Jestjack’s comment on last Saturday’s post, about the vet who opined that the wide-ranging pisser of a cat had “anger issues” (heeee!), reminded me of Anna the German Shepherd, a dog for whom “trainability” was an alien term.
Actually, Anna was highly trainable. But she was a working dog with a capital W and a capital D, and she had so much drive that she really needed a full-time doggy job to run off her bottomless reserves of energy. This was an animal that needed to herd sheep. Or cattle. Or camels. She was so strong that for many months I faced quite the challenge keeping her under control.
A woman who trained search dogs and drug dogs for the police had been the most successful of a largely unsuccessful lot of dog-and-human trainers. By the time Anna was about 18 months old, she was marginally leash-trained, despite daily efforts on my part. This police dog trainer favored a vicious pinch collar, something that just made me cringe…but I couldn’t afford to have the dog drag me into the traffic, or to have to let her go as she charged in front of an oncoming vehicle. Since she craved to bring cars and trucks down by their oil-pans, suicide by car was a likely end for Anna. The pinch collar at least put a damper on that activity. To a degree. A low degree.
One day I mentioned this to Jerry Jenkins, a now-retired veterinarian who over the years had become a friend. He said he knew a “dog behavioralist” that maybe I should try. Silently thinking “holeee mackerel, what next?” I took the guy’s phone number. In a moment of desperation, after having been dragged around the neighborhood again, I called him.
Now, you should bear in mind that another friend of mine, at the time, was a lady who claimed to believe in astrology and who was in the act of hanging out her shingle as a pet astrologist and mind-reader. No. Yes. She was serious. I think. Who can tell?
At any rate, you can imagine the eye-rolling over the “dog behavioralist.”
So I call the guy up, and it turns out that under the silly psycho-babble veneer, what he really does is teach owners (not dogs) how to behave. Abhorred by the stainless-steel pinch collar, the first thing he did was demonstrate how to get Anna to heel using nothing more than a leather leash and her ordinary everyday rolled leather collar. It wasn’t very difficult. The trick was, you had to do it several times a day. Didn’t matter whether you did it in the house, did it in the backyard, did it on a sidewalk, or did it in the park. You just had to do it for a short period, over and over, every day.
Here’s how to do it:
Get a rolled leather collar (it’s better for long-haired dogs and it will work better for your purposes). Get a sturdy leather leash (not nylon). Place the collar on the dog and hook the leash to the collar. Have the dog sit next to you. Step forward with the dog at your left side. Each time the dog surges ahead of your knees, say “HUP!” and give the leash a sharp jerk. Always precede the jerk with the “HUP!” sound. Never jerk the leash and then say “HUP.” Walk steadily and confidently forward. Never let the dog get past your knees without going “HUP” and giving it a jerk.
This won’t hurt the dog, but it will get its attention. Reward the dog with friendly noises for heeling correctly over brief periods. You may heel and sit, heel and sit, heel and sit if that’s necessary to underscore the idea that the human walks the dog, not the other way around. Do not fail to do this for a few minutes at least three times a day — five or ten minutes per session will suffice.
After awhile, the dog will start to expect a jerk whenever you say “HUP!” You can then use the word “HUP” to mean, approximately, “heel.”
It works.
I’ve taken my dog, Hannah, to a behaviorist. She seemed to be a pretty normal dog when I adopted her and she did well with the dog we already had at home, as well as in group training classes and at the dog park. About five months after we adopted her, she started acting aggressively towards other dogs. We had to stop the trips to the dog park and tried working with a dog trainer at home. The trainer worked with us for a few lessons, then said that the issues were clearly more deep and that we should see a behaviorist. So we did.
I joked, too, about taking this shelter dog to a “doggie psychologist” but I discovered some interesting things about my dog and it led me to read a lot about dog behavior. My favorite behaviorist is Patricia McConnell because she seems to be really thoughtful and open to learning, too. She isn’t one of those “I know everything” experts. http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/
Yes, behaviorists pretty much teach/train the people, not the dogs. Dogs are very intelligent and read us really well, but they are not people and don’t respond to things the way people do. That’s something dog owners need to learn and remind themselves when their dog reacts in unexpected ways.
My Hannah dog will never be able to go to a dog park and has to be monitored very closely when we are out for walks and other dogs are around. She is a bundle of anxieties and I don’t see her ever getting over her fear-induced aggression towards most other dogs. But she is sweet and gentle with people and children, and amuses us greatly with her outgoing personality. We love her and will continue to work around her issues.
LOL! You could be describing Anna.
Some dogs are instinctively dog-aggressive and there’s not a lot you can do about it. German shepherds in particular tend to be dog-aggressive. I do not believe for a minute that this is fear-induced. It’s innate, and it probably has to do with protectiveness. In Anna’s case it was most likely to happen when she was between me and another dog. If your dog were fearful, she would not have an outgoing personality with strangers and children. A fearful dog is unpredictable and dangerous.
It used to piss me off no end that I couldn’t take Anna to our neighborhood park, which is NOT a dog park. (On the subject of dog parks, BTW, see this: http://leerburg.com/dogparks.htm. There’s a reason my vet strongly advises staying away from them.) Nevertheless, people ignore the prominently posted signs and ignore repeated e-mail pleas from the neighborhood association and just let their dogs run loose. One couple brings five dogs over there and sets them loose, every Saturday and Sunday morning.
Apparently they’re oblivious to the fact that the leash laws are as much for THEIR protection — and their dogs’ — as for other people’s protection. Idiots.
If a dog off the leash would approach Anna, she would grin ingratiatingly at it and wag, apparently in a deliberate strategy to lure the mutt into a false sense of confidence. As soon as the poor beast would get within reach, she’d go straight for its neck.
When I would ask people to please call their dogs, as often as not they’d give me a stupid look. Usually I’d have to repeat “please call your dog” and add, “My dog WILL bite your dog!”
One time I was walking her in the park, on a leash, when we came upon a family of morons cooking hamburgers on a hibachi, their pit-bullish mutt running loose. When it started to approach us, I called to the humans and asked them to please call their dog.
Response: the usual dense look (“duhhhh…huh???”)
As the dog got closer, I repeated myself twice and got the same non compos mentis response.
They had a little boy, maybe five years old, who had more IQ points than both his parents combined. He got the picture and came toddling over to retrieve his dog, right as it got within Anna’s reach.
She went for its jugular just as the little boy stepped between the two of them.
I screamed “CALL YOUR FU*KIN’ DOG!!!!!!!!” and the hare-brained man finally got off his duff, ran over, and grabbed his animal.
What we had there was two 90-pound dogs having at it with a small child smack in the middle of the fight.
After that, I never took Anna off my property again. We never went to the park again, and we rarely even walked around the block, because of the risk of a fight between her and some besotted fool’s off-the-leash four-legged “child.”
Stupid, stupid people.
That’s a very scary story! Thank goodness most people do keep their dogs on leash in this area. When I take Hannah out for a walk, I *always* bring some treats with me. Not because I’ll be giving them to Hannah (she is never interested in treats while on a walk) but because it is a diversionary tactic that I learned from reading that behaviorist, Patricia McConnell. I’ve only had to do this once, but it worked perfectly. We encountered an off leash dog that I couldn’t avoid easily, so I tossed a handful of treats in a neutral direction (away from us near the street) and the leashless dog redirected towards the treats. Then we were able to quickly cross the street and move away from the dog. That technique certainly wouldn’t work for super aggressive off leash dogs, but it does for the usual mildly posturing or clueless dog.
Hannah is a bundle of anxiety, so I don’t doubt her aggression involves a fear response. This dog is freaked out by all loud noises — thunder, hammering, drilling, fireworks, street work, dropping things, etc. — and won’t eat or go outside when she’s really scared. (We don’t even get ice from the dispenser when she is eating her kibble in the kitchen!) She’s held her bladder for about 18 hours just because there were storms on and off in the area and she was too afraid to go outside.
My dog walker will board her at home with his dogs, at least. He knows how to handle them all and says that after an hour or two of separation, she’s usually OK. His dogs, however, totally avoid her and simply leave her alone.
I have seen her pretty much ignore certain dogs when we’re out for walks. I haven’t been able to figure out the pattern — what it is about those dogs that just don’t bother her — but I wish I could.
Poor poochie! Yes…when dogs are afraid of loud noises, that is an indication of fearfulness. I’d be careful around her and certainly keep her away from small children who are at that stage when they like to emit shrill squeals of delight. A sound like that could be pretty threatening to a dog…it threatens the humans’ hearing, too! 😀
Ah, the dog treat gambit! That’s how the burglars got past my neighbor Manny’s pet junkyard dog: they threw a few handsful of kibble across the kitchen floor. Dog was beside itself with joy.
I’d have been afraid that stray dog would have followed me, hoping for more treats.
Anna would pretend to ignore or to ingratiate herself with dogs. This act was part of her plan to rid the world of other dogs. As soon as they would come over, she would try to exterminate them.
Oddly, though, she quickly took to Walt the Greyhound (what on EARTH made me think I could bring this animal into the den with a troll like Anna lurking, I can’t imagine). She and Walt were the best of friends, and after he died, she refused to eat for two days.
What happened to Anna? I love the look of German shepards and labs but I am pretty sure I am a small dog guy for life
The poor old gal finally had to be put to sleep, she was in such intractable pain. She had gone blind, and at the end she suffered something like doggy Alzheimer’s — she had no idea where she was or what was going on.
I love German shepherds, too, but I would never get another one. Talk about your walking vet bill!!!! They’re prone to an outrageous number of ailments, all of them expensive. Veterinarians must break out the champagne and do a dance to spring every time they see a customer walk in the door with a new Ger-shep puppy.
The other problem with German shepherds, especially those with American breeding, is that they have been so stupidly overbred that many individuals are temperamentally unstable and unpredictable. This can make some of them quite dangerous, and it’s hard to know which ones are like that.
If you want something that looks like a Ger-shep but is smaller and, as a breed, has few health problems, get a Swedish valhund. These are herding dogs with a shepherd temperament, but they’re about the size and shape of a corgi. They look very much like a short-legged German shepherd.
If I were to get a slightly larger but not huge dog, especially if I were a family man who liked to hunt and fish, I’d go for a vizla. This is a truly wonderful dog — can both point AND retrieve, is an excellent children’s pet, has generally good health, and is big enough to make a big-dog bark and be somewhat threatening, as needed.