 Meet Patrick! This handsome young Staffie mix, was... er... *blush*... humping... all the time. He's being fostered in Scotland by Claire, who turned to iSpeakDog for help. Patrick is "very playful, a very quick learner, and wiggly!" Claire says. And, as mentioned above, he humps. A lot. Moving to a new home can be stressful for any dog, and by looking at the Body Language Gallery and learning about dog behaviors, Claire was able to see that Patrick was, indeed, distressed. From the webinar and the website, "I learned that dogs just want to be dogs, and that this behavior was coming from anxiety and stress more than anything," she says. Right away Claire set about helping Patrick tap into his doggie-self and feel more comfortable overall. She stopped feeding Patrick out of a bowl and switched to stuffing his food into a Kong. As you can see in the picture above, Claire gave Patrick a Nyla bone to get his "chew" on, and she puts treats in a braided t-shirt toy as well as in toilet paper cardboard inserts.
"I'm also letting him run free in our fenced-in area, which I was too timid to do last week," Claire says. As Patrick cannot possibly mount someone's leg while at the same time doing a sit-stay, Claire has been working on training that behavior so that she can ask Patrick to sit when she sees that he's gearing up to mount. And it's working. Sounds like Patrick is in great hands with Claire, who says that he is improving rapidly. With her help, young Patrick hopefully will find a forever home soon. If you would like to learn more about this topic, visit our Humping page. How has iSpeakDog helped you and your pooch? Do you have a story to share? We'd love to hear from you. Comments are closed.
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