All About Training Your Dog

So when we spoke last one of the owners of a dog that bitten promised me that she would have her husband, the one bitten, call me so I could ask a few questions.

If you haven’t read the previous post a rescue organization called me and asked if I would talk to an owner who had been bitten by a dog that had been adopted from said rescue organization.

My first conversation was with the wife who told me that her husband was a gentle man and had not harmed or over-corrected the dog at any time. In fact, he was scared of the dog as a result of being bitten.

However the circumstances that were described in the first bite led me to believe that there was more than at first I was told.

Supposedly the husband called the dog to him and when he didn’t come, reached for and grabbed the dog from underneath the table where the dog was and pulled him out. And then the dog bit the husband.

None of this was “feeling” right to me, so after talking with the wife I requested a conversation with the husband. I found it interesting that the wife called me the next night and then she put the husband on the line.

Now I’m usually a pretty good reader of persons, but I also have to say that there is plenty of room for error in trying to read someone over the phone. However if this man was gentle you couldn’t prove it by me as a result of this phone call.

While he didn’t sound furious, he did have a hardness to his voice that you wouldn’t expect after hearing his wife’s description. He was clearly upset and a bit angry as a result of the incident.

Honestly I can’t hold that against anyone. It’s upsetting to have a dog, any dog much less your own, bite you. So my goal was to make sure he knew that I understood and then also to let him know that this was my specialty.

I described some of the dogs that were similar and some much worse in terms of behavior than his dog and I outlined how I had worked with owners and the dogs to solve the behavior problems. I was careful not to minimize his situation, but I also wanted him to know that there was hope.

Actually much more than hope. I didn’t say it to him, but I felt that this was actually not a tough case at all. What he described is not all that uncommon and pretty easy to fix. What I did was mention that I thought we could fix this, but I couldn’t make any promises until we started working with the dog. Now remember I had yet to see the dog.

After mentioning this I then asked him a simple question: “If I can fix this and we can get him behaving properly, would you keep the dog?”

You see the rescue organization called me because the family had been making noise about returning the dog. The organization was more than willing to take the dog back, but wanted to know first if he was dangerous. If he was dangerous then they obviously didn’t want to adopt him out again. So the ideal situation would be if I could help the owners so the dog’s behavior would be fixed and they would keep him.

Ideal for everyone. The wife and daughter loved him. And I assumed that if I could show them what was needed to get him behaving properly then the husband would go back to loving him too.

So as I said I asked him the simple question, “If I can fix this and we can get him behaving properly, would you keep the dog?” Without skipping so much as a beat he immediately replied:

“Absolutely not. I would not consider it. I’ve had dogs before and I’ve obedience trained them. They always knew what they were supposed to do and they always knew when I was disappointed in them. When he bit me he came at me hard and he wanted to hurt me. I have a daughter. There’s no way I’m keeping him.”

I asked him, “Have you ever over-corrected this dog? Ever hit him?”

“No.”

The wife was on the other line and she interrupted.

“How about the time he didn’t come to you right away and you kind of kicked him when he came in the door?”

The husband ignored that.

I then asked him if the dog slept in the bed.

“No. Well he was on my daughter’s bed when he bit me this time, but he’s not allowed on it. He sometimes used to sleep in my daughter’s bed, but we stopped that.”

I mentioned to him that sleeping in the bed is a serious “no-no” and can help create a dog that feels like a leader over humans and many times just correcting human behavior changes dog behavior. He wasn’t budging.

“Look I know about training obedience. I’ve done it with the other dogs I’ve had.”

“I understand, however this is not about obedience. Now the fact that you know a lot about obedience will help this process, but this is not about obedience training and fixing this is not about corrections.”

He responded very quickly.

“Look we’re not going to keep this dog.”

I responded back just as quickly.

“Ok, well then we don’t have anymore to talk about. I’ll take it up with the rescue organization.”

I have to tell you guys two things. First of all, he irritated me because of his obvious anger and that was not how he or his wife portrayed him. Second, he seemed arrogant and resistant to learning something new. The result of that is a girl who loves a dog will not have her dog anymore.

I didn’t think going into this that the dog was completely at fault. I will admit that I had a suspicion that he was angry and had done something to the dog, but I also wanted to leave plenty of room for him to show me I was wrong.

The most telling piece of evidence against him as far as I was concerned however is when he said he would not take the dog back, even if I could fix it. In all my years of doing this I have never had anyone say that.

Now it was time to meet the dog. I was getting myself prepared to meet the “beast”!

Stay tuned for part 3!

 Train on!

Doug

I received a call from a lady who is the president of a rescue
organization here in town with a request. Would I talk to the owner of a dog that was adopted out by the organization?

“Sure, what’s going on?”

She told me that dog had bitten his owner twice, 3 years apart, the last time being about a week earlier.

“What were the circumstances of the bites?”

She told me that the first bite, 3 years or so earlier (I think I
have the timeframe right) happened when the dog wouldn’t come to the father. The father then pulled the dog from beneath a table and as a result the father was bitten.

The last time, about a week earlier had been when the father was taking the dog off his daughter’s bed…hmmmm.

The president of the rescue organization asked me, “Do you think we need to put the dog down?”

I’m not prepared to say that any dog needs to be put down until I can get the chance to observe the dog. That’s a serious move to make, especially given that some of the things I’d heard made me think that this might not be a case of a “dog-based” dog problem.

Before I came to any conclusions though I would need to talk to the owners and see the dog.

Two days later the wife called me and I got a chance to ask some questions. I asked her if the dog slept on the bed. At first she said, “No.” Then she said, “Well not anymore. He’s slept on my daughter’s bed before, but we don’t allow that anymore.”

I also asked if he had been corrected hard at anytime. Hearing that the father had pulled him out from under a table just didn’t sit right with me. My gut was telling me something was going on here.

I asked her if her husband had ever hit the dog and she said no, her husband was a gentle man and in fact was scared of the dog as a result of what had happened.

I mentioned to her the many owners and dogs that I had worked with that had similar problems and how we had solved them, teaching the dogs to behave…and teaching owners how their behavior had either created the problem or reinforced it.

Finally I mentioned to her that I thought we could solve this, but it would help if I could talk to her husband.

She agreed and promised to have her husband call me the next day.

That would prove to be a most interesting conversation!

To be continued…

Ok, so I’m not trying to be sarcastic. And I’m not trying to be a weatherman. All I know is that where I live, it has been cold, WAY cold for the last week. Quite frankly it feels like February right now.

So what does this have to do with dog training?

Well, I was talking to one of my clients. She has an Australian Cattle Dog mix, Mya who is relatively intense. We’ve been working with her to teach her to focus on her owner and also be calm, especially on a walk. She’s a bit dog aggressive.

Sarah, her owner tells me that Mya’s made quite a bit of progress on walks and also settling down in the house. She is a different dog and generally easier to deal with.

Sarah has done a lot of work with Mya and also has changed her own behavior quite a bit. The work with Mya, although not complete, is going well. Which is why what Sarah was seeing in her dog had her puzzled.

She told me last week that Mya had been driving her crazy; pacing, whining and generally acting antsy to the point of being irritating.

“What’s that all about? Why is she doing that?”

I started asking a few questions. I wanted to know what had changed in either Sarah’s life or Mya’s routine. Nothing came to mind at first.

Sarah is a triathlete and so I asked her how her workouts had been going. She wasn’t feeling well and had a leg injury. As a result of that and because it had been so cold she hadn’t been running in awhile.

I mentioned to her that the cold weather might have “fired Mya up.” Many times dogs will get a bit rowdy with a weather change. Cold weather can crank up some energy.

“Oh my gosh, you know what?”

I didn’t know where she was going with this.

“What?”

“Well since my injury I haven’t been running and so Mya hasn’t been running either. Do you think that could be what’s causing her to be so irritating?”

“Could be. Can you take her on a long walk, if you can’t run?”

She said that she could definitely do that.

“Well get her walking again and let me know how it goes.”

Now I haven’t heard back yet, but usually with dog behavior, no news is good news. Of course if Mya continues the whining and pacing then a trip to the vet will be in order, but something tells me that a good long walk will do the trick, BUT…

I told Sarah, “Make sure that when you take Mya out for a long walk, you don’t take her out when she’s doing the whining/pacing routine. Let her settle down first, then take her out. Since she loves to go walking if you take her out when she cranks up the whining she will link up the behaviors (I whine and pace and generally act obnoxious and then Sarah takes me out! Yea whining and pacing!). What you want is for Mya to link up in her mind that settling down is what gets her out the door and walking. That way calm behavior will be reinforced!”

So remember, a weather change, especially a cooler change, can really crank up your dog’s energy and create some irritating behavior! The answer is exercise, BUT wait for your dog to settle and calm down completely before going out for the long walk!