TRAVIS, MY NEW BEST FRIEND

I recently visited family in Phoenix and renewed my acquaintance with Travis who is “my new best friend”. Travis is a Boxer Rottie cross with, for the most part, the best qualities of both if that is possible. He’s going on two, probably runs over ninety pounds and is not an ounce overweight. He has a lover’s temperament , he’s kind and gentle, a real gentleman in the house, and gets along great with his buddy Oliver who is a Westie.
So what’s my point?
Well Travis is the classic example of what I encounter so often and his few issues are completely predictable and curable but they could have easily been avoided with a few basic changes as the dog was growing up.
First of all, Travis was not properly socialized. Here’s another of those cases where the Vet advised that “you don’t take your dog out into different environments until he’s had his third shot.” Well the problem with that is most dogs don’t get that shot until approximately their fifteenth week or longer and current thinking says the first eighteen weeks are the most critical time in the development and socializing of our pups. Since socializing involves exposing our puppies to strange things, noises, places, people, and other animals, this remaining two or three weeks doesn’t leave a realistic window of opportunity.
Travis is a classic example of what you get when the dog isn’t exposed to different environments, people, and animals at an early age. Now his walks include lunging, barking, and charging, when faced with most anything out of the ordinary. This can be remedied but it would have been at lot easier when he was between ten and eighteen weeks.
Obviously since he wasn’t taken out and socialized his leash skills also are less than perfect. Again this problem can be remedied but at his age and stage of maturity it’s more difficult to redirect a dog of his size with only lure and reward training.
His Sit and Down are very good which works to our advantage. Since most of his issues occur when he is on leash and during his walks the retraining started while he was getting his morning exercise. There were a few corrections required in order to get his mind refocused onto the other end of the leash but for the most part these were only needed when he got a little overly obnoxious at the sight of approaching groups of young people and a couple of times when we came upon a few other dog walkers.
Here’s where the sit and down worked to our advantage. As soon as I sensed a change in his attitude he was put in a sit and given a generous treat. We stayed in a sit until the person, dog, bicycle, or whatever, had passed. All this time I was encouraging him to focus on me. This is the process of “getting his attention”, “redirecting his attention”, and “rewarding the action”. This whole procedure requires repetition and patience and practice in little bits with increasing difficulty. As you can see much of this is avoided if we include these experiences in the socializing process.
At this stage, time and distance worked to our advantage. We increased our sessions to a solid hour at 6 am, with a break of about forty- five minutes and then we accompanied my Granddaughter to school (not her choice) where we met lots of distractions. In total we probably managed nearly two hours and at least five miles of concentrated schooling. I wouldn’t recommend this in most cases but I only had a week to get the job done and my student was young strong and enthusiastic.
Is Tavis perfect now? Of course not, but he’s well on his way to a new and different way of doing things. The challenge now is for everybody involved in his life to make a few small changes in their expectation of “rules, regulations, and limitations”.
Unfortunately many dog owners make the effort to start their dogs on a pretty good path and then along the way they gradually compromise and it’s like so many other things. If you don’t use it, you lose it, and before long the dog has acquired some aggravating habits. Lucky for Travis, Grandpa came to visit and was itching for a dog to work with. Hence “TRAVIS, MY NEW BEST FRIEND”.