reactive dogs

The 3 Steps To Helping Fearful Dogs

By |2018-05-15T13:10:06-04:00May 15th, 2018|Categories: Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs, Medications for fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

It has been over a decade since my fearful dog Sunny came to live with us from a rescue camp set up to help care for the animals impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I met him at Camp Katrina where I went to volunteer several weeks after the hurricanes hit. As much as I thought I knew about dogs and dog behavior, training and ...

Between A Rock & A Hard Place

By |2018-05-04T07:50:35-04:00May 4th, 2018|Categories: Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , , , |

Sometimes we have to do something because it needs to be done. If we grab someone about to fall off a cliff we can worry about having to apologize later for having touched them without their permission. But we need to be careful not to use the excuse that needing to get something done absolves us from understanding what it is we are doing. If ever ...

Clean-up On Aisle Dog

By |2018-01-30T08:57:28-05:00January 30th, 2018|Categories: Alternative treatments for fearful dogs, Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

Photo courtesy of Olathe Animal Hospital If you happen to be privy to the chatter that goes on between dog trainers, what I am going to say will not be new to you. Daily, dog trainers are contacted to help an owner with a dog, a normal, healthy, fully functioning dog, whose behavior has become untenable or even dangerous. Sometimes we're contacted within ...

Doing What Comes Naturally

By |2015-01-28T08:49:53-05:00January 28th, 2015|Categories: Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs, Puppy mills|Tags: , , , , , , , |

We live with animals and it's easy to lose sight of the fact. When it comes to dogs we are living with animals who are designed with varying degrees of proficiency or intensity to; hunt, chase, catch, kill, chew, shred, mark and bark. They also breed and poop, and often at times and places we'd rather they didn't. We've brought these animals into our homes ...

Getting To Yes With Your Dog

By |2014-06-11T14:06:36-04:00June 11th, 2014|Categories: Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , |

Dogs who grow up in a home have dozens of opportunities a day to approach people and be reinforced for it. This means it's a good thing from the pup's perspective. They might get a treat, a cuddle, a scratch or the chance to tug on your shoelaces. Dogs, like my dog Sunny who spend their first months or years kenneled with little positive human ...

Folk Healers

By |2014-01-30T08:23:00-05:00January 30th, 2014|Categories: Dog training, Fostering Dogs, Helping fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , , , |

We have a long, rich history of folk healing. In modern times many of the remedies people still rely on either include or refer back to cures used before people understood the cause of disease. "Hair of the dog," the term used to suggest that having a drink to help ease the effects of a hangover may go back to a time when the hair ...

The Belly Button Rule

By |2012-04-29T11:08:07-04:00April 29th, 2012|Categories: Alternative treatments for fearful dogs, Dog training, Helping fearful dogs|Tags: , , , , , , |

When I was a young child and our family visited a body of water to swim in my parents instituted the the belly button rule. The older, more proficient swimmers could swim out to rafts in the middle of the lake or play in the waves, but the little kids could go no deeper than their belly buttons. If we lost our footing ...

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