Note the word 'fix' in the title. All I wanted to do was fix Ben as quickly as possible, I wanted him to be a normal dog I could take to the park who could meet other dogs and play. I wanted to sit at the café on the local park with my family/friends with their dogs and have a coffee, with the dogs happily playing and just doing what dogs do. This was my biggest problem, I didn't want to walk my dog on lead in a muzzle with everyone staring at him and him unhappy with this thing on his face. The amount of times I went back to that local park where all his problems started, pushing his boundaries, not thinking about him and how stressful it must have been. I look back now and think - what the hell was I doing? I was posting about Ben's problems on a Labrador Forum and ignoring advice about walking him separate to Elsa, about muzzling him where other dogs were and taking time to find the right trainer. I was rushing into everything desperate for that 'cure'. Pushing him too far making any work I was doing with him go back to square one.
I was setting my dog up to fail from the moment I set out to cure him. There is no cure, there is management and there is improvement.
I am going to stop there for now because I was going to write about each trainer I have seen and I don't know whether to or not now, this blog is Ben's story so far so maybe I should, but something is stopping me. What do my readers think?
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