Journal #4: Trainings

Man, that dog brought a whole new perspective to our lives!  There was vet bills, dog food, doggy bones, pet treats, pet toys, newspapers that lined the house, and the trainings.

Our floors weren't tiled so he was always slipping and sliding around the terrazo floors or the Florida Room's concrete floor.

There was that time when I felt bad for him and didn't want to leave him in his cage.  I was just making a quick trip to the Home Depot for something.  So I left him in our room.  Came back to an aroma of dog poop all over my bedroom floor!  And him in the corner looking at me with his now hazel colored eyes.

The Trainings
We bought the books and proceeded on this doggy training venture.  Eddy would teach him in the mornings and I would come home and reinforce what he had learned earlier in the day.  There were the late nights when all he wanted to do was play and all I wanted to do was crash.  But off to the laundry room we would go.  I would shut the door and go over our "stay" routine.  Imagine an active puppy wagging his tail wanting to come towards me and me having to keep reinforcing "stay".  As much as I didn't mind him jumping and tackling me, I knew in the long run that this cute puppy would one day grow up to be a monster 2/3 my weight so the jumping couldn't last and the training had to keep moving.

By the time all was said and done, Beau knew to sit, stay, come, heel, move, go and whatever else we taught him haphazardly along the way.  The trainings literally saved his life.  Eddy has other means of discipline too (of which I won't mention for fear of the Humane Society folks).  It's a shame when you can't even discipline your own pet for fear of the "pet police".

I remember him dashing out the front door one day and running across the street to our neighbor's Bonnie's yard.  He never did that again.  It took him a long time to cross that treshold to the front yard.  Dee would test him and of course he fell for it a couple of times, much to his regret.  A recent test came from my brother, Evans who later regretted doing it.  Cause even though "mommy" was the softie of the two of us, she still had to mete out correction.