16/12/2024
KIEDY’S STORY
A REACTIVE DOG’s JOURNEY
https://youtu.be/Pv2AQgeXW74?si=IS6a6rIV7YrvzCju
27, 28 & 29th January 2025 I am opening the opportunity for you to join a three day FREE Training Workshop with me here at Dobercademy which will focus on Reactivity and All Things Dobermann.
If you have reactivity problems with your Dobermann or just generally would like to know more about how I train & how it works by using kindness, Knowledge & understanding then this free three day workshop will benefit you enormously & will show you how to live your best life with your Dobermann.
Here I am going to share Kiedy’s story with you. He was dumped, given up as a lost cause whom nobody could help. He came to me at 9 months old having bitten 3 people and he was so dog reactive he was impossible to walk.
If you are struggling with your dog then my hope is that by sharing my Kiedy’s story with you, I can promote some positivity for all of you and I hope that those of you who do have reactive dogs and are struggling daily can see it doesn’t have to be that way. Whatever your struggles, the knowledge & learning I can share with you will bring peace to yours and your beloved dog’s life. Our dogs are never deliberately giving us a hard time but are indeed having a hard time themselves and having the right knowledge, understanding & training skills we can completely change their lives and ours too.
Kiedy came to us as a foster but as it turned out spent most of his life with us and we loved him dearly. He was a precious boy who loved us all deeply and this article is also a celebration of his life & his wonderfulness.
When Kiedy came to live with us he was 10 months old. Tragically, by that time he’d bitten three people and his reaction to other dogs was so intense his then owners couldn’t cope.
I knew Kiedy well as I had looked after him in his owner’s absence on hols & sometimes when he was at work, so when his stressed owner told me he was going to take Kiedy to Wood Green Rescue I knew the future for him was very bleak indeed. He’d either spend the rest of his life in kennels, terrified & stressed, or his life would be very short indeed as he would be euthanised.
In my home environment, Kiedy was a simple boy, loving & affectionate with those he knew & felt safe with, and he got along with my resident dogs, Coco & Bruiser, as he’d known them from puppyhood. After discussion with my own family, who also were fond of Kiedy, we told his owners we would take him on as a foster & find him a home.
A little bit of Kiedy’s history was he was a puppy farmed puppy and therefore came with no genetic history. He was born with a deformed foot that caused him a lot of pain on and off throughout his life and he had three operations on it. Whilst he was very tiny he twice ate computer components and had two operations to remove those from his tummy, the second of which took place at 16 weeks of age when the vet at that time also castrated Kiedy, telling his owner it would save him money if it was done whilst he was under anaesthetic already!
When we started to foster him I knew from his owner he’d bitten the neighbour in the garden over the fence, not once but twice, and I did wonder why the neighbour had put his arm over the fence the second time when he already learned not to do so the first time 🤔. Anyway Kiedy bit someone else, and because the neighbour was also the landlord, his owner wanted to give him up. He’d also started to become impossible to walk due to his intensive reaction to both people & dogs.
I had a lot of work to do before I could possibly even think about a new forever home for him.
Fortunately Kiedy was crate trained which helped with management to start with at home because he couldn’t tolerate people coming into the house, even so, the intensity of his reaction to visitors was such that he’d jump his crate across the kitchen with the physical element of that reaction. It was so bad!!
Lead walking in public was impossible one absolutely couldn’t hold him, besides which he was clearly unable to cope - that was obvious.
Training started in earnest and I have to admit to start with, at the beginning, I made mistakes, as many do, following the wrong advice that I “master” him and his reactivity, using techniques such as a rattle bottle, & attention training. I now know that I caused him a lot more stress & fear and worst of all, he started to fear my actions too!! Needless to say, this just added to how he felt, which was terrible, and we made no progress.
I knew It felt wrong and I thought there must be a better way!!
I still carry shame to this day that I put him through that.
And so, this was when my own intensive learning and behavioural journey truly began, when I started to really study dog behaviour. I learned how to help him and other dogs. I learned what was going on for Kiedy, what reactivity really was and where it was coming from. I learned about fear, the sympathetic nervous system and the fight/flight response. I learned dogs were just like us and that that they had no control over their stress responses, and I learned the science behind & around what was really happening for reactive dogs.
After I started to study, I was horrified to realise that I’d made matters worse for Kiedy. He was reacting because he was facing monsters or fears that were very real to him, he was so anxious, his sympathetic nervous system was automatically putting him into flight or fight and, I, as the one person he should be able to trust to help him was “correcting” this behaviour. In fact at the time before I knew better, I was deliberately putting him into situations he couldn’t cope with in order to be able to “correct” him out of his reaction!! It was so awful to realise this.
So a long period of rehabilitation began. I now knew from my studies how to help Kiedy and we started with safety & trust. First he needed to feel safe so I stopped exposing him to what he feared the most. I stopped putting him in situations that caused him anxiety. I needed for him to be able to start living without fear in order to help him start to thrive, to feel better and to to feel calm, because nobody can learn anything whilst they are stressed or anxious daily!! I managed him and what he was exposed to thus limiting his ability to practice barking & growling at everything and everyone, to bring down his arousal (stress) levels, I ensured he got plenty of rest & sleep, and at this time took care of the pain issue in his foot. We worked hard introducing calming activities so he could learn to relax. Next I worked hard playing games with him, some specifically to build fun & trust into our relationship and some to encourage more calm, & repetitive, habit forming behaviours we could call upon which I now knew would help us when we were back out and about in the real world amongst his fears. We built focus on me too, and then took care of his breed needs with activities he enjoyed to reduce the risk of frustration or boredom for him. We worked con all of this & lots more for months.
The Real World!
We were now ready!! Using all the tools & skills we’d spent so much time working on and building at home, in secured fields, and other “safe” areas we were Real World Ready! Now I started to re-introduce his “triggers” carefully with space, planning & over time. We chose real world places to practice in where it was safe to do so in controlled environments. I started to invite people into our home, having instructed them first on how to behave. Kiedy started to cope, with them, even started to enjoy their visits, first in his crate, then simply with his muzzle on and finally on his “safe” place where he knew nothing bad would happen. Out & about, he started to be able to ignore his triggers, he knew they were there & that was ok, but his focus was me, his safe space again and he also now had little games to focus on which he loved.
So this is Kiedy’s story.
He is no longer with us as we lost him suddenly & unexpectedly to a massive seizure from nowhere in April this year. He was aged nearly 10 & we had just returned home from another successful & enjoyable family break with him. We were all bereft. Kiedy was the most loving & affectionate of all my Dobermanns and so worth everything I gave him. He gave me back far more!! He taught me more than any other dog could and I’m so grateful to him for that. He showed me the right path, the kind path, the only path and I only wish we’d found that one before I’d received the wrong advice!
I hope you enjoy the video that goes with Kiedy’s Story here. It’s a bit longer than planned but If you can watch to the end you will see how amazing this boy became & what we achieved and I hope it helps all you reactive dog owners struggling right now out there to see what can be achieved with training through kindness, knowledge & understanding.
Along the way Kiedy & I had such fun and he showed me so much intelligence. He was able to learn & enjoyed more activities, tricks & fun sports than one could ever imagine. He led a fulfilled life & he certainly helped fulfil mine too whilst he was here with me ❤️
Kiedy
Much loved and so badly missed
July 2013 - April 2023
My gorgeous brown boy
My Teacher
An inspiration ❤️
Kiedy came to me unable to tolerate dogs or humans - this little video summarises his journey with me. He was the most affectionate Dobe of all Iv been luck...
