When Your Dog has a Poor Experience in the Ring
By Vicki Ronchette
New Champion Sunshine became unsure in the ring in her first show as a 6-9 month old after successfully competing happily in 4-6 month puppy. A couple of months of training and she went back into the ring happy and confident and finished easily.
If you have read From Shy to Showy or attended one of my workshops, you may already know my position on this, but I still see it happen so often, I felt the need to address it again. In fact, I will continue to address this issue every time I see it happen at a show.
What happens sometimes at the dog show is the dog, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to be examined by the judge. The dog may back away, lean back, refuse to show the bite, sit down or try to escape. It’s important to note here that this can be an ongoing issue with a dog or a one off where the dog is generally okay with the exam but on this day has an issue. If it’s ongoing, we may have some specific behavior modification to do which is when I recommend my From Shy to Showy program. If it’s not usual for the dog, it could be caused by a number of reasons. I’ve seen it happen when a dog is going into or coming out of a heat cycle (oftentimes their first one), the dog is an adolescent (male or female) who is just having big feelings likely due to hormones and the conflict that can go along with that, sometimes the dog is not feeling well, the dog may not feel comfortable with that judge or be tired from a cluster of shows or the dog is just having an off day.
What I frequently see happen is that people think that it is a good idea, critical even for the dog to come out of the ring and immediately be forced to be examined and accept the exam. First, let me say that I don’t know any skilled, professional animal trainers or behavior specialists who recommend this. I don’t know who first started this by saying this is a good idea, but it isn’t. If a dog doesn’t want to be examined it means one of two things; 1) the dog is not comfortable with this type of hands on touching by people in general or 2) the dog is not comfortable with the exam on this day. Either way, the best course of action is NEVER to immediately walk out of the ring, set the dog up and start forcing an exam.
If the dog had some sort of a bad experience in the ring, coming out of the ring to immediately be subjected to the thing they just didn’t want to do doesn’t give them time to decompress or even process what happened. Geez, give the dog a moment to relax and come down from the event. There is zero evidence that trying to force a “good experience” right after a perceived bad experience helps the dog or modifies the behavior IN ANY WAY. It’s usually just the good old traditional training ideology that you have to “win” and do what you want to do or make the dog do what you want the dog to do. It isn’t helping the future of the behavior at all. In fact, it could make things worse.
Let’s say you don’t feel that the dog had a bad experience, just that the dog “didn’t want to do it” or was “being stubborn”. Fair enough. Forcing them to do it after they just indicated they couldn’t reliably do it does absolutely nothing for the future of the behavior. It doesn’t teach the dog anything and it could actually fracture the relationship between the person and the dog because the dog’s attempt to communicate that they need help is being ignored. Either way, forcing them still doesn’t change the future of the behavior. It really is just about the human feeling like the only way to train dogs to be reliable is to force them to do something when the dog is telling you they need help or guidance.
So, what should you do instead? That depends on whether it is an ongoing issue or unusual. If it is ongoing, I would start a training protocol where we teach the dog to actually feel comfortable (without force) being examined. Force doesn’t teach dogs to be comfortable. It sometimes teaches dogs to give up and shut down, but as a trainer and owner who actually cares about my and my client’s dogs feelings, this isn’t an option for me. I’m going to systematically help the dog through the issue. Again, if it occurs during adolescence it could very well be associated with the dog’s hormones, heat cycles and that developmental period in a dog’s life. In those cases, I may pull the dog and work on the issue. This is how I deal with it my own dogs and I have successfully finished every dog I had ran into this issue with. Also, with people commenting how much my dog’s enjoy the ring. For me, it isn’t about just finishing the dog. It’s also about MY DOG. I want my dog to be comfortable and be okay. I have the knowledge and skill to help the dog through it. For me, there is no need to force it or try to rush through a championship.
