Being Approached
Confidence Building · 22 steps · by @fearfuldogs
For a dog who needs to be comfortable being approached, and able to eat food delivered by a person, so that training can actually begin. Built for a dog who currently ignores food from people, retreats, or hides.
The unit of this plan is one delivery: **you approach, you drop food, you leave.** The thing being measured is LATENCY, how long it takes Your Dog to eat after the food lands. Latency is the honest readout of how this dog is doing. A dog who eats in twenty seconds is not being slow, they are telling you how long it takes them to come back down.
So the plan runs in three phases, changing one thing at a time:
1. **You leave completely, and the latency shrinks.** Thirty seconds, then ten, then five. 2. **The latency stays at five seconds, and you stay closer.** Across the room, then a few steps, then right there. 3. **The food comes from your hand** rather than the floor, with you already nearby.
**Collecting the data:** start the rep as the food lands and tap Pass the moment Your Dog's mouth reaches it. The recording stores per-rep timing, so your latency trend gets logged for you across sessions. It is approximate, but the direction of travel is what you need.
**Nothing here is a paycheck.** This is classical work, not operant work. The food is not payment for behaviour and the retreat is not payment either. Neither one is earned, withheld, or contingent on anything Your Dog does: on every rep the food lands and you leave, whatever the dog is doing. What you are building is a prediction, approach means food appears and pressure disappears, and predictions are built by pairing, not by reinforcement.
**The rules below are rules.** They are not tips and they are not to be traded off against progress. If a rule and a step ever seem to conflict, the rule wins and the step waits.
- **Food is dropped, never handed, until phase 3.** It lands beside or behind Your Dog, never between you and them. Eating must never cost this dog distance. - **Leave before Your Dog needs you to.** Not when Your Dog relaxes, not when they eat, not when they look at you. Waiting for the dog to do something first would make your leaving a consequence, and then you would be teaching Your Dog to perform calm to get rid of you rather than teaching them that approach is safe. Retreating on your own schedule is what keeps the whole picture under the threshold where Your Dog can still eat. Drop and go, do not linger to watch. - **Stop the approach before the dog moves.** If Your Dog shifts away, you were already too close. That is a fail, and you do not re-approach to fix it. - **Approach on a curve, side-on, eyes soft and averted.** Straight-on and upright is a late proof, not a starting point. - **Never corner.** Your Dog must have a clear exit on every rep. No walls behind them, no closed doors, no leash restricting the retreat. - **The hiding place is off limits to YOU, not to Your Dog.** This rule restricts the person, never the dog. Your Dog may go there whenever they like, stay as long as they like, and leave when they choose. That is what it is for, and it is always allowed. You do not approach it, run reps near it, call, coax, lure or toss food into it, reach into it, or block it. That holds at every step including the proofs, and for anyone else who does approach work with Your Dog. The reason is not that the spot is fragile. It is that going there is the only way Your Dog currently has of saying no, and a dog whose quiet no stops working finds a louder one. - **Rising latency means stop.** If the times get longer across a session, the session is over. That is not a step to push through.
**Emergencies are not an exception, they are outside training.** If a real emergency means Your Dog must be physically retrieved from their hiding place, do it, and understand you have spent something rather than trained something. Do not score it, do not repeat it, rebuild afterwards. To make that rare, teach an exit routine now while nothing is wrong: scatter food a few feet OUTSIDE the hiding place regularly, no agenda, nothing happening to Your Dog when they come out.
Most steps are **Classical** type, so a single fail drops the step. With a dog who hides from approach, that caution is the point.
Training steps
Drop and leave the room
Setup: Your Dog settled somewhere with a clear exit, not their hiding place. Food in your pocket.
Baseline. Walk in on a curve, drop a piece of food a body length from Your Dog, walk straight out of the room. Wait out of sight. Come back only to see whether it was eaten. Each piece eaten is a rep. No fail button here on purpose: this step is measurement, not training. Note roughly how long it took if you can.
Success: Your Dog eats the food while you are gone.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Eats within 30 seconds of you leaving
Setup: Same as before. You leave the room completely after dropping.
Same delivery, now with a criterion: eaten within about thirty seconds of you leaving the room. Start the rep as the food lands, tap Pass when Your Dog eats. If you cannot see from outside the door, watch from a phone or a mirror rather than putting your head back round the frame.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 30 seconds of you leaving the room.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Eats within 20 seconds
Setup: Approach, drop, leave the room.
The in-between rung if thirty to ten is too big a jump. Same delivery, twenty second criterion.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 20 seconds of you leaving.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Eats within 10 seconds of you leaving
Setup: Approach, drop, leave the room.
Nothing about your behaviour changes here, only the bar. If the latency will not come down, that is information about the approach, not about the dog's appetite: soften the approach, come in wider, leave faster.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 10 seconds of you leaving the room.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Eats within 7 seconds
Setup: Approach, drop, leave the room.
The in-between rung between ten and five seconds.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 7 seconds of you leaving.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Eats within 5 seconds of you leaving
Setup: Approach, drop, leave the room.
Five seconds is the working number for the rest of the plan. From here the latency bar stops moving and your distance starts closing, one variable at a time. Do not tighten both.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds of you leaving the room.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You stay at the far side of the room
Setup: Approach, drop, retreat to the furthest point in the room and stand still.
Phase two begins. You no longer leave the room, you retreat to the far wall and stand still, side on, hands quiet, eyes off Your Dog. Same five second bar. This is the biggest single jump in the plan, so expect a drop or two and let the engine find the distance.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you standing across the room.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You stay at half the room
Setup: Approach, drop, retreat halfway, stand still.
Retreat only half as far as before. Everything else identical: five seconds, side on, still.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you at half the distance.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You retreat five steps
Setup: Approach, drop, take five steps back, stand still.
Now the retreat is counted in steps rather than rooms. Five steps back, then still.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you five steps away.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You retreat three steps
Setup: Approach, drop, take three steps back, stand still.
Three steps. Keep your feet still once you have stopped, and keep your weight back rather than leaning in to watch.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you three steps away.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You retreat one step
Setup: Approach, drop, take one step back, stand still.
One step of retreat is almost none. This is where you find out whether the approach itself has become safe or whether the leaving was doing all the work.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you one step away.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You drop and stay where you are
Setup: Approach, drop, stay put, stand still and side on.
No retreat at all. Approach, drop, stand exactly where you are, side on and still, and let Your Dog eat with you right there. This is the step the whole plan was built to reach.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you standing right there.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
You stay for 10 seconds after they eat
Setup: Approach, drop, stay put for the timer.
Timed. Approach, drop, and stay for ten seconds after Your Dog has eaten rather than leaving the moment the food is gone. Drop a second piece partway through if the stillness gets heavy. The Fail button unlocks when the timer ends, so if it goes wrong, leave quietly and score it then.
Success: Your Dog stays settled and loose for ten seconds with you standing there.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Crouch, place, stand and step back
Setup: Approach, crouch, place the food, stand, one step back.
The in-between rung into phase three: crouch, place the food by hand rather than dropping it, then stand back up and take one step away.
Success: Your Dog stays settled and eats within about 5 seconds.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Crouch, place the food, stay crouched
Setup: Approach, crouch beside Your Dog at your working distance, place the food.
Phase three. Getting smaller is a real concession to a worried dog, so lower yourself in one slow movement with your knees and shoulders angled away. Place the food, keep your hand where it is for a beat, then rest it on your own knee. Stay down while they eat.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds with you crouched nearby.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Food released from your hand at their level
Setup: Crouched at your working distance, food held low and visible.
Now the food comes out of a moving hand rather than appearing on the floor. Hold it, let Your Dog see the hand, and release it so it lands right in front of them. The hand moves, but it never travels toward the dog.
Success: Your Dog stays settled and eats within about 5 seconds.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Takes food from a flat palm
Setup: Crouched beside Your Dog, flat open palm held still, food in it.
The last rung. Flat open palm, held still beside Your Dog at their head height, food resting in it. No reaching, no moving the hand toward them, no encouraging. Lick, nibble or snatch all count. If nothing happens in about ten seconds, close the hand and score it a fail.
Success: Your Dog takes the food off your open palm.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Straight on, upright approach
Setup: Approach directly from the front, standing tall, drop and stay.
Face on and upright is a genuinely different picture to a dog. Go back to dropping and retreating for this, from a bigger distance than usual, and rebuild.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds after a head on approach.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Approached while lying down
Setup: Your Dog resting in an open spot with a clear exit. Approach, drop, stay.
Being approached while lying down removes Your Dog's head start, so it is harder than it looks. Never in their hiding place, and never on a bed they cannot easily leave.
Success: Your Dog stays lying down and eats within about 5 seconds.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Approached by a second person
Setup: A calm household member, briefed on the rules, approaching on a curve from a generous distance.
Approach tolerance does not transfer between people for free. The new person starts at the beginning: approach, drop, leave the room. Your job is to stay out of it entirely.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds after the second person's approach.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Approach and touch the collar
Setup: Crouched beside Your Dog, lead in your other hand.
The one that matters in real life, and the single most common context for a first bite. Approach, drop, and as Your Dog eats, touch the collar for half a second and let go before they react. Build to clipping the lead on. Never grab, never hold on to make a point, never use this to collect Your Dog for something they dislike.
Success: Your Dog keeps eating and stays settled for a brief collar touch.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Approached in a new place
Setup: A quiet, familiar outdoor spot with no traffic and no other dogs, and a clear exit for Your Dog.
New places shrink a dog's tolerance, so go back to dropping and retreating and rebuild from there. If the food is refused outdoors, the environment is over threshold, not the dog being stubborn. Go somewhere quieter.
Success: Your Dog eats within about 5 seconds after the approach.
Advance on: 4 of 5 successes
Your Dog can now eat food handed to them by a person who is standing right there. That is not a trick, it is the precondition for every other plan you own: a dog who can eat near people can be taught things near people. Keep the latency data going, because it stays the most honest thing this dog will ever tell you. If the times start stretching, believe them and give the distance back before you are asked twice.