With her friend feeding Jack through the muzzle, she had managed to get the drops in for a couple of days. Yesterday she was trying to do it by herself.
Jack exploded.
Reggie’s pulling is due to excitement at the prospect of getting to the park and chasing his ball.
Ronnie’s pulling is due to anxiety. Feeling unsafe. He feels he needs to warn off any approaching dog that’s not already a friend of his.
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.
I’m starting Johnny’s story with a little rant on dominance from my soap box.
As a force-free, modern trainer/behaviourist I don’t need to dominate a dog to get compliance.
I won’t say that dominance – being very firm and overpowering – doesn’t work. It can and it does. Sometimes.
In the old days I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know better and that is what I did until I learnt how inefficient it was. I have been there. I know what I’m talking about. Being kind and allowing the dog choices does not mean being permissive. I apply rules also. I don’t use force.
Many people still believe that being what they erroneously think is ‘being the Alpha’ is the right way to train and control their dog. It’s not helped by certain TV trainers who make a lot of money using old-fashioned techniques that look like quick fixes.
Few dog owners psychologically would make effective ‘Alphas’ anyway. (more…)
They have had two-year-old Springer Spaniel Ben for one week now. He is a beauty; polite and friendly.
I sensed that some of his quietness is due to being a bit careful and still finding his feet. Ben may well be a bit different when he has properly settled in.
He could become more confident which may well work in their favour where his explosion into barking and lunging when getting too close to another dog is concerned. (more…)
Jonny is a gorgeous, friendly dog – looking and behaving a lot younger than his supposed ten years. The elderly couple who had him previously could no longer keep him.
He has a lovely home now with activity and enrichment.
His two problems are around guarding, growling warning and chasing shadows – or just charging about chasing nothing. (more…)
They want their Cocker Spaniel to bark less. Nearly all action and activity in Woody’s world is generated by Woody. Much of it as a result of barking. The two-and-a-half-year-old barks to get attention. He simply carries on relentlessly until it works. Some days they must take him out on Read more
I’m pretty sure that at the root of Luna’s problems is not having left the gun dog breeder until she was twelve weeks old. There will have been no early habituation or socialisation. She won’t have been taken out anywhere to meet a variety of people nor introduced to the outside world while still young enough to take it in her stride.
It’s hard to see where the tension, eyeballing and snarling between the two dogs has come from. It seemed to be out of the blue – but was it? Both dogs had been happily living and playing together since they took on Poppy, now three years old, as a puppy. Tilly is ten years old.
The two sighthounds barely lifted their heads from the sofa when I entered the room. I could hardly believe it when I rang the doorbell and from a house with three dogs there was no barking at all – not even from their elderly Springer but she may be a bit deaf. When Read more