George update

George has gone home and was really excited to see his owner who felt the same way! It was interesting to see him come out of his shell and to find some of the reasons why he is like he is!

Mia his sometimes companion has been around since he was a pup and I believe that she has had an effect on his confidence due to her character, which is quite dominant towards him and has meant that he has not been free to find his own feet without her putting him in his place!

He needs to be encouraged to express himself without being too cocky as he is liable to bark at people and dogs and snap at any excitable dog. Having an anxious nature means that they try to act tough but are usually just trying to keep everything at bay!


I've asked Georges owner to try a different method around his unpleasant habit of eating other dogs half digested poop which then leads to diarrhoea When George usually sniffs it 99.9% of the time he is only sniffing like any other dog and he is not going to eat it! Georges owner cannot tell sometimes what he is going to do and because the consequences of him eating it are bad, he gets quite upset by it and it usually leads to a stressful walk.

Plan B is to allow him to smell anything he likes but as he turns away from it he can be recalled to a treat to show that sniffing and not eating gets a reward and if he stops when he was about to eat some, then he is called and praised with a good reward to encourage him to seek his food from the owner rather than the poop! The video shows him intently smelling some poop which he may have normally took a bite at, by watching him and encouraging him when he chooses not to eat it, we can encourage him to make a better decision and should start to smell it and come to us for reward which we can harness in the short term, until the habit dies away!

Its a work in progress as in this video so we will see how he gets on!

Cheers

Steve