Hello and Happy New Year! I am writing here in hopes of some Border Collie advice! In February of 2014, I adopted a BC/Great Pyrenees mix named Ozy (3 months).Now, Ozy is a little over a year and has grown from 10lbs to 50lbs. Since I adopted Ozy, he has had anxiety issues and has been a very nervous dog. Although he is really sweet around me and people he is close to, he is wary of strangers (and basically anything unfamiliar). To help him, we run 5-6 days a week (2-3mi) and I use positive reinforcement training to teach him good behaviors. He is really intelligent, but any loud noise causes him to adopt a defensive posture and lose attention. Recently, Ozy and i have been staying at a house different than our own. While at home Ozy is fairly welcoming to newcomers, here he approaches them tentatively. After the initial approach, he takes a couple steps back and begins to bark defensively. In order to deal with this, I have had to take Ozy into the backyard and close the doggy door. If Ozy is not close to the strangers, he does not bark. I am worried that if this behavior continues Ozy could possibly react by biting or harming someone. He is an incredibly nice dog, but the fact that he is scared so easily and quickly makes him relatively unpredictable. Are there any methods of training that I could use to help him with his anxiety? Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this behavior appropriately and positively? If you have any questions about his eating behavior, past training I have done with Ozy, or anything else, let me know! Thanks!
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 19:42:21 +0000
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