Sometimes…. It Works Out

Walking 2 of our dogs through the woods, and in the middle of a good conversation (aka not paying attention to the pups) we hear screaming and sounds of dog blowing up from around the corner on the trail. Yeah….. The same trail that Jax had just run down.

I have the dogs on remote collars for recall, but…. no matter what some people say, I’m not using them to break aggression! But that’s a rant for another time.  Anyway…..

I go sprinting around the corner towards the sound of what I’m sure is gonna be the event that gets Jax put down. As I round the bend, I see a big ol Pit Bull. But he’s not blowing up. There’s still someone screaming. I have the split second fear that Jax is mauling this person. I want to puke.

I keep running, and that’s when I see Jax come back to this Pit at the end of the trail and they start……..

PLAYING.

Seriously.

Playing. Nicely. Appropriately.

Holy shit.

For another split second, I couldn’t process why this woman was still screaming. Or why there was still a dog blowing up. I get to the end of the trail. And there’s this woman with another dog on a leash, who’s just blowing up at Jax. And the woman is screaming at her own dog!

And, here’s the funny part. She starts apologizing to me!

I asked if she was ok, and she kept saying, “you’re dog is no problem. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault” etc….

I hooked Jax up and we left. His new buddy tried to come with us, but eventually went back to the screaming lady.

I literally cried a little.

My little man has come so far.

There may be something to this dog training shit.

 

 

3 Bad Bullies Featured On BalancedTrainers.Com!

Balanced Trainers website has featured on of our articles on their blog section. There are some well respected trainers on that site, and I’ve learned a ton in the time I’ve been mining it for information. So, it’s a HUGE honor that they liked my rambling enough to add it to their blog. Really validates, the work I’ve put into this.

They’ve been in my links section since we started, so check them out if you haven’t already!

There forum, is basically mandatory if you’re into learning about working with dogs.

 

For All The Shy Dogs (& Their People)

The dogs that get the most press are the aggressive ones. I must admit when we started this thing, I assumed most of our client base would be dogs that couldn’t be left with other services. What I hadn’t planned for, was the dogs who were just so scared, their people wouldn’t leave them with others. To be honest, we’ve had one of those too….. But my mind, like everyone else, just went to the gnarly dogs that we can help. But one of the fist dogs we got was a shy guy, not a tough guy. Very shy. As in, took like ten minutes to get him to even investigate me. Fortunately, his owner was one of my students….. So, we already have a very high level of trust. So she, with a tremendously deep breath, handed me the leash. This is her experience with her shy pups Canine Outward Bound Half Day.

“The trust work began way before the agility course.  The first leap was to put Graf in the hands of two people he had never met before.  You see, Graf is the opposite of a dog with aggression problems – he is shy.  It’s not that he bites strangers, it’s that he just shuts down. When we meet new people on the street, Graf hides behind my legs.  So letting Jay and Mandy work with him for a whole afternoon, with me on the other side of town, was trust work not just for my little boy but for me, too.  But Jay has done wonders for my confidence as my self-defense trainer, and I have seen him work with his own dogs.  So, I was willing to take a chance that Jay and Mandy could help little Graf come out of his safe place, too.
My trust was well placed.  They sent text messages with photos of Graf’s progress.  The first one showed my boy kissing Mandy – this from a dog who won’t even take treats from strangers.  Before the day was over, Graf had done lead work side by side with a dog he had never met before, agility work on difficult obstacles, and found out that he liked treadmill running.  Not only was he not hiding, he was having the time of his life.
I think what Graf really found out that day (and so did I) is that taking chances with new people can reveal his own inner strengths.  He was not only learning to trust strange people and strange dogs, he was learning to trust himself.   What a different puppy I picked up that evening!”

-Virginia Eddy