book review - control unleashed*

Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog
(c/o Clean Run Productions)

Author:  Leslie McDevitt, MLA, CDBC, CPDT

Publisher:  Clean Run Productions

ISBN:   978-1-892694-17-1

Pages:  226

Price:  £17.50

Classic Quote

“Even if a student and her dog do not perform an exercise perfectly, as long as the dog is looking happy and engaged with his handler, I count that as a win.”

About the Author

Leslie McDevitt is a certified dog behaviour consultant and pet dog trainer in Philadelphia, MA, USA.  Her behaviour-based articles have been published in the agility periodical, Clean Run, and in Dog Fancy.

Structure

McDevitt is a trainer of agility and often found dogs in her agility classes who were unprepared for working within such a stimulating environment. For reactive dogs who had difficulty concentrating in the agility class setup, she devised a seven-week behaviour modification course as a pre-requisite to agility training. She called that course Control Unleashed (CU), and this book outlines the content of the CU course in week-by-week exercises.

The book is studded with true stories and case studies from her CU experiences and threaded throughout is the story of McDevitt’s progress with her own dog, Snap, to whom the book is dedicated.

Control Unleashed is aimed at:

1. Students of dog sports or the companion dog owner whose dog has difficulty concentrating or working off lead near other dogs or in exciting situations.
2. The experienced agility or obedience instructor who reads dogs well and wants to get a handle on dealing with the disruptive dogs in class.

Difficulty concentrating in exciting situations? That sounds like a Lapphund or two to me! I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book, which I ordered from the US, but it is now available in the UK. 

What is Great About This Book

First of all, it’s a relief to find a dog book with a new approach that really works. It’s a mile from the standard unhelpful advice which runs along the lines of:  keep your dog’s attention on you at all times to avoid him focusing elsewhere and then when your dog’s attention does wander, it’s your fault for not being “interesting” enough.

Instead, McDevitt has worked out strategies and games for building up dogs’ confidence, techniques for keeping their excitement at a manageable level, and methods to train your dog to want to focus on you, not because you say so but because he’s no longer distracted by outside stimuli (like other dogs, for example) and because it is a fun game for him to play. It all adds up to a strategy for helping dogs be comfortable around other dogs and other stimuli while remaining focused on his handler and ready to learn.

The CU course is for dogs who cannot think or control their impulses when they’re excited, who need to learn to relax and focus in the presence of their triggers without becoming reactive, and who need to learn to work off-lead in stimulating situations without getting distracted. CU is not an agility course and it is not an obedience course. It’s a behaviour modification course based on the principles of desensitisation and counter-conditioning.

Each class chapter starts with a list of clear aims and new exercises that will be introduced in that class, so you know where you’re headed as you work your way through. The description of each exercise is clear, detailed and mainly easy to follow with lots of helpful advice for what to do if things are going wrong. The case studies are well chosen to illuminate the lessons being taught, and there are plenty of photos that illustrate the points extremely well, even if they are a little small.

The best thing about this book is that the strategies really work! Well, those that I’ve tried thus far, anyway, have been amazingly successful and in a shockingly short period of time. So far, my favourite game is “Look at That!” which is designed to get your dog to glance at his trigger (i.e. scary other dog, for example), then revert his attention immediately back to his handler for a treat. This takes the stress out of looking at a formerly scary thing and turns it into a game that will earn the dog treats. It turns looking at the scary thing into a cue to revert his attention to his handler. Even better, it does so while allowing the dog to check out his environment and reassure himself that there is nothing around him he needs to be worrying about.

I took my reactive, noisy Lapphund, Keskiyö out with clicker and treats in hand and as soon as he focused on another dog and started to bark, I said “Look!” in a suitably pleasant voice and clicked straight away. He knows what a click means, and he turned to me immediately with a confused look on his face as if to say, “You mean you’re going to reward me for barking at that dog? You usually tell me off for barking at other dogs.”  We started playing the "Look!" game for clicks and treats with every exciting thing he would normally zoom in on.  After only two walks he had already begun to stop stressing and start concentrating on the game. 

The trick, of course, is to manage the situation so that the “trigger” doesn’t get too close. But with my dog’s triggers far enough away to keep him under threshold, the results were fast and dramatic.

What’s Not So Great

Unusually for me, I really don’t want to criticise anything about this book.  I value its content at least as much as, or more than, any other dog training / behaviour book I’ve ever read. However, there are a lot of issues with the book that the reader will need to be aware of.

First of all, Control Unleashed uses a great deal of jargon – terms from psychology like “reframing” or “conditioned emotional response” and from the world of dog sports, such as “contacts”, “two-on-two-off” and “circle work”. Once you get used to this, it’s fine, but it’s distracting and a bit confusing at first if you’re unfamiliar with the terms.

In addition, although it is not necessary to use clicker training in order to follow the exercises in this book, the descriptions do utilise this type of terminology and procedures. For this reason, the reader would be well advised to brush up on clicker training before tackling Control Unleashed.

My only real complaint with the content of the book is that there are a couple of instances of principles being introduced or mentioned but never fully described or explained. For example, McDevitt puts great emphasis on calming anxious dogs by using massage such as Tellington Touch (TTouch) or a technique called the Protocol for Relaxation. TTouch is given a one-line description with references for further reading. The Protocol for Relaxation, developed by Dr Karen Overall, is introduced in two paragraphs, giving just enough information to make you realise that it will take another whole course or book to learn it separately. Yet it is presented as one of the first crucial tools to the CU approach.

Finally, the major goal of the CU course is to make the handler more aware of her dog, his needs, his triggers, thresholds and responses and to find the right balance of stimulation for her particular dog. This is a highly complex topic with individual requirements and trying to get that from a book is difficult. This is specialist material based on reading your dog to tailor the exercises to his particular requirements. Anyone who is less skilled at reading their dog will struggle with getting the balance right in attempting the exercises.

I found that the exercises and descriptions became more and more complex and difficult to follow as the book went on. Furthermore, some of the more advanced and complicated exercises that give the final touches to bomb-proofing the dog would be difficult to apply in the “real world” outside the class situation.

These problems are not a fault of the book, as such. Rather, they arise as a result of trying to lift a step-by-step book directly out of a fluid and changeable class structure which is managed by an expert in dog training and behaviour.

The solution, of course, would be to take a Control Unleashed course instead of reading the book – and I very much wish I had the opportunity to do so!

Worth Reading?

Definitely.  In fact, I think a Control Unleashed type course should be mandatory for most Lappy owners! After all, how many of us haven’t struggled with the over-zealous, barking Lapphund zooming away to say hello instead of paying attention to us? However, in the absence of any CU courses in the UK – or certainly in my neck of the woods – then this book is a must for everyone with a distractable dog. 

Summary

Round Up:  Excellent plan for teaching control to reactive dogs

Best For:  Experienced dog handlers

Woofs:  4/5

 *This is an edited version of a review I originally wrote for the Dec 2009 edition of Lappy Tails, the newsletter of the Southern Finnish Lapphund Society.  Reviews written specifically for this blog will be shorter & more consise.  Probably.