Closing in on puppy homecoming

 Little Luke and his littermates are 6 weeks old! They've been merged with a litter that is one week younger, so there are 15 puppies running around like crazy together.

And also sleeping a lot.

As I've read dog-training books, listened to dog-training podcasts, and watched dog-training videos online over the past 4 months or so, it has made me judge my past self very harshly, as I've dealt disastrously with previous dogs. I like dogs, but each one I've gotten, I've been grossly unprepared. Even with Kaley, when I researched greyhounds extensively, I didn't eve really consider proper training; instead, we just got lucky that she was a "good" dog, who had been taught general human-pleasing manners in her brief stint as a racing greyhound.

The first dog "I" ever owned was a baby sheltie pup. I was living with a man who selected the dog, but the first time I saw her, I was hooked. She was a sweetie. However, I just thought you do the same thing I'd done with cats: get them, they live with you, everyone is happy. We made the huge mistake of letting the dog roam freely in the house, even though both of us worked from 5 AM until 10 AM or 1 PM. Usually, the guy got home before I did, but he said that cleaning up the poop would have made him sick. In fact, even seeing it grossed him out, so he helpfully put paper towels over the piles for me to clean when I got home. (Yes, I realize this was a red flag regarding the suitability of said roommate, but that would be a whole other blog post.) We should have crated that dog.

Furthermore, because I had no knowledge of typical puppy behavior, I just did not understand what was wrong with that dog, who wouldn't leave me alone when I tried to work out. I'd get on the floor to do sit-ups or push-ups, and she would jump onto my head, nip at my hair and hands, etc. If you're saying, "Duh" right now, yeah, so is present-day me. I had no idea how to stop her, because my constant, "Okay, stop" and moving her didn't work. I know now that interacting with her was reinforcing her behavior. And, again, this would have been an appropriate time to crate a dog. After having played/trained with her.

When I moved out, I left the dog because I was moving back with my parents, and knew it was pushing it for them to take my cat.

The next dog I got was Kaley, and she was a dreamboat. I can see now that she had some separation anxiety with me, specifically. She didn't do anything destructive, but she'd FREAK OUT when I got home. We always thought it was funny, and I actually encouraged her to run around and jump up and down because it was so stinking cute. I didn't realize I was accidentally playing into her fear by reinforcing that she was right to party when I got home because it was such a relief. Sigh.

In Las Vegas, we adopted a Husky to be a companion for Kaley when it looked like I was going to be gone a lot for a new job I was considering. I'd take that dog running with me (running was part of the job, or else I never would have done it), and he loved it. He had a lot of energy, but a good run a day would make him manageable. Still, beyond that, I don't think I ever really thought about the different needs a Husky has than a greyhound. He was also boisterous in a way Kaley wasn't, and my ex-husband, who loved Kaley even more than I did, probably, and was very protective of her, felt the Husky was "mean" to her. I saw it as his trying to engage Kale in a way she wasn't used to, and felt like they'd eventually have found a middle ground in which to play. But we ended up rehoming the Husky because of it.

In Sherman, we stupidly tried to adopt a deaf terrier. It was so SO playful, and had really no training before at all. I certainly didn't know how to train a dog, period, much less one who couldn't respond to sound cues. Looking back, I should have established early on a foot stomp to mean "look at me." I could have worked on that several times a day for a week and the dog probably would have understood it. Most dogs respond just as well to hand signals as vocal commands, so it would have been simple enough to move forward with signs, once the dog knew to check in with me in any situation. And, again, we didn't utilize a crate. I don't know why that never occurred to me.

The dog was so small and so full of energy that by the second day we had it, D (who was maybe 3 at the time) was scratched up from the dog giving chase down the hall and jumping up to try to get D to play. We tried telling D to be "boring" when the dog wanted to play, but it's hard to keep a 3-year-old from running away when they want out of a situation. After a week and many bruises and scrapes on D, and D having to keep the bedroom door closed so the dog wouldn't chew all of the Polly Pockets, we returned the pup to where we had adopted her. I'm hugely embarrassed about this one, because it was a small organization run out of someone's home, and I was so out of my mind with stress that I returned the dog on Easter Day.

It was all my fault. I was unprepared and did not think to try to get assistance from a trainer. I felt like it was obvious that the dog wouldn't fit in with our family. Baby gates never occurred to me. Using treats to train wasn't something that was on my radar at all. I just kept treating these dogs like cats. And it was irresponsible.

The last dog we tried to adopt was Shelby, the super-sweet Catahoula leopard dog. She was about 3 years old, and super easy-going. She was huge but not interested in bugging the cats. Aish ended up being the most comfortable with her. We only had 2 problems with her: 1) she barked like crazy every time anyone walked past our house (and since our house is a main arterial to the lake, that happens 10 times a day, minimum); and 2) she made snoring noises every minute of every day. The second issue is what conflicted with D's misophonia, and is likely not something we could have fixed. But the barking. Oh my gosh, I was so bad at it. I just let her outside every time she started going nuts. I'd try to say, "Shelby. Thank you!" and hope she'd get the message that I had heard her alarm and that was enough. But I never showed her what I wanted to do instead. I never incentivized her stopping the barking after that initial alert. I guess that until recently, maybe I thought training was something that pros did, except for things like "sit" and "stay," and even then, you just had to hope for the best and if you had a good/smart dog, they might do it if you were lucky.

As for Shelby, a neighborhood family with three little girls took Shelby, and they LOVE her. I'm so happy about that.

But I was incredibly irresponsible for so many years. I hope to do much better by Luke. I'm not going to lie that the thought that he might whine/bark when we leave him in the crate alone if we have to go somewhere stresses me out a little. As long as D is here, we have to manage noise so carefully to keep D from hating the source of the noise (I think D likes Mal better now than as a baby, because even though he's boisterous today, it's not constant crying). But I'm very hopeful that I have a lot more of a knowledge base to pull from, and support from being on the same page with James on all of this.