Simba the Shiba Inu | Aggression

This review is loooong overdue.

My boyfriend and I adopted our Shiba Inu, Simba, almost three years ago. We learned that he had aggression issues: resource guarding and fear aggression. Simba would generally antagonize people just to see what he could get away with. He would sometimes find random things on the ground, the occasional slice of moldy pizza or a bone, and snap it up before we had a chance to pull him away, and would growl and hiss at us as we tried to get him to drop his newfound treasure.

Things became particularly dire when he wouldn’t stop biting me to scare me away when I tried to wipe his paws. His bites would eventually break skin. I was well aware of the Shiba Inu breed, the temperament, and training challenges before we adopted Simba. I spent months researching training techniques, chatting in forums and blogs, but after a year and a half of DIY training, we decided to consult a professional.

Enter Ryan (TuHai). He came highly recommended by others in our Bay Area Shiba Inu Meetup group. We emailed TuHai about Simba in December 2015, and he invited us to a group class to meet him. We watched a group class, saw one of his German Shepard’s obey a command and was instantly impressed.

We emailed TuHai with a long list of training objectives and signed Simba up for a three-week bootcamp (board and train) while we were away on vacation in February 2016. It was expensive ($$$$) for a three-week training, but well worth the money (+ includes weekly group classes, if you can make it). TuHai sent us videos of Simba’s progress almost daily. When I got Simba back, he was a new dog! (He also lost a few pounds). After the initial training program, we attended group classes when we could, and TuHai spent a lot of time working with us to teach us how to reinforce the training: hand feeding, place training, crate training. For months, we spent 20-30 minutes a day reinforcing training techniques.

Simba is still stubborn, independent, and self-serving, like any Shiba Inu, but he hasn’t bitten me since he returned from training, which is incredible. Our walks are more efficient and I don’t have to worry about him picking up random food off the street anymore.

Best of all, a few months ago, he picked up a gift that I received (not a toy), and I looked at him and saw some fear in his eyes like he was getting ready to guard his newfound toy. I said, “Drop it.” And miraculously, he listened and dropped the item without a treat or a bribe in front of him! At a recent visit to my parents’ house, he picked up cat poop (my parents’ neighbors have an outdoor cat that likes to poop in the yard). We were horrified. To our surprise, when my boyfriend told him to “drop it” he was reluctant, because he really wanted to eat the poop, but he ultimately dropped it.

To anyone who is reading this review and wondering whether the training is worth the investment: it is.

TuHai is also available for boarding or board and train if you’re going out of town and need a sitter. Simba loves TuHai, but he was not very enthusiastic the last time we dropped him off because he knew that TuHai makes him work hard.

— Grace, Kevin, & Simba

Board and Train by Ryan TuHai Ngo