I am hugely grateful to Sonia for helping me out with my overly anxious/excitable Dobermann, Cassius.

Cassius is a 2¾ yo black/tan Dobie who has been brought up (from 8 weeks on) around my horses. For the first 1½ I had no problems with him around the horses, he ignored them and only got excited when they ran. I made sure that both he & my other Dobie, were never allowed to chase the horses in these scenarios and things were good until…….

My bay mare foaled on November 12th 2014 and gave birth to a beautiful palomino filly. For the first 4 weeks of her life, the Dobermanns did not even see her, and when I eventually brought them out, they were restrained in the car. As soon as Cassius saw the filly he reacted with excessive barking. For the next year I dealt with this as best I could, disciplining him in a variety of ways (I can tell you I thought many times of “shooting him if I’d only had a gun”) and just using avoidance, i.e. I just didn’t take him out to the horses. I seem to have no effect on his behaviour and it got to the ugly stage where he actually seemed to elevate to such a level I thought he would attack her if given the opportunity.

This is where Sonia came in. I’ve known Sonia for quite a while & she had helped me before with this particular dog & social skills. I’m a confident dog owner & I have trained many dominant dogs to be great companions but I was totally out of my depth with this anxious dog, he didn’t respond the same ways my dominant dogs of the past had.

It took Sonia to point out just how anxious & overwhelmed Cassius was by the palomino (yearling now) and the fact that he had been escalating his behaviour for a year now. I really wasn’t that confident we could change Cassius’s behaviour before we started.

The first session was long & exhausting for all of us (Sonia, Cassius & myself) except the yearling herself who is not at all disturbed by Cassius’s behaviour & readily eyeballed him. This was part of the problem, Cassius couldn’t deal with her eyeballing him & Sonia picked this up immediately.

Calmly, firmly & only using her voice to congratulate Cassius when he did well rather than to discipline him, Cassius eventually started to ignore the yearling. After the first session, Sonia was so sore in the arms from Cassius’s lunging at the yearling that she definitely wasn’t looking forward to working him again other than she had had some success.

With strict instructions to follow, the following days were mine to work Cassius the way Sonia wanted me to & I followed them to the letter. Cassius just got better and better, he lunged at the yearling less & stopped barking as soon as he saw her, instead choosing to ignore her.

Sonia came out twice more about 5 days apart & by the 3rd visit (14th day) Cassius was not lunging or barking at the yearling at all. We could walk him right up to her & he was choosing to ignore her, even whilst Sonia fed the yearling with Cassius on the lead; he just sat there.

Now, he is still a little anxious because he pants a little too much whilst he is close to the yearling but he has yet to pay any attention to her since Sonia’s last visit. He will lie down on his mat unrestrained & just ignore her. I cannot tell you all just how much this means to me, I am just so happy with Cassius’s progress & now I can enjoy having my dogs & horses together with me again. Don’t worry, I will always be cautious but I won’t stop working on Cassius either. It has made his life better, less anxiety for him & for me. J

Thank you Sonia, again!

To see how well Cassius did - check these videos out !
[link|https://youtu.be/yJALueieU2A|https://youtu.be/yJALueieU2A]