I couldn't stand my dog. I wanted nothing to do with her. I spent dedicated hours training her with few results. Finally, I learned about another way that changed the way I look at dog training.
Hunter, a German shepherd mix, was always very vocal, slow to warm up to new people and mildly reactive, but we seemed to be making progress. When he turned 2 our 13 year old dog died. Everything changed. I am now understanding that it wasn't just that he lost her, but my grief as well, most likely caused him to feel he needed to take charge and protect me more than ever. He would not let anyone outside of family get within 6 feet of me. Walking became a nightmare. Our vet recommended a balanced trainer. We are making progress again. He also has an extremely high prey drive, so I probably won't ever trust him off leash like my previous dogs.
I love that your vet recommended a balanced dog trainer! It's not all that common in my experience, so yay for them! Glad to hear that the training is helping. Keep at it and you may get him off-leash with e-collar training. My dog has very high prey drive as well, but I trust him off-leash 100%!
Hunter, a German shepherd mix, was always very vocal, slow to warm up to new people and mildly reactive, but we seemed to be making progress. When he turned 2 our 13 year old dog died. Everything changed. I am now understanding that it wasn't just that he lost her, but my grief as well, most likely caused him to feel he needed to take charge and protect me more than ever. He would not let anyone outside of family get within 6 feet of me. Walking became a nightmare. Our vet recommended a balanced trainer. We are making progress again. He also has an extremely high prey drive, so I probably won't ever trust him off leash like my previous dogs.
I love that your vet recommended a balanced dog trainer! It's not all that common in my experience, so yay for them! Glad to hear that the training is helping. Keep at it and you may get him off-leash with e-collar training. My dog has very high prey drive as well, but I trust him off-leash 100%!
Very interesting article, I'd like to learn more about balanced training. However, the link to balanced training seems to be broken. Can you check it?