Lessons Learned

Here are the top 10 things that Lucy taught me in her first 3 years of life:

10) Don’t put food too close to the edge of the table.

9) Toys can be destroyed easily by a hound dog with a strong jaw.  Don’t expect them to last for longer than a day…tops.

8) Shoes taste good.  Especially your favorite ones.

7) Don’t leave dirty underwear on the floor if you intend to keep it.

6) Cats are fun toys.

5) Roommates should always keep their doors closed.  Their dirty clothes apparently taste way better.

4) Couches can be chewed.

3) Barking is really exciting.  Especially when you can do it really loudly.

2) Playing chase is fun.  If you live in a place where there are dirty socks that can be snatched and the house is a circle between the kitchen, living room, and dining room, running in circles to play chase is even more fun.  And if you try to be tricky and turn around to circle the other way, dogs are smarter than that.

1) If you run out of contact lenses, don’t leave your only pair of glasses on the bathroom counter while you are in the shower.  Even glasses can be eaten. 

Because I kept Lucy crated during the day, the only opportunity she had to be destructive was when someone was “supervising.”   Supervising a rambunctious puppy every second of every minute isn’t quite so easy, so draining Lucy of energy became my number one goal.  Ultimately, I wanted to be able to relax in my own home and not have hawk eyes on my dog every moment.  It took me a while to take her outside the apartment, as I was a bit paranoid from my previously mentioned traumatic puppy incident.  We relied on pee pads for about 2 weeks and I forced my roommates to grin and bear the constant barking and whining until the final puppy shots were had.  As soon as she had all of her shots and could step foot on dirty Brooklyn streets, my first idea for draining energy was long walks.  After all, as Mr. Caesar Milan always told me, in order to have a well behaved dog, you must have a tired dog.

I started taking Lucy to puppy training.  We went to something called “Clicker” training, where you wait for the dog to do what you want, give them a “click” noise with a little finger clicker they give you, and then immediately follow with a treat.  In this puppy class, it was all about positive attention—no negativity allowed.  Lucy absolutely loved attention.  In fact, she couldn’t stand it when our instructor turned away from her to work with another dog in our group class.  As soon as the instructor stepped away from us, Lucy barked.  And barked.  And barked and barked and barked.  Why wouldn’t she?  Here was this nice lady who taught Lucy to do fun things like sit, stay, wait, come, and leave it.  Lucy was a quick learner and every time she did something good, this very nice lady clicked at her and gave her a piece of turkey.  Yep, no simple dog treats here—cold cut turkey from the grocery store.

Clicker Lady was baffled by Lucy’s sudden love for her.  She claimed that she’d never had this issue before, that Lucy was an original and unique challenge for her.  Her suggestion: buy one of those rubber kongs (the hollow big kind that looks like three balls decreasing in size and squished on top of each other) and fill it with peanut butter.  That way, when Clicker Lady walked away during a class, I could give Lucy the kong and let her work on getting the peanut butter out.  This worked pretty well for about 30 minutes of the hour long class.  Lucy then spent the next 30 minutes alternating between barking loudly and continually licking the roof of her mouth to get all the peanut butter off.  Nonetheless, we suffered through 5 embarrassing sessions of this and Lucy came out of it knowing the basics I mentioned above.

When it came to leash training though, I found the clicker plus my little pouch of turkey, and holding a frantic puppy on a leash was all too much to handle.  And on the walks where I didn’t bring turkey along, all our training seemed to slip right out of Lucy’s mind.  So as soon as our 5 weeks were over, I dropped the clicker and turned back to Caesar who advised me to be the pack leader, be assertive, and use gentle force when necessary.  I got Lucy a pinch collar, one of the ones that Caesar described as taking a “quick bite” when you pull it tight.  It then sits lax around her neck when not being pulled.

            On our first few walks with this, I felt horrible.  I’d seen other dogs with the same collar and thought it looked torturous.  Knowing the theory behind it, I felt a little better but I couldn’t help wondering what others thought about me as I walked down the street.  I’m not sure how closely you looked at those puppy pictures of Lucy a few posts ago, but I must assure you that she was a very cute puppy.  When we walked down our Brooklyn streets, we could barely make it 2 blocks without being stopped by adoring onlookers wanting to pet the floppy puppy.  I always felt like when they bent down to pet her, they were judging me for this mean looking collar. 

            I got over this pretty quickly though and eventually settled on a method that involved the firmness of Caesar’s training, with the positive reinforcement of clicker training.  Again, as with teaching 6 year olds, a little of both is necessary.  When I go running with Lucy now, I am so glad that this particular bit of training was of such importance to me.  If you haven’t tried running with a dog before, imagine a dog running back and forth in front of you, pulling on the leash, lunging at other animals.  I’ve witnessed this with other dog owners, and it just doesn’t work.  Except for on certain rare occasions, Lucy is great on the leash.  She runs or walks right next to me, never stepping in front and often lagging behind.  She’ll show interest in other dogs, but thanks to my oh-so-vicious collar, doesn’t often lunge for them…although I still instinctively brace myself every time we go past one. 

As Lucy has gotten older, calmer, and more mature in the past years, it’s nice to remember sometimes that she still has a lot of those playful puppy tendencies from her early years.  Typically, when we run together she just trots along next to me, but on very rare occasions she gets this sudden burst of puppy energy, grabs her leash, and starts play tug-of-war, prancing, and growling.  This doesn’t usually last long, but it’s quite entertaining.  When she did this on our run yesterday, I started laughing as I usually do, unable to do anything but simply smile and let her have her fun.  It wasn’t until she pranced in front of me, made me trip over my own feet, and then dive to a crash in the middle of the gravely outer loop of Green Lake that I realized I should probably reread my last post and take a little of my own advice.  I can’t help but let this slide though.  No matter how much older and mature we get, sometimes a girl just needs to have fun.