Nevertheless, the dog has undergone a remarkable change. When he arrived he had a bad habit of taking off on his own, partly due to a strong independence created by the lack of leadership in his previous owners. However, the trigger for taking off was his extreme fixation with chasing cats. As we began to realise that this was a big problem that needed some serious attention, we took the decision to work with the controversial e-collar to avert his behaviour. This turned out to be a success. We did not need to zap him many times before a "no" was enough to stop him from any cat temptation. The collar gave Barak freedom from the leash, and I can only praise the effectiveness, but I still stress the need of consultation of a professional if you are not experienced yourself. It is a powerful tool that can cause adverse behaviour and stress on the animal if misused.
We kept on having the collar on him, but almost never needed to use it. At some point it stopped functioning. It was brought from the US and to send it back would be an ordeal. A few weeks went and I suddenly started taking him out without it. My fear was that he immediately would acknowledge that it was not on him, but he was just as attentive as with the collar on. I started to take him on longer walks without it and all went well. Around the house he is completely desensitised from the temptations there and now I can do like I did with Goshen when I hang laundry, which is to just open the door and walk down below the house to hang it. Both dogs hang with me, sniff around a bit, but Barak has no desire to take off on any adventures. He charges after a cat once in a while, but if that happened six months ago, you could have expected to have to wait for an hour before he was back home. Now he comes straight back.
I believe that the mere presence of the collar changed his behaviour in a fundamental way over time. He is today happy and content with staying with the pack (since I am also the funniest person to be around ;). He is also enough exercised both physically and mentally to not have a need for going hunting for cats.
Today we took a walk down to Beit She'arim together, me, Yoram, the dogs and Gal on his bike. Yoram wanted to put the collar on, but I encouraged him not to. I have walked around the facilities when there were people there, with Barak healing unleashed by my side, with no e-collar. Today he behaved exemplarily and we even met cats on several occasions. Nowadays it is Goshen who is the instigator with the cats. Since she never does them any harm we never addressed is as a major problem, but now she is actually triggering Barak! Time to deal with the old bitch a bit I think. Barak is the hero of the house and since his nose for some peculiar reason smells of Rosemary instead of the regular odours, he gets a lot of kisses.
3 comments:
I wish I had your dogtraining skills when we had our Ralph, our cockapoodleterrier, now gone for 15 years. The more we yelled for him to stop chasing cars, the more he chased. We must have inadvertently told him in dogspeak that we were excited too? Finally one day we drove up and down our street and dashed water in his face from the passenger window when he chased. Very quickly he learned to stop chasing our car. But other cars.....? :) He also chased the automatic garage door when it went up. He hung on to the rubber strip att the bottom and went up with the door until he bit off little halfmoons of rubber. :( I loved him!
Haha, they are funny the canines, but at the same time always a reflection of their owners energy. ;)
If Ralph was still around, I could have given you a few wise words. Did you never get any new dog after him? Dog ownership is otherwise most often a irreversible state... Kind of incurable.
No dog yet but a grandson begs and begs for us to get him a dog.
I think I was too much of an equal with Ralph. I should have been the pack leader. He thought my husband was the best tummy scratcher in the world. Plopped upside down for a scratch whenever he came home. But he could sit and stay on command - indoors. One spring he brought in a baby rabbit from our yard and laid it at my feet. I said "bad dog" and gave it a decent burial. Whereupon he went out and got another one. I found that he waited at the door to their house under a tree root and kept him from it.
One time he rolled around in a bird cadaver and smelled like hell. I said "bad dog" and gave him a thorough bath. Then he went out and did it again. Then I got the brilliant idea to remove the dead bird from our yard. Sometimes one is a little slow in the uptake. If I ever have a dog again it might be a greyhound rescued from the U.S. dog race racket. They are said to be sweet, loyal and already trained.
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