Harper's Story
Harper was found in Bakersfield, California, in March 2017 when she was around 2 years old. She was brought to the shelter there and clearly just had puppies a month or two before. Unfortunately, they didn’t find any puppies with her when they found her. She also has a little scar on her face/nose, where the hair never grew back. This is all I knew of her backstory when we went to go meet her at The Barking Lot Rescue in San Diego.
When we finally met her in person at the rescue in April 2017, she was shy but really sweet and calm. She actually walked really well on the leash even though it was clear she never really walked on a leash before. She was even very calm with all the chaos of a bunch of strangers around and other dogs being checked out at the rescue. She is the perfect size at 35 lbs and we were told that she got along with dogs and humans alike, so we took her home!
We drove her back to our home in Los Angeles and got her all settled in with her crate, toys, etc. Everything was going well and I read online that you shouldn’t expose your new rescue dog to people or dogs right away, so I enrolled her in a positive reinforcement training 5 days a week for the first two weeks to learn commands and to boost her confidence since she was shy. She was great the first two weeks with the new people at the facility, but then things started going downhill.
When we would go on walks she started getting reactive towards dogs, even if they were all the way across the street! She then started getting reactive to people when they passed next to us on walks. I told our positive only trainer what was happening and they said we could fix this reactivity by feeding Harper high-value treats (hot dogs, etc) when she saw another dog before she would react. She then started to freak out at people who would come into our apartment by growling and running to the door, so I would have to put her away in the bedroom if anyone came over. I spent thousands $$$ because I had no idea how to deal with my dog’s reactivity and didn’t know there was any other way to help my dog. This trainer also had no problem taking my money even though they told me that she would never like other dogs or strangers.
At this point I was contemplating giving Harper back to the rescue because it was so emotionally draining and I thought that I couldn’t help her, and she would be better off with someone else. I gave it one more chance and decided to do some Google research and came upon Brandon Fouche of “The Fouche Way”. We set up an evaluation and our lives changed after our first meeting with Brandon.
Brandon Fouche isn’t a dog trainer, but a dog behaviorist or what I like to call a dog psychologist. Harper didn’t need dog training, such as “sit”, but needed humans to understand her and what she truly needed emotionally and physically. Brandon was able to determine that Harper had fear-based aggression and had not been well socialized with other dogs, as well as she was mentally dominant but physically submissive. Harper was able to go to Brandon’s facility for daycare and learned from his pack how to properly socialize with other dogs, as well as teaching her that human strangers are not going to hurt her.
Once I fixed the way I treated my dog and didn’t feel bad for her because she was a rescue, this is when we started to see changes in Harper’s behavior. Meeting Brandon also opened the doors to so much knowledge about dog behavior, as well as meeting other dog behaviorists that we have learned so much from too. Harper now goes on pack hikes with other dogs weekly with Colin’s Pack, goes to a daycare/boarding facility run by dog behaviorist Colleen Aguilera (LAK9s), and loves meeting human strangers!
Harper is a special and sensitive dog, and I still learn a lot from her all the time when it comes to dog behavior. Dogs will always be like a 2 year old children, where you still have to remind them often how to behave and what behaviors you don’t like. Harper will never be like one of those goofy, jolly all the time, loves every dog/person type of dogs, but I wouldn’t change our special bond because of this for the world. Don’t ever give up on your dog, they need you - a confident pack leader!
Harper on her pack hike with Colin’s Pack.
