I have a young female pit bull that acts very scared when I try and take her for walks. She lays down and will not move. What should I do?

Question

Hi I came across your web site while looking for information on prong collars. I actually have a question for you, if you have the time to answer it sometime it would be greatly appreciated.

I will give you a little overview on her first and I do apologize if I ramble I am at work and writing this between calls so I keep losing my train of thought.

I have a 5 month old american pit bull terrier named Loki. Sweetest dog and VERY obedient. I got her when she was 3 months old. The breeder gave me a deal on her (I just reimbursed him on her vaccinations) because of her temperament and he would rather give her to me than for her to go into the wrong hands, ( there are a lot of jack-ass pit fighters where he lives). Anyway when I first got Loki she was a VERY timid and sad dog she had absolutely no self esteem and always carried her tail between her legs as per the breeder. The day we got her she was timid and shy until she got to know us, it only took about 5 minutes though to come to us. It took a few days before her tail started coming up and since that first week it hasn't come down. It took her month and a little bit to get over her submissive urination and now there is no problem. She holds her head and tail high and jumps right in to everything.

Anyway he has 1 issue though and I don't know if she is being stubborn or scared. If she is scared I don't want to make it worse and I have never come across this with any other dog I have ever had....my last dog was a pit bull too. When I leave the house to try to walk her she will lie on her side and refuse to budge, at first she would walk along side of and sit down every so often so I would have to tug her to get going again, then she started to pull back towards home now she wont even leave the driveway. When I do get her out she shakes and wont move. How do I get her over that? Why is she scared? When I first got her she was afraid of, the horses next door, the vacuum, the stairs, the trees blowing in the wind, thunder, my patio, loud noises, the broom, my swifter wet jet, the toilet flushing, drapes blowing in the breeze, the kitchen sink draining etc, I was able to help her overcome all of those fears but not this one. If I am away from the house i.e.. somewhere where she doesn't know where she is she will follow me until she gets tired then lay down. She has done that once and I wasn't going to drag her down main street in front of everybody...some so I had to carry her to the car ...might have been my fault too because we walked for over an hour and she wasn't used to walking that long. If I pick her up when walking from home she shakes like a leaf. What am I doing wrong? I'm not being aggressive with her but I am not letting her get her way either ...unless she lays on her side because there is no way I will drag her on her side.

Kristina

Accepted Answer

None of this is your fault. The dog has very weak nerves. This is a genetic issue. Dogs like this will become very dangerous as adults – they will become fear biters if they do not get a great deal of obedience training and if they are not always supervised. This certainly is not something you did or did not do.

If she will not follow put a prong on this dog and drag her down the street if need be. You don’t have to correct her. I have an article on my web site that explains how to fit a prong collar.

You do need to train her though. She will respond well to good motivational training that is followed with a correction and distraction phase of the work.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of obedience training a dog, read the description for my Basic Dog Obedience video. You will probably find that you have not had the full picture on the steps of training a dog must go through before it can be considered fully trained. You can also read why I am not a fan of taking an untrained dog to obedience classes. I think if you read the testimonials on that tape you will see that my customers feel the same way.