Why Does My Dog Do That? by Caroline Spencer

Author:Caroline Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472110060
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Using the Levels – Case Studies

Two different clients but the same problem – toe nipping.

The ‘problem’ that these two clients presented with was their dogs biting toes. This is quite a common behaviour which can range from resulting in a mild tickling action through to irritating to downright painful.

The first client’s dog had started at ‘tickling’ but had moved to ‘irritating’. Usually what happened was that the family were sitting around in the evening with bare or stockinged feet. The dog approached and sniffed, licked or gently nibbled toes. The recipient of the pedicure would giggle or pull their feet away with a laugh. What a good game. Then the human alternated the foot and gave further attention to the dog who then knew how to get his humans dancing, even when they were sitting down. Other family members laughed, which encouraged the dog who then decided that he’d do it to everybody. But when they can’t concentrate on what they are doing due to the nibbling, people can suffer a severe sense of humour failure.

Now this dog was a nice little fellow but ‘persistent’ was his middle name. We tried moving him away as in Level 2 and then Level 3 above but to no avail. He nipped the husband’s right foot yet again and so this time he was removed from the room by a home line as removing ourselves to another room would have resulted in the dog becoming more intent on the foot nipping as he now had moving targets which would be far more fun.

He came back in, waited a very short while and nipped the left foot. Out he went again. On his return, he looked at the husband, gave him a wide berth and nipped the wife’s right foot. So he was removed for a third time.

When he returned, you could almost hear the cogs in his head going round. He looked at the husband as if to say, ‘I did your right foot and your left foot and both times I found myself on my own.’ He then looked at the wife. ‘I did your right foot and got removed so, on the balance of probability, if I do your left foot . . . do you know what? I don’t think I’ll bother.’ Three very short isolations, message learnt.

The second client’s dog was on the painful end of the scale. We followed the same procedure and, when it became obvious that the dog wasn’t going to take the hint, I said to the client, ‘Next time she does that, straight out. No speech or eye contact.’

‘Got it,’ he said.

She nipped again and I gave the client the nod. He took her by the collar and, while leading her from the room, said, ‘Right, young lady, out you go. You’re a very naughty little girl.’

I said, ‘No. Don’t say anything.’

He replied, ‘I didn’t.’

‘You did,’ his wife chipped in.

He became angry and said, ‘No I didn’t.’

I thought they were going to have a domestic but then his mother-in-law stepped in and said, ‘You did speak, love.

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