German Shepherds), some want to bring the group to you (Border Collies), some want to take the group somewhere else (Bearded Collies, Cattle Dogs), but none of them want the group to split up or disperse out of their sight!
Even if your dog is not a herding or droving breed, they still have a desire to keep their social group together, and are still likely to find it upsetting if that group splits up.
So, if your dog has an issue with someone wanting to nip into the coffee shop or newsagents on your walk, if they can’t handle it when you are at a café and someone goes inside to order or to use the loo – that’s why.
This game helps make someone leaving or being removed from the group a good thing, rather than a bad thing.
You’ll need:
- At least two people
- Treats or a tug toy that your dog likes
- Your dog
- Some space
- Good communication skills
Things you can vary later:
- How many people
- Who leaves
- Whether they go out of sight or not
- Whether they leave or the dog leaves
- The amount of the reward
- What the reward is
- Location
- Level of distraction in the environment
As always, it’s recommended to start out easy:
- Fewer people
- Home environment
- People stay in sight
- Reward value is high
- When you alter something, just alter one thing at a time
- As you progress through the levels of difficulty, it may be wise to make some of the variables easier
How to play:
- Agree beforehand how you will tell the ‘leaver’ when to stop or return, or how they will work this out.
- I’d recommend starting with one step and repeating that a few times
- Then two steps
- Avoid anything obvious, like them moving away a few steps and shouting back, ‘Now? Is this far enough? How about now?’, or them continuing to go too far and you shrieking, ‘No that’s too far! Come back!’
- They step out and as they arrive at that one step away (or two steps or three steps), you reward your dog
- Once the reward is consumed, they come back to the start point
That’s it, really. When one step is OK, chuck in two, dip back down to one sometimes, work your way to three, dip back down to one or two from time to time, add in a fourth, and so on.
When the game is understood and enjoyed, start altering variables one at a time. You might be at ten steps, and you decide that now it’s time to go from the living room to the back garden. When you do, that environment will be a little tougher. So, start back out at, say, two steps, and work back up to ten. It shouldn’t take long.
Proceed this way for as many steps as you need. Work out in advance which elements your dog will find hardest and work on the easy things first!
Alternatively, you could work on the dog leaving. While this is less likely to be something that your dog has a problem with, it’s still worth doing to ensure that they really are fine. It is easier, as the person who has the dog oversees how far and when to reward. You only need the other group members to stay put and stay quiet!
Things to avoid:
- Don’t push your dog too far, too fast. It’s way better to stop when your dog is still loving this game than to push for ‘just one more step’ and trigger anxiety or stress
- Don’t rush to phase out food. Yes, we do need to in the end, but no, it doesn’t have to be this minute!
- Do not reward your dog as the person starts to return or as they arrive back. They are already being rewarded for that by the person arriving back. We want to make them being away very rewarding. We don’t want to make their return more rewarding than it already is!
- Do not use the food to distract your dog as the person is leaving either!