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Originally posted by Steve Carlton
Yes, curious about Jessie. What the behavioral problems were and what you did to overcome them. Sounds like a "Dog Whisperer" episode! And kudos to you and your wife for saving her and seeing it through.
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She was fear aggressive, deathly afraid of a leash or collar, scared of her own shadow, and not very domesticated. She played bowl hockey with her metal dish on the tile floor (nice sound), chewed on things, and counter surfed and would not let anyone near her except my wife, who found her. A hand full. The only saving grace was that for some reason she responded to house braking quickly as we let her out into the patio all the time to do her business. She would not go in the grass or dirt, only on brick or the street.
We got her to wear a collar and leash but she tugged on the leash to the point that my wife could not walk her. We tried to apply the lessons from Dog Whisper but the choke collar did not do the trick. She would choke herself to the point of damaging her throat. I am sure it was the way we were going about it and also there is definitely something to the “calm assertive” nature as Caesar Malian claims. We went through this for a year before finding Jason and Highland Canine.
The conclusion drawn by us and Jason, our trainer, was that she was abused by a tall man who wore a hat. I am 6’ and had more problems than my wife, who is 5’6”. She was fear aggressive but not a danger to bite anyone.
Jason changed the collar to a prong collar and that made a huge difference over the choke collar. We started with obedience training. Giving a command (heal, sit, down) only one time and if she did not respond a pop correction with the leash and collar – she had no choice but to obey the command. We did not set up for failure in that for each command we made sure the chance of susccess was high with little distractions at first. We put the food bowl away and the only food she got was from our hand. Going this route brought quick response. Two weeks after starting this training; working typically 3 to 6 scissions a day for 15 minutes each plus two walks of 1.5 miles each per day (the training sessions were also included in the walks), the change was amazing. The way we trained was that she automatically sits when we stop walking, without a command. The command sit also means stay until we say OK. Within 2 months I would walk her down the street, stop, drop the leash and walk ahead 100 yards then turn around and she is still sitting where I left her. One soft command of come and she comes to me and sits. We then took her into new situations, walking down town in a crowd and being around people and dogs, cats, squirrels, etc.
After 2 1/5 months of leash and obedience training we started off leash training (by this time she had obedience training down).
We went to hand signal training for come, sit, down. This went very quickly. The unique thing about hand signals is that they cannot get screwed up by voice inflection or emotion. With hand signals you are calm assertive all the time. The dog responds virtually every time. At the dog park, in a pack of dogs running, I can call her with a hand signal if she looks my way or I say her name to get her attention.
After the obedience training she went back to eating out of her bowl. To stop the bowl hockey we went to an elevated bowl which is better for the dog to swallow plus she is well cared now. Stopping the counter surfing was natural as thru the course of training she responds to a “ANNT” type of command meaning no or stop. Stopping the chewing went sort of the same way plus she is not a puppy any more and we limit her to one toy or chew at a time instead of giving her a new toy every time she chewed something (strange how obvious the logic is – I’ll just chew on something and get a new toy).
Now we are training her to come to a whistle. This is done by going back to hand feeding. Whistle – food - over and over – with her at our feet. Then move away and whistle and she comes. This should go quick also and then she will be back to eating out of the bowl.
That is all the training we want. We started out just wanting were leash trained and to come every time.
Happy ending for us and Jessie
