Espressing themselves

In my experience and I just have 9 years of it...most of the time it's just noise and a dog TRYING desperately to figure out what to do next, should the person not respect their neon signs that they can't cope with the situation. By being confrontational, adversarial in nature, is not helpful to the dog, who above all, needs someone to help them figure out how to conquer their demon.

George vs Cat video where we were sneak attacked by a cat just as I was going to video some fun 'race" to the door work.  Here's George...would you consider this aggressive?  He was just trying to figure out what he should be doing when his body is telling him to "take action".  Me letting him know it's fine to "sniff" at a distance, and "Yup, it's just a cat...no biggie"...helped him out. 



Video below was from when George and I worked on a long line and regular leash ALWAYS making sure no tension on the leash, to help him overcome his anxiety after being attacked at The Chief...seems appropriate for this post. George began to machine gun bark and lunge at other dogs and people in the distance.  The attack totally freaked him out and was so locked in his memory that we had to create a new Conditioned Emotional Response (D & C) at the Chief to help him get over it.



When he is looking in the distance, it's either a person or other dog he's looking at and you can tell, he was not relaxed.   By teaching him to check in with me automatically so he can see I'm calm and there's nothing to worry about...we play games, hang out, have treats, massage and through my body language and actions on what to do in that space...by the end of our stay..he was finally able to relax and let the world go by without having to point out each person or dog in the distance.  We worked at a distance where he was alert to his triggers but far enough away that he wasn't frying his nervous system and unable to think straight.  That's called working subthreshold. and what it does is diffuses the anxiety in the dog and teaches them WHAT to do rather than act on the anxiety.