Emma, our lively,
exuberant pointer cross, came to live with
us July 3, 2002 at the tender age of 8 weeks. I realized at the end of
the first week, that she was far more energetic
than any other puppy we had ever lived with!
I quickly enrolled her in obedience classes,
where she learned the basic commands (sit, heel, come) … however
her reliability rate was only about 50% (on a good day). I thought
that she would eventually just outgrow this ‘puppy stage’ and
with maturity become the dog that I expected (we were in denial).
At six months, she was still jumping up on the
counters, jumping on people, lunging on the leash, chewing shoes,
socks, underwear and somewhere along the line ‘Come’
had come to mean ‘catch me if you can’ … and I
spent more hours than I care to admit to chasing Emma around the
couch trying to get my good leather shoe out of her mouth. I’m
sure she thought her name was ‘Emma-No’.
I couldn’t turn my back on her for a minute because she was
into everything …
I was getting frustrated and exhausted. I had
started avoiding the parks on our walks because if there were
other dogs there she would want to play with them which would
end up with us in a tangled mess of leashes …letting her
off leash was definitely not an option… at that point I couldn’t
imagine EVER being able to let her run free with other dogs in
the park. I was (secretly) beginning to think that maybe we should
be looking for another home for her. Puppy biting had turned into
aggressive play and a simple game of fetch would turn quickly
into torn pant legs and t-shirt hems. The day our daughter said
that she didn’t want to stay home alone with Emma because
she was afraid of her ..I knew I had to do something.
I called Jeff because two phrases in his brochure
had intrigued me … immediate results
and off leash training. We had immediate
results within the first week of training; shoes, underwear and socks
were now safe, counter surfing gone, and the best of all was that once
again come meant come. But could we actually let her off leash??? Emma
was off leash in the park with the other dogs by her second class, and
we can regularly and reliably let her off leash anywhere with any dogs
all the time (in fact many times I forget to even take a leash!).
Jeff’s training methods fit right
into our daily routine ..we didn’t have to
set aside special ‘training time’ … everyday life became
our training sessions. Jeff’s training taught Emma to think …
and a dog that exercises mentally is a much more reliable dog …
and calmer.
All of the ‘puppy problems’ that I
hoped she would just grow out of, disappeared within the first
few weeks. I wish that we had known Jeff to help us train our other
dogs …I can’t imagine training a dog any other way.
Emma is still our lively, exuberant, energetic puppy,
but now I can add well-behaved.
Everyone that meets her comments on what a good dog she is …the
greatest compliment your dog can receive! I KNOW that she will respond
to EVERY command EVERY time.
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Puppy of the Month (Vito)
