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Here's your current installment of the Alien Abduction article.

If you have a dog that balks, puts on the brakes or shies away when being reached for there is a good chance he has made an unpleasant association with your hands coming toward him, sometimes in a specific setting or when the human has a particular stance. Think about it for a moment. When are most of us faced with this scenario? Often time is of the essence and we are leaving to go somewhere. We may need to be off to work or an appointment or we are leaving the dog park. We might be a little tense, either because we are late or past frustrations. No matter where it is, it’s time to go!

So we reach for, perhaps even go to grab, our dogs by the collar or scoop them up. Our pups may attempt to dance away so we must be quick! If we succeed in nabbing them, what happens next? We clip the dog on leash and leave the park, put them in their kennel and leave for the day or just hoist them up into the air. In the process we often drag the dog into our bodies to do so, and for smaller dogs it’s just like an alien abduction! One moment you’re on the ground, the next, you’re up in the air! YIKES! None of this is a fun thing for the dog, so chances are next time your dog will try that much harder to avoid it by staying out of reach. It’s not that we intend to do this. In fact, most of us are not aware that it’s happening at all!

While it’s unfortunate that this happens it is all too common. But there’s hope! Unpleasant associations can be changed. This is the very essence of “desensitization and counter-conditioning”. If your little dog dances just out of reach when you want to pick her up, start teaching her that your reach isn’t scary. If your big dog puts on the brakes the moment your hand goes for his collar, teach him that moving into you is a pleasant thing! Even for dogs who enjoy being touched and are comfortable being handled, it is not unusual for that one specific move – the collar grab – to be unpleasant. If this is your dog, don’t feel badly. Just work on it!

Stay tuned for more!