Bear, a little success story about a big dog!

With the owners permission, I wanted to share a short account of the work D4Dog Walking, Training and Behaviour Support have been doing with Bear, a Greek Shepherd Dog, rescued by his owners from Greece in 2021.

I first met Bear in December 2021, on Christmas Day! He is a stunning dog, as you can see in the photos, a large, bordering on giant dog in size and weighing roughly 50KG. A handsome and powerful dog. At this point his owners had had Bear for around 5 months, having collected him from the rescue organisation in August 2021.

Our initial discussions revolved around the possibility of working on his recall, which was poor, but quickly expanded to include a growing number of concerns about Bear’s behaviour. The most significant concern was Bear’s relationship with his male owner. Bear was becoming challenging towards him, using his size to push him off the sofa, not respecting his space when working at home on the computer, stubbornness, including refusing to come into the house when called by him and most concerning, biting him on the hands and arms when he was excited, something that happened in particular whilst on walks.

I was shown several of his owners jackets, which Bear had simply ripped and or bitten and punctured through on the arms and a pair of tough leather rigger gloves that were also ripped and punctured by tooth marks. It was becoming clear that Bear’s owners were approaching the point, where they were seriously beginning to consider if they could keep him.

A factor that the owners commented on was the difference in Bear’s behaviour towards his female owner. With her he was far calmer, more obedient and hadn’t demonstrated any of the concerning and unwanted behaviour that he had with his male owner.

After a two hour consultation, where we explored the owners concerns, what they knew about Bear’s background both in terms of his breed and his experiences as a ‘feral dog’ in Greece, the rescue experience and his journey to the UK from Greece in the summer of 2021. We discussed what they wanted to achieve and we talked about Bear’s behaviour and exploits since they had rescued him. Following our meeting and research into the known breed traits of Greek Shepherd Dogs, their history and original purpose as Guardian early Herding dogs, the owners were provided with a written report on Bear, outlining the identified issues, strategies to resolve these and guidance on how to implement these.

The key focus was on changing the relationship between Bear and his male owner, through adopting different behaviour on his owners part, being aware of body language – both his and Bear’s. Careful use of positive reinforcement and control of feeding. Underpinned with an increase in exercise to match Bear’s needs. Changing our behaviour with our dogs is very difficult and it is to his owners immense credit, that he has followed the recommendations consistently and effectively.

Bear’s behaviour towards his male owner has shown significant improvement following the initial guidance and recommendation, there has been one occasion where Bear did fall back into his ‘over excited’ pattern of behaviour, but following a number of support sessions on walks and at home, Bear (or rather his behaviour) has become much closer to his owners ‘ideal’.

Bear remains a work in progress and I look forward to continuing to help support his owners moving forward, his recall still needs work and we are looking to develop his interaction with other dogs to help develop his ‘social skills’.

I am immensely proud of Bear and his owners, seeing the improvement in the relationship and the reduction of stress caused by unwanted behaviour on Bear’s part is why I work with dogs and their owners.