If you’re rehabilitating your dog, there is a good chance that fear is wrapped up somewhere in your dog’s behavioral cocktail.

Teaching something like a basic “place” command (requiring a dog to step up onto a short platform) teaches you a lot about your dog’s personality. Some dogs will bound over any and everything to get to a treat. Others will greet anything new has a potential life-threatening danger.

Sophie, and many of the dogs I work with, fall into the second camp. Sometimes it’s not so obvious in their day to day life, but when you put the smallest new thing in front of them, they show you who they are.

If you ever want to successfully help rehabilitate a dog, or even train a dog, you’re going to have to feel comfortable dealing with fear. In this video, I discuss the two major approaches to dealing with fear: the slow gradual, dog-friendly approach and the “ripping off the Band-Aid” approach. I thought that Sophie was going to be resistant, but she ended up giving us an awesome display of why it’s sometimes good to go easy, have fun, and let the dog make choices rather than asserting yourself and making the choices for her.

If you have a fearful dog in your life, then it’s important that you learn how to navigate these moments confidently in a way that helps move the dog forward. Too often when a dog shows some trepidation with something, owners just manage it out of their lives. Sometimes, that is the right decision, but overcoming these little fears is going to manifest itself in your dogs as pure, new confidence.
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Also, overcoming little things like this is a GREAT way to build trust with a dog so you can overcome the bigger fears in life later.  
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So maybe you can’t walk, or you’ve just resigned yourself to the fact that you’re not going to – for whatever reason.

Your dog still needs to walk, though!

Luckily, there is an awesome and easy way to solve this dilemma.
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Training your dog on a treadmill is a great way to close the gap between the exercise your dog is getting and the exercise your dog needs. It also comes in handy when it’s icy, sub-zero, or the Colts are on TV. Yes, it is possible to exercise your dog while you watch football or read a new book!
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A structured walk is the backbone of your relationship with your dog. And for your dog, it is the most important part of his day.

There are a couple of basic rules I have when it comes to being good with dogs – one of which is being able to control your space.

This is something that people understand very easily when it comes to interacting with other humans –  we don’t sit on the laps of strangers, we don’t hang all over strangers, and most of us don’t excessively hug or kiss strangers.

In fact, getting into another human’s space is such an awkward action, we came up with a standardized way of getting into each other’s space so it doesn’t come off as hostile or awkward – the disarming handshake in our culture (in Europe and other cultures they have a similar, but still easily understood social protocol for entering a person’s space).
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However, this basic concept that is so intuitive in our day to day lives with other humans is oddly difficult to apply to our dogs. 

Georgia the Golden Doodle checked in yesterday and the training process is already well underway. She is walking better on a leash, she is learning basic essential commands like place, and she is beginning the off-leash learning process:

​When Bandit started here at AWDT, he was one of the worst runners / door dashers with one of the highest prey drives I have seen in a while.

Until now, as soon as he was able to get loose, he would bolt and not look back, leaving the owners waiting for someone to call with their found dog. Bandit truly earned his name by stealing his freedom and living life one squirrel chase at a time.

With two weeks here and a future of practice and controlled freedom, Bandit won't have to steal his squirrel chasing time anymore.

Here's what he looks like now

Learning how to "squirrel hunt" as a team:

I remember years ago, I was watching an episode of "The Dog Whisperer" with Cesar Millan. Cesar had brought his dog Daddy (by most accounts, a perfect dog) to a farm with horses where he was going to help a lady with her dog.  

Daddy had been trained in Schutzhund (protection dog work) and there was a lady working a horse who kept raising her whip in the air, which triggered Daddy’s training. It caused Daddy to react in a way that was not conducive to the training Cesar was trying to do.  

Every time she would raise that whip, Daddy would react and Cesar had to continually correct the outbursts. He could have easily edited this out. It made Daddy look less than perfect and chipped away at the superhero vibe that Cesar had cultivated during the early parts of his career. ​

We're coming to the end of our latest board & train client's time with AWDT and reflecting on how far she has come! Shandy is a sweet girl with great foundational training; however, like with so many dogs I see, she can become very reactive on-leash. As a HUGE proponent of off-leash training, we spent a lot of time e-collar training with a long lead and giving her plenty of exposure to other dogs while on-leash. After her two week stay with us, she can now walk on and off leash and can interact with other dogs stress-free!

Check out these videos of her progress! 

Few things are as frustrating as when your dog seems to just.. not... LISTEN. But maybe it's you that's the problem and not your dog. Maybe you're frustrated and yelling and your dog doesn't know how to respond to that instability. Maybe you just need to whisper...