By Lynn –
I figured that since I depressed and probably frustrated some of you with that last entry, I’d give you some behavioral success stories that have happened with me in the past at the store!
A few months ago, someone came in asking about something to stop her chocolate Lab from pulling. It turned out that she already had a Gentle Leader and taken classes from one of the store employees (who works at a different location than I), but was still pulling like a train. She was pretty desperate to find something that would stop it, so I explained the pinch collar to her and recommended that she give it a try with some loose-leash training. And to add to the bonus, I threw in my name a phone number in case she had any questions, since she lived pretty close to my neighborhood. [Had she lived way far away from me, I probably wouldn’t have done that.] Anyway, she decided to get a pinch collar for her chocolate Lab puppy too since he was starting to become a puller (he was the appropriate age). Because her one Lab was about 95-lbs, I sent her away with some extra links as well in case she needed them.
Turns out that she didn’t need the links, because she came back later to return them. But she did rave about how that morning’s walk was one of the best ones she’d ever had with both dogs!
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This morning, I was setting up after opening and someone came back to look at our Innoteks. My manager kind of pointed at her with that “This is right up your alley, go help her” manner: it turned out that her sherpherd/collie mix (she was doubtful about that as it looked almost exactly like a border collie) was somewhat dog-aggressive and she was looking to an e-collar to fix the problem. Now I feel comfortable using remote trainers, but only for certain things, and for me to explain how to use it with aggression was way outta my league, so I just directed her to what I knew would work: the pinch collar. She was very open to the idea, and understood that she needed to first work on getting the dog’s attention first and working on respect for her before starting to correct for aggression. As a caveat, I started to refer her to MY trainer, who I know is absolutely solid with any type of dog, but then I remembered that he is located way far away from where we live, but when I mentioned that, she simply said “Oh wow, that’s where we’ve moved to!,” so she was at least in the right area! I gave her his name and the name of his training school, and after explaining the basics of starting to work with aggression, suggested that she give him a call and set up an evaluation. And not only did she live in the far-out town in which my trainer lives, she only stopped by the store on a fluke, just to check it out while she was in the area for a job interview. So I can’t say that I believe in certain deities, but I can definitely say that someone or something set this meeting up between us that morning.
Well, she called back later in the afternoon (which I was completely NOT expecting), and asked for “The girl who was helping me this morning who sold me a collar.” I told her that was me, expecting some kind of question…instead the first thing she said was “You are a saint!” Apparently, she’d started immediately working with her dog that afternoon and even received two comments from her neighbors about how well-behaved her dog suddenly was! “If only they would’ve known him 10 hours earlier!” is her exact words.