Hermes

This is Hermes.

Hermes is a White Shepherd. 

He is a year and a half old. 

And he has severe anxiety. 

Hermes while hiking.

About six months ago I started sending Hermes to private day training once a week. After a week or two his, fabulous!, trainers H and K said he should join an agility class to work on his confidence. That's what we have been doing every Friday night, since April. 

We decided to send Hermes to day training because he (and Lily) has severe separation anxiety and had destroyed 3 crates, a couple of lamps, some couch cushions, and whatever else he destroyed that I can't remember anymore. And to be perfectly honest his separation anxiety is only slightly better now, almost 6 months later. 

We actually had to stop trying to crate train Hermes last October. The day he was neutered I picked him up from the vet and was told to "stop letting him eat rocks" (seriously that's what they said) because he was already damaging his upper canines. It wasn't from eating rocks. It was from destroying crates. So, crate training went out the window. Mostly. We went out and bought heavy duty plastic crates to replace the many metal crates that were ripped apart. The new crate as some damage. You can see some spots where he has tried to chew his way out. He has also bent the metal door and if he tries hard enough he can pull the door off. 

For the most part Hermes is not left in his crate at home. On the rare occasion that no one can be home with them they are crated and have a monitor on them to make sure nothing bad happens. While at training Hermes is crated. There he is pretty well behaved, thanks to K! He still will make a lot of noise and thrash about when I drop him off or pick him up. During agility he does very well in his crate while waiting for his turn. 

Hermes and I at agility class.

After all of the training and learning we, Hermes and I, have done its nice to know we are improving. We have had a few set backs but all and all I am very happy with the progress we have made in a very short amount of time.