Spudz had a HUGE day today. It was his time to go meet the vet behaviorist here in town and see what she thought about his incident with the two other dogs while he was adopted. He is nervous and since he's never really liked enclosed spaces I'm bothered by having him in a small vet exam room.
Our appointment was at 9AM and we were there until almost 1PM. During the consult we were asked to ignore him completely and let him just be himself. She was pretty much on the same page as me as far as only using positive methods to train him and that thrilled me. I've had a LOT of people who are insistent that since I deal with pit bulls I need to be in charge and be dominant. **Welcome to the year 2012 people! **
Spudz is having a horrible skin irritation and while he was playing with the Kong Wobbler in her office he would stop out of the blue to start itching. He was anxious and he was on edge. He continually jumped on Becky and I. As asked, and as I do with all dogs, we ignored the behavior and stood up until he moved away. This has always worked very well until Spudz becomes Spudz. He jumps into my lap and starts sucking on my lower lip. I don't know what it is about when he is at his amped level, he goes for my lip. To me, it's his plea of "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" There was a dog waking up from surgery in another room and Spudz heard the dogs cries. He worried that door unless redirected.
As the appointment progressed we discussed re-homing. To me, this is a non-question. Spudz will never be re-homed until he is comfortable in his own fur, which is obviously not right now. She showed us a tap touch training that she felt would be ideal for him to learn which I agreed with. Teaching him to look for my or Becky's open palm as to where he needed to be seems like an ideal way to work with him. He needs reinforcement in knowing what to do.
Since he had come back to the rescue I had already started showing Spudz how to say please. with Dr. Sophia Yin's method. I did this off leash and in the empty half of the rescue facility. We move quickly and he moves with me and has picked it up quickly. As soon as I stop moving he turns to me and sits. He's amazingly smart, but that tends to be the dogs who get into this kind of trouble. Now on leash is another story, that will be another step for him.
The vet didn't have a lot of other suggestions as she wanted to observe him mostly. We shall see. Hopefully she is on board with training protocols. I know he can pick it up and it would help him TONS! He was wore out after pacing the exam room nonstop. He really is just a very large overly sensitive boy who needs training!
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