Dogs and indoor trainers - need help

The dilemma lies in your last paragraph. What is your priority?

Yeah I love my dog more than anything. But there HAS to be a way to spin AND keep a happy dog! He's smart - he'll figure out that it's actually good for me, right?

Oh, wow.  Call Cesar Milan?

Well, seriously... I have seen Cesar correct that type of behavior; like when a dog goes ballistic everytime the owner tries to vacuum.  You may want watch some of his episodes, check out his website, or invest in one of his books.

I wonder if you have someone else get on the bike while you "do a correction" everytime your dog reacts negatively.  Whatever you do will take a lot of repetition and time.

Rules, boundaries, and limitations
Exercise, discipline, affection

Be a pack leader!

Yep, this is good advice.

Giving a correction to something your dog fears is NOT the way to do it - it will only reinforce in his head that it's a negative thing to be worried about.

Just crate him.

He's never been crated ... except for the 18 months he lived at the shelter when he was 4-5 years ... since he's been with me he's never been crated as he gets so scared he'll pee himself (the year and a half he lived in the shelter was not the best time of his life) ... and I've never had any other need to crate him.

I should have said - he's normally a VERY good dog, very well-behaved and I worked very hard with him and he is now exceptionally trained ... but he's got these few random fears that I've never been able to train out (ferrets and tape measurers are two others).

I'll work on it slowly. It'll come, I hope. I just mostly want to know I'm not alone, this has happened to others? I guess I just needed to vent. Thanks, BT.

Then what you want to look into counter conditioning and desensitization. A fantastic book and calming program to check out is Control Unleashed.

In case you didn't already know Cesar is a bunch of hooey...some words from some of the most respected folks in dog training.
http://www.urbandawgs.com/divided_profession.html
http://dogtime.com/cesar-millan-and-ian-dunbar.html
http://vetmedicine.about.com/b/2009/07/07/veterinary-behaviorists-t...
http://landofpuregold.com/the-pdfs/response2milan.pdf

what about having a toy he likes handy and playing fetch or tug of war whilst on the bike?  that worked for me...

LONG post coming.  Be warned.

We have had fantastic success training our dogs - both retired racing greyhounds.  We took training classes from Mary Waugh Swindell.  She and her dog Cassanova were a great team and set the record for weaving cleanly through 60 weave poles: 11.79 seconds.  She definitely knows her stuff.  She taught us about positive clicker training.  Here's a basic clicker from PetSmart:

<-- Click the picture to go to PetSmart's page to see more info.

Basically, when you see your dog doing something you like and want to reinforce the behavior, you use a sound (like a clicker, available at PetSmart, PetCo, etc.), give the dog a small treat, and praise like crazy, then go about your business.  When you see the dog doing something again, click, give the dog a small treat, and praise like crazy.  Repeat for many many days.

When we got our first greyhound, she would poop all over our small fenced backyard.  It was horrible, because I was constantly missing her poops and stepping on them later, sometimes with bare feet.  To solve the problem, we taught her that there was ONE place in the backyard that she should go poop.  We fenced the area off with a short 3' dog kennel style fence, waited until she had to go poop, put her inside the fenced area, sat with her inside the fenced area and waited.  She tried her best to hold it in, but she eventually HAD to go.  (In fact, I remember going in during the first few times with a lawn chair and magazines!!)  Once she did, we clicked, treated, praised, took her out of the fenced area, and played with her for a while.  The next time she had to go, we repeated the process.

Eventually, she learned that the fenced area was her pooping ground.  After a couple months, we were able to take down the fence.  She still knew where to go, and went straight there every time she had to poop.  (Mind you, I stil cleaned it on a regular basis, but the poop was in a much more confined area.)  When we got our second greyhound, she learned by watching our first pup that there was only one place to poop.  We had to reinforce it, but it went much quicker.

So here are my suggestions.

1) Get on the bike but don't pedal.  Wait for your pup to calm down.  Just sit there and wait.  Once he stops barking and starts to appear calm, click and give a treat.  Hop off the bike, praise him, and go watch some TV or something. 

2) 10-15 minutes later, get on the bike but don't pedal.  Repeat the same steps as in #1. 

3) Continue the above steps for a day or two.  If you feel like your pup is responding well with you being stationary on the bike, then start to move the pedals VERY slowly - maybe only 1 or 2 revolutions.  If he starts barking and going crazy, stop pedaling, wait for him to calm down, but DON'T treat.  Start to pedal again and try to go only 1 revolution.  If he's okay, click and treat, then hop off the bike and play with him, etc.

4) After a while, he'll start to get desensitized to you being on the bike and moving.  It's going to take time and patience.  This will NOT be an overnight process.  It will take weeks.

With ours, it took about 3-4 weeks before she understood her new poop zone.  Expect the same kind of time in your situation - maybe longer.

But it CAN be done!!

For now, I know it breaks your heart to think about it, but maybe you can put him in your bedroom with the door shut until he's gone through enough training that he's okay with you on the bike.  For now, turn the stereo or TV on in the bedroom so that there's sound to block out the sound of the bike, and turn the stereo or TV on in the room where you are so that there is MORE sound to block out the sound of the bike.

Good luck!!

-Joel

Edited by TXGreyhoundGuy 2009-08-03 7:52 PM

Greyhound has it right.  Conditioning the dog can work, with time and patience.  Reinforce desired behavior with treats, build tolerance, and you should be able to get on the bike in a few weeks without a problem.

Sounds like the best thing to do is put the dog in a crate.  Leave it in the room with you and see if it stops barking.  If it does...let it out and see how it responds.  If it continues to bother you put it back in the crate.  It will eventually learn...

Sticking with the Cesar Milan theme.  My suggestion would be to  "Claim the bike/trainer".  You need to make it clear that the bike/trainer belongs to you and your dog has no business telling you to get off it.  It will probably take a lot of time but it can be done.  We had problems with our two dogs attacking the vacuum and we tried everything we could think of until we saw an episode of the Dog Whisperer that showed how to fix it.  Basically when the dog goes near you on the bike and appears that he/she is going to exhibit the behaviour, you get off the bike, go towards him and use your body language (don't physically touch him unless you absolutely have to) to redirect him away from it to show that the bike is yours and he cannot go near it when you are on it.  Make sure his focus moves away from the bike before you go back to the bike.  You are going to have to get on and off the bike a lot at first but eventually he will start to realize "Hmm, I guess the bike belongs to my owner and I'm not allowed over there so I will just stay over here".  
After 6 years of trying to get our dogs to leave the vacuum alone, within a couple of weeks we were at the point where one of them just sits on the couch and watches and the other just leaves the room when one of us is vacuuming.
Good luck and keep at it!

X2 Careful conditioning and desensitization is the best and kindest approach.

My vote goes with the conditioning the dog to know its ok by sitting on it and praising after he calms down. It may seem like the hardest due to time but usually works the best.

I have the opposite problem that my dog wants to play with me while I am on the trainer but doesn't hand me stuff she drops it so I can't reach it. Today she put her rope toy under one of my pedals i hadn't even seen she did it she went back to get it while I was doing about 100 rpm and I kicked her right in the face. I felt so bad but I"m guessing I won't have that problem anymore.

x3 -- this is definitely a situation where positive reinforcement training is called for.  Punishing the dog for reacting fearfully to something he's afraid of is just going to reinforce his fear and make the behavior worse. 

lol... my dog does something similar when I'm cooking dinner.  He knows that sometimes if I'm chopping up little pieces of meat or cheese, a piece might drop, so he creeps in and lays down directly behind my feet.  So once or twice a month, he does it so sneakily that I don't notice he's there, then I step backwards onto his ears or face.