For The Dogs
My good friend and favorite play date was feeling down when she came over to play last time. She had along her recently taken in puppy. The puppy was driving her and the entire family insane. Her husband had always wanted a hound dog and so when they had the chance at this utterly adorable pup they jumped at it. Now they were regretting it.
The adorable hound pup is eating everything in sight, terrorizing the children and her endless energy is wearing my friend into exhaustion. People had been asking to have a chance at her ever since they got her and maybe it would be best for everybody if they let someone else have a try at the poor, adorable puppy. But she so did not want to.
I begged her to please try clicker training. To let me have a little go at it, see what happened. I have no clue how to train dogs. We are blessed to have Daisy who is perfect in every way, she’s never needed training. She let me try anyway.
That silly puppy went from running wild, chewing on children to sitting quietly at my feet waiting patiently for her next great reward of a piece of dog food. Clicker training is incredible. Of course as soon as we pulled out the phone everything went wrong. Daisy found us and was horribly upset to be left out, children needed attention and I was looking even scruffier than usual.
After working with the puppy awhile her loving owner had to give it a try and start learning the basics of clicker training. It’s harder than it looks.
She is not fixed by any means. I still know nothing about training dogs, her owner knows nothing about clicker training and is having to learn everything from scratch. I think they are going to try though. The amount of work necessary to bring the crazed puppy to a point of being able to live with her is overwhelming. But maybe, just maybe with clicker training there is a glimmer of hope.