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Having strangers feed a dog treats is a widely recommended route of helping a dog through fear of strangers. I've read a few articles about how it isn't always the best route to take as it teaches the dog to pay more attention to strangers than to you(which is up for debate). However, I thought I'd also read someplace that it can create a CER, opposite of what we are looking for-teaches the dog that strangers are always going to interact with him and try to coax him to eat treats, etc. which for some dogs can make them worse. Can anyone point me to the article supporting this, or tell me your experience with having strangers feed your dog? Did it help? Did it hurt? 

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I can't give you an article, but I can tell you that is exactly what happened with Kylie (non-BC).  She was a shy puppy - not fearful or bad but why. We did the 'have people feed her' thing for a while.  The people invariably pet her.  She quickly stopped going to them for treats because *she did not want pet* way more than a treat to overcome.  Switching order - approach/pet/treat did not work either - didn't want the treat enough to tolerate he petting.


And really it's that simple .  IF the dog really dislikes what the treat predicts a lot, it's not going to change their CER on the strangers/touching. 


And. 

I don't know if you've run into this one but if the dog is highly driven by what is there/the stranger is offering but is still afraid, you can also have a scenario where the dog is baited in much closer than they'd choose to be to get the treat.   Once that is gone, they are closer than they want to be and can freak out and, yeah, bite to create the distance they would have STAYED at , had the food not motivated them to get closer. 

 

Strangers throwing food or throwing a toy (toward the dog but AWAY from themselves) is much preferable to me with dogs who are unsure of stranger interaction. 

Dogs who are confident and happy about it- well. The interaction is rewarding and they don't need more reinforcement of it, anyway, so I don't bother.

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^^^ This is what happened w/Gibbs. He's one of those dogs who is very happy being petted by women he doesn't know, and really, really uncomfortable w/men he doesn't know. Treats offered by men only made him more anxious, so I stopped, and just tell unknown men who want to pet him that he's very skittish w/strangers.

The good news is that I have gained a roommate a few months ago, of the male variety. He'd been my neighbor for almost a year, and he showed wonderfully good sense when it came to interacting w/G.

It's worked out quite nicely. Gibbs has him trained so that Roommate takes him out in the back yard and plays a little ball w/him whenever Gibbs even looks at the door.  

Many people, unfortunately, are just positive that 'dogs LOVE me!' in a not-reality based way. So, I'll just say 'I'm working on some training right now' or the like and keep moving.

Ruth & GIbbs

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We used to have a very anxious fear aggressive dog from the shelter. The people at the shelter taught her with treats to sit on their lap and tolerate being petted. I wasn't convinced that was the way to go to help her. She would come to you and to untrained eyes seemed to enjoy it, but I felt that she did it just to please them and was still anxious about the whole thing.

We achieved a lot more by simply ignoring her and teaching her we didn't want anything from her. She learned to trust us. We tried to do the same thing with visitors, but unfortunately people find it hard to ignore a dog and would look at her of even worse talk to her (honestly how did they not see that is not ignoring...). Anyway, what I think is that interacting should not be the first step for a fearful dog, especially because of how unpredictable strangers are, but also because it is a step too far in my opinion. It can put a lot of pressure on the dog. Just having a stranger in their vicinity can already be challenging enough. 

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4 hours ago, Riika said:

Having strangers feed a dog treats is a widely recommended route of helping a dog through fear of strangers.

I really want my dog to learn to ignore strangers. Even more than that, I want strangers to learn to ignore my dog. At the moment he doesn't seem sure what he wants from them, he appears to be excited to see them and wants to approach, but then sometimes once there doesn't seem to like them. Sometimes he'll jump up and bump them on the nose although he's getting better at not doing this. What seems to be working is if I drop treats for him when we are near/talking to strangers. This helps to keep his feet on the ground, his mouth busy and a positive experience at being near the stranger.

I don't really want strangers feeding him. Every so often there are local reports of meat laced with nails or poison found on dog walking routes, or stories of dogs being stolen, seen on cctv happily going off with a stranger. I was the same with my children, don't take food from strangers, don't eat random food you find.

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23 hours ago, CptJack said:

Strangers throwing food or throwing a toy (toward the dog but AWAY from themselves) is much preferable to me with dogs who are unsure of stranger interaction. 

 

20 hours ago, Flora & Molly said:

Anyway, what I think is that interacting should not be the first step for a fearful dog, especially because of how unpredictable strangers are, but also because it is a step too far in my opinion. It can put a lot of pressure on the dog. Just having a stranger in their vicinity can already be challenging enough. 

^^ With fearful dogs, yes. These approaches are much more helpful and put much less stress on the dog. Safer all around. If/when the dog becomes more comfortable around people who aren't putting pressure on, that's the time to reassess and see if the dog can handle more. Some will never be able to and I wouldn't be trying to turn a dog like that into, say, a therapy dog if the dog didn't have the confidence around strangers to feel at ease. And safety for all concerned should be the determining factor as well as the dog's comfort level.

Otherwise I think it depends a lot on what you want from your dog. Bodhi was a dog who came to me with out much confidence and a lot of wariness of people. But his temperament is sound and the wariness was learned from his experience as a stray. Once he regained his confidence and trust, he was happy to interact with others.

Most of the time I have plenty of Bodhi's focus on me; he's a mama's boy. I allow and even encouraqe strangers to give him treats, but he's a therapy dog and I want him to interact with other people. The tradeoff is that I tend to lose his attention to me when other people are offering him food. He's exceptionally food motivated (formerly nearly starving as a stray, which had a lasting impact) and I have to be diligent to keep him focused on me when there's food around. Just having food nearby isn't too bad, but if someone offers him something I don't want him to have I have to be very firm in my cues for him to leave it, which he will do, but the attention really isn't on me any longer at that point unless whoever has the food puts it aside.

A less food motivated dog wouldn't require as much from me, but then if I didn't want him to be interacting with people and wanted more of his focus on me for a specific reason or task it would be a different situation also. So a lot of it depends on what you want from the dog and also the dog itself WRT its degree of food motivation.

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Yes, absolutely!

With Kiran, I encourage interaction with others.  He's not a therapy dog, and won't be (I don't have time to commit) but he is very, very confident - in himself and his sense of safety in he world.  He's also very much a one person dog.  So having other people have food or a toy so he'll interact with them.  It often leaves them with the impression that he likes them and that can be very good for people. 


Reality is more like they're a food or, better, fetch dispenser,  but there are times and places that him interacting is a thing I want.  So handing them some food or a disc or ball so he'll play with them is good. 


But, as you said, he's neither fearful, unsure, or wary - nor is he overly 'magnetized' toward other people.   Heck, my HUSBAND can't even do anything with him without food or toys immediately obvious and me obviously lacking them.  Me?  I've trained and proofed new behavior with praise, just to see if I could.  Weird.   Cool! But weird.  


But really really really not a thing I'd do with a dog who wasn't rock solid OR a social butterfly type dog.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/2/2018 at 1:41 PM, Riika said:

Having strangers feed a dog treats is a widely recommended route of helping a dog through fear of strangers. I've read a few articles about how it isn't always the best route to take as it teaches the dog to pay more attention to strangers than to you(which is up for debate). However, I thought I'd also read someplace that it can create a CER, opposite of what we are looking for-teaches the dog that strangers are always going to interact with him and try to coax him to eat treats, etc. which for some dogs can make them worse. Can anyone point me to the article supporting this, or tell me your experience with having strangers feed your dog? Did it help? Did it hurt? 

Hi Riika!!

I don't have an article for you, but I do have experience with this.

When we first adopted our girl, Tessa, she was a former stray and she was terrified of all people, even me at first.

She was willing to take food from anyone, though, so we did take the approach of having everyone at the training building feed her.  Any time someone walked by her, they gave her a treat (these were instructors and classmates that I knew and trusted, not random people, BTW!!)

In Tessa's case, it did not create a negative CER.  She learned that her training building friends are treat machines and she did grow to be very comfortable in their presence.

The up-sides of this: 

- Tessa learned that people can be trusted in dog-training/competition contexts.  People will feed her, but never try to "dive in" and touch her.

- I never found that Tessa started paying attention to other people instead of me.  When she and I are working together, I have her attention.  Of course, I did do other training in this regard, and that training is quite effective, so that may be why she doesn't look to others for treats or anything when she and I are doing something together.

The down-sides of this:

- Tessa can be rather rude when we are at trials together because she will stare at people who are eating with a hopeful look on her face.  That said, she only stares - she does not try to go up to people who are eating or anything.  When this happens and people notice, I briefly explain her background and I have never come across anyone who did not agree that having Tessa staring at people who are eating is a much better alternative than her cowering in fear of them.

Well, that's it.  There are no other down-sides!!!

Now, I realize that results of this will vary from dog to dog.  I think the key with Tessa was that she showed a strong willingness right from the start to take treats from people, even though she was afraid of them.  At first they needed to toss them toward her, but she always made it clear that getting the treat was important enough to her to tolerate the proximity of the person.

In a case where a dog is too frightened to take treats from someone, I would never recommend "having everyone feed" before there were a clear comfort level, similar to what Tessa showed from the start, in place.

Anyway, I thought I would share my experience.

Have a Day!

- Kristine

 

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Kristine, 

It’s good to see you back! I’ve missed seeing your posts here, as well as on your blog. :)

Thanks for sharing your experience with Tessa. 

 

To all that responded: thanks. I did decide to try it with my puppy, and it didn’t go over well. We will not be using that method. 

After a few minutes of just being around the person, with them ignoring him and playing tug with my other dog, he stops barking and becomes comfortable around them, and will evdn run up and play tug. He won’t allow petting(which is acceptable in my mind) but after his initial outburst will mingle in a crowd, just ignoring everyone-these are mainly well behaved kids, not adults. He is actually pretty good with adults, even sprawling on their feet and wanting a belly rub. 

I think the best thing is going to be just letting him do what he wants, and watching the kids to make sure they don’t push on him. They have been extremely good about just continuing their thing, and not trying to approach the puppy, so that’s been nice. 

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57 minutes ago, Riika said:

think the best thing is going to be just letting him do what he wants, and watching the kids to make sure they don’t push on him. They have been extremely good about just continuing their thing, and not trying to approach the puppy, so that’s been nice. 

To me, this seems right. Allowing the dog to move at his own pace in getting more comfortable with other people, while at the same time controlling and monitoring the interactions and circumstances in order to protect everyone involved and make sure he doesn't have a bad experience. This is probably what I would do if other methods failed as they have with you. Sometimes the dog has his own wisdom and we do well simply to listen to that.

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2 hours ago, Riika said:

Kristine, 

It’s good to see you back! I’ve missed seeing your posts here, as well as on your blog. :)

Thanks for sharing your experience with Tessa. 

 

It's good to be back!!  I kind of got eaten by life and Facebook for a while!!!

I have also updated my blog, and I mean to start keeping up with it again.  With lots of pictures, of course!!

In case you don't have the link anymore and you want to stop by ....

https://tessamatic.blogspot.com/

I did write up an update of all of my dogs as my "I'm back" post!!  :)

Best to you with your puppy!!  I agree that often just letting the dog feel out the situation (while keeping everyone safe) can be the best way to go.

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