The Little Bear Dog Blog

Little Bear’s behaviour problems started to really take a hold when he was just under a year old. The product, we think of a couple of attacks by other dogs, although it’s easy (and very human) to try to pin the behaviour on a single incident where he was the innocent victim. With hindsight, it was probably a whole combination of things including my reaction straight after the event which was to scoop him up and cuddle my shaking pup.

As the barking, lunging and then pinning and growling started to emerge I tried to fix it with the help of Mr Milan. Big mistake. Although there’s much about his approach that I agree with, (the focus on exercise, assertiveness and the need to work on the owner sometimes more than the dog), that’s as generous as I can be.

So I went to my vet and was referred to a very well qualified behaviourist. She assessed him and a few days later I got the written report and my training plan along with a lifetime guarantee of follow-up support.

All very good, but the crux of the advice was to avoid all other dogs on the basis that he shouldn’t be allowed to practice the bad behaviour. Although this didn’t make sense to me, she was the expert, so I tried. For months we picked quiet times at the park and would hot foot it in the other direction (as instructed) the minute we saw another dog approach.

Now for a young, playful dog used to romping around with his friends every day this must have been pretty miserable.  He became more and more frustrated and reactive and I questioned the advice on more than one occasion and was told firmly to ‘stick with it’ which I did.

Then one day in a deserted park we were dive-bombed out of the blue by a huge young Labrador. She came out of nowhere and bowled LB off his feet and of course he went nuts, pinning her down and growling at her the minute she flipped on her back.

Never being able to secure a ring back from the behaviourist, I tearfully emailed her to ask what I should have done in that circumstance. Her advice was curt and uncompromising, ‘You shouldn’t have put him in that situation to begin with!’

A lengthy email exchange followed in which I explained that short of keeping him in a box, avoiding all dogs was just not an option. The ‘treatment’ was making him even more reactive and we were both miserable in our self-inflicted roles as the local lepers. We weren’t talking about a vicious menace to society, but a Miniature-Schnauzer who had learnt to growl at more submissive dogs, so surely isolating him from other dogs was a little over the top.

What I needed were the tools to be able to deal with such a situation if it arose.  I mentioned that a friend of mine made her dogs walk slightly behind her if they’d been naughty and asked if this might be a useful technique. This earned me a lecture about not taking advice from ‘amateurs’ and I was told that she didn’t advocate any form of punishment, including making him walk behind me or indeed telling him ‘no’ if he mis-behaved. The advice remained, I was to avoid all dogs and ignore all bad behaviour, period.

It was at this point that I decided that she wasn’t the behaviourist for us. After persevering for months with her plan, LB was even more reactive than before, but was also now pretty miserable to boot. My own confidence had been shot to pieces and I was more confused than ever. Probably the most frustrating thing was her refusal to explain the theory to me. With hindsight, this was probably the catalyst I needed to start the behaviour course,  but I’d wasted a lot of time and money following her advice and I was still without the practical tools I needed to manage LB’s behaviour.

Thankfully, the experience didn’t put me off seeking help and thanks to a couple of fantastic behaviourists, I now have the tools (and a bit of theory) to deal with LB’s behaviour if he steps out of line (see the magic of time out).

So if there’s a moral to the story, I suppose it’s about finding the right fit for you.  Finding properly qualified people is always important in dealing with any problem behaviour, but especially aggression of any kind, but so too is making sure that you can work with that person. Sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn’t, so moving on to try someone else is sometimes the best option.