Lula is a Chihuahua fit for combat. Extremely muscular and a constant vibration of motion and dominance, we had many issues to work out. She was incredibly possessive of her own personal space, so she would nip at any dogs who came near her. One thing that is not so obvious about working with small dogs is that the behaviors that most people would dismiss as "cute" or "acceptable" because of their size, a great dane would never get away with. When we let them slide on behaviors such as jumping on people, possessing their own space or even people, constantly pacing, etc., we allow them to escalate in a bad frame of mind.
A dog's state of mind is written all over his or her body language, so it's important to pay attention to what their body language is telling us. I worked through all of these issues with Lula by bringing her around as many other dogs and people as possible, always followed closely on the heels of exercise. Many small dog breeds are stunningly fast and need a lot more exercise than we give them, so once I kicked up the pace with Lula, she behaved much better because she was getting that need met. Once she had a reward and consequence system in place with her owner, she realized that these bad behaviors were actually not pleasing to her owner.
Dogs who are more dominant don't always have that much incentive to work for and please their owners, but mainly this is because they don't understand that their owners are in charge. Most people don't know how to gauge whether they are more dominant or whether their dog is, and so most of my work is in coaching people on how to be more dominant than their dog in their dog's eyes. When dogs understand that they have a job and someone to please, they work hard to protect that, but if they don't feel that they have either, they make it their job to please themselves and reprimand everyone who doesn't please them.
I learned so much from working with Lula. The most important thing that I learned was the importance of consistency when working with a dominant dog. I teach on consistency with all dogs, but dogs who challenge your boundaries need to be told more often that they are, in fact, not in charge here. Lula successfully transformed through the application of my training methods and behaves how her owner wants her to now.
