sheltie female

Question
I am sadly divorcing, and my husband does not want to take our Sheltie with him to an apartment.  This dog is more strongly bonded to him than to me. How can I win her to myself, or is that inital bonding with him too strong for her?


 Also, typically, she is a frequent barker.  How can this be handled humanely if I go to an apartment myself?   Thank you very much for your advice.

Answer
Hi Henni,

I'm sorry to hear you are going through this.  

The good news is that in our experience, a rescue can go from being afraid to extremely receptive to the primary care giver.  

With that said here is some advice to speed up the process:
After your Sheltie's dinner and potty, grab her favorite toy and get on the floor with her.  Put both hands in front of you on the floor and kneel down while looking at her.  This is dogspeak for "play with me".  Expect her to sneeze and snort at you, she is laughing because you are being silly.  This is a good thing.  Spend some time playing with her and working on basic tricks: sit, rollover, lay down.

Another note: do not be afraid to discipline her if she is mis behaving.  Dogs respect pack order and you need to be the head dog now.

Just spend some quality time every day (if possible) with her.  This will help her adjust to the new living situation.  If you aren't already crate training, I would strongly urge you to start now before going into an apartment.

When you say "humanely" preventing or crubing barking I'd say you are applying too much of your thinking to her actions.  We have used a bark "shock" collar with great success in our house.  No, there is no huge plume of smoke when it goes off.  It is very much like a powerful static charge when you rub your sock feet across the floor and touch a doorknob in the winter.  I have touched the collar myself to test the shock-uncomfortable but not harmful just like static.  The neck of a dog is also not nearly as tender as ours is.  Remember the collar is for short durations for training.  Use a handsignal and a command to enforce "DON'T BARK" with the collar and she will catch on very quickly.  Bring out the collar regularly at first, then work toward rarely.  

If you can find a citronella collar try it first.  The shock collars are more effective in most cases and easier to "refill".

Shelties are amazingly smart and loving as you know.  Expect her to recover from this far faster than you will.  I don't think you will have any worries, but if you do ask me and I'll try to help.

'sneezes
Dave