Back To School – The Fear Factor

First of all, let’s start this week’s blog with a quick “hurrah” as following on from “Night Terrors”, I’m delighted to report that with a newly decked out cage, complete with new bed and pillow with our scent on, Harry is sleeping like a log.

High-Fives all round (Or should that be High Paws)

This week I’m having a bit of a mental battle with myself when it comes to young Harry. I’ve been reading more forums and magazine articles about dog training and I don’t know if we’ve left it too late to get Harry into shape.

Since day one of Harry entering our lives, we’ve tried to teach him simple commands “Sit” “Stay” “Lie Down” etc, the success rate of him listening and obeying commands is about 20% - at six months old, surely it must be higher.

Then again, Puppies are like Babies – it takes time. Most articles I’ve read say Pups should be understanding the simple commands as soon as they leave their mothers at 7-8 weeks – we didn’t get Harry until he was 13 weeks old, but still he should have absorbed them by now.   

The biggest problem we have at the moment is “Recall” AKA getting the dog to come back when he’s loose. He LOVES an escape, not to get away from us obviously – it’s to explore, but he is prone to darting off at lightening pace down the farm fields towards the main road! It takes a crack squad of at least four to get hold of him and back in a controlled environment! “Harry Come” to him is “Harry keep running pal”.

Around the other dogs he’s OK, he sniffs around like you do but is generally well behaved, other than stealing treats and not chilling out! He has a BIG problem with that when the other dogs are around, when they aren’t he WILL take a nap 80% of the time, it’s driving me insane – especially when there’s something on TV or your trying to get some work done.

I can hear you screaming now “He’s a puppy, it happens” – I know, I know… but you haven’t met him, this is not normal puppy behaviour.

Enquiries have been made about Puppy Training, but that’s my next worry… what if he doesn’t respond? Especially when you consider puppy training is group based, which means other dogs… and other owners who want to out-do you!!

It’s going to be like school, which fills me with fear.

With the farm dogs and family, Harry is OK – he knows them and is fine around them, but when we take him for walks and he see’s other Dog’s and other people, that can have interesting results! One dog or One person is manageable with a tightened grip on the lead and some fuss, but multiple dogs and multiple people at once, in a crowded environment whilst your trying to listen and make a breakthrough… all I can say is ARRRRHHHHHHHGGGGG HELP ME.

That’s it for this week, if you’re reading and you have tips on getting him a little wiser and calmer ahead of School, imagine it like private pre-school, then please let me know! Oh also the Collar camera DID arrive, once again I didn’t think it through – yup, I got endless shots of his fur and, after he’d shook it off, the sky as it lay out in the garden getting slowly buried!

P.S. I saw this on facebook earlier too, maybe a topic for next week – that’s SO going to happen!