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My dog loves Top dog jewelry

I have a 4-year-old Siberian husky with a jewelry fetish. Whenever people walk into our home with jewelry on their hands, the dog salivates, licks and jumps like crazy. She won't leave you until you remove the jewelry -- then she walks away. My mother wears a ring that she never removes, so she tried putting gloves on to hide the ring. Apparently the owners who had the dog before us played roughly with her, and the gloves somehow encouraged the dog to play rough with grandma. Does my dog need a psychologist?

Nope, just an appraiser. Technically, your dog has a phobia, not a fetish, and is probably fearful of the jewelry, rather than excited by it.

Behaviorists meet dogs that develop phobias for the strangest things. One dog salivated and yelped as if it had been shot every time its owners pulled their mini-blinds up or down. It turns out that this dog was once shot by an air gun from a window decorated with mini-blinds. Just before taking aim, the gunman pulled up the blinds.

This is merely a hypothesis, but it's likely that your dog happened to take notice of a large piece of jewelry worn by a previous owner who hit her. (Sadly, puppies are often physically reprimanded.) From the dog's perspective, the jewelry is forever connected with the awful experience of being struck.

You can lessen the phobia by using the desensitization program with simultaneous positive counter-conditioning, but it may take months. Take some heavy-duty jewelry and place it next to the food bowl for several meals. Then begin to play with the jewels as the dog eats. Eventually, you'll want to hold them and soon wear them, while the dog eats. Take it slowly. If the dog continues chowing down, fine. If it hesitates or begins to act tense, then you're moving along too fast.

Eventually, you'll be ready to invite a guest and start all over again. Ask your guests to refrain from wearing rings. Instead, place the rings next to a bevy of dog treats and have your guests pick them up and nonchalantly place them in their pockets. Next time, instead of their pockets, have the guests put the rings on their fingers. By now, your dog will be partially counter-conditioned, and hopefully it will be so distracted by the treats that it won't mind.

About grandma and her gloves: Many trainers recommend putting on gloves to play with puppies as a way of avoiding those sharp puppy teeth. For various reasons -- one of which you describe -- this is not a recommended tactic.

To shake your dog of her aggressive habits, put the gloves on, tell your pooch to sit, offer a treat and then quickly remove the gloves. Re-teach the dog to think that the gloves mean a treat instead of rough-housing.

So long as your dog doesn't meet up with Michael Jackson

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