[nagdu] Engaging distractors

[Tami Jarvis]

Tracy,

With Mitzi, I've tended to take a situational approach, engaging and 
explaining when it's convenient, just ignoring and moving on when we 
need to focus. She's a fairly reserved dog and not terribly 
food-motivated, so I could be a bit lackadaisacal with her. In 
restaurants and such, I take a firmer line and stay on the straight and 
narrow, making sure she knows we are not there to socialize and poke our 
nose into other people's eating space. So I just ignore distractors and 
move on. If people talk to me, I will answer them, if a bit 
distractedly. There's usually so much noise and bustle going on that I 
need to pay attention to stay oriented and weave around all the moving 
obstacles and whatnot. To be honest, there are times I would like to 
snap at folks for distracting my dog -- at least once, someone has waved 
food at her as we went by! -- but I'm too busy finding the path to be 
snotty.

Loki is good friends with everyone, just hasn't seen them for a bit and 
needs to say hi. He does so with gentlemanly charm, but the concept of 
letting people walk on by or of walking on by them is slow in coming. 
When we move on to more advanced public access training, that's going to 
make life interesting. How I will change my ways of dealing with people 
actually trying to distract him remains to be seen.

I think that just ignoring the bad behavior of distracting the guide dog 
while it's working sends its own message, maybe even more clearly than 
stopping to explain. I think of it in terms of operant conditioning. The 
desired reward for the bad behavior is to get a reaction from the dog 
and maybe from the handler, so denying that reward is negative 
reinforcement for the bad behavior. If I'm standing in the grocery line 
or something with nothing better to do, I'm more likely to talk about 
the whys and wherefors, though it depends on the approach the other 
person is taking. Praising the dog for ignoring the distraction really 
gets the message across, and clicking and popping a treat in the dog's 
mouth can elicit a gasp of shock from the person I'm rewarding her for 
ignoring. I think on that one, I smiled and said to the world at 
general, "She's doing her job." It struck me as awfully funny, I'm afraid.

I think in the diner situation, I would have done as you did and just 
moved my dog along.

Tami


On 05/15/2015 06:15 AM, Tracy Carcione via nagdu wrote:
> I usually don't try to engage with people who are distracting my dog.  I'm
> so concentrated on controlling my wild young beast and getting him back on
> track that I don't think of it, really.  I tend to treat human distractors
> like yapping dogs or scampering squirrels, I guess.
>
> Last night, we ate at our local diner, and, as I was working Krokus through
> the tables, where he is very apt to be distracted by food, some guy we were
> passing was saying "Hi buddy!", more than once.  I told Krokus softly but
> sharply to hopp up, and moved him on past and out the door.  Then I wondered
> if I should have tried to engage the guy and explain to him why distracting
> my dog was a bad idea.
>
> I wouldn't do it in New York City, probably, but my neighborhood here in
> Jersey isn't so fast-paced.
>
> What do other people do?
>
> Tracy
>
>
>
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