(An online consultation – Ripley and the cat) When a fearful young rescue reacts to everything outside, could a problem inside the house be making progress even harder? Ripley is now five months old. Her mother was a Romanian street dog that was rescued just before her puppies were born. Read more
When we have a very fearful dog it’s hard not to get sucked in and try too hard. I feel they are doing this with trying to get Rosie to eat and with pushing her to be friendly to friends and relatives. This only adds pressure.
Why does a dog bark constantly in the car when approaching home or a familiar destination? At six months old, Daisy came over from Eastern Europe. She lived with a someone nearby before the lady took her in three months ago. Daisy is now one year of age – a Read more
What can you do when a fearful dog doesn’t feel safe even in her own home?
She seldom feels completely safe. Lucy’s fearfulness affects everything, most importantly her reactions to their baby daughter.
With fear being at the root of all the issues that are a problem for the seven-year-old Cocker Spaniel’s owners, general fearfulness is what we must address. (more…)
Why would a young Cockerpoo bark fearfully at almost everything when out on walks?
Sid is gorgeous and I was expecting a Cavapoo. I don’t believe he is a Cavapoo though. The scared barking came from a dog looking more like a newly trimmed Cockerpoo.
There is definitely something fishy about his start in life, where they got him from at eleven weeks and the fact he was already incubating kennel cough.
The ‘breeder’ wouldn’t give her address until they were on the road. When they got there Sid was handed over to them straight away. There was a small Cavalier KC that they said was Sid’s father and a small black poodle that they said was his mother. No other dogs.
My suspicion is that this smart house was a front and very likely Sid had been shipped there from somewhere else. (more…)
What do you do when your older dog seems frightened of a new puppy instead of welcoming them? Here is two-year old Dogue de Bordeaux, Maisie, in her favourite safe place, under a chair in the corner of the kitchen. Maisie is frightened of a lot of things. She is Read more
Hand-feeding doesn’t mean pandering to a dog and treating her like a princess. In the case of a dog that needs a lot of desensitising and counter conditioning around things that make her fearful, the food can be used as a sort of tool. It can also be scattered on the floor. Foraging and searching is incompatible with spooking or barking.
Confrontational or dominant behaviour from the humans is a slippery slope that too often ends badly.