Liminalist
Jr Member
Hi all! This is a continuation of my Introduction, since I wanted to post it in the right place.
Eris' Story:
Eris will be 2 in April 2025. I got Eris at 16 weeks from what we thought was a reputable breeder. It checked all the boxes.... until it didn't. The more I learned in the 6 months following getting her, the more I realized this breeder might not have been what we'd thought. In trying to get some help, I ended up connecting with her sire's breeder (lovely person), and I learned quite a bit about Eris' breeder after that. I don't want to mention names or start sh*t, just setting the stage. She was sold to me as a calm temperament with strong working drive and many of her relatives went on to be service dogs. In the first few months of having her, it turns out she hadn't been properly vaccinated, she had a skin infection, she had worms, and she even had a UTI. It wasn't until she was EIGHT months old before we had her back to complete health. Thank GOD her heart is in great condition and she's negative for all the genetic concerns. Just a weird situation.
I knew I didn't want to take any chances with obedience, so when she was 11 months old, she went to a Board-and-Train facility that employs the Mini Educator eCollar. She did really well there and came back to me with no issues. We continued on with training at home but I started to notice her obedience slipping at about 14 months, I figured I just had been slacking off and maybe I had. Around this time, Eris came inside once from playing with my other dog (Byron the Llewellyn setter) with her ear torn about half an inch at the tip. It was pretty nasty, but luckily healed up fine. There were no noises or sounds of a scuffle, so it really seemed like it might have been an accident. Unfortunately, as more time went by, we noticed her starting to snap at him, lunge at him, and she full-on attacked him. The attacks continued to escalate until we had to separate them and I reached out to her original trainers to ask for advice. Their advice was to basically crack down on her more as she was probably going through some maturing and she thinks she can get away with bullying Byron (this was right about 18 months on the dot). Unfortunately as we implemented the new training regimen, I started to notice what I can only describe as emotional dysregulation skyrocketing to the point where when taking her on hikes, she was very nervous, reactive, screaming when a dog came close to her, emotionally shutting down, cycling through behaviors as if trying to guess what I wanted, shaking, teeth chattering, etc. I had this gut feeling that "stubbornness" was NOT the problem, something ELSE was going on. Meanwhile, Byron was now scared of her and we can't trust her alone with him anymore. Thus, my already small home is now subdivided more -- not great for two energetic dogs.
Luckily, I know two other dog trainers in my area, so I sought out 2nd opinions. I went through the WHOLE story with them and was lucky enough to get her in for a very long assessment with one of the trainers, and he quickly determined that she is NOT an assertive dobie at all, and most likely the use of the eCollar was making things far worse. It may have worked when she was a puppy, but use should have been either discontinued and/or changed over to the Tone rather than the Static. Interestingly, she had a hard time being taught recall because she simply would not leave your side. My other trainer friend said, "that should have been the clue even as a puppy that she's very anxious and they shouldn't have employed the shock collar so correctively. Typically confident dogs are happy to run off an explore. The fact she was glued to their side would have been a big clue to me that she has a nervous disposition." So, it started to look like the instructions to crack down on her and correct her MORE actually had the result of her now associating a variety of things with the discomfort from the eCollar. It's possible that Byron is causing her constant anxiety in the house on top of that.
Both trainers basically agreed that yeah this is a very typical nervous dobie behavior I've seen a hundred times, and she's expressing that fear as aggression. Guy has trained dozens of dobies and was very sympathetic to me. She is definitely driven, but is not the calm/assertive/gentle disposition she was sold to me as. Her first trainers blame it on bad breeding, but I don't think that explains everything away.
So what now: We have a new plan in place to basically start her over on her correction/reward markers (a painless little jerk to her leash and a firm "no" for a correction, and a simple pat on the head and "yes" for reward). She is a bit overly food motivated, so the trainer wants me to reserve food for only the most important of markers that we really want to capture or as are now working on muzzle training, to really jackpot the muzzle with treats.
Where am I now? TWO DAYS into implementing the new techniques from the new trainer and I've already seen a positive change. It's like she is already realizing that she isn't going to be punished anymore, and when she messes up, instead of shutting down she just tries again until she gets it right. So I finally feel hope for the first time in months. While seeing her smile again fills me with hope, I just feel so awful that I played a part in traumatizing her like this. My new trainers insisted I did nothing wrong, I just did what I was instructed to do, and these things happen all the time unfortunately; they commend me for doing everything I can to fix it. It still hurts though.
At the moment, I'm sending the Setter to my parents' house just to give them space while we work on this, since clearly the two of them are not on good terms anymore, and I'm going to make sure she has a muzzle and a vest on just to keep people from rushing up to her and scaring her more. Heck, its mainly for my own peace of mind, since now I feel like I'm constantly on high alert and anxious myself looking out for threats, and I know my own hypervigilance is not helping her at all.
------
So that's the story and why I joined the forums! I'm basically looking for any and all advice, support, and recommendations I can get. This community seems really great and constructive.
Thanks all. =)
Eris' Story:
Eris will be 2 in April 2025. I got Eris at 16 weeks from what we thought was a reputable breeder. It checked all the boxes.... until it didn't. The more I learned in the 6 months following getting her, the more I realized this breeder might not have been what we'd thought. In trying to get some help, I ended up connecting with her sire's breeder (lovely person), and I learned quite a bit about Eris' breeder after that. I don't want to mention names or start sh*t, just setting the stage. She was sold to me as a calm temperament with strong working drive and many of her relatives went on to be service dogs. In the first few months of having her, it turns out she hadn't been properly vaccinated, she had a skin infection, she had worms, and she even had a UTI. It wasn't until she was EIGHT months old before we had her back to complete health. Thank GOD her heart is in great condition and she's negative for all the genetic concerns. Just a weird situation.
I knew I didn't want to take any chances with obedience, so when she was 11 months old, she went to a Board-and-Train facility that employs the Mini Educator eCollar. She did really well there and came back to me with no issues. We continued on with training at home but I started to notice her obedience slipping at about 14 months, I figured I just had been slacking off and maybe I had. Around this time, Eris came inside once from playing with my other dog (Byron the Llewellyn setter) with her ear torn about half an inch at the tip. It was pretty nasty, but luckily healed up fine. There were no noises or sounds of a scuffle, so it really seemed like it might have been an accident. Unfortunately, as more time went by, we noticed her starting to snap at him, lunge at him, and she full-on attacked him. The attacks continued to escalate until we had to separate them and I reached out to her original trainers to ask for advice. Their advice was to basically crack down on her more as she was probably going through some maturing and she thinks she can get away with bullying Byron (this was right about 18 months on the dot). Unfortunately as we implemented the new training regimen, I started to notice what I can only describe as emotional dysregulation skyrocketing to the point where when taking her on hikes, she was very nervous, reactive, screaming when a dog came close to her, emotionally shutting down, cycling through behaviors as if trying to guess what I wanted, shaking, teeth chattering, etc. I had this gut feeling that "stubbornness" was NOT the problem, something ELSE was going on. Meanwhile, Byron was now scared of her and we can't trust her alone with him anymore. Thus, my already small home is now subdivided more -- not great for two energetic dogs.
Luckily, I know two other dog trainers in my area, so I sought out 2nd opinions. I went through the WHOLE story with them and was lucky enough to get her in for a very long assessment with one of the trainers, and he quickly determined that she is NOT an assertive dobie at all, and most likely the use of the eCollar was making things far worse. It may have worked when she was a puppy, but use should have been either discontinued and/or changed over to the Tone rather than the Static. Interestingly, she had a hard time being taught recall because she simply would not leave your side. My other trainer friend said, "that should have been the clue even as a puppy that she's very anxious and they shouldn't have employed the shock collar so correctively. Typically confident dogs are happy to run off an explore. The fact she was glued to their side would have been a big clue to me that she has a nervous disposition." So, it started to look like the instructions to crack down on her and correct her MORE actually had the result of her now associating a variety of things with the discomfort from the eCollar. It's possible that Byron is causing her constant anxiety in the house on top of that.
Both trainers basically agreed that yeah this is a very typical nervous dobie behavior I've seen a hundred times, and she's expressing that fear as aggression. Guy has trained dozens of dobies and was very sympathetic to me. She is definitely driven, but is not the calm/assertive/gentle disposition she was sold to me as. Her first trainers blame it on bad breeding, but I don't think that explains everything away.
So what now: We have a new plan in place to basically start her over on her correction/reward markers (a painless little jerk to her leash and a firm "no" for a correction, and a simple pat on the head and "yes" for reward). She is a bit overly food motivated, so the trainer wants me to reserve food for only the most important of markers that we really want to capture or as are now working on muzzle training, to really jackpot the muzzle with treats.
Where am I now? TWO DAYS into implementing the new techniques from the new trainer and I've already seen a positive change. It's like she is already realizing that she isn't going to be punished anymore, and when she messes up, instead of shutting down she just tries again until she gets it right. So I finally feel hope for the first time in months. While seeing her smile again fills me with hope, I just feel so awful that I played a part in traumatizing her like this. My new trainers insisted I did nothing wrong, I just did what I was instructed to do, and these things happen all the time unfortunately; they commend me for doing everything I can to fix it. It still hurts though.
At the moment, I'm sending the Setter to my parents' house just to give them space while we work on this, since clearly the two of them are not on good terms anymore, and I'm going to make sure she has a muzzle and a vest on just to keep people from rushing up to her and scaring her more. Heck, its mainly for my own peace of mind, since now I feel like I'm constantly on high alert and anxious myself looking out for threats, and I know my own hypervigilance is not helping her at all.
------
So that's the story and why I joined the forums! I'm basically looking for any and all advice, support, and recommendations I can get. This community seems really great and constructive.
Thanks all. =)
which is likely a very good thing.
)) I don't want to say her previous training was bad, I think it just needed to pivot to something else, and that's the downside of a 1-time board-and-train and not continuing classes or being able to observe it yourself. I still think board-and-trains are better than not training a dog, but it did put in to stark reality the importance of being there with your dog for training, too.
