…How It’s Going…

Continuing on in our training journey with Brodie-he was doing GREAT following our obedience class! Well…maybe not perfect or super well behaved, but way more manageable than before. He still pulled when we went for a walk and still had some minor reactivity because he wanted to meet every human and play with every dog (even when he was told no).

The reactivity (we were told) was not an aggressive one…he more so just wanted to be friends with everyone. He loved meeting new doggy friends! He did well with dogs that were about the same size or even a little bigger, and after a little training, started to do even better with dogs that were smaller than him! BUT the leash manners when on those walks were HORRIBLE.

At least they were good on the water!

Picture this-me, a smaller woman-and Brodie-an (at the time) 50 pound pittie mix-walking down the street. Him pulling and trying to go where he wanted and me trying to leash train him and not let him pull me down. So you can say, learning some leash manners or getting some control was VERY important to us!

Although I had control and he never pulled me down, it was still rough.

We did find some relief in what (we still believe) is one of the BEST harness/leash combos to ever exist. We found Blue-9! They are an awesome company that specializes in dog training supplies. We got their Balance Harness (Blue in Medium/Large) and their Multi-Function Leash (Blue in Small/Medium). The harness has multiple points of adjustment, which is great for a deep pittie chest! The multi-function leash can be a duel clip (like in the picture) OR as a 3ft, 4ft, or 6ft leash! We like to use it for hands free situations! We also use it in the car and attach his seat belt to it! It’s easy to go on and off, and he get’s so excited when it comes out!

It definitely helped with control, BUT I don’t know if he necessarily learned any actual manners because he completely forgot the manners as soon as we weren’t using the harness. This lead to our vet recommending a gentle leader-after he pulled me all over the place at the vet’s office one day. (Again, smaller human-60lbs pup…not a great picture if people think I can’t hold him…)

And so Brodie and I went out and got a gentle leader! We took the training slow, but Brodie responded relatively well to it. He started to learn that he can’t pull too far ahead of me. We coupled the gentle leader with traditional positive reinforcement heel training-treating whenever he stayed in heel or gave me his attention. And occasionally we switched on and off, either throughout the walk or alternating walks with and without it. The off times we walked with a flat collar. And it seemed like he had learned SO much! I was able to walking with almost no issues.

We started to notice that the only times there were issues were when other people or dogs were with us. He’s great for one on one walks with me, not great for others or when we were with others…so as far as we had come, we still had a lot farther to go.

And then the health issues started… Brodie developed some bumps that we thought was just an allergic reaction to something, but it wasn’t. When his neck swelled a few days later, we rushed him to the vet to find out that he had not one, but TWO hot spots, one of which infected one of his lymph nodes.

Because of the location, we had to stop using the Gentle Leader for a while…or forever, we’ll see. This was the first of ongoing issues with Brodie…that are still going on today, but are FINALLY (fingers crossed) under control.

We thought that he had recovered when he developed a 2nd rash…which then got better and then he developed even more bumps. All the time this was going on, he also had super loose poop and diarrhea. Not so fun. It got to the point where our vet and our vet tech recommended allergy testing him. He was on a stool hardener and STILL didn’t have solid poop. No joke.

A week after this he snapped at our best friend’s dad who had walked into our house unannounced. We thought it was just a bad introduction, but looking back, it was our first sign that we needed to change our training plans and mentality.

Then the following weekend while we were camping, he snapped at 2 more people. We didn’t see either as aggressive, more protective of me and as leash reactivity since he was leashed and restrained in both situations. Our friend and vet tech had us thinking that it was because he was still not feeling good (which was totally true). We found out weeks later that he was allergic to the dog-safe bug spray that was ALL over his body, the trees around us, and the grass we were camping on…plus the food he was eating. (He’s a hot mess of allergies.)

We started getting very concerned because the snapping was random and we never knew if he was going to lick or snap. We looked into trainers, reasons behind it other than medical (which we had just started to get under control), and someone had suggested meds-which I was not really about. We had our best friends over (our vet tech best friend and her husband) and she gave us some real talk-Dan and I were NOT on the same page for training. I was alllllllll about strictly positive reinforcement and I am overly nice. Dan is a lot more strict and stern. She told us that Brodie’s getting mixed signals, which is not helping the situation.