We have a tank of a dog, Cosma. She looks like a chocolate lab, pitbull mix, with the beautiful brown coloring, short legs, alligator’s mouth and is built for days. In April she will be 5 years old already. Crazy.

My boyfriend got her back in college, so small, she could fit into your cupped hands. She was way too young, but so fricken cute, with bright blue eyes. Aw, I wish those eyes stayed blue, now they are the same brown as her coat, which don’t get me wrong, are still beautiful, just more spread apart 😛

At her age now, she is so sweet to both Adam and I. We like to call her a jealous Judy, because she always wants attention, especially when we are holding the cats.

The problems we are facing with Cosma, is she doesn’t really like people or other dogs. Adam has done a bunch of research, and we concluded that she, in fact, is more scared than anything, so she acts out. This really makes it hard for us to take her out much, getting to the point where we avoided dogs on a walk. It’s even worse because people already give a bad rep to Pitbulls, and we want them to see the friendly, playful side of her.

To change this behavior, we are starting to train her that new people/dogs are good. This means high reward treats, appraise and not anger, and making her pay attention to us more out on walks.

Let’s see how it goes,
Do you have any tricks / ideas?

Cheers