“IT’S OK – MY DOG IS FRIENDLY!” THAT’S NOT HOW IT SEEMS TO ME!

First published on positively.com and reprinted with permission

Picture this: You are walking with your little girl. A family appear up ahead, and the fairly large boy whoops with joy at the sight of you two, races towards you, jumps on your child - who is now screaming - and rolls her over, grinning inanely. While you frantically try to extricate your precious little one without actually harming the boy, you hear a distant cry from the boy’s mother: “It’s ok! He’s friendly!”

Your response is probably unprintable.

And if you were the mother of the rowdy boy, would you really think it ok to let him bounce all over other children, on the grounds that he’s friendly?

So let’s turn this around now, and substitute pet dogs for children.

You have a super-friendly, waggy dog. He lurves other dogs. You know that he doesn’t want to start a fight. And if you try and keep him on the lead when he sees another dog you’ll get singing and dancing  - as he pulls your arm out of its socket. So you let him do his own thing on walks: diving on dogs, body-slamming them, chasing them, trying to roll them over in play.

And dogs all love to play, don’t they?

Because you’re not afraid of him, you expect his victims to be equally unafraid.

Really?

At the Other Extreme

On the other hand, perhaps you are blessed with a dog who is afraid of other dogs, who barks and growls, lunges and prances, when he sees them approach. You’re probably anxious because you fear that if he ever gets to the other dog he’ll rip its throat out. So you make sure you keep him on lead, and avoid other dogs as much as possible.

His way of carrying on is baffling to you, because you know that your dog is a perfect peach at home, brilliant with the kids, and a pleasure to have around. You may be pleased to learn that your dog is most probably not at all aggressive - just afraid of strange dogs, and doing his best to keep them at a distance.

Both these extremes are normal, just at either end of the bell-curve - instead of the middle where we automatically expect our dogs to fit.

But just like with children - you get the dog you’re given, not the one you wanted!

Your dog’s character is part of him and is why you love him. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t influence how he feels and help him to tone down his responses.

Whether over-friendly or under-friendly, your dog needs a little help to interact with the rest of the world and lead a less stressed life. (If your own friendly approaches always resulted in tears and screaming, that would be pretty stressful for you too.)

But What Can I Do?

Strange as it may seem, both problems can be treated the same way.

Distance is very important to dogs. Both these dogs can see a dog at a great distance and not react. It’s when they trip a certain proximity that you are going to get the undesired noise and kerfuffle.

What you need to do is reward the state that you like when you see it, and just before the calmness changes into vocalising and leaping, encourage your dog to turn back with you and get a little more distance. Your own calmness is essential to the success of this game, so relax your hands on the lead, smile, say “Let’s go!” cheerily, and slow down.

Your reward could be a tiny piece of tasty cheese or hot dog. All the time your dog is calm and not shouting, keep posting these delicious morsels into his mouth until he stops paying attention to the other dog and starts paying attention to the source of these goodies instead. Success!

If yours is the friendly dog, you can now ask the other dog’s owner if their dog would welcome a game. Maybe they will, then your bouncy dog’s reward for being calm will be the opportunity to interact with a strange dog. Maybe they won’t, in which case you can reward your dog with a toy-game or more food while you head away.

If yours is the fearful dog, you can congratulate him on his bravery, and his reward will be increased distance from the object of his fears. So you turn and head away.

Repeating this time and again will gradually elicit the calm response in your dog as the default. This process will be greatly accelerated if you can get the help of a professional force-free trainer. Be sure not to go to someone who wants to reprimand your dog: punishment of any kind will heap fear and anxiety on the existing fear and anxiety and make the situation worse!

As you know all too well, the skill of parenting is to work with the child in front of you, rather than the one you wish you had in front of you!

So it is with your family dog.

For more help with this ever more common problem, watch our free Masterclass for Growly Dogs

I’d love to hear how you resolve this issue on your dog walks - just write a comment below. I’ll appreciate every one!

Dog Reactivity after Lockdowns

I get frequent requests for help from folk who got a pandemic puppy without understanding the significance of the puppy socialisation period - which is from 3 to about 15 weeks.

It’s in this time that the dog’s brain forms its ideas about the world around it.

And it’s why a proper understanding of this is critical to your future life together with your dog.

See our post with a free Socialisation Guide at https://www.brilliantfamilydog.com/blog/our-familys-always-had-dogs-why-is-this-one-so-difficult

You see, what your very young puppy experiences in those critical first weeks will set the tone for how he sees the world for ever. If he enjoys children in this period for example, he’ll carry on enjoying them. If he gets to meet other (carefully chosen) dogs and the meeting goes well, he’ll adjust much better to meeting strange dogs of all shapes and sizes in the future.

It doesn’t mean he’ll breeze through the world with never a care - but it does ensure he’s getting the best start possible.

Same goes for noisy kitchen pans, car rides, train journeys, sheep, visits to the shops, wobbly or uneven surfaces, strange objects, loud noises, sparkly or shiny things … and so on.

Everything your puppy is likely to meet in his life he should be exposed to in a gentle manner at whatever distance is appropriate not to evoke a fear response - in those first few weeks.

So you can see that when you get a puppy, you have your work cut out to beat that deadline of 14-16 weeks of age!

And it’s why the best age to get a puppy is 8 weeks, as by then he’s experienced a couple of weeks in the litter with his littermates once the dam loses interest, and still has plenty of time to do his learning.

What if that time was missed?

It’s not your fault if you didn’t know this and the breeder didn’t know enough to tell you how to handle your new dog! (This underlines the importance of sourcing your puppy carefully - see Choosing your Puppy 1, 2, and 3

So if that time of getting out and about was missed because of lockdown restrictions you are now stuck with a dog who may be fearful or reactive to many things he should be able to take in his stride.

(Actually, socialisation in lockdown was possible within the law - if you’re determined enough anything is possible!)

But here you are, with a dog who is fearful. So what do you do?

First off, understand that you can never replicate that period in a puppy’s brain development. That’s closed. Over.

But you can do lots to help your dog adjust!

Your first consideration is to ensure you don’t overload your dog, overface him with what he is confronted with.

Fewer walks which are comfortable and enjoyable are hugely preferable to daily walks through fire and brimstone!

Work out exactly what upsets him, and make sure you don’t encounter those things at all for now, if humanly possible. This may mean driving to quiet places for walks.

Whether it’s chasing bikes that is the problem, or lunging at people or dogs, then you need to embark on a desensitisation and counterconditioning program (that just means changing his emotional response so he no longer needs to try and defend himself against them).

How to do this? We can show you, step by step, in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy.

This may be absolutely enough for you to see how you can manage walks and improve life for both of you.

Need more specific help?

Your dog is losing his mind when he encounters these things, appearing aggressive and dangerous? Check out From Growly Dog to Confident Dog where I and my experienced team of trainers will guide you through the changes you will make so you can both enjoy your time together - in the company of those who have succeeded and will cheer you on!

And for some starter lessons and an introduction to these programs, here’s where you go: 

You can check out the lessons and talk to us in the chat. We’d love to help you change all this!

As I said, in the strange and heady times of the pandemic it may not have been your fault that you were unprepared how to handle your new dog.

But getting things put right now is down to you . . .

Your dog can’t do it alone.

Open your mind for you and your dog!

Something we all need to do regularly is to clean out our mental baggage! 

I know I need to do this - more frequently than I’d like to admit.

Why? Because these things can creep up on us. We think we know what we think. But when we look closely we find that there’s some beastly deeply-entrenched belief that trumps what our rational mind is trying to think!

We have been influenced by everything in our lives - and often we don’t have any idea of that influence. It could be from parents, teachers, work, tv, overheard remarks . . . we take it as gospel.

And it’s lurking deep within us, countering what we want to think.

“Oh yeah? How does that thought square with what you know deep down that you believe?” says that inner voice.

And nowhere is this more evident than in people’s ideas about how they should be with their dog.

I love it when people say, “It’s so obvious when you put it like that!” and “I can’t believe I didn’t realise this before.”

“You’re talking rot!”

But I see this a lot, in reactions to videos and posts of mine.

It’s a knee-jerk reaction.

Instead of reading or watching, then agreeing or disagreeing and moving on, some folk are moved to lash out.

I have dared to question a deeply-held belief of theirs, so what’s their response? Kick, scream, shout, finger-point, abuse … you get the picture.

“I don’t understand this idea so I’ll attack it,” is their response.

This is them with a closed mind, fighting against imagined foes.

Sadly, they don’t allow the introspection necessary to see whether there is any sense in what I say. They just lash out. It’s that “cancel culture” which is unfortunately encouraged by the immediacy of social media.

They are absolutely entitled to disagree with me! Of course!

But a sensible response, a curious comment, would be far better than reactions like this recent one:

“Wows this Brilliant Family Dog is absolutely a nut case”

Still with me?

If you’re still reading, it’s possible you like what I tend to say, and you’re open to new ideas. I hope that’s the case - in matters of dog training and everything else. Because so am I! I don’t “know it all”, and I’m always learning.

I learn about dog training by seeing what people I admire are saying - but mostly I learn from my readers’ struggles, and from living with my own dogs, each of them so individual.

There’s a danger that we form an opinion some time early in life, and never consider revising it. If everyone did that, we’d still be living in caves!

It’s good to question our beliefs. We can become complacent, close our minds, refuse to move forward.

• We used to send children up chimneys

• We used to steal people, put them in slave ships, and sell them.

• We used to believe that deviations from social norms were evil.

• We used to believe we had to beat dogs into submission.

Fortunately all those things have changed!

And things have moved on so fast in understanding dogs over the last 70-odd years, that there’s always something new we can learn as the latest research filters through to the world at large.

People who have had dogs - managed them successfully - for years, come to me with a question about their new dog, who’s throwing up new challenges for them.

There’s no reason why they should know all the developments in dog behaviour study - and it’s great that they come to me and ask!

This shows that they have an open mind, and they’re ready to learn.

What new thing have you learnt about life with your dog recently? What crazy old belief have you unearthed and removed?

Tell us in the comments below!

And if you’d like to engage in more conversations like this, come and join us in Creativity Central (it’s not about dogs but . . . they do creep in here and there!).

You've learned EVERYTHING about dogs … so why isn't it working?

You’ve hunted all over the internet

You’ve read all the books

You’ve watched the whole of Youtube

You’ve learned ALL the things.

But whenever you try to do any of the things, it just doesn’t seem to work for you.

There is nothing wrong with you!

This is 100% normal.

And the answer is NOT to watch another video, read another facebook post, follow the latest meme.

I get that you may be trying to save money by only getting the free stuff. But what is it actually costing you in terms of the quality of your life with your dog? The level of your anxiety? Your embarrassment when your dog “misbehaves”?

There is more to life than saving a few shillings. After all, as my grandmother used to say,  

There are no pockets in shrouds!

If your car broke down, would you rely on the internet to try to piece together all the conflicting advice and find out what to do, or would you take yourself off to a car mechanic?

The missing link

You have everything available to you. Really, you do.

You KNOW what you want to do with your dog … you just don’t seem to be able to get it going. Doubts and other things are always getting in the way. Whenever you try to copy what you see, it just doesn’t work. Your dog is not getting any better, and you are getting frustrated!

Perhaps you doubt your own ability to help your dog, and consider rehoming him or sending him away to someone else to “fix”. Read this post before you entertain that thought for another moment.

Thing is, you can gather information till the cows come home, but unless you have the support you need, you’re unlikely to get it working for you!

 You see, there’s one thing in all this that you’re missing.

💚 You need someone who can answer your questions.

💚 You need someone who’ll push you to do the hard stuff.

💚 You need someone who can coach you in your particular situation!

What high-flyer doesn’t have a coach? Which dog trainer didn’t work with a top dog trainer? They know they can’t do it by themselves! Even the greatest of them! In fact, the greater they are, the more they know they need a coach.

Stuck?

So if you’re feeling bogged down, stuck, unable to move forward to what you truly want your life with your dog to be, take a look at this free Workshop, which shows you what to do, how to do it, and how to get the personal help you need - all of it structured in the right order so you don’t flit from pillar to post trying to mesh impossible systems together - and inevitably fail.

And if you’ve spent hours watching videos and you’re wondering how on earth you can reach your dream of starting your own dog training business, start here.

Once you have someone working WITH you - life becomes so much easier!

Thanks massively to this course and the input of the trainers, we are making progress. CP, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

My dog and I have completed the program now and I feel so much more confident that we can progress. We are enjoying our ‘no pull’ walks so much more than the previous routine. I was really starting to think of rehoming her after being pulled off my feet on several occasions. I now put much more effort into understanding her and not so much about ‘controlling’ her.” JF, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

I felt completely lost at the point you're at and didn't find this Community until much later. You're definitely in the right place for help and support! VP, encouraging another student in our lovely private Community

I am only in Module 3 but I can tell you I feel more relaxed while out walking Jack. I appreciate the emails from Beverley Courtney and feel as though I have a therapist as well as a trainer! Your understanding of human behavior and how I'm reacting is just as important and I love the emphasis on the relationship I'm building with Jack. The emphasis doesn't seem to be on "fixing" the Growlies but on deepening the relationship we have with him and I love that. ND, student in From Growly Dog to Confident Dog

Thanks for your reply and advice. It’s so nice to hear about all the nuances that I would miss as a novice. It’s the very reason I joined Brilliant Family Dog. Thank you so much and for your prompt reply. JT, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

Our dog’s mental state affects our own

.. And our mental state affects our dog’s!  

I come across a lot of people with reactive or anxious dogs, who are anxious and reactive themselves.

Sometimes the dog’s anxiety has affected them.

And sometimes it’s the other way round, and their anxiety has pushed their dog over the edge.

And this is why I see working with reactive dogs as a holistic exercise.

It’s not a question of giving you techniques and strategies to change your dog. Seeing it as entirely the dog’s “fault” is very short-sighted.

Our dog’s behaviour, as Susan Garrett says, is a reflection of our training.

And if that training comes from a place of angst and fear - thinking that the dog is in some way out of control or unreachable - or through the anxieties of the owner, it’s not going to be a great reflection!

Dog Training or Dog Coaching?

The reason my From Growly Dog to Confident Dog program works so well, is that it addresses the needs of both the dog and the owner.

You can’t treat the dog without treating the owner!

You are a pair. You are a team. You can’t pluck one out and ignore the other. This is one of many reasons why sending the dog away for training DOES NOT WORK!

I have gone from using 'blame transference', feeling embarrassed, ashamed, guilty and anxious to feeling confidence and calmness which has positively transferred to my dogs. PW

My dog has had a great breakthrough he's growing in confidence and so am I thanks for all your help KW

In my work as a coach, I draw people out and thereby enable them to make their own choices. (There are some techniques thrown in there too! 

And this is how I like to work with dogs - whether reactive or not - by offering them choices and letting them choose a path which makes them feel comfortable.

This way the dog’s confidence builds up over time, till what used to frighten or alarm them no longer does.

And at the same time, the owner’s fears and needs are addressed and their confidence builds too!

💥 Win-win!!  🎉

I really cannot thank you enough, as I now know that I have the confidence to teach him and he has the confidence to learn from me. Instead of being in despair, I feel that we now compliment each other. PG

It's made such a difference and it's certainly been a confidence-booster for me! I no longer dread taking him out for a walk. Thank you. LM

Just a brilliant course that gives you confidence and takes away a lot of the guilt feelings that you have an unhappy stressed dog. LR

Confidence-building for dog and owner

So if you’d like to find a way to improve life with your anxious dog, even if you struggle with fear and worry yourself - take a look at our free Masterclass, which shows you the The 3 Biggest Mistakes Growly Dog owners make - and what to do instead!

Just a quick note to let you know I'm loving your advice and guidance. You are giving me the confidence to let her be herself and she is blossoming at 8 years old! HR

I'm finding myself growing in confidence after our rough start. DW

Our walks have become more pleasurable now, and our confidence is growing each day.  MF

Dog and crawling baby ALERT!

I had this interesting enquiry recently. The family are doing just about everything right, and taking great care of their dog and their baby.

“.. She mostly likes to be in the same room as us .. She is extremely gentle and friendly with children out and about too, actively going to meet them, although she has growled quietly at children in a few instances when she has felt anxious, e g. Crawling baby went too close when she was boxed in a bit, 5 year old cousin tried unexpectedly to touch her head, friend's toddler went too close when she was eating a chew (she's not food aggressive generally). We have learnt quickly from these instances and have worked hard to ensure that she is given space from the baby and that the baby is never allowed to approach her, the dog must always come to her, and then the interaction is closely managed.

However, she's just become very anxious as the baby has started crawling and being more mobile, watching her fixedly from her armchair, and sometimes leaping off the chair to go to her.”

I was glad to see their perspicacity in understanding why their dog sometimes reacts to children, and that they are taking care to avoid these events. I told them I was impressed with what they were doing, and with their awareness.

Many people have this same concern, so I thought I’d give you the benefit of the answer I gave this enquirer.

1. Dogs need to sleep 17 hours a day.

This comes as a shock to many people! But knowing this is a lifesaver, and gets rid of a lot of problems straight away - those problems caused by the dog being frazzled, overstimulated, overtired. Just like your toddler will be shortly if not sufficiently rested!

I would ensure that all those sleeps are done in your dog’s crate in a separate room, completely out of bounds for the soon-to-be-toddler. You need to acclimatise your dog to this new arrangement so she’s happy to toddle off to her bed whenever she needs peace and quiet.

Given that the baby is still sleeping a lot you should be able to juggle this so that they aren't always awake together. If the "threat" is ever-present this is going to make you tense and alarm your dog.

2. Playpens cum room dividers

- for child or for dog - are a great help. Another lifesaver, in fact. Once your baby gets up speed crawling (they’re very fast when proficient!), and wants to get into everything, you can’t be on guard the whole time. A playpen that opens up and zigzags across the room can allow your dog to be included without worrying about your baby getting too close while you blink.

3. Baby gates are your friend!

Use them all over the place. Accustom your dog to the joy of her own safe space beyond the gate, and accompany this with lots of treats. If treats are always administered behind the gate, this will soon become a favourite place. I know you don’t want to exclude your dog - of course not! But you do need to be able to relax and enjoy your baby as well as your dog. Being on guard duty all day long is exhausting, and pretty well impossible. Make life easier for yourself and your perplexed dog by ensuring separation periodically. As your baby gets older you’ll have all evening to enjoy your dog in her armchair!

4. Give your daughter a toy dog

that looks as much as possible like your dog. She can cuddle and fuss over this toy and leave the real dog in peace. I've seen this work really well. 

5. Never leave dog and child alone together,

not even for a moment, not even while you answer the phone. Always take one of them with you. Accidents can happen so fast, and especially when we’re distracted.

Want some videos that show you exactly how to teach your puppy? Here you go:

And for more help with your dog - get our free email course on common dog problems! Lots of help for you there.

THIS FREE ECOURSE IS A BONUS FOR YOU WHEN YOU SIGN UP TO RECEIVE EDUCATIONAL EMAILS AND OCCASIONAL OFFERS FROM ME. YOU CAN UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
Privacy Policy