Sometime in the beginning of October, when Abby was 15 months old, I got a call from my mom telling me that Abby had "jumped on someone". Up until this point, things had been going pretty well. My mom had adjusted to taking care of Abby, and was taking her either on a hike or to the dog park every morning, plus a half hour leash walk in the afternoon. Abby was good on hikes, and usually good at the park, except that she had started avoiding my mom as soon as she thought she was going to have to go home. Oh and she continued to chase dogs playing fetch (the more hyper the dog, the more exciting the chase) - a habit she'd started in the summer that is proving to be VERY difficult to stop. In general, though, things had been good. In October though, everything started going downhill. A minor problem was that my dad didn't want to walk Abby anymore because the squirrels had come out and she was obsessed. It is almost impossible for me to get her attention when there are squirrels around, so I can't imagine it was much fun for my dad to try. On walks with my mom, Abby started staring at people more intensely and sometimes lunging at them.
At the very end of the summer I'd had a scary experience where I'd brought Abby to the movie store, and there were two little girls who asked to pet her. I still had the "shy but sweet" impression of Abby in my head, so I said sure, but that she'd be more likely to come up to them if they kneeled - BAD IDEA! She did go up to them, but when there were all of a sudden 4 hands on her head, she freaked out, snarled, snapped, then ran behind me. This experience left me completely shaken, and left 2 little girls crying. It was awful. I was completely shocked, since Abby had never snapped before. This was about 2 days before moving out, though, so the only thing I could really do was put it out of my mind and warn my mom to stay away from kids with Abby.
Back to the lunging: I'm not sure what my mom was doing right before or during this behaviour, but she did start using the halti on Abby. When I first heard about the behaviour I was upset at the situation - upset that I'd left my dog, upset that she was doing this. Unfortunately, it came out as anger and blame directed towards my mom. I told her that she didn't know how to deal with Abby, and that it was because of something she was doing that Abby was lunging. I told her that Abby needed to be reprimanded strongly for lunging. Those were all of my first reactions, and I know now how useless reprimanding that kind of behaviour is with Abby. When I went home on the weekends, I tried jerking her collar and yelling 'no'...and all I did was make her more and more scared. As I saw the behaviour more, I started being able to read her body language better. I could see her tense up, shift her ears, lower her tail stump, and then, if the stimulus kept coming closer, lunge towards it. And then, instantly, cringe, since she anticipated my correction. Once I realized that I was only making things worse, I changed my tactics...but more about that later.
The lunging on leash was the least of the aggression problems. Hikes were starting to be a big problem. Abby would be ahead of my mom on the trail when a jogger would come towards them. She'd freeze as the jogger got closer, while staring, then as the jogger passed she would jump up on them snarling and whining for a couple of seconds. She also started chasing bikers and snarling at their ankles. Every time my mom would hope it was a 'one time thing', but it obviously wasn't. The last straw was in November, when Abby did the jumping and snarling on an old man who was shuffling slowly down a path. After that, my mom was too scared to walk Abby off leash anymore. I convinced her to keep taking Abby to empty fields to play fetch, to at least burn off some energy. My mom started calling behaviourists to help with Abby.
She finally found a good one and had a private consultation, then enrolled Abby in advanced obedience. The plan of action for leash walks was that when my mom saw people coming, she's say "people!" in an upbeat, happy voice, then give Abby a treat as they were approaching/passing. My mom started seeing improvement, but was still not hiking with Abby (understandably). The people/treat regime only lasted for a few weeks before my mom went to visit my grandma in LA and took Abby with her, since she was going to be there for a whole month. The change of scenery seemed to be enough to put a (temporary) end to the leash lunging...but while in LA Abby started being leash aggressive towards other dogs, which was completely new since she'd been 'fine' with dogs while on leash before.
