Re: Need Some Help

[.dodger.]

hi,

he isnt “greeting nice” – i would go back to not allowing any greets until you have your heelwork brilliant again.  if he pulls out of heel to greet then put him back in a heel and carry on – it sounds like the “jumpyness” you are getting is him needing re-settling into the heelwork and moving on.

from what you say, you’ve been letting him greet everything and anything in challenging posture sounds like you are right about your greet nice cue – its extinguished or needs repairing badly.

why are you letting him charge up to other dogs ?  just walk on by Laura until you have control on your terms 🙂

I normally don’t let him greet many dogs at all. I always have him in a heel close and we just carry on walking past the dogs, but it’s when a dog is off lead and will come up towards him or if we know the owner and dog so stop for a chat.

from his point of view its no wonder he’s charging at the dog if you have him sitting anticipating being able to lunge at it 🙁

We never do sitting while other dogs are passing now. If we are walking towards a dog and he breaks his heel close, i stop cue the heel close and he returns to my side for us to then carry on walking – he always rushed back to my side so that we can carry on walking towards the dog quicker. Maybe i should bring him back into a heel close and then change direction away from the dog??

i would think dodger takes confident but gentle management – maybe in slackening off your heelwork he’s read that as a lack of confidence in his handler and is pushing – that then affects your emotions which then he sees he can push more perhaps …?

if you have someone who can go out with you take out one of the others that you’re confident with / you know doesnt have issues and get them to film you walking and then do same with dodger and see if there is a difference – lead tension ? shoulders ? eye-contact … just thoughts really

Can’t ever go out with anyone at all, even if they don’t have a dog. Everything had been going great and then my dad took him out and on the same walk he almost got a hold of a dog and lunged for two people (one being a child) They have no control over him and to be honest their attitude towards him i don’t want them to either. They are not the right people to be handling Dodger. It’s also Dodger who is part of the problem. Put him in anyone elses hands and he doesn’t listen to a thing they say or do. I know he had a really nice walk with Mandy where he listened but apart from that he just switched back to the old dodge.

I think you are doing great with Dodger and I am sure you will get through this you are SO close he’s just a clever boy too !!  ….. darn these clever dogs 😉

Thanks Claire :-* I’m just really frustrated that we’ve gotten so far but we just seem to be stuck on this part right now. We are working on are leave it and heel close in the house but in a dream world i’d just like to stop him approaching dogs in that manner because 3 out of 4 times it will end in dodger lunging at the dog growling. Not sure if he would get his teeth into any of them unless the other dog did first but the growling and chasing is bad enough. ::)
claire x

On a good note we sas his girlfriend Mya the GSD after not seeing her for a few months and he is still smitten. After coming out of her heat she has become very snappy with dogs and she also has a resource guarding problem so if a dog goes up to her she tends to lunge for them. She did it to dodger serveral times and instead of doing the usual ‘attack’ back he just lunged into a play bow and continued whining. He really is in love with her, had that been any other dog they would have been in a lot of trouble 😀 :-*

Thanks Jacqui, will sign up and have a read of those ;D