JIMMY'S TRANSFORMATION FROM FERAL TO FORGIVING!
View his transformation here:  https://youtu.be/QXB6fia2McI

Shea's Lounge Book Signing Event at Whitie's Pets 2014

Tower Pet Parade 2014

Tower Pet Parade 2013

When you walk a dog on a leash, you can open a pathway to your dog of complete understanding. Not through anger or yanking,  but with subtle calm and assertive commands and corrections that are carefully applied to help your dog to understand your position on the things you approve of and the things you don't approve of.  From there, you can incorporate sounds and hand signals and your body language to help keep your dogs attention and to built a conduit for the transfer of information. 

When I first found Jimmy, a Pomeranian and Terrier mix at a local shelter, he was the one who ran away and wouldn’t let anyone (except maybe two volunteers) actually pick him up or to even get near him.  He was there for 19 months and probably would have never been adopted.  With the help of a young volunteer girl, we were able to corner Jimmy and throw a blanket over him so I could then hold him steady and put a leash over his snarling, snapping and fully frightened face.  He was quite scary. He bit me numerous times and drew blood every time he bit.  I found out that previous to his 19 months at the shelter, he had been abandoned and living at a local car wash for at least 3 months until he was trapped and taken to the shelter.   

Jimmy is like many...many dogs in America, who for any number of reasons, find themselves dumped on the streets or into shelters, where it is hard for them to get placed into another home.  Unfortunately, people really don't look at dogs as family members, as much as they might look at them as expendables and something they could return or just dump when the dog doesn't perform to their expectations.  Dogs don't simply match peoples expectations miraculously through some sort of vulcan mind meld, or through dog human osmosis...Dogs MUST get their directions and rules and understandings from very clear and concise directions from a caring dog owner who wishes only to build a quality relationship between them and their loving companions.  The dog owner needs to make his/her intentions extremely clear and concise (like a parent teaching a child about safety around cars or strangers etc.)  Like the child, the dog also needs to learn how to listen and understand what it's owner is telling them.  This is where I come in!

Most problems between man and dog occur when absolutely no real direction or leadership from the dog owners are given to the dog...other than "NO",  and so the dogs simply revert to what their instincts tell them to do, and therein lies the rub...BECAUSE when a dog believes he is in charge of himself or that he is the master of his own destiny, then dogs will make bad decisions that effect everyone around them, and thus...end up on the streets or in the long growing line of Euthanasia.  I work directly with dog owners and dogs who have never built these relationships and understandings between them.  Jimmy was afraid of people from the beginning when he was abandoned at that car wash.  He needed to learn to have trust again because all he really knew was that, for some reason, he was thrown out the door of his family home and given low odds to survive on his own.  Something he did or even perhaps a way he may have reacted, caused his owner to say "I'm not going to deal with that crap"...and out the door he goes !  The real problem was that the owner didn't really want to spoend the time, or didn't know how to spend their time, teaching Jimmy how to learn to understand what was acceptable and unacceptable to his owner, in a way that fostered Jimmy's learning and understanding.  No wonder Jimmy ran from people! His own people turned against him and sentenced him to a slow and agonizing death while alone on the mean streets!  

I think most people who have had dogs, discover that dogs can be very hard to train and even harder to catch if they do not wish to be caught.  Just try running after a dog who gets out of your fenced in yard or through the front door, who has not been previously trained to listen to it’s master.  Sometimes the shear joy alone of that feeling of freedon and adventure, is enough for a dog to ignore it's owner's orders to return, as it explores the neighborhood to it’s hearts content…or until you catch him, or even worse.  

In my opinion, Leash training is the cornerstone to all communication between man and dog.  PERIOD!~ Without leash training, (unless you are adept in getting and keeping your dog’s attention with your voice and hand signals alone), you will not be able to train any dog to listen to you.  The leash is like the telephone line that runs directly from your thoughts and straight into your dog’s head.  When used properly, without anger or malice or frustrated bad intent, the leash becomes the way to teach your dog valuable information and to keep your dog in the game of learning what you want and don't want.   

Dogs react in many different ways to the leash, from some who immediately submit at the very first tap, to others who scream and holler and fight and bite with all their might just to get out of their feelings of being trapped, or as I like to all it…their view of "Being held down by the man!"  Once the leash is introduced and utilized properly, and the dog begins to realize that they are not trapped and that they actually get good things from responding appropriately to the owners requests, then they can relax and enjoy the ride.  See Jimmy's transformation from fearing the leash to learning how it helped him to connect with me and to all the good things being submissive brings.   This is the video documenting Jimmy's transformation.  https://youtu.be/QXB6fia2McI 

BE WHO YOUR DOG LOOKS UP TO!

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