Little Bear – How Fast Can A Dog Change.

How is your dog when they are calm? Funny how they are never a problem right? Not “aggressive”. Not “reactive”. Neither of these terms is a diagnosis – they are only symptoms – the outcome of a problem. Neither is a condition that you can “fix” – they are emotional responses.

I have no fear of dogs. This is not a “how to” on fixing your dog, don’t try this at home. I am the first one to lay hands on Little Bear in over a year other than her family and she nipped me three times through the process. She is very highly human reactive. She is displaying alot of aggression.

This is Little Bear today – after everything is said and done. She’s a completely different dog, she’s not the attack dog that people thought she was. She’s has a beautiful personality, very friendly when out and about with people and dogs. Read on to understand how bad it was for her.

I hope it can give you some understanding of our dogs and how we need to do things different. I’m not using treats, or tools of any kind. I’m not being forceful. I record for the owners benefit – I want the owners to be able to see the transformation in their dog. I have nothing to hide.

Brief synopsis if you don’t want to read the entire thing. Bear had some serious mental health issues – alot of mental stress, running hot on cortisol. She had to blow out the lines, get rid of all that stress and she unloaded on me through barking. Flooding the dog? Maybe, but this is what she needs. Once that mental stress was gone, she changed in a hurry. All Bear and the other dogs knew was to drive people away – well, when she realized that she wasn’t going to drive me away, she didn’t have a choice but to change.

Long version.

Bear is part of a pack of 4 dogs, and Bear has been a bit of a poison pill for a while now – and no stranger could ever pet her for well over a year. To ice that cake, Bear went through a traumatic event on July 1st weekend that left her bleeding after being attacked by another dog in a boarding kennel. And hiding out for 2 days in fear with no food or water and bleeding. Yeah, not a good thing to happen to a reactive dog. When the owner finally found her, she didn’t recognize him – she was traumatized. Ever since then, she’s gotten worse. She was bad on leash, she was bad in the yard, fighting with the other female, stirring up the pack.

I spoke with the owner for quite a while about the dogs, they were all “aggressive” and he really wanted some help. On the first assessment, I told him to let the dogs out into the yard one at a time, from worse behaved to best behaved. I want to meet each one of them one on one, the owner stays in the house. If he’s in the back yard, it really increases the need for the dog to show aggression. And that’s not the real story.

I don’t care “that” Bear was showing aggression and reactivity, I need to understand why. I’m going to focus on the why. Fix the why – and the symptoms of aggression and reactivity disappear.

One by one, they charged the fence to put on a show, teeth and slobber – but then they back down. Dogs learn pretty quick when someone isn’t displaying fear and they don’t know what to do with it. All they get is a fear response from other people. I open the gate, and they all ran, move around the yard, they avoided and barked. The last one was different, she stood her ground more, bluff charged more. In her current state she didn’t want to bite – if she was really aggressive, I wouldn’t have made it in the gate. She doesn’t want to bite, she’s showing that – but if I push her… She’s scared, she’s insecure, and she’s not thinking.

Meet little bear, pit cross with a set of pearly whites, and she’s not afraid to use them.

All she did was bark at me, bark, bark and more bark. Sometimes it was an aggressive bark, other times it was a “why isn’t this working” bark. They get confused. All I’m doing at this point is being calm and watching her body language. This is Bear at her worst – and knowing her body language at its worst is paramount for when we do end up at a dog park.

Dogs can only stay in that state for so long – they are blowing out the lines and she had a long line to blow out. I think it was about 30 minutes that she barked. I brought my dog in, she sniffed him then barked at me more, she didn’t care about him – it was all about me – the human. She’s hitting me with slobber at some point a foot away from my face. She tried everything to get a rise out of me, but she already played her hand. Or so I thought. I seen the moment her aggression level went up and she nipped me. Happened three times. She’s not screwing around.

This dog carries so much mental stress – and yes, your dog has mental health. She needs to blow out the lines – and she’s doing it to me. I’m being her bitching post so to speak. I’m not reacting to it, not taking it personal. Get the beast out, cause at some point she’s going to calm down and her brain is going to engage. Then we start working, it’s impossible to work with a dog in that state. She got worked up over and over, I waited her out – shorter and shorter periods each time. This went on into the next session – but gradually got better. When she calmed, she would come to me for affection. If I moved, it set her off again. Bear was relentless. She barked at me for the first 10 minutes of the 3rd assessment, then we went for a walk. The owner followed from a distance to see if she was different. She never reacted at all, a few dogs, a few people – and one dog owner that was trying to protect his little dog from the pitbull. She stood there watching them go by. The owner joined in to experience it. She didn’t react when he calmly joined me. The owner was quite surprised that she’s calm with me. When we got into the yard again, she barked some more. Then something interesting happened.

Watch the video. I asked the owner to let Milo out – he’s the father of the pack. Lets see what happens. Bear watched him come out, Bear then jumped on me – and Milo became the insecure enforcer. She did it again as the owner took Milo back in the house. Bear knows she can’t get a rise out of me, maybe she can goad Milo into it. This is the result. Look at Bears face through it all. She’s not aggressive anymore, at the moment, she’s being a little bitch.

The CBD took her hormones down, but the rest is all she knows to do – drive people away. I took away every option for her to do so, I’m not scared of her and she knows it, I’m not leaving. This is the end of the 3rd session – the next day we were at a dog park and she was brilliant, making all the right choices. When she comes back into frame at the end of this video – she had no options left, even her father couldn’t get a rise out of me. She is done and has nothing else in her bag of tricks.

This is the moment big changes happened.

Since she did great on the walk, we planned for a dog park the next day. Lets see what she’s got.

When I met her at the park, figured she would bark at me. Nope, the beast is gone now, the lines are clear and she can relax. A little cautious but ready to go. She’s alert but calm. I have never in my life seen a dog with all her behavioral problems step into a dog park and want to meet people and dogs in the first 5 minutes. The owner was stunned, and so was I. She was choosing to do this calmly, and I had to let her do it. I’m watching her body language, nobody is going to get hurt. She not only met them, but they gave affection and she mingled. Unconcerned. I’ve got all this on video, going to take me a bit to get it edited for time.

The owner was watching this from a distance and he was yelling “That was amazing”, he watched his dog be social for the first time and not try to eat anyone. We walked together, she’s still a little nervous, like getting surrounded by a few dogs too fast. but she didn’t bolt. She relaxed and let it happen. She was actively choosing to go up to people for affection. She was having a great time. The owner is walking her around now and experiencing it. He’s loving watching his dog just be a dog instead of a nervous wreck.

We aren’t done yet, she’s not fixed yet, but she is showing how willing she is to move forward. And I think she’s going to be the leader showing the rest. As she calms down, the rest of the pack responds in kind. And we will work on what’s left over with behaviors on all dogs.

Environment creates a stress, body creates cortisol in response – dogs behavior is the result of that cortisol load. What’s the problem? Cortisol. Get rid of it any way you can. I truly believe that cortisol is the leading cause of bad behaviors in dogs. Bear was running hot on cortisol and she blew out the lines to get rid of it. The owner dosed all of his dogs with low dose CBD oil that evening of the original phone call. The following morning I get a text saying the dogs slept all night, he had to wake bear up in the morning. Were the problems solved, no, but it’s going to help. The first step is getting rid of cortisol. If there is no cortisol load, the dog tends to be less reactive.

This is a quick before and after. From Bear barking it out to the first minutes in a dog park where she calmly approached dogs to meet them – then went to humans for some affection. This is how fast dogs can change when you step back, understand the problem and give the dog what they need. Bear in mind, this is a dog that nipped me 3 times trying to get a rise out of me.

This is the complete dog park video.

This story isn’t over yet. Realize that we have 4 very insecure dogs – and the 2 females can’t be together yet as they do fight. We are going to start driving alot of nails pretty quick over the pack dynamics.