Mondays are the toughest days of the week. Mississippi has had two days with the both of us instead of just boring old me. During the weekend we aren’t usually on the computer and generally if we are home, we are interacting with Mississippi in some way. Come Monday, Tom goes back to work and it’s just us girls. Mississippi does not like this. She’s pretty bad when Tom and I eat meals, but when it’s just me eating, she is downright pissed. She will bark non-stop as long as I am eating. Then, when I go to work on the computer, she will bark non-stop. If I let her hang out in the office, I can get her to do some down stays with me for a while, but soon she gets antsy and starts looking for things in the office to destroy. I kick her out, and she barks non-stop for a loooong time. If she finally settles down, and I have to leave my office for anything like a bathroom break or a glass of water, the barking starts back up again. The more frustrated I am with her, the worse it gets. Hiding in the basement doesn’t help much either. She still knows I’m in the house. She will pace and bark for a long, long time.
Monday I had zero patience so I gave up trying to work from home and drove to the Flickerbox Portland office for the day. It’s frustrating to leave her alone in the house because I don’t see how it’s going to solve anything. I foolishly imagined that when we got a dog, it would be great that I worked from home because the dog would have someone to hang out with all day. Mississippi doesn’t want to just ‘hang out’ she wants to play hard all the the time. She wants to go in the backyard and dig her way to China all the time. She does not want to sit quietly while I work. She does not want me to sit quietly. We must be doing something active all day long or she gets frustrated.
I understand that she is frustrated and it makes me so sad. I start feeling like getting her was a mistake. So Monday I took some time to think about how my attitude directly affects how well I can cope with her tantrums and I tried to snap myself out of it. Tuesday, although we had some rough times, was a much better day simply because I greeted the day with an attitude of acceptance for our current situation. I love Mississippi to pieces and as long as I show her love and keep up her training, things will continue to get better. Impatience and frustration only make things worse. When I’m mad at her, she will defiantly tear up the irises. When I am not mad at her, a simple ‘off’ will usually get her away from them.
We have been trying a technique where we don’t acknowledge her directly when she is barking. If we are sitting when she is barking, and she shows no sign of stopping, we will sometimes get up and walk around, not making eye contact. It’s something I learned in the Calming Signals video. Seeing us pretending to be busy is supposed to signal her to calm down. The problem is, I don’t think she wants to calm down.
I hate switching training techniques. They say that consistency is the most important thing. But how long do you try something before you accept that it’s just not going to work. Her barking is getting worse, not better. So now, we are trying a can full of change. When she starts her crazy barking, she gets the can. The can is more obnoxious than her. But I wonder if she’ll just get used to it. I know the can thing works well with puppies, but she is not a puppy and she knows it’s us shaking the can. Will this really work? I read about teaching her ‘no bark’ similar to teaching her to sit or stay for long periods of time. You stretch out the treats after time so that you get her to not bark for longer and longer periods. Because she is barking for attention, I wonder if this will really work. If the problem is me not being able to get any work done, how does adding even more training time to my day actually help this situation?
Tom’s attitude is, she has a happy home, she is loved, played with, trained, fed and kept safe. If she wants to be a brat, we just have to let it happen and hope she eventually figures out she doesn’t get anything from being a brat. Unless her goal is to kick me out of the house, her brattyness is definitely not getting her very far. If she’s frustrated at being lonely, all I can do is make sure she gets training and play time with me, plus some sort of doggy interaction every day. I’ve booked three half days of doggy day care this week. I’m hoping it gives her a sense of community.
Speaking of, where the hell is my community? Where is my people park? I wish iIcould take her out in public more. We could both go sit at a cafe and do some work. She’s too antsy to sit outside in public with me. What do I do? Do I just try anyway? Let her bark at and jump on all the passers by? Gee, that sounds fun.
When I started writing this post, I didn’t think it was going to end up sounding so bleak. We had a pretty good time yesterday. We had a great time playing in the living room, we practiced walking on a leash, she let me work for quite a while without barking up a storm. We went to a doggy park and although she had a pretty good time rough housing, the teenage boy who was there got covered in muddy paw prints from all her jumping and one of the other dogs was very upset with her rowdy play and tried to stop her. She never got the hint and I eventually had to remove her from the park. It was so peaceful after we left the gate. You could almost here a sigh of relief from the other dogs as we walked off. But she was pretty good last night. She hung out in the basement for a while until she started trying to steal Tom’s stuff. We made her go back upstairs and she sat quietly while Tom played music and I drew.
There’s a dog training class at the Sellwood Community Center over the summer. I think I’ll sign up for it. Plus I need to call Tim and set up our next class. One more week with Tim then we are on our own again. She’s come a long way but she still has a long way to go.