Ben and Evan
The two five-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniels had been left in a garden in London and not taken outside for a long time, if at all.
They were picked up in an unkempt condition and with very long nails.
They become different dogs
Amazingly, they are very friendly with all people and dogs so long as it’s in their own home and garden where they feel safe. However, once a lead goes on them and they know they are going out of the gate, they become different dogs.
Excitement doesn’t necessarily mean happiness, which is something dog owners don’t always realise. The two are walked down the road together, squealing and yapping, and to quote the lady, all hell breaks loose if they see another dog.
Their new humans, wanting to do all they can for the little dogs, have cast about to find ways to solve the problem. The first thing people often try is dog training and they have been going to classes but find that ‘training’ doesn’t help at all.
At their wits’ end, they have tried anti-bark collars to make them quiet. Nothing works.
Why is nothing working?
Nothing is working because they have not been addressing the cause, the root, of the problem.
Terror.
They are just trying to eradicate the symptom – the noise. Like many people, they simply hadn’t correctly interpreted from the dogs’ body language and stress signals just how scared they were feeling.
Although happy little dogs in the house, because they are so terrified outside the daily build-up of stress generated by walks is spilling over into other habits. In order to relieve their stress they do things such as licking and sucking themselves until they are raw.
Preparing to go out
One at a time we put a comfortable harness on each little dog. With the short leads on thin collars, when they do lunge at anything that scares them it will be hurting their little necks.
We first took Lenny outside into the garden so I could show the lady how to walk him on a loose, longer lead giving him the feeling of more freedom. Being less ‘trapped’ should eventually allow him to feel less unsafe.
Before even leaving the garden Lenny was panting and agitated, frequently shaking himself and scratching as a displacement activity to help himself cope. He did calm down sufficiently to follow the lady around on the loose lead and for us to open the gate and walk him out into the garage area.
We got to the opening and then he saw a cat. He exploded. It sounded like he was being murdered.
It was perfectly clear to me that even just past the garage we had pushed too far too fast, but now I had seen and heard for myself just what happened. We had established the ‘threshold’ at which we should have stopped – the area behind which the real work would now need to start.
Even worse
Little Evan was even worse. As soon as the lead went on in the garden he was nervous wreck. He screamed. He bit at the lead.
To try to stop these things they had tugged back at the lead and scolded him but he’s so agitated he really can’t help himself.
I showed them how to stand still and calm and to reinforce not screaming and not biting the lead. He quietened down a bit and walked around the garden a few times, but we never even got out of the gate.
Evan ended up by sitting down, refusing to move and shaking, so we took the lead off and went in.
The poor little dog is in this state before a walk even starts, so no wonder he is hyper-vigilant and reactive once out. A dog with this level of stress is incapable of learning anything – it does things to the brain. See this.
Giving the little dogs choice
The cornerstone to their success will be to give their little dogs choice and a way out – an escape. If the dog doesn’t want to move, then the walk should be abandoned.
The lady’s day starts with about half an hour of mayhem as she walks the dogs together before going to work. It’s a nightmare for her too, but she does it as a caring dog owner believing that she’s doing her best for them. She hadn’t seen that where they are concerned this sort of walk is doing more harm than good.
A walk should leave a dog happy, relaxed and satisfied, not a nervous wreck needing frantic activity afterwards in order to unwind.
Plenty of happy, short five-minutes sessions is what these little dogs need for now. With lots of repetition and keeping well within the threshold where they feel safe, they can slowly become acclimatised to the outside world at their own pace.
It will be great when they at last feel sufficiently safe to start sniffing as dogs should do. They should always feel they have an escape route. So far they have in effect been ‘flooded’ – with the best of intentions forced into a situation they can’t cope with.
We can’t undo five years in five weeks or probably even five months. It will take time.
Tiny increments
Our little experiment with each dog showed the people just how slowly they will have to take things and in what tiny increments, but it’s encouraging, too, because at last they have a plan to work on that makes sense and is kind.
It will all now need some really careful planning. They will have a routine for getting the dogs out one at a time with as little stress as possible. Although walks are an ordeal, neither dog wants to be left behind. I feel they should always go out in the same order so they learn just what to expect and the second one out always knows his turn will come.
There is one big positive. This is that they Lenny and Evan are fine when other dogs have come to their house, proving they are not scared of dogs per se but only when they are feeling unsafe in the scary outside world and trapped on the end of a lead.
Feedback nearly three weeks later: I feel that the boys have made sooooo much progress already, I know its a slow progress and I have all the patience in the world….but to date, I am very happy. We have been able to move to full round the block walks with both of them quiet and they are indications that they are enjoying it too. They are starting to sniff a lot. Evan sniffs more than Ben, Ben watches me.
