The Puppy or the Idiot

For over a month now I have been working hard to try and train our new puppy, and for over a month now my progress has been minimal at best. I have never trained a puppy from scratch before, so I really have no basis to compare anything that I do with, but I have this strange feeling that I am being sabotaged the entire way. No, not by my Mom, for she actually supports me when I come to a decision on what we should train her to do. Instead, it is by our household idiot, my Dad.

I am trying to come up with a nice way to put this, but I honestly feel like he is sabotaging all my hard work every time he talks to her and pets her and feeds her. Seriously, it has been about a month and a half and the dog still does not know to come when called, does not know to not go to the bathroom in the house, and does not know some of the simplest commands. And all of this is because my Dad will not get on board and stop pampering her. Fact is he keeps acting like this is a child that he can buy the love out of, giving her treats when she is being bad or playing games we have told him that are off limits. So she does not learn because she is getting a mixed message and all that is really happening is the dog thinks I am a mean person. To say the least, that really pisses me off when I am trying to train this dog to be something amazing and not just another mutt.

It comes down to this, we have told my Dad to get with the program and to stop doing all the dumb things he does that are not helping her learn. For instance, while trying to train her that it was good that she went to the bathroom outside he forgot to bring out some treats. So after the task was done and several minutes later when she was back inside, he gave her a treat and rewarded her. "Are you freaking stupid?" were the first words out of my mouth when I saw him do this. She is a dog, not a human, and she thinks you are rewarding her for no reason because she did not recently do the task that you wanted her to do. Good job, but all you have done is undermined the value of each treat because she thinks they are something she deserves and does not have to earn.

Here is another classical example of him being a total idiot when it comes to training, I told him we need to start crate training her and that means on a daily basis she goes to the bathroom outside, drinks water, and then we throw her in the crate for a few hours. He says back to me when I tell him the plan, "But I don't understand, she is in the crate all night." Okay, yes we put her in the crate at night so she does not go crazy on all the furniture while we are trying to sleep, but then she falls asleep and does not learn that she needs to go to the bathroom outside and that the crate is her home. When you crate train a dog during the day it does something more than when you throw them in the crate at night. The day training teaches them that her home (crate) is a place not to go to the bathroom and the same goes with your home. It also teaches them where going to the bathroom is okay to go while giving you a break from having to watch the puppy every minute of every hour of the day. Again, you freaking idiot, just get with the program and start doing it instead of undermining my authority and making me seem like a mean owner.

The Problem Puppy

And just for reference, our new puppy is half australian shepherd and half border collie mix, both of which are known to be extremely smart, natural herding dogs. They are also both known to test their boundaries time and time again to see what they can get away with, and if you have one idiot out of line that does not keep them in shape, they think that whatever they do is okay. I like to call this effect the velociraptor mentality, which is a reference to Jurassic Park when they discuss how the velociraptors will check the fence for weak spots to escape through. Anyway, in other words, these dogs are really smart, really difficult to train, and impossible to deal with when someone will not follow the set rules.

So now I have an option, I can either train the dog or train my Dad. I do not have time for both, especially since the only other person who seems to want to take time to watch the puppy is my Dad and he is the incompetent fool that is causing more problems than helping mend by watching the puppy. I wish there was a book called common sense, because then I could at least beat my Dad with it to see if the sense goes in. Seriously, this is your pet and not your friend, so stop acting like you are going to hurt her feelings and start acting like you are the master. Maybe then we will get a puppy that comes on command.

A Little Monster After Nine

Indigo Barking at the Potatoes

The longer we have our puppy, the more stuff it is that we seem to learn about her behavior and her personality. Like we know she is going to be an excellent family dog, because she gets upset when one of us leaves the room and super excited when that person returns again. She loves licking and kissing, she loves lying on our feet, and she loves being around us. So her being a loving family dog is not the issue.

Instead, we are learning interesting little personality traits about the puppy that we never expected. Like for such an adventurous dog, and I mean adventurous, she is afraid of a bag of potatoes that we left in the middle of the kitchen floor. Seriously, my Mom and I watched as the puppy would circle back and forth, watching the bag with a keen eye and as if at any moment it might get up and attack her. All of this from the same dog that is not scared of thunder, lightning, rain, the dark, cats, other dogs, or just about anything else that normal dogs are scared of.

Here's another strange one that she is scared of (in comparison), the broom. I was sweeping the backyard porch with the broom, getting all the dirt off of there that she had brought up, when suddenly I see she is standing at the very edge of the porch watching. She gets interested and steps up on the porch, but I don't stop sweeping because it was obvious which direction I was going. Well, she would jump about a foot in front of the broom and then ten feet back as I swept it across the wood. Indigo would bark a few times at the broom, then try to get close again. And sometimes she would even scurry off far away in fright that it was coming after her. Truly a funny sight to watch.

Nap Time Angel

But even beyond just the weird things that the dog is scared of, we are also learning how she starts acting when she gets energetic. Now, my Mom will say that she is getting cranky right before a nap, but I think it is just the dog's way of saying I am bursting with energy and ready to run around. Anyway, we were eating dinner and the dog was being a menace, grabbing things with her teeth and chewing things up. We ended up putting her outside since we all had to eat dinner and could not afford to keep pulling her off of things. Once outside, the pup started running around the yard and keeping herself busy. She drags a stick from one side to the other, munches on it a bit, and then is off again. And for all the love I have in the world for her, I do not have the type of energy she has.

Still, after prancing around the yard and tearing things off of trees and really running around untamed, she finally calms down. Getting up on the porch, she plops right down in her toboggan and goes to sleep. So by the time we got outside to watch here, finished with our own meals and quite satisfied, she is just laying dead in the toboggan. That's when my Mom picked her up and was able to hold her like a little angel in her lap.

And then she wakes up and has all the energy in the world again, which brings me to the main point of my post and the reason for it's inevitable title. At around nine at night (sometimes a little bit later), she starts getting rough again and nippy. This is where my Dad came in and started calling her the devil dog. I do not think that this is a devil dog, but more a puppy that has bursts of energy and just needs to use them. But it does feel like the devil has possessed her the way that this personality of being nippy and starts biting comes out every day around the same time.

After This: A Loving Dog at Eleven

Even right now as I am writing this blog, she is getting extremely violent with the milk jug again. From the sound of her growls and yips, you would think that she was in an epic struggle here to kill the piece of plastic. And it is strange that she gets this way with the plastic, but at least it is not human flesh. She does seem to identify the difference, which we know because she never attacks the milk jug or other pieces of plastic until we place them on the ground and let go.

Finally, after rough housing and (usually) being thrown back outside to go run around like a nut, she calms down and plops asleep again. At least we have a lot of pictures to remember her as a puppy like this!

Thankful for Vinegar

I think I can explain this post in under twelve seconds by starting out with puppies are like atomic bombs, by which I mean that they are packed with copious amounts of destructive energy. In order to contain and control all of these energy you have to either play with them until they tucker out, give them toys to chew on and play with themselves, or figure out some other way. Scientifically speaking, we would classify all of these options as the dissipation of the energy to lead to a less violent force.

Well in our house we have three grown adults that have almost every day available to take care of our new puppy, and all three of us are exhausted now. Literally, this dog has more energy than we can handle and we all need about a week vacation from trying to raise her. Now do not take that the wrong way, we all love this puppy and we want her to be a part of our family, but it is just a level of work that would kill anyone if they tried it on their own.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, something that we all have started to say we are thankful for that you would never expect, the empty vinegar bottle! Basically, what we have learned about our dog is that she hates plastic with a vengeance and will stop at nothing to attack and kill plastic items. So one day, my Dad placed a clearned-out and empty vinegar bottle on the floor to be taken out to the recycling bin later. Our little puppy-girl suddenly came out of no where and looked it over, sniffing it before jumping back and barking. I am not going to say our dog never barks, but she has to be upset with something to bark at it. So as he watched (and my Mom and I tried to sleep), she suddenly sprang up and attacked the vinegar bottle, trying desperately to kill it.

I say thank you, because this is a great way to keep her entertained that we never knew about before and start dissipating some of that energy I spoke of. And in all honesty, we all find it very entertaining that she attacks the bottle as such and we are not exactly sure why she hates empty plastic containers. Either way, it has been a great way to get rid of some of that puppy dog crazy and we have since continued to place the bottle down and watch her attack it at random.

The Puppy Takes on the Vinegar Bottle's Ally, the Milk Jug!

But that is not all she attacks. As shown in the video I took above, she will also attack empty plastic milk bottles in an effort to dominate them. Another item she has no problem attacking in the same manner are the tomato plastic holders that you get when you buy a tomato plant for your garden. Now I am sure that this is not teaching her things she should learn, but she does not attack anyone in the family like this, she does not bark at other dogs or at us, and she does not seem to be learning any bad habit from this exercise. So we have actually sort of been enforcing it since we would never put a vinegar bottle or a milk jug down that was still filled with their respective contents. I just hope she keeps staying as intently interested in it as she has been.

Training Starts Yesterday

If the joke name "Bad Dog Gimme That" is not a clue to how stubborn our new australian shepherd/border collie mix puppy is, then the fact that we have decided to start training her should be a good hint. Up until now, we thought that this puppy was seven weeks old when we got her, which would make her eight weeks old now and another week away before we could start really training her to be a good dog. Except, then I counted the number of weeks since she was born that the breeder told us. Turns our that yesterday was her tenth-week-since-birth day. Upon learning this, a unanimous group decision was made that she starts training right away.

That was yesterday, and that is exactly what happened. Although we are still working on getting her a crate that we think she will enjoy, we are now tirelessly working on making sure she learns who is the boss. You see, up until now we have let her eat when she wants, play outside as long as she wants, tug on things, jump on things, bite us, and a mountain of other things that a dog should not do. All of that stopped. Here's how we've changed it:

• Eat When She Wants: She now has a food schedule, three times a day as recommended online and this will change to twice a day once she becomes a year or so old. We take the bowl away after half an hour of her feeding time and if she did not eat her fill, then she goes hungry for five hours or so.
• Play Outside: When she asks us to come inside, we do not always let her go in. We need her to know that the door opens when we say it opens, that she does not have a magical ability to command us to open the door, and that we will do it when we can. However, at the same time we are also trying to teach her to ask politely (as in whimper or bark) for the door to be open, which she has started doing. To clarify, this is not so much a large deal of letting her inside, but more of a who has control. And do not worry, we sit out there with her even on hot days, so we know when it is too hot.
• Tug on Things: We can't have our baby girl tearing up the house and to stop her we already bought some spray called Grannick's Bitter Apple. At first we were using some other stuff that said it stopped dogs, but after reading reviews we immediately turned it in because she actually attacked things more. This new spray stuff smells bad and after putting some down, she does not attack the object until it wears off (and it does wear off).
• Jump on Things: There are two reasons we do not want her jumping on things, because we do not want her up on furniture or other items and we do not want her jumping on guests that come over. A simple tug on the collar (it does not hurt her, but gives a physical reminder to stubborn dogs that they are not supposed to do it) and one of us saying, "No!" So far she has been learning quickly, not liking the tugs on the collar and learning to stop doing whatever she is doing wrong. There is still more training to go. 
• As an added note here, we are okay with her coming up and jumping on people that have given the signal that they do not mind being jumped on. This signal is that they get down to her level, on their knees or sitting on the ground, but if the person is standing she needs to know not to jump.
• Bite Us: This has been concerning for all of us, because sometimes when she gets playful she also starts nipping. Her teeth are sharp and painful if they dig in, and she has a habit of not liking to let go. So to say the least, we do not want her biting. Unfortunately, she is also still teething, so biting on stuff helps relieve some of the teething pain and so all she wants to do is bite. We have done two things to try and stop her from biting us.
• First we grab her muzzle lightly, shutting her jaw for a second, and we say, "No!" We do this about ten times, giving her plenty of opportunities to stop and we usually try and take her outside so she can be rough on sticks and toys and not us.
• If she keeps biting, no matter what, then she gets a 10 minute time out. I've never heard such cries and had I not have been strong, I think we all would have caved to letter her sit out for a few minutes.
• By doing this, she is learning much more quickly not to bite us.

And do not get me wrong, my family and I are being overly nice to the puppy too. If she has an accident inside, we just take her outside and let her finish her business. We never hit our dogs, we never smack or anything like that to our pets! These are family members and we know it does not teach her to stop doing the bad thing she is doing, but rather just makes the animal scared of us. Instead, we just clean it up and move on, hoping she does not do it again.

Anyway, I love that puppy dog, but she has to be properly trained! And these are just the things at the top of our list! We also want to train her to do normal dog tricks, such as sit, stay, lay down, roll over, and even the basic come here. And from there we also want her to learn how to heel, take car rides, and  never bark at other dogs. It is going to be a challenge, but I know that putting in this time and effort will lead to years of love and I mean both ways!