Dog Name: Zena
Dog Age: 3 Yrs.
Dog Breed: Neapolitan Mastiff
Behaviour issues:
Dog Aggression, Obedience Issues, People Aggression, Phobias
Zena was behaving aggressively to any visitor that came to the door even after guests have been present for hours – a slight hand gesture or movement to get up will set her off into a frenzy of growls and barking. Some friends and relatives are reluctant to visit as she is a massive dog. Zena also is very fearful of people while walking on the leash and as her owner passes people she is constantly looking over her shoulder at them in fear. They are expecting their first child in September and are expecting a lot of guests and hope to correct these behaviours. Also, they were told that they should consider re-homing her because they have a baby on the way.
Outcome Descriptions:
Zena spent years feeling she needed to protect her pack – no one has shown her that there is a leader consistent enough to take care of the threats – so she took over. In the first session, we were able to keep Zena back from the door. She still growled when I moved but by the end of the session I walk beside her while Sarath corrected her and she didn’t “punch” me. She was starting to relax – much work is to be done with Sarath and Priya finally exuding leadership.
Client Comment / Review:
We contacted Bark Busters because we were unable to invite guests into our home and recently we noticed she was getting aggressive towards male veterinarians when we took her to animal clinics. Also we had a baby arriving soon.
Lisa was very helpful when I spoke to her over the phone, she was genuinely interested in learning more about Zena and what we had been practicing, by not being over critical. When Lisa arrived, she basically asked us to go through the everyday scenario and explained to us what was right and wrong in what we were doing, and what was the work around it, rather than imposing.
We continue training and are seeing immense change in Zena. We even had a guest over to our house for an hour and it went well without any problems.
We understood that the core issue was the leadership and we hope once this is dealt with, the rest of the issues will disappear. And we see that consistent training is required to see faster changes in Zena.