Training dog to come back

As a family we’d always enjoyed walking and had long dreamed of having a dog to go for long walks with in the countryside.  When we got our labrador, Buster, we were very excited.  However, walking with Buster was far from the dream we’d envisaged.  He pulled on the lead so strongly that we couldn’t let our children hold him on the lead, it was difficult enough restraining him ourselves.  Once off the lead we had a lot of trouble getting him to come back, he was far more interested in running up to other dogs and people.  Some walkers were understanding and didn’t mind but plenty of others did not like him at all, particularly those with small children who were nervous of our large, bouncy dog.

We got fed up of every walk turning into an embarrassing and stressful experience and lost count of the number of people who told us we needed to control our dog.  We found that instead of going for more walks we were sticking to ‘safe’ walks in places where we would know other walkers who knew us and were more sympathetic than angry strangers.

On one embarrassing walk someone told us about Dog Intuition and so, with a certain amount of scepticism, we gave them a call.  Colin Rose came to our house to meet Buster and to see how he was at home.  We then went for a walk together and he explained Buster’s behaviour to us and gave us a set of techniques to practise with him.  When we saw how Buster behaved for Colin we knew that the problem was not with him but with our handling with him.  We followed Colin’s techniques and although we didn’t get it right all the time to begin with we had much better control over Buster.  After a few one-to-one sessions with Colin we enrolled in his weekly adult beginners’ course so that we could keep up with the training.

Buster is now brilliantly behaved and at last we can enjoy walking with our dog.