We had two at home visits this week. Once from Richard Spencer-Mills who specializes in tough cases and herding breeds, and one from our trainer Tim from Pawsitively Pawssible. Things have definitely calmed down here and I feel like now we can start to really get some serious training into her.
Richard helped me so much with the biting issues and gave me loads of advice about all sorts of things from teaching her a hand command for ‘off’ and ‘leave it’. He told me about all sorts of training programs I could put her in and talked to me about chaining commands so that we can eventually get her to go in her crate, lay down and wait. He told me we are doing great and that Mississippi is the greatest dog in the world, which we of course already knew. He showed me a couple of cool tricks, like getting her to weave through my legs as I walk. He was here I think 3 hours and although she was completely frustrated that I was talking to another human instead of lavishing her with attention, she was pretty good at lay down and stay. Her ability to stay down is increasing.
Tim came over today and helped us with the door situation where she just wants to molest anyone who comes in. She’s going to have to calm down and sit before she can come near the door. We’re going to have to enlist some volunteers to come over and help us with that. He also showed us how to get her to ‘go to her place’ which right now is her crate. She did really well. Now that she’s starting to get it, I’m also planting a peanut butter kong in her crate when she’s not looking. Then I ring the doorbell from inside my office, gotta love remote doorbells. This still gets her to bark but I’m directing her to go to her place, and lo and behold, there is a fat peanut butter kond waiting for her. I figure I’ll do this a few times a day, where something delicious is waiting for her. Soon the doorbell will not set her off into a frenzy of barking.
Tim told us if she does her crazy barking when we are trying to watch tv, and she’s not content to stay at our feet, that we just go downstairs and play some music without her. So barking incessantly for attention turns into ‘mom and dad leave me all alone, bummer’. He also told us to wake up earlier than she usually does, give her a kong, and go back to sleep. That way hopefully she’ll stop whining and barking to wake us up. We’ll see, I still don’t feel 100% confident that one is going to work. Hopefully it’ll turn into a habit of, “oh, the humans wake me up and I get a kong” instead of “these humans better get up right now because I want to go outside.”
One big thing that both Tim and Richard taught, was to have a single word or sound for when she does something wrong. So we’re sticking with Ut-oh. Richard taught me that if she does something wrong where she needs a timeout, put her in the bathroom or somewhere boring, wait just one to two minutes, then let her try again. Repeat until she associates being separated with doing something wrong. He said it’s just vital that we always give her a chance to get it right. Richard also gave me the very sage advice to just get away from her when she’s making me crazy. The escalation into utter frustration and anger doesn’t help anyone, it certainly doesn’t feel good to me and Mississippi has got to hate it too.
Thank you so much, Richard and Tim. I gave Richard some homemade focaccia, looks like I owe Tim a batch too. Tim says Mississippi is ready for any of the group classes so it’s time to wear her out with some serious training.
We’re getting there one day at a time. It is starting to feel like we’re really improving. When we have frustrating moments, we feel like we have more tools now to deal with them. I’m not feeling as overwhelmed as I was a couple weeks ago.