Moving From Over-Reactive to a Trusting Partnership - An Honest Hounds Mentee Blog
While two of my dogs have progressed well on our Honest Hounds journey, they work with me, join our social walks, and help in assessments for clients - many here won’t have met my third dog, Rufus!
He was actually my first dog and the one to take me down the vortex that is ‘dog behaviour’. He was always going to be the biggest project, so I put some of that work on hold a while and focused on the other dogs. We did, of course, make changes in the house, reset boundaries, got to work on recall in safe spaces - but we didn’t tackle the big challenge, which was his drive to attack other dogs when we were out and about.
The turn of 2025 saw us ready to move forward - aside from all the changes we had made in the house and socialising with ‘safe’ dogs. It was a big project, but I had support from everyone here, notably affiliate trainer , who I imagine is still haunted by my WhatsApp voice notes and boarding him for a few days to bring him on still.
Rufus has moved on exponentially in these short few months, from a dog who would not only move to attack oncoming dogs but actively seek them out to practice this behaviour - to one who the vast majority of the time will issue a small grumble on sight of a dog and raise his hackles. If it is far enough away...he will simply acknowledge it!
This is all great news, I hear you cry! And yes, whilst it is, sadly I wasn’t truly aware it was happening. I could say ‘ah yes, that was a good walk’ but I couldn’t see the change happening as an overall.
I can, however, describe with acute accuracy the two times since January he has behaved less than impeccably. We joined the partnership & connection workshop last weekend in Dundee - and these incidents are all I could remember as I walked to the van for our turn - not the positive changes, but the incidents that could be repeated.
Why is that?
The answer is simple. I’m behind his progress. I’m now pulling him back now to where I’m ‘comfortable’ being - panic; trauma; crisis management.
I know how to cope in that state. It’s familiar. I can mitigate risk, keep others safe, and protect my dog from making mistakes.
As a trainer, I am used to supporting others in these situations, and having worked through similar with my other two - I forgot all of that and could feel myself slip in to management and control; tight leads, tension applied by me, not him - everything feels different with him.
The problem with all this is that we won’t grow! He can’t shake off the remaining stress shackles he has, and likewise, I’ll never be able to enjoy a relaxed walk with all my dogs anywhere there ‘could’ be a surprise dog. And we are aiming higher.
Spending hours drilling down on how some of the tiny connection opportunities every day had such an impact on our relationship, and seeing the trust we could have in each other was amazing.
The next day, I woke and decided Rufus had the skills to lead a social walk with me - please believe me when I say this is INSANE when I am still seeing the old version of him in my mind.
He did amazingly well; he respected others’ boundaries (apart from human, Lucy, who he wanted to hang with a little too much - but we’ll work on that next ) averted his gaze from potential conflict, sidestepped reactions from other dogs, and walked past multiple other dogs both on and off lead.
Working on our partnership was the missing link for us to start creating trust.
When I started the journey rehabbing three behavioural cases at once, I did recognise that one would likely take longer than the others, but I didn’t realise it would actually be me!
By Gill Fraser
