JoanSmeets

Yes, I feel that the powder is doing a good job in helping him cope with his stress levels. That way he can hopefully get even more out of his training, even if he is doing better than he was now. I do indeed feel that it was a good choice to start with mild triggers, even though I still get the idea that we overdid it a little. The powder had been given at least for 5 days already before the puking incident and there are no new treats. I think that the training session had been very stressful for him even though he seemed to be quite calm. We have ran this by the behaviorist and she agrees with us that we might have overdone it a little. Next session will be with a larger dog, but we will keep it at one dog and spend the remaining time on working on getting in the car and driving. He sadly threw up again this morning (this time before breakfast) and he seems to be getting quite a few episodes of reversed sneezing lately. Since we ordered the wrong food last month (normal Hill's i/d instead of the sensitive) and we are now back on his normal prescription diet we will be seeing if this is will change anything. If things aren't better by sunday we'll have to see if the vet can find anything. We were already planning on this anyways since he seems to have irritated eyes.

We did end up getting the Perfect Fit harness on Tuesday and he does not seem bothered by it at all. I have noticed that it is a little easier to pull him away from things he is not supposed to go to. In addition to the harness and the training we have also been giving him a powder that is stress-reducing, recommended by the behaviorist. We have been avoiding dogs on walks, but I have also found myself in situations where I had no way out and so far he has been reacting less than I am used to. He only growled at a dog he can't stand from the beginning instead of the full out barking and lunging he would normally have done at the distance we were at. And that even before real training, so I am starting to feel a little more confident that we are going to be just fine. We had our first training yesterday and he did really well, even though we did the training with a dog he met one time before and a small dog which he is not that impressed by. To step it up a little our behaviorist will bring a bigger sized dog next time. We do think that the training has been a little much for him since he was restless at night and this morning he threw up his food, so we will run that by her before making another appointment.

That's a tough situation to deal with. Although I have no long term solutions and I'm sure that Adrienne can help you best with those, I just wanted to weigh in that management is your best friend in this tough beginning. When we first brought our dog home he was really afraid of us abandoning him. I guess that every switch of owner does cause some abandonment feelings however big or small and it might be that your dog has a lot of trouble dealing with it. We made some mistakes ourselves which made us end up with a similar situation you find yourself in now. We were not able to kennel him, not even at night, and he started to destroy things when left alone. Random at first and later on only chewing up stuff with our scent on it. We were able to stay home for him so he did not need to be alone and we gave him a dog-proof sleeping spot in the hallway (empty dogbed, took off all the curtains, put away our jackets). After some time he started to understand that we were not out of the house at night and that he was not being abandoned and he completely settled down at night. That way we were able to provide him with a cushion in his bed and we put everything back up. We have had no problem with him destroying things there. Now that has been his safe sleeping space for quite a while we have recently been leaving him alone sometimes and put a camera up to monitor. He settles down after 2 to 5 minutes and goes to sleep. So in my experience it takes some time for them to find the routines, trust that you are going to come back when you leave and settle into their true personality. You could try dedicating a space/room in your home to your dog and dog-proofing it completely. If at all possible, avoid leaving him alone for a while and work on building some trust first, and if you start leaving him alone it's best to build it up very slowly (if he can handle it 5 minutes at a time at first). It can not hurt to treat it as a separation anxiety issue though, and I'm sure Adrienne can provide you with information and tips on that. The destroying may be part of his breed and the fact that he is still a very young dog, so dog-proofing as much as you can could not hurt either. Most of all, good luck! I hope you can overcome this hurdle!

Let's just start off by saying that the whole "Alpha dog" theory has been proven to be based on wrong assumptions. I know there should be an article on that in the library of this course which can explain way better than I can. I notice you are saying that she responds differently to you than she does to your partner, but in my experience this is only partially affected by your relationship to the dog and more so by your way of responding to the dogs behavior. You talk about pushing her off and telling her no and to us humans it's clear that you clearly do not want your dog to behave that way. To your dog however it's attention and the pushing her off may even feel like play to her. If you first give her attention and play and then all of a sudden put her in a time out, which does feel like punishment to her, she is most likely only going to be confused. I notice this difference in our Belgian Malinois as well, who is a pretty mouthy dog because of his breed. My partner handles the situation much like you do and will often end up with bruises because the dog gets more excited, thinks he is being played with and goes over his threshold. On the other hand I rarely get nipped because I take away all attention when he uses his teeth to interact with me and will put him in time-out without further attention if he carries on. And with a dog that is often described as "only has one owner" I can say that there is definitely a difference in relationship between our dog and my partner and our dog and me, but that is based on a lot of factors but none of them being "who he respects as a leader". I would however keep an eye open for Adrienne's reply because I think she can help you along with some solid advises on how to handle your specific situation.

I do hope that it is going to give the results we want for him, but we will have to see about that. He is such a friendly dog when able to meet the other dog and we just hope that we can help him cope and being confident in passing by if he does not know the other dog. It's going to take some work, but if I think back about how fast he learned to trust humans and males again after he came to us I still have high hopes. It's indeed just meant as a little help for a 108 lbs girl to hold back an 83 lbs dog in the rare case that we are not able to avoid conflict. I have no idea what age he is exactly as he was left tied to a tree, but we do feel like he has grown and with a little logical thinking we feel that he should be somewhere around a year and a half. So if the perfect fit harness is indeed making it possible for me to handle him a little easier if I ever need to, that definitely has my preference over a harness that is questionable on a few aspects. With the statement about the "giving more control" I was referring to information I found on the internet about front clip harnesses which did not really help me along. Your information has made it a little clearer for me and makes me a little more confident in picking the perfect fit harness. We do indeed already use a different harness (Julius K9) which only has an attachment on the back. This works great on quiet walks and does not seem to restrict him (even though it has a strap across the chest), but if I do end up running into a dog that is a huge trigger it ends up being a power struggle between me and the dog. Let's just hope that the perfect fit harness is going to make it a little easier and we will be able to help him along so he can gain a little confidence.

Just an update on this topic. I decided that I would give the easiest option a try first and have just been telling him to leave it when he was not making an effort to get to the treat. I have been doing two short training sessions of this, and in the last session I threw a treat out, told him to leave it then did a few sit's and down's. After I got up, moved past the treat and when his attention was drawn to it by doing so he went in to investigate. Told him to leave it again and he actually just backed away from it! So thank you a lot for your advise, I totally did not realize that it could be so simple. Few more simple sessions to make sure it sticks and then upping the challenge!

We are indeed going to plan a few training sessions with the behaviorist, where we will actively work on his fear preferably in a controlled setting with another dog/ other dogs selected for the purpose. In the meantime we are avoiding other dogs the very best we can and if we are not capable of that we are doing a search game that the behaviorist has shown us (and has tested in the orientation consult) at the biggest distance we can create. I have to say that this has given quite some success already with dogs he is just unsure of and has no bad association with otherwise. We are still working on a sort of emergency turn. The real trouble we are having is with certain dogs/breeds and in certain settings. For example there is a German Shepherd (he has been bitten by one so that's a huge trigger) he has not trusted from the start and his owner walks incredibly fast. We always seem to meet them on the narrow roads out in the fields and they will not slow down despite knowing our dogs reaction and the reason for it. Chester stops dead in his tracks and won't move and won't turn around (and if he does keeps stopping and looking back so conflict is not avoided by this). The only option I have in this case is take all my strength and just pull him along into a field as far as I can get before they pass us, but I can't always walk into a field and because of the dog being such a huge trigger however far I get is not far enough. The only other option to avoid this situation completely is staying inside of the town, which brings the problem of meeting more dogs and therefor creates more stress. Because I only need the training tool to take some of the strength out of the lunging in these situations I tend to lean more towards the perfect fit harness. The loose leash walking is something we are training on a different way. I have indeed found that the ability to attach the rings on the front and on the back give more control. Some say that the dog wearing a front clip harness will pull himself back around and others say that it works by the ring being in the center of gravity of the dog and it can therefor pull less hard. I do find "gives more control" a little vague, and since I have not been able to find what exactly is meant by that I have still been hesitant to make a decision. Maybe if you could give a little insight on what "gives more control" means exactly I will be able to make this decision. The website of the Mazter tool is the following: https://www.zterk.com/ I now noticed that they do not mention the nerve pathways in the written text, only in the video. So I have translated what they say about it here: The Mazter works by irritation (not further specified) and dis-balance. There are nerve pathways located beneath the rings on the shoulder. The mazter will apply pressure here as soon as there's pressure on the lead. The dog will experience this as an unpleasant feeling and will try to avoid this feeling. Thank you a lot already for the effort and all the information given so far!

This overwhelming amount of options to choose from and the two sided reviews are indeed exactly what is making this so hard. The problem also being that I am from The Netherlands and most websites with brands available are in Dutch, so it's hard to give all information that are mentioned with specific brands. The first harness, the one which is described as giving a pesky feeling to the nerves when pulling, is called the Mazter. This is unfortunately a Dutch brand with websites only in Dutch or German, so I have included a picture. As far as I understand the rings are supposed to be positioned exactly on some nerve pathways to give this feeling, and together with that it pulls the dog off balance. I don't know how harmful that would be exactly to the dog, because it is only mentioned on the product website and not on the websites of any distributors, who only mention the balance. The last thing I want is to make him more fearful. The second harness the behaviorist mentioned is the perfect fit harness but she also mentioned that it is not an "anti-pull" harness. https://www.dog-games-shop.co.uk/perfect-fit-fleece-dog-harness.html While I am concerned that the other harness might bring some unknown discomfort for the dog I wonder if this harness is going to do the job it is supposed to do. Because of the lunging I also try to steer clear of the harnesses that work trough tightening the front strap to apply pressure and the halti-type head halters. I would not be opposed to a harness of any other brand that does what it is supposed to do, like front clip harnesses I can come by here in The Netherlands. I have tried researching how these harnesses work and if they would be helpful in my case but it is hard to find any information on how they work and why they do work on some dogs and not on others.

Hey there, Since you have already helped me a great deal on another topic I was hoping you would be able to help me with something else. Chester has been bitten a few weeks ago and after that he has developed some pretty severe reactivity towards other dogs. Fear is something we have been struggling with since we adopted him, and sadly it now manifests this way. We are working together with a behaviorist to work on these problems. My SO can hold him back when he is lunging, but because Chester's weight is closer to mine it takes me all my strength to keep him in one place. Besides that I have some complications in my wrists and therefor we have decided that a safe and pain free training tool/ anti-pull harness are a lot safer for both me and the dog. This is only meant for me being able to hold him back when reacting to another dog, so it will not have to be effective to "teach him not to pull". It just has to take some of the strength out of the lunging. Besides that it has to be sturdy, because he is a pretty big Belgian Malinois. The behaviorist has mentioned some harnesses but I am having some doubts about them. For one she mentioned a harness that is "anti-pull", but the introduction movie on the website mentions using nerve pathways to create a pesky feeling that makes the dog stop pulling. She told me that she had never seen a dog being visibly uncomfortable wearing the harness, but I am still having some doubts. Especially since his reactivity stems from fear. The other harness she mentioned was a front clip harness, but when searching the internet I can find almost as much people saying that it did not work for them as there are saying that it worked great. So I guess I am looking for some advise or opinions on the training tools described, or any advise that could point me in the right direction in picking a training tool that will help me along. Thank you in advance!

Thank you for your quick reply. He is a lovely dog, and certainly has some of the characteristic traits of the breed. He is a rescue though so it's bringing its own challenges in training him. We did indeed teach him some inhibition, which is making it hard for us to put it on cue now. I took my time today to try if dropping a treat from a table or countertop would get him to go for it. Not much luck so far, as he understood the exercise was for him to leave it. I tried tossing it away a little, but he only goes after it if I toss it out of my own reach (associating it with a game we play to teach him search). He does to some extend respond to "uh" which we have been using to communicate that he is doing something we would like him not to do, but I wanted to put this specific action on the "Leave it" cue (only in Dutch). I think I might try with something more valuable/interesting than treats (safe foods), with the risk of it being too hard for him or accidentally reinforcing him diving for food. If there are any more tips they are appreciated.

Hello, I have just started this course with my dog Chester (a Belgian Malinois), and while he had some of the basics down there are a few we have not trained yet. That's when I ran into some trouble with the leave it command. We thought him to leave things without putting a command to it, and this is a behavior that has not been generalized yet. It is however working just fine with his food and treats if he knows I want him to leave it alone. This means that if I present a treat to him in my open hand he will at first just stare at me without trying to get to it. An item he is more interested in is generally too big to cover back up and too hard to start with. Problem number two in this is that we have thought him to give us his paw, or in his case smack his paw into our hands. Something he does on command but will also offer if he has no idea what I want him to do. This results in me presenting the treat --> he stares at me --> he figures out that there is something I want him to do and he goes towards the treat --> I close my hand as needed --> when he leaves it alone and I open my hand back up he proceeds to smack his paw into my hand before I can close it again sending the treat flying which he then proceeds to stare at. I'm having a hard time adding the leave it cue to him leaving my hand alone because it's hard to find the right timing where he is not mowing his paw around and if I finally do he smacks the treat out of my hand and if I reward him then I am rewarding him for the smacking. How would you tackle this to teach him a proper leave it? I could maybe even provide a video of him doing this if it is not clear what happens.