Unlike many of the dogs we work with, he has never been traumatized, or experienced frightening times in his life. He was just a puppy in need of some behavior adjustment. He would get very excited when around people, and would start to play-bite. As he was getting older, his biting was getting to be a problem. Ideally, from early puppy-hood his biting urge (which is perfectly normal) should have been diverted onto a toy, such as a hard rubber bone. But this had not been done. In addition, Brandy would get himself worked up into an extremely agitated state during play, and would become uncontrollable.

Mary decided to take him to puppy training classes. The trainer took one look at poor Brandy, who was obviously very overwhelmed by his first experience of the class, with all the new sights, sounds, smells and other dogs around him, and promptly diagnosed him as "hyperactive." She did not offer any ideas as to how this could be remedied, however. It was at this point that Mary got in touch with us.

We asked her a few questions about Brandy's diet, which turned out to be quite a good diet and thus probably not the problem. We decided to give him some essences, and if they failed to have any effect we would have an indication that perhaps the diet did need changing. To start off, we suggested that Mary buy some Chestnut Bud, Impatiens, and Vervain (the Bach remedies being the easiest to get ahold of in Ireland). She started those 5 days before the next class, adding them to his food and water.

By the day of the next class, Mary was noticing that Brandy was much calmer, although he still tended to play-bite. At the class itself, Brandy was a completely different dog, and better behaved than many others who were much more experienced and older. Everything seemed to be going well. That is, until the trainer decided to use Brandy in a demonstration to the class to show how to get a dog to lie down on command! When Mary told us this had happened we were absolutely amazed that a so-called professional trainer should see fit to carry this exercise out with such a young dog in only his second training class, and one who hadn't even been taught to sit yet! Of course, Brandy didn't know what to do when the trainer tried to get him to lie down; he started rolling on his back (probably in fear and submission) and mouthing her arm. The trainer let him go and announced "this is a dominant dog." Again, she could not offer any solution to the problem, only this vague (and totally inaccurate) diagnosis.

By this time we were urging Mary to stop with the classes, as they were going to ruin Brandy or at least make him very hard to train; and she did stop. We then prepared him a second cycle of essences: Cosmos, Snapdragon , and more of the Impatiens, Vervain and Chestnut Bud . We told Mary she could take a few drops, too, to get the benefit of the Cosmos as we have found that mutual animal/trainer use of the essence really does have profound effects. We believe this echoes the findings of many other practitioners.

Within a week, Mary called to report the changes in Brandy. She felt he was "listening" to her more. In general, he was much calmer. He was still mouthing and play-biting a little, but more gently. She was beginning to teach him to walk on the leash, and he was doing well. When visitors came to the house they would all comment on the improvement in him. One lady in particular, whose high-pitched voice invariably set him off and rendered him "hyper," came to visit and Brandy just sat there calmly, ignoring her.

We didn't hear from Mary for about another couple of weeks. Then she phoned one day to say that he had finished his essences (having got through the 30ml very fast indeed, perhaps because she was using the drops for herself too), but she thought he was now regressing. The training had broken down, the uncontrollable energy bursts had returned, and the biting was worse again. Plus he was now bigger, stronger and entering his adolescent phase!

We were perplexed about this, as was Mary. Brandy had been doing so well. We wanted to find out what had caused this sudden reversal. Talking to Mary, we came to suspect that perhaps other members of the family were doing something to undermine the training.

We asked Mary to do some detective work to get to the bottom of this, before deciding on further remedies. She traced the problem back to her son, Michael, who apparently had been playing tug games with Brandy in her absence, and getting him very wound up, also letting him win all the time and thus giving the pup not only the idea that he was superior in strength, but that it was great fun to wrestle with humans. (There is nothing wrong in playing tug games with puppies or adult dogs, as long as you win more than you lose and always take possession of the toy at the end.) He was running around the garden, letting the dog chase him and snap at his heels; then he was chasing the dog, teaching him it was great fun to run away from people!

In case readers are forming the impression that Mary's son is a seven-year-old child, it should be pointed out that he is in fact in his mid-twenties and old enough to know better! Mary was not impressed, and gave us permission to write this.

At the time of this writing, Brandy's behavior has not yet returned to its best. He has just started another cycle of the same essences as before. This case is not yet a success, but it is interesting as it shows that in behavioral/training problems in animals, flower essences work best as part of an intelligent program where all the family, or all the people likely to be handling the dog, participate consistently. It is easy to allow progress to break down when mixed signals are given to the animal - this is one of the themes of our new book, Dogs Misbehaving: Solving Problem Behaviour with Bach Flower and other Remedies. Mary has now issued strict guidelines to everyone in her family, and it is hoped that Brandy's progress will resume. We await further reports.

Read three other animal case studies from S.A.F.E.R.

Brandy is a Springer Spaniel pup belonging to Mary, Gael's cousin in Ireland. When we started the case, he was about 4 and a half months old. Brandy's problems are very much behavioral, training issues.

This is the case of a Retriever named Jacques . This is one of our recent cases. It was carried out by distance consultation, the dog and owner being in France (showing that in this type of therapy it is not actually always essential to have personal contact with the client / animal).

At the time of this writing, Molly is in foal. However, her problematic temperament was causing concern as to how easily she could be approached and handled as the pregnancy progressed. This was the main priority for treatment, to "mellow" the mare into a more docile and receptive emotional state within the remaining month of pregnancy, for her own good, that of the foal, and for the safety of the handlers.