Considering leaving your trained dog with someone else for extended periods?
QUESTION:
My dog spent a week at my sister's house and now my dog is acting a little bit aggressive. What the heck? She has never barked at me unless she was playing. She has been pacing the house and wants nothing to do with me. What do I do?
ANSWER:
Most likely your dog has been spoiled over the course of the week away and has experienced being in charge of her own life for long enough to affect her. Your dog is avoiding you, not wanting you to resume your leadership. I will get to advising you what to do in a moment, but first of all...
I have to say, that’s why I try not to leave my dogs with anyone that's not going to properly maintain my training standards. Ideally, it’s best to take your dog with you whenever you travel, if you can. There are more and more hotels changing to pet-friendly status, making it easier (and more pleasurable!) to take your trained pet on holiday with you, or even on business trips, especially when traveling by car. This eliminates the heartbreak of having to leave your canine friend at home - an emotional experience for both you and your dog.
The other option is to find a reliable and competent local pet sitter that is either already familiar with my Perfect Dog training methods, or is willing to learn and diligently apply them. This could be a friend or family member, or an independent service provider.
It’s also best that the dog remains in its familiar environment (your home) versus being relocated to the pet sitter’s house/apartment for the length of your travels. Although this not absolutely necessary if you have no other option, it does help in terms of maximizing training maintenance. The reason being is that your dog is already familiar with exercising self-governance within the boundaries of your “house rules,” but a change in environment can require some degree of re-enforcement (and the caregiver might not be willing to go to that extent in terms of his/her service toward you and your dog).
Either way (that is, whether you choose the pet-friendly hotel or reliable pet sitter route), a competent alternate caregiver for your dog is far better that leaving your trained dog in the hands of a weak personality that could care less about your training standards. This is especially true when there are added negative influences e.g. if the caregiver has one or more untrained dogs, or if the place of care is a dog kennel full of unruly residents. These negative influences will be sure to undermine your hard-earned trainings results, influencing your dog to revert to old habits and behaviors.
Remember all of your time, effort, and love that went into completing my Perfect Dog training process with your dog? My opinion is that it’s not worth risking unraveling it all (or at least a significant portion of it) for the sake of saving some dollars, or for the sake of pleasing a kind friend or family member that would love to shower your dog with kisses (and cookies!) all week.
Nevertheless, if it’s too late (such as in your case), all hope is not lost. You have the opportunity to choose a different route next time you travel out of town, but for now you need to focus on getting your dog back on track as quickly as possible.
So, what exactly do you do? In your case, because aggression is the key issue, you’re going to have to muzzle the dog (review what I say about muzzles under the "Equipment" section on Perfect Dog DVD #1 - they're not just to stop a dog from biting) and reinforce some of the basics lessons - especially the "Down" command which is, remember, the most submissive command for a dog to obey.
You will need to properly re-establish your leadership before your dog earns freedoms again. DO NOT attempt commands without having the dog muzzled (together with the Command Collar and at least the medium-length Freedom Training Line attached to the dog as well, of course), even if you assume everything will be fine.
Also read the following older Blog post (Training Tip) as it contains some additional points that will help you. (Be sure to read all of the way to the end so as not to miss anything.) LINK: https://www.thedogfather.com/training-tips/help-i-have-an-extreme-dog
Don't be discouraged, though. It's a good learning opportunity and a chance to bring your dog’s training up to a point where things are better than ever. You did it once before, and you can easily do it again - and this time it will be even faster and easier because you and your dog will simply go through a stage of reinforcement and “tidying up some loose ends” vs. learning everything from scratch.
— Don Sullivan, “The DogFather”