George's problem - or is it mine?

So, am I a bad mother? You see how I am taking lessons from the Jewish mother? It's all my fault.

The psychologist was lovely and very encouraging and helpful. All we have to do is remember and put into practice all that she said.

Such as throwing his dinner around the garden. Why? I hear you ask. (Do I?)

George is first generation family pet. His parents were both working dogs on a farm. We met them and they were lovely but they had plenty to keep them busy. George is showing signs of frustration. Dogs in the wild would spend something like 70% of their day looking for and devouring their food. George spends 2 minutes. So to make it more of a challenge and thus use his brain and physical energy, throw it around the garden. Similarly hide leftovers or little treats behind bushes; this makes the garden a more interesting place to be in and should make him less likely to roam. He doesn't try to escape if we're in the garden with him as he has things to do.

He's showing signs of anxiety in his reaction to us when we take him out. I haven't mentioned it but he's been quite bolshy and aggressive on occasion. The psychologist said this is a last resort; all his other methods of communication had been ignored. Signs of stress like licking his lips, yawning, panting, as well as more obvious body language like tail dropped and ears back.

So we have to learn to hear what he's saying to us before he gets to the aggression. But for the meantime try to avoid things that cause him stress until we can gradually help him to overcome his fear. The thing that most appears to cause him stress is going out for a walk from the front gate. So we have to go out the back gate. (Okay, now he's beginning to sound like a neurotic but there is logic honestly! The front gate is nearer to the road.)

And we have to begin the training again because we'd lapsed pretty badly on that.

Keeping him busy, distracting him, making what we want him to do seem interesting - all these type of things we have to work on.

We'd also been getting some things wrong. We'd been advised that if he growled we should pin him down. This is a no-no. She explained things about positive and negative reward and punishment but I got a bit confused. Fortunately Claire (the psychologist) is sending us a report and in the meantime has given me lots of standard advice sheets.

Also the dominance thing. Claire explained that he doesn't want to be dominant: he would rather have decisions made for him because he doesn't have the experience to judge and make good decisions. So he'd rather have that taken out of his hands but he has to learn that he is able to trust us.

Oh, so many things she said. Collars with a calming hormone. Feeding tubes that he has to work food out of. Giving him attention when we want to and not when he wants it. (That's very hard. I talk to him all the time - even though half the time, does he listen to his mother?) But she also said, 'he's lovely.'
xx