New puppy, fireworks and a show for the neighbours!

zebidee1

Georgina wrote: »

Sounds like good advice zebidee. I'm glad you found a trainer that uses positive training techniques. Is he APDT registered?

I have no idea tbh. He has a good reputation around here though, with many local (ish) people singing his praises. He trains Police dogs and has done a tv series about problem dogs (amongst other things) so he seems to know his stuff.

He emphasised that everything must be positively done in our handling of Harley and that we must be strong leaders so he feel secure when out with us etc. He was on the phone for over an hour and seemed interested in us and Harley.

Everything he said made sense when we talked and I got a good feel about him so who knows...he may just help.

zebidee1

Follow on update:

Behavourist came out today and the visit seemed quite successful thankfully. We showed him the short video of when we went to originally pick the pup so he saw what he was like at 5 weeks in amongst his brothers as well as the video of when he met the neighbour's labrador who is a day older than Harley.

The neighbour is a very experienced dog owner and when she said it was ok to leave Harley with her lab even although her dog was being really boisterous, I had no reason to disbelieve her. It seems that I shouldn't have listened to her as she was completely wrong and the situation just made him worse.

Anyway, the behavourist was here for around 3 hours and he had Harley taking food from his hand (unheard of!) and he also took him out for a walk with us, with him holding the lead.

His opinion is that Harley is by nature, a naturally quiet dog. Couple that with poor socialisation (he thinks the breeder wasn't truthful about her part in the socialisation process and that he was kept mostly only in the company of other dogs) and a timid, nervous puppy is the result.

He reckons Harley will never be an outgoing boisterous type but he can definitely be encouraged to be less fearful.

Within a short half hour walk, he had a passing boy on a bike, stop and give Harley food without actually looking at him (and Harley took it) and also one of our neighbours who Harley has never seen before did the same. That in itself is incredible.

He changed Harley's collar to one which, if Harley pulls...spreads the force all round his neck more, rather than just concentrating it on the one side he is pulling on. He also showed us how to deal with Harleys pulling by using a long lead which seemed to have better results than the standard one we were using. He did say that both the lead and the collar weren't actually necessary, but they might make things easier for us.

He came in with the confident attitude that he was going to do things his way and although Harley wasn't having anything to do with him, his strong calm demeanor seemed to convince Harley that it was ok to be around this man. Also the beef jerky he had in his pocket might have had something to do with it, lol.

He left us with a list of things we need to do so we have some work to do as owners before we will see change in Harley but I feel more confident that things will improve.

I was absolutely amazed at how he got Harley to look at him in the eyes and keep looking at him for a short time afterwards. He got Harley to focus on him and him alone, so that if someone passed whilst they were outside, Harley never batted an eyelid because he was so busy focusing on the man.

One of the exercises we had to do which was to help focus Harley, involved being accurate with timing and we found that difficult so we will need to practice that. The behavourist had it off pat and so Harley was doing as asked almost immediately.

I honestly believed I was doing well with the training and although I was, up to a point.....I was not doing anywhere near what I need to be doing to help Harley.

So, although it looks like we have a naturally quiet soul, we should be able to make him a little more confident at least.

The behaviourist asked if we watched Cesar Milan and he said that although he didn't agree with all that Cesar did, he did say that Cesar had it spot on when he talked about calm assertive energy. He said that Harley needed us to be calm and assertive and he needed to feel we would always protect him so then he would relax and feel less worried.

Makes sense really. I thought we had been protecting him but we weren't doing it in the right way for him.

Wish us luck, looks like we have some hard work in front of us over the next few weeks.