Problems Seemingly Impossible To Solve

[emmabeth]

It is incredibly difficult - hotdogs are full of salt and sugar and cr*p, of COURSE he will eat those w hen actually he isnt hungry and doesnt NEED anything.

Ask her if shed let a toddler eat anything it pleased even if that meant it ate nothing but McDonalds and chocolate all the time.

Get a copy of Victorias book Fat Dog Slim from a local library?

[H-Man]

Next time it comes up I'll ask what she'd do with a kid. She says she wants him to be independent, but the point is he's completely dependent on her. Like a child.

But, fruit and veg isn't high on the agenda in this house, at all. She is obese. I ate a banana for my breakfast the other day and she was like "that won't fill you up, boy. I'll cook you an egg sandwich".

I might buy that book to read myself, but I can't see her or anyone else here reading it. It's that thing of her not seeing that there is a problem, so she isn't willing to try and fix it. She thinks barking at other dogs is normal, pulling on the lead shows he's excited and happy, and feeding him hot dogs is caring for him. So I know I'll find it hard to get through to her. I probably won't.

I'm gunna just keep going with my own thing, trying the clicker training, teaching him a couple of tricks and reinforcing the ones he knew before but has forgotten. And walking him well. Today we took him to a field and there was a loose dog who came running over to have a sniff, Omar got scared and was reactive, but thankfully the other dog just stood and sniffed. What EXACTLY should we do in that situation? I'm thinking just stand, keep control of Omar by holding his collar or putting an arm in front of him to stop him leaping, and then just wait it out? The two I was walking him with though were saying "Omar calm down, Omar, Omar...Omar" and had their hands all over him etc. Luckily the owner of the other dog was OK with it, he called him back and the dog eventually went to him and he put his lead on. He said he always goes up to dogs not realising that some dogs aren't happy with that and we apologised and it was all good. We followed the other dog for a bit and Omar was pulling and we turned and carried on where we were going originally. There were a couple of other dogs too, not on their leads, luckily they weren't too interested in Omar but Omar was pulling and wouldn't take his eyes off them. We just kept walking, not making a fuss, just trying to get a distance and wait for Omar to focus on where he was walking rather than the dog. We'll walk him again later, and hopefully take him to the same field every day until we leave (because the person that will be walking him mostly when we're gone has told us he's not walking him to the field because he 'doesn't trust himself' with him). Our thinking is we want to expose him to other dogs as much as possible, but I don't know.

What would you guys suggest? If we take him to the field again tomorrow and there's a dog in the distance, and Omar sees it, should we get him to sit and watch? Once he sees a dog he's not interested in food at all, so it would just be a case of watching the other dog (and hoping it doesn't see Omar and think he might come over to say hello, ha). Or we could just walk in the other direction, or...I dunno. We don't even know why Omar is pulling. I still think it's reasonable that maybe he wants to just run over and sniff. Actually maybe not, because there was a dog sitting at it's garden gate as we were walking to the field, and we didn't see it until we were actually walking past. That dog just sat and watched behind the gate but Omar attempted to bark even with his muzzle and was jumping. He calmed right back down again when we'd got past though.

[Noobs]

Don't make him sit and watch if he's already too stressed to take food. If you're going to buy Fat Dog Slim then I would also suggest "Scaredy Dog" by Ali Brown, which will help you with the reactivity. However, if Omar is already eating junk, there is a section in the book regarding diet and how bad diet affects behavior and reactivity. So you have quite the challenge ahead of you. But the book still might help.

[emmabeth]

The best thing to do is to take him away (out of sight) of whatever he is reacting to/at - and then refocus him with praise/treats/toys. That latter will be hard as the higher the stress levels the harder it is for a dog to find anything rewarding and of course he has little reason to desire food rewards.

You are absolutely spot on that constant talking at him and overhandling will not help and likely will make things worse in such situations.

If someone could consistantly do the above, eventually he would chill out more and realise that he NEVER has to deal with strange dogs, and it would become a habit to listen to the person and not react (because reacting is not necessary and listening to the person is rewarding). However on a rubbish diet this is going to be really hard to achieve.

[jakesmom]

It worries me that Omar wears a muzzle when around other dogs, I would imagine that this greatly increases his stress levels and will make him react even more.

Considering the flight or fight instinct, wearing a muzzle means he cannot fight or even defend himself, and he can't run away either because he is on a lead. How must the poor dog feel.

I took my dog to the village shops last week, wearing his muzzle (he has had a problem with people) and he was absolutely fine, totally relaxed, until we saw a dog, he went crazy and I had a problem getting out him out of the way . Although my dog is reactive towards other dogs, he is not normally that bad and I'm convinced it was because he was wearing a muzzle.

Is there any chance at all they will reconsider this?

[Nettle]

I think you are wonderful for doing all this for Omar.

[tansox]

I own two rescued Rottweilers, and believe me, they adapt really quickly, so if you think you have a chance of getting this dog back with you, it would be a far happier result than where he is currently. Just my view, but I have worked with rescued dogs for over 25 years and there are very few dogs that don't adapt to better homes.

Good luck.

[H-Man]

Thanks everyone, it's great to have support in this even if this problem literally IS impossible to solve at the moment since he's not actually my dog anymore. I think once we're down here for good we'll definitely look into getting him back. The problem is anywhere I've looked into renting down here has a no pets policy, and so has any place I've looked into in the past. Do people generally ignore this rule? Ha. I just can't see how anyone could ever have pets when I've only ever seen "No Pets" at the bottom of rental application pages.

I'm gunna have a search around this website so that when we walk him in a little bit, we can maybe take him to the park again and have a definite plan of what we're going to do. I watched Cesar Milan or whatever, the Dog Whisperer, earlier today out of interest because I've only ever watched Victoria's show, and it seemed like the show was mostly about his own ego. I got very little advice from the show. In fact I finished it more confused than when I started. Why does he tap the dog and say "Pst..." all the time? And he seemed to magically get a dog from being completely reactive to other dogs, to walking completely fine side by side with one on the same leash, just by repeating "shhhh...shhh, shhhhhhh" to him.

I wish the people I was walking Omar with had more patience. My housemate, who owned the dog with me, is probably willing to take as long as it takes, which I think might be the key, but his brother (who's 15, and is technically the owner of Omar now even though it's generally his mum that deals with him) is always willing to move on quickly. Anyway, will let you know how it went walking him to the park tonight and tomorrow. I've got 5 days left with him which I know isn't enough time to solve this problem, but if we could maybe set up a system that works with Omar in that time, so that the people walking him when we're gone know what to do, then that's better than nothing.

[Noobs]

That CM thing is a whoooooole other debate. The dogs he "rehabilitates" are shut down. They stop reacting to avoid the punishment, not because they've changed their minds about the thing they were afraid of. It is a huge thing in the training world - the old school dominance training vs the dog-friendly ("hands-free" or "positve" whatever you want to call it) views.

I've seen plenty of episodes where the dogs he is dealing with aren't "aggressive" or fearful; they're just adolescent hoodlums with no manners - he has to work extra hard for those. Like the two jumping Goldens. He was poking and Pst-ing them for a while before he got them to walk on leash. That's because they were normal non-fearful dogs who thought nothing of being prodded, where fearful dogs would respond more to that because it makes them more afraid. Let's just say I watched his show with interest. Then I watched with skepticism (What would I do instead?). Then I just couldn't watch it at all anymore. I'd much rather get live people on this forum or read other helpful sites like dogstardaily.com and fearfuldogs.com, Patricia McConnell's blog, etc. Much better use of my time.

[emmabeth]

The 'magical reaction' in dogs trained that way (i avoid mentioning names on here lets just discuss methods!)... is down, in my experienced opinion, to a conditioned response.

Dog hears shhhhht and pssssssst in conjunction with a pretty harsh aversive, such as a jerk on a prong collar, a zap from an e-collar or a hard kick. Dog in pretty short order associates the sound now as a cue telling it that this harsh aversive will appear shortly. The same basically applies for the foot tap method - kick a dog often enough and hard enough in a certain way and it WILL react pretty extremely to merely a raised foot and a relatively gentle nudge.

So theres your magic - its fear.