Hiding behind her owner.
Josephine is a big, heavily muscled young Cane Corso with a sensitive streak. Walks were the problem: “So my only issue, truthfully speaking, with this one is, it was the walking,” her owner said. Cars and stores worried her, and she would sit behind her owner to hide.
With strangers, her trainers recall, she used to bark, back off fast or turn standoffish.
“Freedom, basically.”
Her program started with freedom, not drills. On a 33-foot Flexi she had room to explore, and more than one trainer worked with her from the start so she got used to new people.
Asked what helped most, her trainer was clear: “What probably helped her make the most progress was just exposing her to environments, but doing it in such a way that she had a lot of room to do things. So freedom, basically.” Her favourite reward on one walk was a good rub-down from Christian.
A stranger walks by.
In her last days, two trainers took her downtown at night. A stranger walked past, and instead of barking or backing away she moved toward him, a little unsure but curious. “So that was a choice point for Josephine,” her trainer said; “what we got instead was something we’ve been encouraging, which is a little bit of curiosity.”
She ignored a person getting out of a car, held sits at the crosswalk, and by the end of the night held downs on a word alone, with more distance and time. “You can see she’s making a lot better choices here now,” he said.
A big change in attitude.
Leaving Bass Pro, her trainer summed up the change. Her sit and down were verbal only, and “the main thing that I’m happy with is her really big change in attitude towards exploration and other people.” A little shyness with a stranger, he added, is common for Corsos.
On go-home day he took her into Cabela’s as well.
Look, don’t run.
At the go-home lesson her trainer walked her owner through the plan: a long, loose lead so Josephine can make choices, “here” and “let’s go”, a calm “nope” when she needs one, and “break” as the reward. As he put it: “When I go out on a walk, my thought is like everything goes through the lens of, all right, I’m hanging out with my bud.”
On the walk she sniffed, kept the lead loose, looked at a passer-by and walked on. “She’s already different right now,” her owner said. Her trainer’s last word on her: “It’s really nice now that she’s in that mode where she will just look at things rather than running from them.”
The plan for home: a long, loose lead, clear words, and walks that feel like hanging out.
