Feeling a lot better and even optimistic after today’s session with a new trainer, a trainee dog trainer who as part of her education offers free sessions.

Her theory is that Max’s stress issues (my worst nightmare – that he bites a child because I did not see it coming – remember? – or that he causes a couple on an e-roller on the pavement, coming much too close and much too fast, to have an accident because he lunges at them) have less to do with too many stimuli on the streets than with his belief that he is expected to protect me as well as himself.

Astrid’s methods are based on what life used to be, or is, like for dogs in the wild. This means a whole new set of house rules, 12 to be precise, for Max and me in order to reinforce the hierarchy at home, or to use a cliché – to establish me as the alpha male to a much larger degree than now, with rights and privileges which the rest of the pack (i.e. Max) does not have, and as one who does not need protection. So there is lots of concrete stuff to work on and it will be interesting to see if, with time, it changes Max’s behaviour outside of the home.

We have already been observing some of the rules from the beginning, at least up to a point. For example, that it always has to be me who goes through a doorway – any doorway anywhere – first. I just need to be 100 percent consistent from now on instead of 90 percent :-).

Another one – completely dissociating his eating from my eating, and that my meals have nothing whatsoever to do with him – were already in force from the start, and I think he had already learnt that in his previous foster family. He learnt immediately that he can’t enter the kitchen unless I tell him that it is OK, and he never tries to beg food, even when I eat on the balcony and he is sitting right next to me. The new rule is that from now on, I have to eat first before I feed him, and not vice versa.