I was lucky enough to go to a seminar by Grisha Stewart about BAT - Behaviour Adjustment Training which is the method she developed to help reactive or fearful dogs. I loved the method and it made perfect sense to listen to and observe the dogs and allow them to approach the scary object then come away repeatedly to get used to it and learn to cope.
Molly does have more than a tiny issue with the vacuum cleaner - in that she is very scared of it and attacks it on sight. It is the kind of issue BAT is very useful for and also a pretty harmless one if I do stuff things up as she already reacts very badly to the vac so I really can't make it much worse. I am therefore going to have a go at using BAT to help her cope with the it.
Not entirely sure how impressed Molly will be as the training generally does not involve food rewards - instead it relies on the functional reward of moving away from the scary object to be reward enough.
Still early days in our training but after several sessions with the vac switched off I have taken the leap to switching it on. Things are slightly complicated by me being on my own so having to do some careful management to put the vac in position but hopefully so far so good!
