[Fluff] [Discussion] My dog self-regulated his hyper energy this morning!Dog Talks

This is a really big deal because our sweet boy hasn’t had the best self-regulation skills. He’s part GSP, quite high energy, and less than a year and a half old, and has been prone to getting overexcited and doing silly things as a result - up to and including mouthing us kinda hard because he wants to start an unwanted sudden game of tug/wrestle with sweater sleeves. We’ve been working with him, giving him mental exercise along with physical, swapping out inappropriate chews for better ones, using timeouts and reverse timeouts when he gets too hype so he can calm down without our presence, and teaching him to wait using the Overall relaxation protocol, and we’ve definitely seen improvement but it’s an ongoing experiment.

Anyway! Today, a courier mistakenly brought a grocery delivery to our door instead of our neighbours’ and his guard dog routine got him hyped up when he’d usually be cuddling with us in bed, so much so that after the delivery guy left, he jumped up on me when he didn’t totally mean to (and thwacked me in the mouth with his paw, similarly without meaning to).

So!

He went and found one of his balls, & started chewing it & bringing it to us to throw for him. After a few enthusiastic rounds of fetch, he was less energetic & overhyped, let the ball go, & asked us to let him back into bed for snuggles with us.

A hero! A model of temperance! Using the tools he has available to move through his reactive and high energy state! He’s learning!

Feel free to post about similar eureka moments your dogs have had - this took us so much by surprise.

Submitted October 24, 2020 at 10:35PM by fetishiste https://ift.tt/3dSOEcR