Joined At The Hip – When Bonding With Your Dog Goes Too Far

Seb is an eight month old German Shorthaired Pointer and he certainly thinks he has landed on his feet. His owner has a stressful job and wanted a dog to help him relax and get out a bit more. He chose an HPR breed and read a book that said when bonding with your dog, you needed to be with them all the time. Taking this literally, the owner moved out of his bedroom and started sleeping in the spare room with the dog. Rather than having sweet dreams together, he has created a nightmare scenario.

There are now huge problems, both domestically and with the dog. Seb has bonded in completely the wrong way with his owner. He is dominating, mouths him and jumps up at him. This GSP is taking all of the owner’s time and energy – completely the reverse of what was intended.

We have had a practical lesson where we instilled some structure for Seb. He is now sleeping downstairs and the owner has boundaries to put in place. We will follow this lesson up with a virtual session and take it from there. There is a lot of work to be done to correct the balance in this relationship.

Posted: June 12, 2020