Time To Work With Milo – The Father Of The Pack.

Ever notice all the dog training videos on youtube that show dogs like this? Yeah, I can do that too. This was 5 days ago during our treadmill session, I haven’t seen Milo again til last night. It’s easy to get a reactive dog to act like this. Bring out the owners, you’re near guaranteed to see aggression. Problem is – if this is all a trainer sees, then they treat it like an aggressive dog – and train it from that standpoint.

This is not a training problem. I’m not training this dog for anything.

This is not fair to the dog. Aggressive and reactive are not a diagnosis, they are symptoms, the outcome of a problem. A 5 year old child can watch this video and declare Milo aggressive – it doesn’t say much about trainers skills to diagnose a dog. We need to do better, dogs like this are being euthanized through recommendations by the training community at large and it needs to stop.

Milo isn’t an aggressive dog, he’s a fearful dog. He’s carrying alot of mental stress – and when you see him here, he’s not thinking, just reacting. That said – lets see the 100% turnaround last night. Lets watch this “aggressive dog” turn to putty.

Milo is highly reactive to humans and dogs – as you can clearly see. This isn’t aggression, it’s a combination of stress, lack of exercise, lack of socialization — and Milo doesn’t trust anything. We had both Milo and his daughter Little Bear out for a long walk together last night – it’s time for his daughter to help the father overcome all this. Bear has come so far, so fast – she’s gaining confidence very quickly and she’s becoming much more independent. I really believe that’s what all owners want – an independent dog. Just like they want independent children.

Here’s the walk from last night. Excuse the sniffles and such, but it’s uncut.

Starting out, it was rough, Milo showed he wanted a piece of me, lunged at me a few times. Really, I’m not concerned about this – I understand why he’s doing it and I’m going to respect his space. I’m walking Bear. I’m not afraid of Milo, but I’m not going to push him til I get bit. I’m not concerned about the pulling either, it’s not about structure. All things considered, pulling is fully expected, let him do it. Is it good for a dog to be dragging on a leash by the neck, no. But this big boy isn’t going into a harness – it would turn him into a sled dog.

At some point, Milo calms down and I move in – he’s not trying to attack me, but he is eyeballing me – he doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him. When the dogs go calmer, and Milo’s nose engages, his brain is in gear again, he starts to sniff and mark, this is good. It’s time to use Bear as Milo’s mentor – I squat down, call Bear in and generally she doesn’t hesitate. I want Milo to see his daughter trusting me, coming to me for affection. We do this repeatedly on the walk. Milo is a big boy, not much for stamina, and he’s going to wear out pretty quick.

He lunges at dogs for the most, and we have to control that for now – I don’t want dogs getting hurt. We switch dogs at some point, I take Milo at the 27:20 mark – and he knows right away that I have the leash now – he keeps eyeballing me. I’m looking for any signs of aggression from him toward me – there is none, but he’s not ready to trust. When Bear calms down, I start calling her in for affection. Now bear in mind, I have Milo’s leash, and his daughter is approaching me for affection. This can be good – or it could spur an attack. I’m watching him closely, but I’m calm.

There were a few times when Bear came to me – I could see Milo almost forget that he didn’t trust me, he started to approach and stopped. This is ok – he’s showing that he wants to trust me, he’s trying, but his resolve isn’t ready to break yet. It has to be his choice. He needs to choose to calmly invade my space, accept me and accept affection.

We get to the river and sit on the sand bank for a bit. Bear comes to me repeatedly – then it happens. At the 49:20 mark, Milo makes his choice and barges in to my chest looking for affection. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to happen that fast. And he hung around me, tried to sit on me – but sat beside me and took affection from me. Yes, I sound like an idiot when talking to dogs, but I don’t care. It’s called praise, it’s called reinforcement – it’s called being happy and proud.

You will never see a treat in my hand. That’s the worst thing you can do to your dog.

You can watch the rest of the video, but as you can see, he becomes less and less reactive to people and dogs. Toward the end, he wasn’t trying to attack people – but he was trying to sniff them. I’m not ready to trust him yet, this is step one of many but we will get there. Tonite is all about him, about his choices – about letting him blow out the lines, get rid of that buildup of mental stress.

Back at house, we enter the back yard – owner lets Bear off leash, and Milo goes straight onto the treadmill for about 10 minutes to finish him off. All of the dogs are getting on the treadmill now – Bear and Mini seems to want to do it on their own. Bear tries to jump on with Milo a few times, there isn’t room.

Bear in mind, Milo is on the treadmill – we are in the back yard and the 2 daughters come out. No reaction from Milo. Why? Because he’s tired now, distracted on the treadmill – and he’s beginning to trust. When he had enough, I took him off the treadmill – he didn’t react at all to me while the girls were there. Passed him off to the owner to put him in the house to relax.

Bear stayed in the back yard for a bit, she was whimpering for some weird reason. I suspect it’s because all is quiet in the house now – the dogs aren’t barking. Generally it’s Milo that gets the dogs stirred up, but he’s tired, he’s done. A tired dog is going to be a much happier dog.

I’m going to take Milo for 24 hours, just like Mini and bring him into the deep end of the pool. Socialization hard and fast.

Are people ready to talk about change yet?