Journal Entry

:: Adventures in Dog Training ::

Carly, the queen of fiendish and cute canines, is a handful. She has a lot of quirks, things that bother her. Dealing with her dealing with these things is an ongoing project.

Having recently drunk deeply of the Dog Whisperer Kool-Aid, we’re very conscious lately about what we’re doing to enforce our positions as the leaders of our little pack. The central idea is that Carly won’t be able to relax until she really believes that we have things under control. A lot of her weirdness is probably due to her believing that things are dangerous, and that she needs to take charge. I don’t think this is something of which we’ll completely break her, but progress has been made.

Lately, we’re been thinking about how the dog charges the door. When the doorbell rings, as anyone who has visited us probably knows, she charges the door and barks. What with the mail, and UPS and FedEx, this happens at least twice a day, usually three or more. Carly also rushes the door when I go out to pick up the mail, although she doesn’t bark, just waits there and goes running like hell back to her toys when I come back.

Today I tried something the dog whisperer does, making the dog lie down or roll over when something they hate is nearby. So when FedEx was here, I rolled her over and made her stay there. She was kind of resistent, really wanting to be up and alert, but she did it eventually. Then when I went out to get the mail later, she actually stayed sitting where I told her to, didn’t rush the door, didn’t move until I let her go. It was amazing.

This is the first time I’ve had a dog of my own, and the whole business of training her, figuring out as much as I can how her mind works, is very interesting. Even if she is a little freak.

Of course, now she’s all curled up on the couch making all this story seem like a bunch of hooey.