ZEUS THE DOBERMANN

We had this beautiful boy come and see us for help with loose leash walking and reactivity.

When his owners got him out of the car, he was at the end of the lead barking at everything in sight and then nothing at all.

His owners really struggled to keep a hold of him, and you could see were visibly stressed by the way he was behaving.

Before we started the session, we had a really good chat to see what his background was. You could see he was super stressed and just didn’t know what to do.

After speaking with his owner, we discovered they didn’t get him until he was 4 months old and hadn’t really been anywhere other than the “breeders” backyard.

Zeus had unfortunately missed the crucial socialisation period, so he was never exposed to everything life has to throw at them, so he just didn’t know how to calm down and focus.

Usually, in these situations, we would look at counterconditioning responses to help him through it, but because his barking was non-stop, we needed to calm his head and work on engagement, leash pressure and reward markers.

Once he understood what was expected, he was walking nicely, without barking at everything. He has a super food drive, so this helped.

Next, we got him walking around our dog so his owner would know what to do if they came across a dog. To start with, he was spitting teeth, but once we stopped that you could see how uncomfortable he was around another dog.

By the end of the session, he was able to walk by his owners side on a loose leash past various dogs.

Now his owners can work with him, we can progress further next time and work on changing his emotional response to the triggers.