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You have now watched all my "How to Train a Puppy" videos and you are thinking to yourself, "I could never do that. My dog will never do x, y, or z."
You're wrong. You can do it.
Because you know what? My life summed up isn't a 5 minute video.
In my real life with my dogs, I screw up. I correct to harshly. I don't correct on time. Sometimes, our walks suck. Sometimes I just put my puppy outside so I can do something without watching him for a minute.
And it's ok.
It's ok because as long as you are trying and practicing, you'll get better. And the better you get, the better your dogs will get and their quality of life will improve.
Confession Time
Poppy and I do not get along.
{Her and Andy are like two peas in a pod, though. If he was on one edge of a cliff and she was on the other side and he called her, she would jump. Hands down, without a question. He is her person.}
Poppy is a super dog. She is so good. She is loyal. She is obedient. She is insanely intuitive {example: she picks up what entire phrases mean on her own}. She is trustworthy.
She is also so hard for me. She can be so obstinate. She can be so stubborn. She is soooooo vocal. She always knows better but sometimes just can't help it.
She has been the most challenging animal I have ever worked with in my entire life. Her and I are just not naturally on the same wavelength. I have a hard time understanding her. She has a hard time understanding me. I have made so many mistakes with her, sometimes I look back and want to cry. Cry real, literal tears because I feel so bad that I have such a hard time and have done so many things wrong.
But every morning, I wake up and try again. Try new ways to connect with her and new ways to communicate with her. New ways that I can figure out why she may be doing a certain behavior. And she recognizes the tries. Dogs may remember, but they are the master's of letting it go and moving on. They just don't care. How you act today matters more to them than how you acted yesterday. Or last week. So, if your dog is a challenge, try again.
Because one day, you'll look back and smile and maybe even cry some happy tears. You'll smile because you remember the 30 pounds underweight Poppy you brought home because you just couldn't leave her there and you thought she would die on the way home. You'll remember how you taught her to walk across different surfaces besides concrete. And how she was so scared but she came because she trusted you. You'll remember how she literally shook for hours after you gave her a bath for the first time because she was so scared but now she jumps in the tub on command. You'll remember how frustrated you were when she would poop on the carpet every single Sunday while you were at church. But eventually, you both got over it. You'll remember that you would cry on walks because she was pulling so hard and you were so frustrated and had tried every tool you could think of and nothing was working. And then you tried one more time and it was the right tool. It worked. She understood. And you were so relieved, and she was so relieved, and you both had the best walk ever that day.
And you'll think to yourself, we can do this. Because really, I guess you can't do it by yourself. But if you work with your dogs as a members of a pack, together you can anything.
So don't you give up on that ol' dog of yours. You can both learn how to do this and have the best behaved dog on the block.
Check out all the posts in this series here.
Anneli Robinaugh
I just watched your whole series which was so helpful and I feel a lot more confident at the idea of training a dog. I am thinking of fostering and maybe eventually adopting a dog and I’m interested to hear more about how you establish boundaries with your dogs and young children. My biggest concern about fostering/adopting is having a plan to make sure both my toddler and the dog are safe and understand boundaries.
Alli
Great question! I think it's super important to make sure that children and dogs can interact safely. Dogs work from a pack mentality, so from the get-go, your children need to be established as leaders in your "pack." The easiest and most effective way to do this is with food. To a dog, whoever controls the food is in charge. I teach my children how to feed our dogs following the same sit, eye contact, ok method and that helps a lot to establish them as leaders. I also help my kids understand how the dogs are feeling when they act in certain ways and to be aware of their personal space. This depends a lot on the dog and their personality. Poppy doesn't like to be bothered, but Maverick likes to be in the center of all the chaos with kids. Does that help? Happy to answer more questions if you have them!