Taming of the beast

Annie is a cutiepie and a generally good dog, however, she has some serious issues that were never addressed. First, she never got accustomed to strangers, since we never really had many people over (because she'd go nuts, thus making it worse because then she never got used to having people over). She also has some aggression towards other dogs. Well, living by myself and not willing to forgo having company over, and also knowing that now that I am the only person, that there's nothing to (ahem) derail the training (i.e. trying to teach a dog not to beg while the other person refuses to stop feeding her from his plate doesn't work).

Also, since some of my neighbors have dogs and I want Annie to have puppy friends, I decided to look into getting a trainer. Well, most trainers who come to your home are far to expensive and I wanted to deal with her issues at home. It just so happens that a friend of a friend is a semi-professional dog trainer (she trained both her dogs and does agility training with one of them) and she lives in my neighborhood. So she is helping me train Annie (I am paying her, of course, but a fraction of what it would cost a "professional" to do housecalls). I am already seeing progress after only 2 weeks.

Both the professional trainer who did an evaluation of Annie back in February and this woman I am working with now said the same thing: Annie is not being aggressive, she's actually quite insecure because she's always been coddled instead of led. She wants to be shown what to do - and when she's anxious about something, the absolute worst thing to do (which is what John and I always did) is to try and "soothe" her.

The first thing that she changed was the walking habits. We had Annie on one of those harnesses that goes around the chest. As it turns out (and this makes perfect sense when I think about it), those harnesses actually ENCOURAGE pulling because they act like a yoke. Those are what sled dogs wear to encourage the pulling behavior. I now have Annie walking on a training (choke) chain. It sounds mean, but I assure you it is not. It's not like I'm actually choking her. It's just a means to keep control of her head - where the head goes, the body follows. And it's not like it's constantly tight - on the contrary - it stays loose unless she needs a correction and then she gets a quick, light tug, and then it goes loose again. She's already learned to walk in the HEEL position (at my side, head by my knees) - something she NEVER did before.

Today, we passed by two anxious dogs - something that would have thrown her into a tizzy a few weeks ago - and I confidently walked right on by, giving a slight jerk to the chain when she went to lunge toward them - she stopped and kept walking while the OTHER dogs kept going nuts. I was in awe of how well she did with that - given that it's been 7 years of exasperation over how to get her to stop lunging after other dogs. We also walked right through a crowd of 5-6 people, something I would have avoided before, and she didn't flinch. One of the guys said "wow, that is one well behaved dog!" and I said "If you only knew!"

We then worked on stranger-danger and doorbells to help desensitize her to the doorbell and get her to see strangers as good things rather than things to be afraid of. From now on, everyone who comes over gets a few small treats to give her and some special instructions on how to act.

It won't be long before she's a much more well behaved and confident doggie.