Helping a Foster Dog Gain Confidence to Find His Forever Home

We worked with a foster dog to help him get ready for his new forever home, so we used counterconditioning to stop nipping behavior for this eight-year-old Vizsla named Bauer.

When I first arrived I was excited to greet such a wonderful and happy dog named Bauer. He was so wiggly and happy that it was contagious! After talking to his foster Mom I learned that Bauer had nipped in his past when someone was holding on to him tightly and he likely had a previous history of abuse. To help him overcome these fears so he could move on and get a new and fantastic home I showed his foster Mom a new training technique:

As you can see in the video above Bauer was doing wonderfully with this exercise! The point is to be able to keep working with him using counterconditioning to help him gain confidence when people talk in louder voices and move their arms in the air. We don’t want him to get startled and how any defense behavior. So the key is to take things slowly so he never gets nervous again and we keep building his confidence as we work with him. Many dogs get nervous from loud noises or when we raise our voices but this training method will help him overcome these fears.

By the end of this dog behavior session Bauer was looking to his guardian for direction and learning to relax when he had previously felt intimidated. As a Vizsla trainer I recommend that they keep using our Petting with a Purpose technique. We wrapped up this dog training session with Bauer’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.