Dog Sees Cat...Need TACT!

Our dog Beau is a Beauceron cross and like many of this breed, has a strong instinct to chase any fleeing animal – most particularly cats. He sees any darting streak of ginger as an invitation to switch into predator mode and hyper-reacts almost instantly in a way I’ve never seen a dog do before – lunging, high pitched squealing, eyes fixated, completely unresponsive to any cue and then the bolt! We live in a large apartment complex in Switzerland where residents’ cats roam freely. Dawn and dusk are dangerous times of the day for Beau as this is when the cats are most likely to be on the prowl. Whenever my husband travels, I often have to take Beau out on my own at these times if only for a toilet break. It is stressful time on us both as I am just not capable of holding back such an explosion.

Beau is only 13 months old but at 30 kg (66lb) he is one strong adolescent and a single collar and leash just will not hold him. Once when he was much younger, his response to his first sighting of a cat was so instantaneous and violent that he ripped the leash from my husband’s hands and took off after the blur that had invoked the reaction. If ever there was a dog in need of TACT this was it.

TACT – Touch-Associated Clicker Training – is a technique devised by Julie Robitaille and Emma Parsons (author of “Click to Calm”). It involves a systematic desensitization of the dog through a combination of familiar behaviors, touch and clicker training. One of the strategies Julie recommends at the outset is double leashing the dog for safety. In Beau’s case it is critical as the force with which he bolts rips the leash from my hands like a whip lash, and puts huge strain on the leash, and who knows what damage to his neck. With the double leash though, one attached to his collar, the other to an Infin8 head halter, Beau is remarkably calmer. It is like that contact of the nose strap, reminds him that someone is on the other end of the leash – me!

Chilled and ready to go

TACT for us is a process and requires detailed planning and monitoring on my part and practice for Beau in carefully controlled environments – something that is not easy to achieve when living in a small apartment on the fourth floor. I’ve had to tailor many of the protocols to suit our situation. The brilliance of TACT lies in the flexibility of the process it employs to custom-create the criteria and rituals to suit the needs of you and your dog.   As a result, TACT is not the only approach I am using to assist Beau with his reactivity.

Leslie McDevitt’s “Control Unleashed” has a whole section on how to connect to a dog, to establish a bond and to tune into each other. She recommends various strategies but one I do daily with Beau is massage, something I started with him before I applied TACT, but now is integrated into the rituals. On our training walks, during the heat of the day when all smart cats are sleeping, Beau and I go out on a single leash and do a lot of connecting. We play “check it” and “look at that” and I seek every opportunity to touch him, stroke him, give him a scratch in his favourite places. We’ve got used to screaming children this way, to plastic bags blowing in the wind, and to men with sunglasses and strange hats. He walks beautifully on a loose leash and I get lots of eye contact, making him the perfect walking companion. But these are specific training walks, in very familiar places and as much as possible they are under my control. Not every walk can be like that; he’s a big dog and needs to get out of doors at least five times a day and sometimes I have to take our miniature poodle along as well. So the double-leash has come to mean “we are going for a nice long exploratory walk to new and exciting places and mum’s got her pocket full of yummy treats”.

The treats start the moment the head halter goes on and whenever he connects with me, even if it is a sideways glance. I keep the collar leash as loose as possible and use the halter leash to steer if need be, but mostly he is engaged enough with me that it is not necessary for me to use it at all.

In this way we go to new places, take longer walks, go out first thing in the morning and last thing at night. These walks are a major test of my observation skills. While keeping one eye and as much of my attention as possible on the dog at my side, if I see a distraction I can make a decision on how I might handle it and then guide Beau into a situation where we can safely observe what is going on. If appropriate I cue him into a relaxed down to watch what is going on – something we practice daily in the apartment using Dr. Karen Overall’s Relaxation Protocol.  We did this recently when the pool man was caulking the fountains in the gardens. Beau dropped into a down on cue, and interspersed with treats for staying relaxed, he got a full body massage while beadily watching every move made by the dreadlock coiffured, sunglass-wearing workman. Hard to get reactive when you are so chilled out.

TACT, Control Unleashed and the Relaxation Protocol are all brilliant techniques to keep a dog beneath threshold and accepting of strange and unusual situations or sudden changes in an environment. Management also plays a part and for weeks now I have been carefully managing Beau’s exposure to things new and thereby ensuring we are working in a “safe” environment.

At some time though, we have to take what we have learned and hope it holds up in a real world environment. I got just such an opportunity the other day to test what I had been doing with Beau for real.

It was mid-morning and I’d taken him to drop off the recycle. We took the detour past a building site as always because it is a favoured elimination spot. This sheltered pathway winds past shrubbery on the roadside, and a grass verge on the building site side. On this occasion we walked past the water trough, into the lane and Beau froze stock still. On the other side of the fence separating the building site from the path – less than 2 feet away – was a black, white and grey tortoiseshell tabby. She just sat in the grass and growled. I knew Beau’s freeze was the calm before the storm and as I couldn’t have moved him no matter what I did, I decided my only option was to use all I have learned so far to keep him below threshold.

I started with long body strokes and soft words as he wasn’t taking treats at all, his eyes and his attention were firmly fixed on the feline before him. I knew the clicker was useless unless I had his attention, so I quietly worked his back, his ears, his muzzle and chatted complete garbage in as calm and relaxed tone as I could. The cat stopped growling and I had a wee brain fart – I clicked and tossed the cat a piece of dried liver. Beau shot me a look and he got a click and a treat too. So here I was standing with this dog paralysed from the neck down, hackles up, tail and legs stiff, every muscle in his body taut, watching me out of the corner of his eye as I clicked and treated, first the cat, then him. I had the leash loose, double looped around my arm so I could have free hands, and I stroked, clicked, treated, stroked, clicked treated. Little by little, bit by bit the thaw set in. I could feel it beneath my hands as I worked my way up and down his spine. The ears that had been glued back against his skull, relaxed a little and twitched forward in curiosity. The cat sat crouched ready to pounce or flee, her eyes locked still with Beau’s, but she too seemed to relax a little.

Was that a movement in Beau’s tail? There it was again, right from the base, not exactly a wag, but nor was it threatening. In fact it looked remarkably like the beginnings of the propeller tail with which Beau has wiped clear the contents of shelves, or cleared away glasses left erringly on the coffee table.

Time ticked on and still I massaged ’n’ clicked ’n’ treated.  The cat remained unmoved and Beau yawned, a stifled one but a yawn nonetheless. The spell was broken. He turned to look at me, his tail more mobile. He looked totally bored. Where was the fun in staring at a cat that just stared back? Or had he been out-stared? I recalled the Eye Contact Game I learned as part of Helix Fairweather’s Cyber Agility Teamwork Building Blocks course. I often play this with the dogs in the evening to help them focus and to bring down their energy level. Beau was used to being stared out, and it often resulted in him falling asleep at my feet. Had he just been out-stared by a cat?

I don’t know how long we stood there but it felt like an age. What went on in Beau’s mind during all this I don’t know but a couple of things have happened since that lead me to believe quite a lot of processing took place.

Firstly, I was able to lead Beau away from the area with a “Let’s go” cue, and no reactivity at all from him, just an over-the-shoulder glance at the cat still sitting there, watching him blinkingly.   We’ve been back to that spot several times since and Beau without fail goes looking for his feline friend and looks so disappointed to see she is not there. On several other occasions since we have inadvertently stumbled upon a sitting cat in different parts of the estate – one perched on top of a post at the entrance to an underground carpark, just watched as Beau and I approached.  There was no fence barrier between us this time and Beau paused for a moment to check the cat out, and then we continued our walk. Another, a large ginger tom, sat in amongst the rose bushes at the entrance to our apartment one evening when I had both dogs out at once. Beau froze and stared as the poodle, who was off leash at the time, did his hot-coals dance in front of the cat trying to entice a game or at least a reaction. I busied myself with long body strokes and talking more garbage and when I felt the tension release a little, both dogs came away at my cue and the cat, bless him, stayed where he was.

I don’t doubt that had any of those cats decided to flee, Beau would have been after them like a shot. But the training opportunity presented to us by their staying put, gave us the best lesson ever.

What was it I learned? That these techniques really do work and the secret lies in the connection you create with your dog. We have to trust them to trust us – if we put the time in and prepare our dogs well in advance for the strange and unusual, they will trust us when it really counts.

And what about Beau – what might he have learned? That perhaps cats are just as interesting as little dogs and might be worth “observing” some more. That experiencing the strange and unusual often results in a great massage, coupled with clicks and treats just for doing nothing.

And the cat? That a strange click sound is making the crazy lady on the other side of the fence chuck dried liver away for free!