I was speaking to a lovely lady recently who has an elderly Collie Cross, Betsy, who she rehomed a few years ago from a local Rescue.  She had taken on this dog knowing that it had behavioural problems but had been told that this gorgeous girl was ‘untrainable’.

The main problems Betsy was displaying - poor recall, dog aggression and excessive barking - resonated with me, as we too had previously had all these issues with Harvey and in spite of using various different training techniques, had been told that he was ‘untrainable’.

I remember only too well Harvey’s ‘selective hearing’ and poor recall.  Whilst he would do a perfect recall in the hall where we went for training classes, as soon as I took him to the local park all the lovely smells and distractions were far too much for him and no matter what I used to entice him to come back to me, he chose exactly when he would return.  I often wondered why I couldn’t master this, after all I was doing everything advised by the experts.  I used cheesy treats, fishy treats, meat treats, but if he had the scent of something better there was no way he would return to me.  I now understand that, because Harvey thought he was in charge, if there was something more interesting in the park, maybe a rabbit to chase, he would choose when to come back.   It wasn’t just in the park that we had problems though, if there was a fox the other side of our back fence he wouldn’t come inside … we often spent ages late at night chasing him up and down the back fence until we could get hold of him and bring him back into the house.  And of course we told him off once we got him inside, which I now know is futile.  All he understood was that we were annoyed and upset, but he thought it was the foxes that had caused us this distress, not him!

Then there was the aggression towards other dogs and uncontrollable barking!  Harvey had a reputation locally … as soon as he saw another dog he would start barking and wagging his tail furiously.  Most owners gave us a wide berth, others picked their dogs up as they went past, and I was kept to one side at the dog training classes so that he couldn’t injure any of the other dogs.  I was advised by many people that as he was wagging his tail he wouldn’t bite, but I didn’t want to risk it!  When studying Canine Communication I soon learnt that a waggy tail doesn’t necessarily mean your dog is happy … it just means that your dog has raised energy levels.  These could be happy energy levels, or stressed energy levels caused through fear and the need to keep the family safe.   I tried all the suggested techniques - spraying him with water, shouting at him, rattling a tin of stones in his ear, compressed air – and though some worked the first time he soon reverted to his old behaviour.   Additionally, I didn’t feel happy treating him this way … I wouldn’t spray my children with water or rattle stones in their ears, so why was I being so nasty to my dog?  The traditional methods and gadgets just didn’t work on him, as they were ways of addressing his behaviour without trying to change the cause.

So what was I doing wrong?  I was looking at things from the human perspective, rather than Harvey’s.  Whilst I was told by the trainers that there was nothing I could do with Harvey, I don’t give in easily so when I came across Canine Communication I thought I’d have one last attempt at training my ‘untrainable’ dog.  By changing the way we all interacted with Harvey, his behaviour gradually improved.

How did we change? For example, we stopped allowing him to jump up on our laps uninvited, stopped giving him attention when barking, initiated play ourselves instead of whenever he dropped a ball at our feet, stopped shouting at him when he did something wrong, and with time our roles reversed. No gadgets were involved, no shouting, and we taught him at home where he feels comfortable and relaxed. At last, after more than eight years of struggling with traditional training methods, Harvey started listening to us and willingly did as we wanted! I felt happy and comfortable using these new techniques and Harvey understood what I wanted – it seemed like a miracle!

Canine Communication makes total sense to me and Harvey clearly understands the signals I am displaying, so if you or anyone you know has a dog who has been labelled ‘untrainable’, give me a call and we can talk about it further – I’d love to help you!