My parents are staying with me for the winter and spring. They brought their dog, Zoey, who is my dog's sister. (Same litter.) But behavior-wise, Zoey and Bandit are night and day. Bandit is calm, cooperative, quiet. He's a dominant dog by nature, but in our little pack of two, he totally accepts me as the boss, and we have a very harmonious, respectful, cooperative, EASY relationship.
Zoey is SUPER-dominant, but in a stubborn, insistent, headstrong, incorrigible way. (My family jokes that her real name is Zoey-No, because she is ALWAYS doing something naughty.) She was sold to a family when she was 3 months old, but they gave her back to my brother (who owns the parent dogs) when she was about a year old, because they just couldn't deal with her. We think that she seemed a bit damaged when we got her back-- we think the other family was maybe a little physically abusive with her because they couldn't deal with her behavior and dominance. The other part of her personality is that she's very sweet and loving and sensitive and gets her feelings hurt, so my parents feel like they have to coddle her and be gentle with her always and give in to her demands. (Plus -- I'll be honest -- they're too lazy and impatient to try to WORK with her.) So in their little pack of 3, Zoey is the "top-dog."
Anyway, for the last couple days -- seriously, it's only been about 2 or 3 days -- I've been working with Zoey on two tasks: sitting and waiting before we go out the door for walks, and staying out of the kitchen when I'm in there cooking. I started with the sit-and-wait before going out, and then today I added the whole "stay out of the kitchen" bit.
I'm soooooo impressed with her! She's being so good. She's whining less and giving me less backtalk and being more responsive to my commands to "sit" and "wait." (I tell her as she's sassing me that I don't care about the back-talk as long as ultimately she does what I tell her to do. And eventually she does.)
She is very different she is with me than she is with my dad. She's still totally ignoring him -- but as they say, dog-training is as much about training the people as it is about training the dog. Zoey's trying to learn because I'm insisting and she's trying to please me. My dad....not so much!
Here's a question: Now that we're doing well with the sitting and waiting for the release command before going out the door, what are the best methods for teaching her that she doesn't need to BOLT out the door, which she does about half the time.
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