How can owners balance a dog’s love of freedom with the need for reliable recall when distractions appear? They so want to be able to carry on giving Luna freedom. This is what they want to resolve in contacting me: ‘Unreliable recall in distracting situations’. ‘Distracting situations’ are exactly when Read more
What happens when a dog that once loved other dogs is attacked several times?
Dogs have attacked Coco. Three times.
Off-lead, out of control dogs can cause so much damage. The actions of people who risk letting their own reactive dog run freely up to another dog can completely spoil the future walks of both the dog it attacked and his owners.
The young lady did everything possible to give her beautiful Shiba Inu, now eighteen months old, the perfect start in life. She chose Coco so carefully from a good breeder and socialised him brilliantly to people, other dogs, noise etc. They lived in a flat in London and took him everywhere with them, habituating him well to daily life.
She really couldn’t have done more.
In giving him the opportunity to play and get to know other dogs, like all of us she took the risk of his encountering ‘the wrong’ dogs. On three separate occasions another dog attacked Coco. It seems they were males each time. (more…)
What happens when a busy, enthusiastic Spaniel can’t properly express his natural instincts? Unlike so many of the dogs I go to, enthusiastic Cocker Spaniel Rudi has no reactivity problems at all towards other dogs. He’s adorable and he is adored! Rudi, 7, and has lived with the couple in Read more
Is aggressive behaviour caused by dominance — or by fear, stress and feeling unsafe? Aggressive behaviour, is it through fear or something else? Delilah was in another room behind a gate when I arrived, barking but not for long. Her lead was already attached to her harness. When the gate Read more
It’s tempting to think that if a dog refuses to walk that she is being ‘stubborn’. The gentleman has very kindly picked her up, carried her a little way and put her down again. It went like this all the way to the woods where she would then start to run about freely.
Why can former street dogs cope beautifully at home – yet struggle more and more when out on walks? Rocky and Flossie were born on the streets in a small coastal town in Bulgaria around two years ago from mothers also born on the streets. For the past year or so they Read more
When a dog has learnt to be selective whether he comes or not when called, it can be good to start all over again with a whistle. Home work needs to be put in first – lots of it. After a thousand toots of the whistle over a couple of weeks, each time followed by a tiny piece of something tasty (it can be a great family game whistling a dog from room to room), we should be well on the way to creating a conditioned response.