Zak an 8 year old Irish Wolfhound cross Labrador was my daughters husbands dog unfortunately the marriage ended and her husband didn’t want Zak. My daughter has two boys and also works, however they didn’t want to give Zak up.
Zak is a lovely dog in many situations, affectionate and loving at home but was very difficult to control when he saw other dogs when on walks. He would bark aggressively, pull and lunge towards them, and also with some people although this was unpredictable.
Being such a big dog it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold him and on more that one occasion pulled me over.
Walks became a nightmare, we dreaded seeing other dogs and started walking him early in the morning and late at night to avoid them.
We though about getting help for him but people were telling us he was too old to be trained. We tried a couple of trainers in Bath but his behaviour was not improving. Then someone told us about Colin Rose – Dog intuition.
Colin explained why Zak was reacting and that we had to use positive reward based training to get Zak to trust dogs again. We started the training with Colin and his dogs and then introduced Zak to other dogs in a controlled way.
With Colin’s encouragement we stuck at the training, it has taken a while but we can now walk Zak with 9 other dogs without a reaction, he is now starting to join in the play. So nice to see him happy again!
We are getting more and more confident with him, now allowing him to meet dogs he has not met before. We still get the odd reaction, little bark, but nothing like we had before and he is easier to control.
Zak is now a joy to take out thanks to Colin’s patience – we could not have done it without him. It is so lovely to see Zak running and socialising with Colin’s dogs and other dogs too.
We can’t thank Colin enough.
Anne & Carol