broccolini
Well-Known Member
I really liked her response email. I am really interested on how this goes and your experience with a behavorist. I have always wondered exactly how they work with the owners and the dogs in comparison to a trainer.
Yes, me too.
We've worked with trainers and she went to puppy class. She's very good at fooling the trainers into thinking she will act like a normal dog. She was the star of her puppy class. Even with the other dogs around. She would just lay on the floor and look at me when we weren't doing exercises.
One trainer was used to working with Malinois. I liked him, but none of his methods were ever going to work outside of our yard. The other trainer was a big fan of choke collars. Athena was not.
Also, I'm not really worried about regular training stuff. Athena is a good dog. She has good house manners and for a Tibetan, she acts great around people. We have zero recall. She barks like a maniac. These are things we expect her to do so it's okay.
I only want help getting her to act reasonable around other dogs. And even with that, she's not the worst dog ever. We just live in an area where there are going to be a lot of dogs on the same sidewalk. I'd like her to be able to handle that. She has about a 20ft bubble for dogs walking toward her. We need something smaller.
And if this is mostly my fault, I want to know that too.