The above video is me showing off my incredibly smart and talented dog. After just three weeks she can do all these commands and more. And just look at how darn cute she is! When I watch this video I can’t believe I have moments when I want to give her back. She’s the best dog ever.
I’ve been talking to a friend of a friend about our frustrations with Mississippi. She’s done a lot of work with the SPCA and has been great about giving me advice and referring me to books and things. And when things are quiet and peaceful around here, I feel like I make such a fuss over how hard this is. But throughout the day there are so many great times and terrible times. It’s all very intense. We’re still trying to get used to the intensity levels around here. Here’s my email back to my friend:
Foot note: We went to the hospital right after it happened. It was a bad fall and I was pretty sure I broke my ankle. They shot me full of morphine and x-rayed and I’m all clear for broken bones. Just have to hope the soft tissue damage isn’t bad. So I’m waiting two weeks for a follow up. It seems to be getting better quickly so far and the swelling has gone down a great deal just in the last 24 hours. So I think It’ll be ok. I’m in a funny darth vadar brace and crutches. Today I’m hobbling around pretty well without crutches as long as I’m medicated.
I guess I make her sound like a harder case than she is. She is hard, there are many frustrating tears shed around here, but it’s all probably based on having too much energy and not knowing what to do with it all. That’s just going to take time as we get her more trained and get her doing more complex agility training or something or finding other work for her. She’s a complete lover and just wants to please. Just two humans aren’t enough for her right now. I’d hate to stop the dog park, she looks like the happiest pup in the world there and she plays very nice with other dogs. She goes on every errand I can take her on and loves the car.
On an aggression scale she’s probably a -20. She’s one of the most affectionate dogs I’ve known. One of the reasons I thought she’d be easy to train was that she let me put my hands all over her head and mouth at the pound, play with her paws, rub her belly, etc and even take toys from her. Any biting she’s done has been play biting and is usually more mouthing. Just she’ll get over excited and want to jump and mouth my arm and that’s when we have to do timeouts with her. We’ve taught her to jump on command and have even built her a jumping station so we can channel her jumping a little.
I’m pretty sure there’s no separation anxiety with her. Yesterday made me even more sure. I was here with her but couldn’t do much playing since I couldn’t walk. She barked for hours. It seemed like I couldn’t do anything to get her to stop. She was either barking out of boredom or barking to protect me, or probably a mix of both. Guess it doesn’t matter why. She did sit with me for a while but lost patience by the afternoon, I don’t blame her, I was very boring. My neighbor said yesterday was the first time she’s heard her bark like that. So I’m pretty sure when we aren’t here, she doesn’t bark very much unless the mailman comes. We keep the blinds shut and the radio on to lessen the outside noises. Today I’m working on rewarding her for getting away from whatever shes barking at and sitting down quietly for me. We’ve never punished her for barking, I think she just came to us wired to think that if you bark enough, you get to go outside. previous to our life together, i think she spent most of her time outside by herself.
Being unable to walk has made me see things a little differently. the the next few weeks, I physically can’t work with her like I have been. We like the “zen downs” you talked about and instead of trying to distract her from destructive behavior with more clicking training sessions, we’re trying to train her to sit quietly next to us using clicker training methods. The longer she sits, the more clicks and treats she gets. She’s catching on very quickly. I know she’s needed to learn down time but we hadn’t figured out how to do it very successfully. Before the injury she got 3-4 walks a day, 2 play times in the backyard and countless mini clicker training sessions throughout the day, kisses, massages, belly rubs. All her food is fed to her in frozen kongs right now. She’s got a treat puzzle too. We kept trying to help her with more and more mental and physical activity, but there can never be enough with her, she needs to learn a little inactivity. Even after the dog park trips, when she looks so physically exhausted, she wants to keep going. So yeah, we need to teach her to relax. I guess in that way, she’s a lot like her owners. 馃檪
So I feel like we’re headed in the right direction. It’s just frustrating sometimes. Luckily, she’s only destructive and loud when she has an audience, so if our couch and rug can just make it through another month or two, I think we’ll make it.