Luna is a 1-Year Old German Shepherd/American Bulldog Mix from Fairfield, CA who attended our 3-Week Behavior Modification Training Camp.

Luna struggled with nipping at certain house guests when they attempted to pet her. She was also very anxious and aggressive. She would jump on people to greet them and when she got really excited, she would chew on everything she could put her teeth on including shoes and furniture.

The first week of training Luna was taught: sit with built in stay, down with built in stay, heel, leash walking, and place. She was very eager to learn and loved earning her food rewards! After she was taught with food and understood, a slip lead was used to teach leash pressure then we gradually introduced low level e-collar pressure. Lunda was also conditioned to work in a muzzle so that she could be protected in public if someone tried to reach for her to pet her without asking first.

Luna’s jumping was addressed by redirecting her to sit or to her place in the house, allowing her to slowly get comfortable in her own time. Once she warmed up she did really well with people, but she was easy to scare if there was too much pressure to say hi immediately. Her reactivity to dogs was addressed by keeping her occupied with obedience so that she didn’t become so stressed when dogs were around. Working with a lot of dog distractions during camp such as visits to dog parks and walks with multiple dogs helped her confidence around dogs immensely. Luna feels much more comfortable when she has direction so she responded very well to training and enjoyed having her anxiety put to ease.

Luna came to us pretty reactive to dogs and very nervous and distrustful of people. As her training progressed she became much more relaxed around both dogs and people and was able to feel safe knowing that she would be directed if she started to get uneasy.

We gave Luna’s owner’s some homework on preparing for guests to come over. We went over how to get her to drop items that she shouldn’t have such as shoes and how to keep on top of nuisance chewing behavior. On our walk during her go home lesson her owner’s were able to successfully manage her around dogs and learned how to have a two way conversation with her and keep her engaged where she would have otherwise been extremely nervous and reactive.