Raising a dog means you are going to be wrong a LOT, and you are going to have to be ok with that. I was wrong from day 1.
I have always wanted to give the rescue dog a stable home. Little did I know that if you don’t already own a dog, the path to dog adoption via private rescue is a long shot. You can tell the private rescue all the puppy raising books you read and how you are super excited, but in the end, if you have never raised a puppy before, most private rescues won’t dare let you adopt one.
Fed up with numerous rejections from private rescue organizations, I started stalking the adoption page of the Humane Society. One day, after my job interview, I drove over to the Humane Society and picked out the runt of the litter. She was the tiny fearful puppy of 12 weeks, weighing in at whooping 7lbs. I was told that she is a small terrier mix, and would grow to be about 20lb at most.
The only accurate statement above is that I adopted a puppy after a job interview.
Turned out she was malnutritioned, and her growth was stunted. Her teeth indicated that she was closer to 16 weeks at the time of adoption. After 6 months of playing catch-up on growing, the pups turned into a 50lbs border collie-pointer-something mix. Rescues are awesome.
True to her working dog nature, Lucy is a extremely high energy dog. I slacked off with the training at first, thinking that I’ll take care of it at the obedience class.
Nope.
Day 1 of Obedience Class: Lucy had a meltdown due to the fact that she can’t play with other dogs. All parties involved in this exercise are having the worst two hours of their day. Pups is completely stressed and got zero chill. All 6-7 other dogs at the obedience class were doing just fine, focusing on their respective humans and getting snacky snacks…I mean getting trained.
And that’s how I started teaching myself how to train a dog who failed out of obedience class. I had already taught myself the basics of fitness training. Turns out, dog training and human training are pretty similar.
After about a year of training Lucy, I decided to write them all down. Mostly so I don’t forget, but hopefully this might inspire someone out there who might be wondering how to train their sweet hyperactive dog.