When I got Aggie, I had some pretty wonderful ideas about how well-behaved and well-adjusted she would be. On our first walk, she came out the door, took a sniff of the town air and turned right around to go inside. Her tail went between her legs and she planted her legs into the porch like they’d been poured in cement.
Aggie’s a beautiful blue belton English Setter with about a thousand issues. To begin with, her past is completely unknown to me but does not seem to have been a good one. It seems like she was confined to a kennel for most, if not all of her life. She has a fear of feet, possibly from being kicked. She was not used to a leash and when I got her on June 5 and she knew no commands.
If there’s a light in any of this, it’s that she is just about the sweetest dog in the world. Terrified of most everything, but sweet.
It has taken about two weeks for me to gain her trust. To get her to this point, I had to be patient. I gave her a lot of time and a lot of space. At first I tried forcing her on walks. As much as she did, finally, relent and walk with me, I ended up getting more angry than was useful.
I abandoned the practice and decided to let her move at her own pace. I still would make her go outside a few times a day, but once outdoors I let her leash drop to the ground and weeded the flowerbed while she figured out on her own that my little corner in town was nothing to be scared of.
After two weeks, she’s a much improved dog. She fights only 15% of the walk. She sits before she goes out and comes inside. She doesn’t pull (forward) on her leash. She is even beginning to understand heel.
Now that she trusts me, though, I’m moving on to the training part. My immediate goals for Aggie are: Sit, stay, down, heel, lay down and come. High expectations, to be sure. But she’s an incredibly smart dog and I believe in her.
My MO for this process, which begins Monday, is to follow the Monks of New Skete book, at least for basic training (any hope of hunting with her is – at least for now – going back on the Dream shelf).
I don’t have any expectations on when she will accomplish any or all of this. I just plan on working with her consistently. The goal is to someday be able to take her hiking, camping, fishing without worrying about her being scared or running away, as she just tried when she saw her first herd of whitetail.
I’ll keep this blog updated with her progress. In the meantime, anyone with advice or suggestions, especially English Setter related, please pass it along.
