Tonight I have been working with an Italian Greyhound who has a barking problem with other dogs, as well as a deep fear of other dogs. No matter where her owner takes her, she will see a dog and start to bark and lunge, she has a very loud bark for such a small dog and can go on for a long time. From the moment her owner pulled her out of the car, she was crying, barking, pulling and stressed.

The behavior and the level of behavior were of great concern to the owner. She has had the dog since she was a baby and the dog is now 18 months old and has apparently been behaving like this from a very young age.

Now when a dog behaves this way from a very young age, there is a reason for it, but what is even more remarkable is that the owner has put up with it for so long. Italian Greyhounds are not very common as pets, I have only seen a handful in all the years that I have been training dogs and they are a lovely breed, so what had happened to this young female to make her behave this way?

If you have read any of my works, you will have heard the phrase “we create the behavior of dogs” and the same happens here and when I had a conversation with the owner about the first days of having the dog and what he was allowed. do, the inevitable pattern began to emerge. To be fair, it’s not the owners’ fault as they were just following all the usual advice that every dog ​​owner they know ad nauseam gives and regurgitates ad nauseum because they’ve heard it from every dog ​​owner they’ve ever met. . known for what must be true. That advice is that you should socialize your puppy and get him used to other dogs. The problem is that most owners interpret this as allowing your puppy to get close to other dogs and learn from the consequences, good or bad. The owners seem to believe that all dogs will be fine with all the dogs they have met, so they gladly send their new pup away from them to meet and greet older dogs at will and hope the pup knows what to do. .

Do you think the puppy’s mother would allow her baby to be in danger? No I would not; she would make sure her baby is safe and secure with her. So by allowing a new puppy to get close to other dogs, do you think you are becoming a suitable replacement for your puppy’s mother? Well that’s exactly what you should be doing, just because it’s a dog, it still needs care and care, without being positively encouraged to leave you and see how it fares with older dogs it doesn’t even know.

To put that in context, would you let a three-year-old go play with a group of children ranging in age from 9 to 14 and leave them to their own devices? I hope we still don’t think it’s perfectly okay to do that with our puppy, who is someone else’s baby whom we have entrusted to care for.

What does this mean for the puppy? It means that she will find the company of other dogs fearful and stressful because she is literally alone and relies on her wits and instincts to survive. Her new family is nowhere to be seen, so they clearly don’t care for her, so she feels completely alone.

Because this is repeated, probably every day, she learns that if she runs towards the other dogs barking, their owners take the dogs away from her so that she does not have to meet them and be afraid. This behavior is then reinforced by her owner, who will scold her for barking and try to call her the other dog. This, of course, only reinforces the behavior because she interprets your interaction as a reward, so she does it more and you give this behavior an even greater reaction and it quickly becomes an established and ingrained behavior that you are teaching the child. dog to become more and more stressed. other dogs.

In the space of an hour, he was walking on a loose leash and his owner was ignoring the other dogs and this was accomplished without force, fear, commands, food or toys. When the dog gave the behavior that the owner wanted, it was rewarded with praise and fuss, when it went towards another dog, this behavior caused its owner to walk in the opposite direction so the puppy followed her and received praise and fuss for taking the right decision. . It’s as simple as that, when you know how.