crazy red

[TREY]

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[Guest SweetJordan]

You need to teach him to have an off switch.

Riley didn't come w/ one, but now she has a beautiful off switch.

 

 

To make a long story short I used her crate for chill out periods for the first couple of weeks or so that she was home w/ us. I would provide her w/ some good quality exercise (mental and physical). Then I slowly increased time spent out of the crate. I would do things such as down and stays to get her to stop moving outside of the crate, and I would only reward and pay attention to her when she was in a calm state. At first I would only find her calm for a couple of seconds, but slowly that increased. Also during this time she began to use her crate on her own to chill out in. And before long I no longer had to give her chill out times in her crate, and I got her to the state where she would spend time sleeping during the day which was a big step. Now she has no problem relaxing on her own. She will spend time playing on her own or w/ one of her doggie friends. Some mornings when she gets up and I'm brushing my teeth she'll do sprints up and down the hallway on her own, but she's not bothering anyone. And if she wants to play and I feel that she's had enough and I'm busy I tell her to go lay down. That means she can either literally go lay down or she can play by herself and she will choose one or the other on her own. I've also found that with her being a young high drive BC she of course needs more actitivity than most dogs, but if I provide her w/ too much then she goes into overdrive and becomes overstimulated.

I think the main thing that helped her was again rewarding her only when she was calm. She was moved around alot so she had a lot of nervous energy as well and literally had to learn how to behave outside a crate(living in a crate was all she knew from her previous owners). So it can be done it just takes a little bit of work.