As I left Jan Fennells house on the first day of the foundation dog listening course I started crying and could not stop. I was crying for my dogs and all the mistakes I had made that had made their lives worse. I was still crying the next morning but went back for day two determined to learn more and do better.
So much of what we consider normal behaviour from our dogs and accept just is not normal and does not have to be that way. These are the mistakes I made that once I knew better took me a year to mend my dogs damaged mental health.
We were her third home at 1 and she bounded into our house wanting to be best friends with our older Maltese. Lupin had no manners but we didn’t know that then. Teaser our Maltese did and refused to have anything to do with her and retreated to our bedroom.
Lupin was terrible on a lead, pulling us down the road. I tried every normal dog training method to stop her nothing worked. We would instead drive to a local friendly farm and let her out with no lead and just run because we believed she needed that much exercise. She was as thin as a rake and would run across two fields in seconds and disappear. In desperation we turned to older friends who had gun dogs for advice. We were told to use an e-collar to stop her running away and a figure of 8 lead to stop her pulling. Both these things worked so life went back to what we thought was normal. We still lost her occasionally when she went off after a fox smell. She would act aggressively towards any other dog on a lead but because we had the lead over her nose we could control her. Inside the house she was the sweetest most loving dog you could imagine and her fear of men, especially in hi vis seemed to be slowly decreasing.
The meeting of a neighbours puppy that bit me made me question my knowledge of dogs and she showed me a copy of the Dog Listener by Jan Fennell. When you have been doing things one way all your life to suddenly change your whole behaviour is hard, to persuade your husband to also change his behaviour is even harder.
I understand everything clients go through because I have been through the same issues. What I can guarantee once your whole family has made that change is UNBELIEVABLE HAPPINESS both for you and of course for your dogs.
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