Our behaviour specialist rocks!
What a difference today! We had the behaviour specialist come this evening and she spent 2 and a half hours with us and Hershey, talking about how to deal with Hershey's fearfulness and ways to get her to refocus during stressful times so that her fear can be replaced by calm and happiness.
It was nice to be able to talk to someone who listened and watched carefully before making judgments and recommendations. It was also nice to be told that there was a way to "fix" this and have Hershey be a normal happy dog. The behaviour specialist was excellent at answering all our questions, providing us with lots of tools and methods of working with Hershey and we now feel far more empowered in this process. This is so different than before - we felt disappointed, unsure and honestly scared of Hershey with the old trainer. This is such a better feeling.
The behaviour specialist has suggested we do clicker training. Hershey wasn't afraid of the sound and seemed to respond well to the few instances we tried while the specialist was in our house. Hersh wasn't scared of her either, and their interactions were as close if not closer to what Jacqueline had tried - unsuccessfully in her case! The whole experience was very positive and we have clear directions on what to work on that make a LOT of sense.
We start full-speed ahead tomorrow (Hersh was too tired after the excitement of someone new in the house to start this evening) - and it'll be 6 very full days of intensive training. Given how fast she catches on to everything, I hope we can get her "hooked" on the clicker pretty quickly!
In other news; on our walk last night I almost stepped on a dead squirrel. The squirrel was in full rigor mortis - looks like he had a heart attack. Gross.
It was nice to be able to talk to someone who listened and watched carefully before making judgments and recommendations. It was also nice to be told that there was a way to "fix" this and have Hershey be a normal happy dog. The behaviour specialist was excellent at answering all our questions, providing us with lots of tools and methods of working with Hershey and we now feel far more empowered in this process. This is so different than before - we felt disappointed, unsure and honestly scared of Hershey with the old trainer. This is such a better feeling.
The behaviour specialist has suggested we do clicker training. Hershey wasn't afraid of the sound and seemed to respond well to the few instances we tried while the specialist was in our house. Hersh wasn't scared of her either, and their interactions were as close if not closer to what Jacqueline had tried - unsuccessfully in her case! The whole experience was very positive and we have clear directions on what to work on that make a LOT of sense.
We start full-speed ahead tomorrow (Hersh was too tired after the excitement of someone new in the house to start this evening) - and it'll be 6 very full days of intensive training. Given how fast she catches on to everything, I hope we can get her "hooked" on the clicker pretty quickly!
In other news; on our walk last night I almost stepped on a dead squirrel. The squirrel was in full rigor mortis - looks like he had a heart attack. Gross.
posted by traxis at
10:07 PM
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