Recommended equipment for placing rescue dogs

[Page Fever]

Here's a question...

I have a young, very very very strong dog who will be up for adoption in about five months. Did I mention that he is very very very strong? He is also very young, and very happy. I'm having a great time in clicker-training and positive reinforcement training him. He is happy and waggy the whole time. I have been using positive reinforcement, also, to get him to walk on a loose leash. It works, technically. It's just that when he first starts out on his walk, he is so explosively excited that his attention span is about two seconds. Maybe less. I happen to be about six feet tall, and very strong. But a potential adopter might not be. After about twenty minutes of the "be a tree" exercise, or after about ten minutes of jogging around making quick turns so that he's more inclined to pay attention to where I'm going, then he settles down fairly and walks well. But that warm-up period is really difficult. I don't know if there's equestrians in the group -- but he reminds me of one of those horses that is completely safe and calm ONLY if he is cantered around on a lunge line for a while before mounting up. I have tried initiating walks when he is tired from some other exercise, but it really does not seem to help.

Meanwhile, I have introduced him to a Halti. He accepted it very well, and it helps in controlling him. My problem is that I don't really like Haltis. Part of it is just personal pride. I feel that it is just using a piece of equipment that I wouldn't have to use if I had been able to train him correctly. The other part of it is that I don't trust other people using Halties. People have a leash in their hand, and they tend to jerk it. It would break my heart to have my exuberant dog lose focus and someone to cause him to bash into the end of his Halti and get all torqued up.

I am trying to train this dog with the idea that eventually he'll be going to a new owner, and more or less trying to guess what that person is going to want. I'm assuming that they're going to want a controllable dog. I can't decide if it is better to just continue working with him on his regular collar, and placing him with the information that only the physically strong should attempt to handle him and that he's young and excited and might not be perfect all the time, and hopefully the new owners will continue his positive training, or placing him in a Halti and hoping that the people will know how to use it and won't wreck him.

*Note: Sometimes I daydream about becoming a professional dog trainer. When I do, I can't help but wonder if I would be doing it ONLY so that I can require that people who adopt MY rescues can come and take free classes.

That way, I can continue to be controlling and obsessive. :wink:

[Renee]

Hi Page-

How would you feel about using a sensation harness or premier's easy walk harness? If you adopted this dog out, why not give the new owners a quick lesson how to use the harness and how to successfully walk this energetic boy.

[Page Fever]

I did think about getting him some type of harness...but around here, only the really sketchy pit bull owners walk their dogs on harnesses, and I don't want him associated with any of that, even in the eyes of innocent bystanders. Thinking about it a lot after I put up the post, I just don't believe I'm much of an equipment person. We are making progress, and I do have him for another four or five months, so I'm sure he'll settle down. And I always suggest to people to take an obedience class anyway, just to bond with their new dog even if he's already been trained.

[Jody Bidlack]

Ok, you do have an equestrian in the group. Here is my experience with horses. Most horses that need to be lunged (ran around in small circles to tire them out/warm them up) are not getting enough exercise or are being fed a diet that is too "high energy." The first thing I do with those horses is to not confine them in a stall. They live in a fenced area that allows them ample exercise. The 2nd thing I do is gradually change their diet to what God intended. No alfalfa, no corn, etc. They eat grass or grass hay. The only exception to this is animals that are underweight, sick or missing too many teeth. I give my horses very little grain. I bring them in twice a day and most get a little as a treat. The ones that get more have weight or other health issues. A very wise vet once told me that, thanks to mankind's intervention, many modern horses are bred to be lean. Their genetics do not allow them to store fat very well. Excess fat, sugar, starch, etc. in their diet quite often is not stored as fat and is released in the form of anxiety, excitability and too much energy.

I would imagine that dogs are similar. I would recommend that whoever adopts this dog have a very large fenced yard and the time to play with him a lot. You may also want to put him on a dog food that doesn't have a lot of corn (or other high sugar ingredients) in it. Animal feed has lots of corn in it because it is cheap and it tastes good, but when was the last time you heard of farmers being worried about dogs, wolves or coyotes ravaging their corn fields. It is just not their natural food.
Jody

[Kimberly Lyons]

Lol, that is true about the corn field!! What I do with my GSD, is I have taught him to trot about on a lounge line in the backyard. I took a leaf out of a horse book and started doing this. I only do this some of the time because I read that if you do this every time, the the horse/dog will HAVE to do this before each session/walk etc. So I vary it up. Sometimes I put him on a treadmill and let him run for as long and he wants. Othertimes I put him in a lake and trot around the edge with him swimming alongside.