A week after we adopted Paulie, we saw his true personality come through. Some good, some bad. Since we didn't know about his past life, we were actually training an old dog new tricks. It was very clear that Paulie was seriously a reactive dog. Taking him on walks was very stressful. He would bark at everything that moved. When he saw other dogs, and especially when I was walking him, he would get all fired up, trying to break loose of his collar to run towards the other dog. We figured that his past owner was an older lady for which he was very protective. I was at my wits end every time we walked. Immediately, we contacted a trainer for help. She came for a few hours to teach us the basic skills and left. Well, that did nothing. We were then told of a 5 week dog training class which was an hour away. On our initial meeting, Paulie was very excited and the staff told us their class would fix him. After shelling out more money, we went to the orientation with other dog owners. This didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know. The following Saturday, my husband drove as I sat in the back of the SUV with Paulie, enroute to our first class. (Picture below) Upon arrival, I saw a major issue as we entered the training room. The other dogs and their owners were all in the same room, separated with a partition. The dogs knew there were other dogs there so the barking started and continued for 90 minutes. By the time we left, we were frazzled and was now dealing with a dog who was a hot mess. I guess we liked punishment because we went back the next week. Things weren't getting better, however, we figured let's keep on going. During the second from the last class, clicker training was introduced. That sealed the deal. Paulie didn't like this method at all and we figured he associated the clicking noise to a bad experience in his puppy years. After that, we never went back for training.
After this roadblock, we contacted a few other trainers. One recommended a prong collar to teach Paulie when not to bark. That seemed to help to a point then when he was in the tantrum zone, it didn't matter, actually, nothing mattered. We opted to try one more time. We were promised their training would worked. We even sent him to doggie training for a week. Plus, we tossed in some additional one on one training. The training helped, however, the barking at other dogs was still happening. I even bought a barking collar and some other collar to train him not to bark. We used them in the video when we went to the horse farm. They made Paulie yip and to me, it was like pure torture. Personally, I didn't like these tools. At this point, we gave up and continued to use the techniques that all the trainers used hoping something positive would stick. This training process ran a few years and thousand of dollars later, we felt defeated. We agreed that working with Paulie and giving him a lots of love and attention was the best thing we could do for him right now. That's what we did.
The barking collar on the left is triggered when the dog starts to bark. There are two metal prongs on the underside that touches the dog skin. When this "shocked" Paulie, he would react into that "zone" and trying to calm him down was impossible. The prong collar is suppose to imitate when the mother dog nips at her puppies around the neck. This is her way of teaching the puppy from right and wrong. I didn't like this method from the get go, however, the training highly recommend it. Both methods made Paulie more reactive. We had another electronic collar that came with a remote. When you saw your dog starting to get reactive, you would push the button to send a "shock' signal to the dog. As Paulie got older, he became deaf and his eyes weren't as keen. He could still smell the scent of another dog, however, his reactiveness calmed down. I personally don't recommend any of these collars. Socializing your dog at the get go is the best way to avoid these issues. If you are a puppy owner, training is really key.
