Morgan from Tempe, called us as a referral from a past client who needed help training her recently adopted dog, Rosie. Rosie, her terrier, pitbull mix was only 4 months old, but had a rough start to life. She was found with her littermates, but no mother and she had very little socializing skills with other dogs. Rosie became very attached to Morgan and began to resource guard Morgan. This was likely because Morgan was the first constant thing in her life. Morgan gave her constant food, affection and shelter that she became accustomed to and she did not want that to go away.
When Morgan sat down for our initial visit she seemed a bit defeated because she didn’t know why Rosie was acting this way and was not sure if there was anything she could do to stop the behavior. Morgan was also a small framed woman who didn’t feel she could control Rosie for much longer on walks and in crowded environments, so she stopped doing them altogether.
Morgan signed Rosie up for the Boarding School program, but after a lot of processing of the information changed her mind and switched to the Unlimited program as she felt doing the training at a slower pace would be best for her needs, more so than Rosie’s. After only 2 lessons Morgan began to feel more confident and showed her personality [upbeat and happy] more and more. She came to lessons looking and feeling like she could lead Rosie through anything, which included a pack walk with Rosie and another reactive dog. She said that she didn’t think anything like that could happen for her and yet she was walking and leading two dogs who in the past would have reacted to each other very differently.
