life, the universe, and donna

A-freaking-mazing.

This morning, I met up with Shannon Malmberg of Zen Dog Training for a consultation. Oh. My. God.

My dog. She can BEHAVE! Outside! On a leash! Without being a complete idiot!

I’ve been working with her, pretty consistently, since I got her. And she’s definitely making improvements in most areas, slowly but surely. The on-leash aggression issue is not one of them. A few days ago, we were both a little startled by someone coming up the front walk to our apartment behind us. Justice started to go for her, I pulled her in closer, and her redirected aggression (which, so far, has just been snapping at me – which is bad enough, quite frankly) convinced her to clamp her teeth over my arm pretty hard. Yep, my sweet baby girl bit me but good. Even through the hoodie I was wearing, I’ve got some pretty nice scrapes on my arm from her.

Luckily, I already had an appointment with Shannon for this morning. When I met up with her, Justice did her wonderful little “I’m going to kill everyone!” performance, which was good — if we’re going to change this behaviour, Shannon needs to see what we’re up against. One of the things I was interested in trying out (hesitantly, anyway — I wasn’t completely sold on the idea) was remote collar training.

It’s a life saver.

We tried one of hers, and … holy crap on a stick. It’s a completely different dog. She’s attentive — to the person holding her leash, rather than to whatever that is across the field. She wasn’t pulling on the leash — heck, she wasn’t even walking at the end of it as she often does. Total loose leash, walking at my side, happy as a clam, regardless of the other dogs, joggers, and a variety of random people wandering by. Absolutely amazing.

I’ve tried them out myself, and I see why proponents of the collars dislike the term “shock” collar. They’re really not. The stimulation they give is on par with a standard tens unit, whereas “shock” makes you think “touched an electric fence”. It’s nothing like that, and I wouldn’t use anything that did that. With the collar Justice tried on, Shannon used a level 4… out of about 36 levels. That’s all she needed to be much more alert and attentive to ME, rather than to whatever else looked more interesting. Like, say, that spot on the grass over there that another dog once stepped on, three weeks ago. Or that bird. Or that thing she THINKS is a bird. Or that tree, that MIGHT have a squirrel in it, but probably not.

In a heartbeat, she went from being a distracted wandering snarling freakjob to being a sweet and docile little girl — still playful, but paying attention to ME, instead of … everything else.

The collar didn’t bother her much. At first, she mouthed at the leash a couple of times, thinking perhaps that’s where it was coming from. After a minute or two, you could practically see her shrug and just go with it. We “set her up” a few times to where she would normally lunge or start freaking out at someone — there was someone sitting nearby with a hyperactive puppy. She started to go into her usual routine, but after a quick correction from the collar, she simply stopped and came back to me. Sat on my foot (the silly girl LOVES to sit right on my feet) and looked at me with a big doggy grin. But never once did her tail go down — it stayed curled up like a flag, and never did she look like she was in any pain. I’ve gotten much worse reactions from her by grabbing her by the scruff of her neck to keep her from attacking someone. Or me. With the collar… no stress, no freakouts, just a “Huh. I guess I shouldn’t do that.” Dude. Why didn’t I try this sooner?

Granted, she still needs a lot more work. She ain’t perfect with it by any stretch (and I wouldn’t expect her to be — this was a consultation, she only wore the collar for about 30 minutes) and needs a lot of correction at this point. Not to mention, I need to learn how to use the remote myself (the trainer held it the whole time.) It’s not a “put it on and the dog is instantly perfect” magic bullet. But she’s appearing trainable. There’s a starting point. One that doesn’t involve me having to haul back on the leash (which is about the worst thing you can do — that’s how they teach police dogs to be MORE aggressive) or the scruff of her neck to keep her from biting someones head off. Or my arm.

I know they’re controversial, and I’m sure that some people reading this are going to hate the fact that I’m using it and think I’m a horrible dog abuser. And maybe your dog doesn’t need it… but mine does. For her own safety, for her own freedom (ie, the ability to be off leash, without a drag line, and without me worrying what she’s going to do), and for our shared stress levels… I know she gets just as frustrated as I do when she starts lunging & snarling at other people & dogs, and I have the scars to show it!

In the next few days, I’m going to take some video of her so I can have some “before” and “after” demo’s.

Shannon had her dog there as well, and wow, what a great dog. He looks like a Big Justice, minus the mismatched ears and the Crazy. He was perfectly happy to just sit and watch us work with Justice for almost the whole session, even though Justice was wearing his collar unit.

It ain’t cheap — $250 for the collar, plus $90 for each training session, probably needing 3 sessions. Justice is worth every penny. I can’t wait.