So today I’d like to talk about what it actually means when I say I have to constantly manage Reese, and why it is so very important that it is done. Now this is something that you should be doing with every dog, but especially higher-drive working dogs with strong temperaments to match. Technically, what happened this week was my fault, and I am fully aware of it, and the issue was corrected before it became too severe. However, the entire situation started extremely subtly, and if I wasn’t practiced in managing Reese I probably would have continued missing the signs until all of a sudden I was in a nightmare dog scenario with no obvious cause in sight.
The start was with an uptick in Reese’s bad crate manners and separation anxiety. He’s always been pretty bad about his crate when we leave for work, but over the last month it started escalating heavily to the point where the second we shut the door to leave he would start slamming around trying to escape, usually injuring himself in the process. We had been making very slow but steady progress over the last few months, but all of a sudden it seemed like we were back at 0 and backsliding even further.
Coupled with this was a very slight uptick in Reese’s cat obsession, starting with us needing to yell at him slightly more often, and then calling him back to me, and then banishing him to place, until it seemed like he was constantly on their asses and not leaving them alone. Along with this was a return to his previous asshole behavior during play, where he would never bring the toy back to me, and a sudden start to crossing the property line into my neighbor’s driveway despite repeated no’s and call backs and only very stubbornly coming back. Training started becoming difficult again, with him sometimes blowing me off and not paying attention.
Now, this all very slowly built up over the last month, and what it was, and I knew it, was Reese testing his boundaries yet again to see what he could get away with. He started with very tiny infractions, things that I did not really see the need to punish him for, and slowly escalated the behavior until all of a sudden I had an asshole dog again. I knew what he was doing over the past month, and I kind of half-heartedly punished him, because he is smart enough to stop before I get to the tipping point of a harsh correction. But every day he’d push and push and push, and it was entirely my fault for letting it get to that point without correction and I know that. We didn’t get to the point of nightmare dog, but if I hadn’t stopped it it wouldn’t have taken long to get there.
Today, though, I decided enough was enough and gave him a harsh correction straight out the gate with his first bad behavior. He was deeply offended, and committed the act again, and this time the correction was even harsher (now, to be clear, I did not beat my dog. The correction was an ecollar push at his lowest training level. The harsher correction was a longer push on the ecollar at the same level). He started throwing a tantrum, but stopped the behavior so I went to remove the collar. Today was probably the closest I have ever been to being bit by Reese, because he was PISSED that I dared correct him. He stood stone still with his hackles and lips up and teeth bared, and the entire walk over he hard stared me down. I reached down to unclip the collar, he held still (while still showing his teeth but there was no growl and no move towards me so I did not correct that, he is allowed to demonstrate when he is not happy so long as it does not escalate), I removed the collar, and I went to work and that was that. The punishment was issued and the matter was done.
That right there, though, is an example of what can happen when you let your dog continue to push boundaries without correction. Now, as a working line GSD Reese is a bit harder than the average pet dog, and chances are that your average dog will never get to the level of bad that Reese can get to. Reese has a long generational line of being bred to bite people, and I count as people, so there has always been the risk that if he wasn’t properly managed, he could turn out to be an aggressive, people-attacking dog. The average pet owner will most likely never have that risk. However, after coming home on my lunch break today and later on to pick him up for his actual training session, Reese has been a delight. He’s been polite, he was a rockstar in training, and he’s currently laying down quietly instead of bothering the cat right above his head. He pushed his boundaries yet again this morning, except this time the boundaries snapped back and he was resettled back into his place. And he’s happier for it! He’s been reminded once again of what he’s not allowed to do, and he’s been reminded that he can be corrected and therefore it’s not worth it. This is what it means to manage your dog. It means reinforcing the boundaries that you have set, and if pushing happens, it means correcting the behavior before it escalates into something worse. The average pet owner (because it’s not just dogs, cats and other animals can do this too!) will probably not need to worry about this getting as bad as what Reese can get, but if you suddenly start noticing that your pet’s behavior has had a sharp decline lately, try to see if there’s something small happening that maybe shouldn’t be and start there.