Welcome to the Pack: Jager

Jager is a four year old German Shepherd who is the sweetest boy with the people he knows and trusts. But new people, new dogs, and new places can feel like a lot for him.

His owner’s goal is simple: to be able to do more dog friendly things together, explore new places, and actually enjoy those experiences as a team.

Something I see often with reactive dogs is a lack of confidence. And confidence isn’t something we can teach overnight. It’s built through positive experiences, trust, and LOTS of small wins.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing with Jager.

For our first session, we met at the training facility. The goal wasn’t obedience or pushing him outside of his comfort zone. It was simply giving him the opportunity to get to know me and hopefully decide that I was safe enough to allow into his bubble BUT he did end up working for treats and we did a bit of obedience and this guy is super sharp, when you have something he wants!

Session two was his first field trip to Rural King, and he did GREAT! We had 1 goal: a sit with 0 pressure, no force and guess what, he did sits, a few downs, and stays! He also got lots of compliments from a distance!

Today, for session three, we met at Lake Park. We walked, we explored, and most importantly, we let him sniff and decompress. We weren’t looking for perfection. We were hoping for opportunities to see people and dogs from a distance while still allowing Jager to feel safe and make good choices.

Next week we’re going to take another little step and introduce Bentley into the general area. No pressure for interaction. We’ll simply see what Jager tells us and go from there.

With dogs like Jager, slow sessions and small wins eventually lead to BIG victories.

I’m already seeing those little wins with him, and I’m so excited to watch them get bigger and bigger.

There is no timeline for building confidence. We meet the dog where they are, celebrate the progress in front of us, and keep building from there.