Please Help!

I can tell you this -26C with windchills of -43C are too cold for me bundled up never mind a bare dog that does not like being cold on a normal winter day!!!

Absolutely do not get a second dog if your first dog is not where you want him to be for behaviour! And that counts for any breed, never mind that your guy is a powerful big Bull-Staffie mix!

But it sounds like there are a number of issues here that you want/need to address — and you’ve done the right thing in taking him to obedience classes.

Unfortunately, not all obedience trainers are created equal. Frankly, I am astonished to hear that the training school “expelled” your dog and said there wasn’t much they could do for you. It is very common for dogs to “forget” their training when they get away from home and into an area of high distractions, and there are solutions…

You do have a complex situation here, however, and fear / fear-aggression is not something I’ve had enough experience in handling — so I’m going to send you over to Watch and Train.com. Jeff Millman is a top dog trainer in Chicago, who is not only extremely experienced with “problem dogs” but also incredibly generous with one-on-one advice through his forums. I check in at his website often, because there’s always so much more to learn about training.

One reason why I like to recommend Jeff Millman is that he’s a natural teacher — lots of trainers are good with dogs but can’t communicate so well with people: but Jeff is a teacher for both dogs and people. Tell him about your situation — including your history with dog school and the private trainer — and see what he has to suggest.

Let me know how you make out?

Your dog’s chronic toenail infections mean his feet are very sensitive. Boots may put pressure on the nails and cause him pain. At the very least, he has good cause to be afraid of having his feet handled, based on his medical history.

This is not a simple situation — and not one that can be solved long-distance, over the Internet.

I’d strongly recommend getting in touch with a positive-methods dog trainer in your local area (a clicker trainer, if at all possible) to help sort out your situation before something more regrettable happens.

Ideally, through the regular and positive reward-based training we do with our dogs from the time they’re very young, the dogs come to trust us to do what’s best for them. (They may not like everything we decide, but the point is they can trust us to make the decisions!) Our part of the deal is to keep our dogs safe from harm. This can be tricky with skittish, timid or fearful dogs, and especially so if they have signs of fear-aggression. Dogs pick up so much from voice and body language — if we get tense and anxious, they know it and get even more tense and anxious themselves.

I know that some dog owners can be a bit reluctant to call a professional trainer or behaviourist — maybe it’s money, maybe it’s embarrassment — but behaviour problems don’t go away by themselves, they just get magnified over time. A good trainer who’s there on the spot, to see you and your dog together, can often pinpoint the key to solving a whole host of problems, and you’ll just kick yourself for not doing it sooner.

Please do consider an in-home consultation. If you don’t know who to call, ask the humane society or kennel club or your vet for a recommendation. If your dog is growling and snapping at you, there’s likely something more going on here than just an issue of putting on booties. It might be a good idea to talk to your vet about alternatives to regular boots, too, if they are putting pressure on the nails and causing the dog some pain.

As for the “cat mishap,” been there! Nothing like walking into a room and seeing your cat sitting on the keyboard, one paw firmly on the Backspace key, watching your hard-won words disappear backwards up the screen at a rapid pace before the screen goes black. And that’s how I learned to hit ‘Save’ almost obsessively!

My daughter had said to me (while I was reading your post) “What are those, ipod covers?” I said that they were doggie boots. She replied, “Why would someone put ipod covers on the dog’s feet?” She’s thirteen.

In the above comment, I had originally written about what she said, and how I thought what you had created was a wonderful idea. It is awesome great for so many dogs in the colder areas, (we live in the Mt Hood area of Oregon, so they are a great idea to pass along to people here!)

As I was trying to push the “Post Comment” button using the mouse, the cat somehow layed down on the correct combination of keys to delete a large portion of the comment, leaving only the joke I made about my daughter’s comment, saying that you have a great idea for i-boots, and my dog would need i-video boots!

Again, love your site!

I’m thinkig I should go for i-boot video size for my bulldog!

There are a few essential commands that you should make an effort to teach your dog. Even if you teach him nothing else, he should return to you as soon as you call his name, be able to sit on command, lie down, walk to heel and be able to walk on…
I also found an interesting site on dogs.Get access to [link]Basics Dog Training resource[/link] for owning, training & handling your dog’s behavior.

@Claudia – Awww, what a beautiful 4-legged redhead you’ve got there! I need a photographer like you for all our doggie portraits… all photographs, probably, come to that.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h91/KysstheRayne/r006.jpg