A little setback

So it has been a week or so since my last post. We had an incident occur late last week in where Jake jumped up on our dog walker and bit her. Her and her husband have been coming into our home since Jake was 9 weeks old to take him out for a short walk and feed him lunch. After a discussion with the dog walker we didn’t get a lot of good details to help us understand what the trigger was, so I’m not sure we’ll ever know what happened.

This was of course very upsetting. I felt like we had failed as dog owners and went through a whole gamut of emotions for a few days following the incident.

I can tell you that it was an eye opener! It quickly made me realize that maybe we couldn’t do this on our own and needed some help. With all the issues Jake has – stealing objects off the counter, barking at neighbors walking by the house, digging in the yard, incessant whining, pulling on leash, jumping on people, etc. – we had no real idea on how to resolve them.

So I have spent the last few days finding a dog behaviorist. We have an initial assessment session scheduled for early December.

I have also been spending time reading a book that was recommended to me. It is called Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson. I am only half way through the book, but I have had several ‘Ah Ha’ moments where it has helped me understand why Jake is behaving the way that he is. It also makes me think that maybe they aren’t behavioral issues at all. It is a simple case of us not telling Jake what we expect from him. For example, we’ve never taught him what we expect him to do as opposed to jumping on us when we come home. We’ve never taught him how to walk properly on leash … and this was made worse by the fact that he went on so many leash free walks and runs when he was a younger puppy. If you own a dog and you are experiencing any ‘behavioral’ issues like I mentioned above (but not limited to those), I highly recommend reading Culture Clash. It has opened my eyes and I now understand why what we’ve been doing for the last 8 months has not been working.

We are still going to meet with the behaviorist, but the situation doesn’t feel as helpless anymore. We have seen marked improvement in some of Jake’s behavior since working on the sit, down, stay and touch commands. I can now easily distract Jake from being curious about the birds by asking him to come touch, which he readily does for a treat now. We are starting to see an improvement in his recall when coming in from the back yard.

Stay tuned!