Doggie Boarding School – The Turnover

Emma has been home for about a week and a half now, so I figured I should give an update.

At pick up, we were trained on how to maintain her training.  Honestly, I was amazed at the difference in her.  She still has her spunky  personality, but she listens when commands are given.  We have been able to take her outside WITHOUT a leash.  That’s is huge. 

We had to reinterduce her and our 10 month old son.  That has been our biggest challenge.  We do not want to keep them separated because we believe that was part of Emma’s jealousy.  It’s amzing, they both have the whole house and both still seem to end up in the same location.  I actually feel they are practically on top of each other every second.  Our son still needs to learn to touch nicely.  We’re working on it, but we’re not there yet.

Surprisingly, Emma has been good with our son since she has gotten home.  We have to keep a close eye on them both.  We can tell when Emma has had about enough, and we call her and she comes.  We “place” her out of the baby’s range and let her take a break.

It’s been a lot of work, and it will continue to be a great deal of work.  I do believe that this will help us be a family!

Doggie Boarding Schools – Pick Up Day!!

We go to pick up Emma today.  She’s been gone for 2 weeks at a board and train.

Both my husband and I go today to be trained on how to maintain her behavior.  We’re both anxious and very nervous.  We hope that she still has her personality, but listens to our commads!

I’ll give an update to report on all of the progress she made.

Doggie Boarding School – Part 2

We dropped Emma off on Tuesday.  We anxiously awaited our first update.  Every day, we each check our emails about 100x a day (or at least it felt like it!)

Finally, we got our first update on Saturday!  They said the first two days, she was very aggressive anytime someone would try and touch her.  The trainer was able to work with her, and they feel they are past that.  Since then, she has learned many of the basic commands.  She now knows sit, down, come, place, extended sit, and extended down.  They also sent a video of her doing the commands.

She seems to be doing well.  There was only one time in the video she didn’t appear to be listening.  But within a few seconds, she was focused again.

I’m still nervous that she will come home and be aggressive when we try and put her collar on her.  Only time will tell.  Hopefully she keeps making strides in the right direction!

I keep reminding myself that she can’t possibly be the worst dog that they have worked with.

Hopefully our next update will come soon!!

Doggie Boarding School – Part 1

I know I have made reference in previous posts about my furbaby.  She is a 22 month old Corgi.

A little background on her.  We brought her home right after Thanksgiving in 2013.  My husband and I had dogs growing up, but she was our first baby together.  We would spend hours after work playing with her.  She would do basic commands for treats.  After awhile, she became very hyper.  Typically puppy behavior.  Everyone kept telling me, after she is “fixed” she will calm down.

March 2014, we had her surgery.  We dropped her off in the morning, and we were allowed to bring her home after work.  The next day, she was acting like her normal self again.

In April, she started to get slightly aggressive.  She would growl and show her teeth.  As the weeks went on, she started to get worse.  She would corner me while showing her teeth.  If I would move, she would lunge at me and she would bite me.  *She is by no means vicious.  She would go days, and show no signs of this aggression.*

With a baby on the way, we knew we need to do something to get her under control.  In September 2014, we started basic obedience classes.  We took her to 5 classes.  We missed the last class because I went into labor early.  This class taught her to listen on command, as long as she was receiving a treat as a reward.

My maternity leave I spent in my bedroom or the baby’s bedroom.  When my husband wasn’t home, I was not able to control her.  My husband and I had many conversations on the topic.  It was hard for me to continue to want her around.  I was afraid of her, and I was afraid of her hurting the baby.

She did well when the baby came home.  We never let her very close, but she would lick his feet.  Once he started to move around, we had to restrict her more.  She no longer had free access to the whole house until he went to bed for the night.  The baby loved to stand at the gate and just watch her.  She would come over and give him kisses on the hands.

Fast forward to July 2015.  The baby had been pulling up on the gate for a couple months at this point.  For the most part, we could tell when the dog had had enough for the day and needed to be left alone.  The baby and I were sitting on the floor next to the gate.  He was not even touching the gate.  He turned to put his hands on the floor so that he could crawl away.  The dog reached through the gate and “bit” him.  I’m not trying to make light of the situation because I do consider it a bite, but she does not actually bite hard.  And again, that does not make it right.  Obviously, it scared him.

I was fed up at this point.  My husband was upset because I had already warned him that if she ever even attempted to hurt he baby, she would be gone.  I waited to address the situation until the next day.  I didn’t want to say anything rash.  I HAD to calm down before I could talk to him.

We made her  an appointment to rule out any medical issues (which we had already talked to our vet about her issues in the past.)  She came back with a clean bill of health.  I found this training online (thanks to a friend who loves watching dog videos!)  It is a 2 week training.

We made an appointment to meet with the trainers.  We went over our concerns, and her behavioral issues.  They feel fully confident that they can help us with her.  We don’t want to get rid of her, but she needs to listen to us.  She needs to know how to act around us and other people.

Her journey starts today.  We hope this training will bring our family a dog who can be apart of the family again.

Wish us luck!

Baby vs Puppy vs Mommy

My husband and I had the bright idea of getting a puppy while we were trying to get pregnant.  Both of our families have dogs, and we both wanted a dog.  We thought, why put it off?  It could take us month, or maybe years, to fall pregnant.

We traveled 4 and half hours one way to pick up our new fur-baby.  She was so little, fury, and cuddly – what’s not to love??  This dog and the future baby will be best friends!!

 This is the puppy just two weeks after coming to live with us!

We were pregnant within 2 months of bringing home our furball!  Our puppy was just a year old when we brought the baby home.  She barks nonstop at anything.  The fan, vacuum, shadows, the noise my breast pump makes, and the list goes on.  I read that the baby would not be startled by her bark because he will be used to hearing it.  That turned out to be true! Whew!

Her still being a puppy brings on challenges.  If I drop something, I have exactly .02 seconds to pick it up or she will have it.  This includes the baby’s pacifiers or burp clothes.  She has destroyed both.  And I do not get any sympathy from the husband on this matter.  His advice?  Be more careful and don’t leave things where the dog can get them.  OH!  Is that how it works?  I wasn’t aware that I wasn’t allowed to drop something.  Sometimes juggling a baby, a bottle, the burp cloth, and not trying to trip over the dog is just too much!  If I have to choose any of those to drop, the burp cloth would be the one I would choose!  Doesn’t mean that I want it to get destroyed before I get the chance to bend down and pick it up.  And I have to do this fast, while holding the baby and bottle in his mouth!

I don’t know what we’re going to do when the baby is able to actually play with toys and starts moving around.  It’s not fair to keep her locked up all of the time, but it’s not fair that he would only be able to play with toys in his room.  My husband and I battle about this all of the time.  But that is a whole different issue.  I will leave that issue for Future Me to deal with!

My baby has been fussy recently.  He wants to be held ALL of the time.  Which don’t get me wrong, I love cuddle time with him.  It does make it really hard to get anything accomplished.  Also, he hasn’t really been taking naps the last couple of days.  I’m lucky to get 45 minutes before he wakes up.

So today, I changed him and fed him – and by some miracle he fell asleep!  I am finally going to be able to accomplish something with out him strapped to me in his carrier!  First, I decide to pump.  It is so much easier to pump while I can sit back and watch TV.  Just as I am finishing up, I hear the UPS truck outside of my window.  Great, I pray they don’t ring the doorbell.  I can’t answer the door while still hooked up to my pump, AND the dog will go crazy.  I peek out the window and see the driver running back to the truck without my package in handle.  Whew!  Crisis averted there!

WRONG!  My dog heard the sound of the brake being released and decided to go crazy!  She starts barking.  I’m optimistic that the baby will be able to tune her out.  I lure her into the kitchen and close the baby gate.  She continues to bark for what seems like FOREVER!  It wasn’t forever, but it was for a solid 5 minutes!  She finally starts to calm down, and the soft cry of my baby can now be heard.

She woke the baby!  I’m furious with the dog.  The baby is inconsolable.  Today will not be the day for me to accomplish anything.  Maybe tomorrow?

Having a puppy and a newborn have been a huge challenge.  I feel like every day is a new battle with the puppy.  I’m not heartless, I promise, but there have been times where I wish we could give the puppy a new home.  That being said, I give credit to all of you Moms out there who have a newborn and a toddler(s) running around!  You must have a lot of patience or drink a lot of wine!! 🙂