Space issues

Irie has become pretty much unbearable on our walks in Chicago these past few months.

If she sees a squirrel it results in her attacking the nearest tree and giving an ear-splitting yowl which makes people look out their windows at us in disbelief.

If she sees another dog, there's lunging and growling and general chaos.

And don't even get me started on what happens when she sees someone riding a bicycle.

I was about at my wits end and had actually started looking into doggie boot camps. But before I shelled out the big bucks for a long term program, I decided to try my luck with a personal trainer.

Irie and I had our first appointment this past Thursday and have already made some great progress.

What did I learn? First, that all the harnesses I've been using to try to keep Irie walking nicely next to me and not lunging aren't helping. Our trainer said the real problem is that I can't get Irie's attention when she's in "attack mode" and the harnesses make it even harder because they pull from the center of her chest rather than her head. So, despite all my best efforts to find a good control harness for her, he said the best one to use on walks is the prong collar. Now, I have a prong collar and have tried to use it in the past, but it really hadn't worked. He took one look at it, decided it was much too large and resized it to actually fit Irie's little neck. Low and behold - a whole different experience! She is now not lunging and it gives me much more control. I'm not really a huge fan of using prong collars because they look a bit harsh, but I've been assured by many people they're much better than choke chains and they don't hurt the dog. They just remind them to not pull ahead or get too crazy.

So, when Irie decides she needs to attack something he's got me calling her name and walking backwards until Irie finally turns to look at me to see why it is I'm walking backwards. Once she does that I'm supposed to put her into a sit and give her treats. While this results in a very strange sight I'm sure, it actually does seem to work. At any rate it's much better than scolding her to no avail or giving her treats constantly to try to keep her attention which I think actually just reinforces that barking at something deserves a treat.

The trainer also has me working on sit-maintain which is basically means that the dog has to remain sitting until the owner gives the release cue. And that the dog's focus is on me rather than the food or whatever it is they really want.

I was working on this with Irie yesterday morning and much to my surprise (and admiration) she actually remained seated even when Maverick came up to investigate the treats on the floor which would normally send her into a frenzie. So, we're making progress there to.

I went into the training feeling like I had an incredibly agressive dog, but the trainer simply laughed at me when I said this. He said, "Ingrid, Irie is not agressive. I've seen agressive. If she was aggressive, you couldn't have walked her through all the other dogs out there in the other room without her lunging or attacking someone. This dog just has space issues. She's little and she feels threatened when she's on her leash so she does her best to let others know not to mess with her."

So, my pup has space issues - and maybe a bit of an inferiority complex. But she's not overly aggressive which makes me feel better.

We're going to work on these suggestions for a few weeks and then probably go back for another session to work on some other issue areas.

It seriously makes me wonder why we don't have children trainers in the world. I guess we do, they're just not called children trainers - they're called psychologists. And the best part (and oh, how true) dog trainers really do very little dog training - instead they do a ton of people training on how to respond to dogs. Exactly the same concept I believe in for child training - it's all about training the parents.