The Little Bear Dog Blog

We’re on a roll!

Returning from our evening walk the other day we rounded a corner to see our neighbours boys playing football in the street. Now for an anxious, reactive little dog like LB this is quite a lot to take in. 

He’s always been great with children (they’re always good for a game and they’re brilliant at dropping food in their wake) however a visit from a friend and her young girls last year made him quite anxious. 

A happy playtime turned into ‘lets chase the dog’ and having ignored their mother, I had to step in and tell them off (which I’m sure went down like a lead balloon.) LB seemed fine but spent the rest of the visit tucked behind me on the couch out-of-bounds to the girls. Sadly, the incident obviously left a lasting impression because he now barks at them every time he sees them.

So, operation ‘kids are lovely’ is now an ongoing training regime.

So the boys playing football gave us a great opportunity to practice.  After explaining to them what we were doing and why they were more than happy to take part in the exercise (“Poor little thing, we’ll show him we’re not scary.”) which just meant them carrying on with their kick about, while LB worked on licking chicken out of my hand – a sort of ‘human hand Kong’.  It takes a strong stomach for dog slobber (and some wet wipes afterwards) but I’ve found it to be a great distractor for when he’s too stressed to respond to ‘watch me’ or offer another behaviour.

And so as the boys kicked their ball about and told me all about their own dogs I knelt on the pavement with a Schnauzer enthusiastically licking pieces of chicken out of my hand. 

Chicken exhausted, I stood up. The boys were still playing and chatting and LB was just standing there – body and tail relaxed watching calmly.  Keen to end on a high I thanked the boys for their help, gave LB loads of fuss and about a dozen rounds of ‘Clever Boy!’ and we practically floated home!