Wary of new people.
Kelton first met Penny in a park near her family’s home. “She wouldn’t even let me get near,” he recalls; she tried to bite him a couple of times. In her first days at Angier K9 she bit when taken from her crate, and he wore protective gloves for a while. She was also very sensitive to the e-collar, so he lowered the level on the spot.
“You warmed up to me.”
Her early training ran through play. Place was taught without words at first, down was built from nothing, and running games stood in for tug because she guarded the toy. By the third play session her trainer could say: “you warmed up to me.”
From growling to being petted.
At a store and in parks, a group of young adults petted and played with her for more than 20 minutes. “She used to growl at anybody that walked by,” her trainer says. At the first owner lesson her family saw how it is handled: a calm, clear correction, then she is free to look again. Her trainer reads her as cautious rather than aggressive, and the family learned exactly what to watch for.
Never blame the dog.
Penny is a sensitive dog, and her trainer kept adjusting to her. When her place work slipped one week, he traced it to his own call, taking her leash off a little early in a fenced area, and said so on camera: “You’re the one with responsibility. In this case, that’s me.” He lowered her collar level (“I forgot how sensitive you are”) and rebuilt it calmly, one step at a time.
A few sessions later: “I think I fixed that little mistake.” It is the philosophy behind all of her training: “Never blame the dog.”
Called away from a stranger.
Her trainer chose a trail by a road on purpose, because “being obedient with people… that’s one of her issues.” Penny was called away from a passer-by she wanted to greet: “I didn’t have to use the e-collar.” She then held a down while a person walked past.
Seeing it in action.
By the second owner lesson her trainer said her reactivity was “basically gone.” The owners practised the collar and lead, and called her away from a person she likes. Kelton’s biggest relief, and theirs: “I trust that she’s not going to do anything to them.”
On a two-mile walk she did not react to people at all. At the go-home lesson a stranger fed her in a store aisle; four weeks earlier, the team noted, that would not have gone well. Her owner left knowing exactly how to keep it going.
