Stop Nipping Behavior for a Herding Breed

We worked with Max to stop nipping people by using Behavior Adjustment Training or BAT.

After I arrived I sat down to chat with Max’s guardians about their main dog behavior concerns. I learned that Max has started to nip at people when he was in an uncomfortable situation for him. Often times there are two issues when a dog is nipping, either the dog is not giving enough warning signs that they are uncomfortable or they have warned people and the people don’t know what to look for as warning signs. In Max’s case he was not giving enough warning signals before nipping, so we wanted to use BAT to train him to walk away when he was uncomfortable rather than being reactive and nipping. To see how we accomplished this you can watch the video below.

As you can see in the video I never actually started petting Max, which is completely normal in these situations! One of the goals is to train Max to learn how to relax around new people and one of the ways we can do this is by letting him come up to me when he is comfortable and allowing him to smell me without me touching him. This is building trust so Max doesn’t feel like his personal space is broken and he needs to defend himself. Over time as he gains confidence people can start to pet him during greetings.

By the end of the Omaha dog behavior session Max was learning how to calm himself down when greeting new people. As a Cattle Dog trainer I suggest that the owners use our Petting with a Purpose technique to reward Max for his good behavior. We wrapped up this dog training session with Max’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.