Some Prevention... Some Correction... and Some Perfection

This is Suna, Willow and Tanka.

Suna is the Lab in the rear. She is 14 years old, but going strong. Besides an early puppy class, she's never had much formal training and is by her people's account a nearly perfect dog. Aft

er meeting her, I agree. She is the type of dog that people I work with have who say to me, "Gosh, I've had dogs all my life and have never needed to hire a professional trainer".

Suna is Willow's aunt. Willow is 5 1/2 years old. She is also a great dog, but has a few issues like leash pulling, and pretty selective hearing when she's off leash. We are working to correct these things, and things are going great.

Willow is Tanka, the puppy's mom. Tanka is 5 years old. When I met him, he had already had some pretty good training, not only from his people and an early puppy class, but also from Suna and Willow.

Their people called me primarily to make sure Tanka doesn't run into some of the issues that Willow has, but since when I work with a family, I work with any of the dogs in the household that have issues, I'm helping with Willow as well.

When I met them, I noticed that at nearly 6 months, Tanka was beginning to develop some rivalry issues with Willow and their play was starting to become more aggressive. It wasn't anything to seriously worry about now, but Willow is a pretty strong willed and dominant dog, as is her son, and there could be potential for more serious issues down the road.

In a previous post, I mentioned that it's so much easier to prevent serious issues than it is to correct them down the road. We're early in our training, but Willow's leash pulling has already been eliminated, and her focus is improving. We're laying the groundwork for a reliable recall.

Tanka also continues to do well, and while he displays some of the stubborn behavior that is his personality, we're on the way to setting him on a course to be a wonderful dog for the rest of his life!