Bella

Bella is a smart and capable dog. She knows all the basic commands-sit, stay, come, place command, leave it, bring it here, down, shake. What is quite difficult for Bella is related to her anxiety that leads to a lack of impulse control. She is very food motivated which helps with training. Bella loves fetch and is obsessed with it. Unfortunately due to how hard she runs when she plays, she injured her leg. In the summer of 2019 she had to have TPLO surgery on her leg to fix it. We no longer play fetch with her now to avoid injury on her other leg or re-injure the fixed leg. We also used to take Bella on runs, but since her surgery we only take her on walks. We have young kids in our home, ages 4 and 7. Bella has always done fine with kids. Her only issue is wanting to lick all kids in the face. We have another dog in the home that we got when Bella was 2.5. Bella has always done fine with our dog in the home. We have also had a friend with a German Shepherd that she has done fine with. Any dogs that are strangers and meeting dogs for the first time is difficult for Bella. Her severe anxiety leads to high pitched whining/reactivity to other dogs when we are on a walk. This is always triggered by a dog that is already barking/whining, but she will also react this way when a dog across the street is calmly walking by. She also does this same type of anxiety reaction when getting ready to go for a walk. We have tried a class for reactivity with her as well as an in home trainer. We have also used medication to help calm her anxiety.