Trials and Tribulations with Anika: When to Hire a Trainer

Anika is my third Weimaraner. After having had two prior Weims, I thought I knew how to handle them. Ha! Ha! Joke's on me!

We acquired her when she was eight months old. My prior Weim, Coco, was about 18 months old when she came to live with us. Those months make a difference. Anika always had that extra reserve of energy. Nothing wore her out. She is exceptionally suited to be the hunting dog she was bred to be. She is extremely focused on the various squirrels, cats, birds, and flying insects that enter our yard. However, my husband and I do not hunt nor do we have any interest in beginning. So our hunting dogs are pets.

Having been broken in with Coco, I thought I knew what to expect. And although Anika resembles Coco in many ways (her sire is Coco's brother), I didn't realize what a challenge she would be the first couple of years that we had her. Those first two years of Weimaranerdom are crazy! But as time went on and I researched and learned more about her behavior, I realized I had a reactive dog on my hands.

Out walking in our neighborhood, if we walked past another dog or person, she would pull on the leash, jump, bark, and bite the leash. If I was walking her with Steffi, my calm 11-year-old Weim, she would bite her and they would both pull and bark. It became not only a spectacle, but a danger since they are very strong, and once pulled my off my feet, and Anika once bit my arm in her frenzy. I had to do something other than never take her for walks.

I bought Patricia McConnell's book, Feisty Fido: Help for the Leash-Reactive Dog. Although the book was helpful, I really needed personal, one-on-one help from a trainer. If you've never had a leash-reactive dog, you don't realize how difficult it is the take a simple walk around the neighborhood. When walking Anika, I had to constantly be on the lookout for anything that might raise her threshold into the red zone. Nothing was relaxing for me or for her.

With the help of Cheryl Flemming of For the Love of Dogs, LLC, I am now able to walk her! Cheryl was recommended by my riding buddy, Betsy Adams. What a godsend Cheryl has been! We started with an at-home session where Cheryl could observe our interactions and find out what I wanted help with.

Cheryl is an advocate and practitioner of clicker training. She quickly had me clicking and rewarding Anika for walking by my side and watching me. Once we had that behavior established, outside we went on a walk. It's much more difficult out where there are more distractions, but we worked and worked on it under Cheryl's watchful eye.

After four or five at-home sessions with Cheryl and practicing on my own with Anika for several months, I've been able to manage her anxiety on our walks by watching her behavior and always having some high-value treats along to reward her. Our walks are never really totally relaxing, but they are so much better than they used to be and I now have the tools I need to help reduce her anxiety and boost her confidence.

I always bring a bag of treats with me for her and just in case I need to throw treats at a dog who's not on a leash to distract the dog from us (don't get me started on that!). Plus, I no longer walk the two dogs together.

Now when I walk Anika, I can observe her and when I see the signs of high anxiety, I stop her, have her sit and give her a few treats to calm her. Most of the time she turns back to me when she feels anxious and waits for her praise. Now my job is to fade her from all the treats, but we are not there yet!

October 1

We like to drive to the beach at least once each fall.

Forget summer! Too many people. Too difficult to park. Too many bodies to navigate the dogs around as we make our way to the sand.

But as we have had an especially hot summer and fall, we thought we needed to make it to the beach one last time before the rains hit. Last week, Thursday, was it.

As I drove and tried to manage Anika's travelling anxiety, my phone kept receiving news alerts. Since I was driving, I didn't look to see what the alerts were. Once we had parked, I took a quick look to see that a school shooting had taken place in the lovely town of Roseburg on the campus of Umpqua Community College. By the time we were enjoying the sunshine and our lives and the joy of our dogs, nine people had lost their lives in the pursuit of higher education.There is obviously something very, very wrong with this scenario.

I had not planned to write about the shooting in this post, but as I thought about our beautiful day, I realized this was the most terrible day for many, many others.

So I leave you with this: Nature's beauty -- Haystack rock on Cannon Beach.

Weims are Aggressive Chewers

I took Anika in for a routine dental cleaning and found that she had two cracked teeth. The huge molars on either side of her mouth. The dental specialist recommended two root canals with crowns. The estimate was over $5,000! I love my dogs, and I will spend that much money to save a life, but for an optional crown? I don't think so. After discussing the options, I decided on one tooth extraction and one root canal, no crowns.

This is all because of fierce chewing on antlers and Nylabones. So I learned the hard way (no pun intended) not to give them things to chew on that can break their teeth. Consider this a warning.

Here is a pile of toys I had to throw away. You can see how much they were chewed down.

I invested in some puzzle-type toys that the dogs have to work at to get the treats out. The purple ones are not popular. The rubber tastes bad and the kibble is too difficult to get out. They end up eating the rubber. The orange balls are great, but I have to watch them at all times or they will crack the plastic. The best one is the big green toy with the yellow top. It fills with kibble and there's an adjustable opening on the bottom. The dog rolls it around by her nose and the kibble falls out. This toy seems to be indestructible. The biggest problem with all of these is that they involve treats and if you don't want to give your dog endless treats (which I don't), then other options need to be given. The green toys are like tennis balls and they enjoy chasing them and playing with me.

I give Anika one of those rawhide chews every week or so, but I am cautious with rawhide for fear it will lodge in her gut. Steffi gets a tiny piece cut off so she doesn't feel left out.

But ultimately, they need to get outside and play and run. Anika has single-handedly eradicated our yard of fledgling birds this spring. Great sport for her, but not so good for the little birdies.