I can’t start telling you about my experience training Paco, without you first knowing some of his background.  At least the background I know about him.  Paco was one of hundreds of little brown chihuahua, terrier, dachshund mixes that end up in the shelter, in our area.  Here is where I have to be honest, as much as I don’t like to admit this, I never really liked little dogs.  I’m a big dog person, I’ve always had big dogs, little dogs just never appealed to me.  At all.

I spent some time volunteering at my local shelter where there were mostly little dogs like Paco and Pit Bull mixes.  Once in a while, a lab  might come through and would get adopted within just a couple of days, seeing as how I’m being honest, this is how I found my lab, at the shelter.  A big black lab with deep brown eyes.  It was love at first sight and now he is one of the best dogs I’ve ever owned.  I also adopted my Pit Bull from the same shelter, she was 3 months old, a cute bundle of blue with hazel eyes.  But my personal dogs are a story for another time.

As I continued to volunteer, I found that “Hey, these little dogs aren’t so bad”  They still did all the little dog stuff that I dislike, shaking or trembling as if they are terrified all the time.  But truthfully, they really were not that bad!  So the shelter taught me many things one of which was to get over my bias about little dogs.  Which I did.

Back to Paco’s story.  So into the shelter comes one more little brown dog, with white socks and little brown freckles on his feet.  Just as cute as the rest of them. Only Paco’s reality was going to be much different from the rest of the little brown dogs there.  A bowl of food was put before Paco, as he ate, a big plastic bite test hand entered his bowl.  Paco promptly bit the strange looking hand.  Now his destiny was sealed.  Paco was taking his trip over the rainbow bridge!

It just so happened that a rescue organization came by and decided once again that Paco would have a different fate.  The rescue knew just the right foster family for him, and once again, he found himself in a safe but still unfamiliar home.  Paco’s luck was changing.  At first he might have been frightened or timid, but who wouldn’t be.  Soon he learned to trust his foster parents and other foster dogs.  And life was good.  The foster family knew Paco had some issues and knew that he would need some behavior modification training to help him find his forever home.

This is where I get lucky.  I just happen to know the foster family and had been discussing Paco with them, when they decided to entrust me with his training.  Some of Paco’s issues were nipping, incessant barking, resource guarding and piddling on the floor when excited or scared.  The biggest problem was that Paco would not let new people touch him, he would snap and bark at them.  As a dog trainer, I knew that all of his problems were associated with how he felt about himself, very insecure and that all of his outward behaviors were just symptoms of this insecurity.  People get dogs for many reasons, and one of those reasons is to make ourselves feel better, and unfortunately little dogs get the worst end of our emotions.  We think we are doing things that the dog likes, but truthfully, we are only satisfying our own ideas of what we think the dog needs or what makes him happy!

People use little dogs as accessory items.  They dress the dog in clothes (I know that little dogs get cold, so if it is truly cold, maybe a little sweater or keep the dog indoors).  Dogs don’t need to wear dresses or suits, they don’t need to be carried in your hand bag or worse, one of those contraptions that you strap on across yourself so your dog can ride on your stomach.  That is for human mothers with newborn babies!  People carry their little dogs instead of letting them walk and worse still, pick them up, at any human perceived note of danger.  All of these things are what causes little dogs to have what is know as the Napoleon complex, and they start to think they are bigger then they are.

Knowing that Paco’s outward symptoms were only a reflection of his fearful, insecure self.  I knew right away how to get started training him.  The first thing we did, as soon as the foster family tried to hand him to me, I said “no, put him on the ground”  took his bag of food supplies and off we went, no problems at all.  On leash, I introduced him to my home and then we promptly went for a pack walk with my two dogs,  best way to introduce dogs in my experience is to go for a walk.  Paco understood very quickly who the established leader was, not because of anything I did to him but because he saw how I handled my own dogs and how they responded to me, how I advocated for Paco, when my own dogs got to curious.  Paco still shook, but I knew it would dissipate soon enough.  Paco learned how to heel with an auto sit, sit/stay, down/stay, kennel up, wait at thresholds, wait for food and he learned place!  Somewhere along the way, Paco stopped shaking and started to enjoy all the new things he was learning.  Although I don’t train using treats, I’m not against trying something different in order to get the desired results.  Knowing that Paco would be doing lots of meet and greets to get adopted, we needed a way for him to begin to trust strangers.  So we went out on the town and I handed a treat to a stranger, who then knelled down, and showed Paco a palm with a treat.  Paco promptly took the treat and liked the hand and then even allowed the stranger to pet him. Not once did he snap or bark at the stranger!  Eureka!!!  Paco now has a strong foundation and is ready for his forever home.

I would like to thank the foster family who put their trust in me and my training methods,  without you, I would not be able to thank Paco for showing me how to train a trembling little brown Chihuahua mix by using a much lighter hand and  reminding me that all dogs need the same thing.  Leadership, structure, balance and rules!