Diary of a broken dog - September

We continued to introduce Jax to each of the dogs with not much success. Jax lunged and snarled.
Each dog responded in a different way, but generally with curiosity, friendliness and tolerance.

Pat was in favor of just throwing Jax into the whole pack, as he had seen on Cesar Millan's show.
Finally he talked me into it. All six dogs were let into the yard, and Jax was led into the mix. For the most part our dogs simple wanted to sniff Jax, which he did not allow (whirling and snarling). The big dogs got bored with him in a few minutes and wandered off to take care of business or play with each other. Jax stood in the middle of all this, alarmed, worried looking.

At one point Beau trotted to Jax and did a play bow. Jax just stared. Beau bowed again, and again, and again, finally sinking into a hugely exaggerated deep play bow. "Do you hear me now?"
But Jax just stared...he didn't understand. I thought, "he doesn't speak 'dog'."Beau gave up and trotted away.

Jax trotted stealthily up to one dog after another to sniff and check each one out. Our dogs were patient, standing still for inspection, as soon as they turned to sniff Jax, he would dart away growling. I thought, "he has no dog manners."

During this month I took Jax for long walks 3 or 4 times a day. I tried clicker training, at first he was terrified of the clicker and would run from the room when he heard it. Finally outside on a leash, I clicked the clicker and dropped a greasy treat. Jax couldn't run because of the leash - after 3 or 4 greasy treats he figured it out and immediately lost his fear of the clicker.
Clicker= yum!

He was starting to enjoy walks, now he was pulling to go places. He was starting to sniff and inspect things he encountered, starting to behave like a real dog. I needed to change the pulling habit, so I used the clicker - clicking everytime he walked quietly next to me - but this turned into, "run ahead, fall behind, get a treat, run ahead fall behind get a treat." I felt clumsy with the clicker and I wasn't teaching what I intended.

I tried the "be a tree" method - if the dog pulls, the handler stands still until the dog returns to the handlers side. I spent a lot of time standing still in the middle of the sidewalk while Jax flipped and jumped and leaped and lunged and ran in circles around me.

I tried "turn and walk in the opposite direction". Everytime Jax lunged ahead of me I turned around and walked in the other direction. This was a little bit more successful. Still. We never got much farther than the sidewalk in front of our house. All that turning back.

I tried Cesar's method, with the leash up close behind the ears - that was better - but what really made the difference was ME. I remembered what Janice Wolfe (dog whisperer NJ) looked like when she walked dogs - confident & happy. And I remember her saying, "don't look at that dog!"
So I adopted her posture, looked up and strode forward, and Jax trotted alongside me.

But not every time. Not always. But it does say a lot about the human part of the equation.