Health and Behaviour - There’s a serious link!

When you’re ill, in pain or even hungry does your behaviour change?

I bet it does! Snickers, you’re not you when you’re hungry.

Same with dogs!

Now, this can be tricky to spot when the puppy is still really young and hasn’t had a real chance to show the real them.

Sammy here had giardia. This is a nightmare parasite that usually isn’t killed by normal wormers.

Often, dogs with giardia often show a lack of impulse control, high levels of frustration, are underweight and a lack of bite inhibition, which summed Sammy up, and is the reason I recommended a good vet check which led to being able to pick this up.

Now the giardia has been treated, we see the real Sammy, a lot of these behaviour issues with Sammy reduced on their own when the discomfort went away, but since he has grown up with this, some of these behaviours are all he knows and we now need to work on these.

Sammy used to attack the other dog in the house when dinner was being prepared, which we fixed by teaching him to go to bed, then again when they were getting ready for a walk, so we taught him place and heel while getting ready to leave. He’s doing well with these and we are now tackling the outside behaviours.

Outside, Sammy is reactive to movement, regardless of what it is that’s moving. Our first step is building his focus and teaching calmer behaviours out and about. We need to have a default behaviour to replace the reactivity and looking back at his handler is the one for him.

This is our first session outside, he’s already doing super well and we need to now practice this until it’s near perfect, everywhere.

Well done guys, great work!

If this case sounds like your dog and you are having a similar issue, or a different issue entirely, book a FREE assessment call with us by clicking HERE.