The worse thing about what happened to Shaker wasn’t that he got beat up, but that it happened before he was old enough to be certain about what he knew. It caused him to doubt what he knew about his language.
Let’s say you get mad at me, I say that I’m sorry. If I am just learning the language, I think that I have not said the right thing to appease you. I doubt my language skills.
This is different from I know what I said; you were a jerk and didn’t accept my apology.
Shaker was scared and angry. We never knew what was going to set him off in the early reactive phase.
Because Shaker did have a lot of experience with other dogs it didn’t take he long to progress beyond the reactive phase to becoming comfortable in his dysfunction.
A dog is comfortable in his dysfunction when he knows which dogs are not to be messed with. He no longer gets ticked at dogs which can and will kick his rear, only a dog in the reactive phase does that.
In true bully fashion the weak, insecure or inexperienced are sniffed out. Zeroing in to terrorize is just a matter of personal style.
So Shaker is now confident in his dysfunction and his language. He is no longer my innocent pet; he knows the law of the wild. Okay, so life is hard time to get over it.
The two distinct post incident phases require different treatment plans. Does this make sense? Any questions?
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