Random Paragraphs from Bad Dog to Best Friend

Dakota was a problem child.  She peed all over the house, she bullied our other dog and she barked non-stop when we went to work.  She was wild and out of control and she hadn’t been taught even the most basic commands.  In addition, she was destructive.  She wanted to chew anything that came into her sphere.

My husband got home first.  Nothing could have prepared him for what he walked into.  Dakota had pooped everywhere.  Not only had she pooped, she had managed to smear it all over herself, the floor, her food bowl, her water dispenser, and all the toys we’d left for her.  Welcome Home!

Potty training a yo-yo dog is a very challenging task.  They are highly stressed from being bounced from home to home and they live in fear of being abandoned again.  What does a stressed dog do?  It pees.

Dakota had the secondary problem of being a nervous pee-er.  If she was stressed, she peed.  If she was excited, she peed.  If you raised your voice one iota, she peed.  If she was mad at you, she peed.  If the urge struck, she peed.  While putting the leash on to take her out to pee, she peed – every time.

We kept the dog crate next to the door to minimize the time it took to get her out the door on our workdays after she’d held it all day.  This was an important step.  Once she was able to hold it until she got all the way out to the potty spot, we moved the crate farther from the door.  If she slipped up, the crate went back to the original location for a week or so.  Forwards and backwards, that’s how we progressed.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if anybody else had adopted Dakota, she’d have quickly ended up right back at the dog pound.  There aren’t many people willing to commit themselves the way we had to commit to Dakota.  We were utterly miserable but we were also determined.  I knew what Dakota’s ultimate fate would be if we failed her and it wasn’t a good one.  Besides, Dakota was actually great fun.  She had a unique personality and you couldn’t help but love her.  In her good moments she was utterly charming and she made us laugh a lot.

She arrived at the kennel with head high and tail wagging, enthusiastically awaiting this new adventure.  Dakota was a happy dog.  We’d plucked her from the dog pound and a life of revolving doors and brought her into a place of abundance.  Even when she was in trouble she was happy and we had dubbed her Dakota the Undauntable.  She enjoyed her newfound home and family and even if we were mad at her, she didn’t mind it.

After the trip we went to collect Dakota from the dog kennel.  The change in her was so profound that I cried.  Dakota’s head was hanging low in abject misery, her tail was tucked between her legs and she was shaking badly.  Dakota’s entire demeanor was that of a dog who’d been totally beaten down.  She hadn’t seen us yet and she looked utterly destroyed.  She absolutely thought she’d been abandoned again and for Dakota, the week had obviously been pure and utter hell.

Be prepared for your dog to make a game of it.  For the dog it’s as simple as:  “I run into the kitchen and they shoo me back out, then I run back in again.  What great fun!”  Be persistent, be firm, and eventually you will prevail.

Dakota knew without a doubt what our bedtime routine was.  She knew many of our routines.  Some routines she honored quite happily but with others she played dumb – looking at me with a blank stare even when I knew that she knew exactly what was expected of her.  She used the blank stare as a pretense.  Dakota played dumb simply because she didn’t want to obey.

Gypsy Rose was a peaceful, gentle dog.  Dakota was a scrappy, street-smart problem child and she didn’t want Gypsy Rose in her new territory.  Dakota wanted to claim it all for herself – us included.  She nipped at Gypsy Rose, shouldered her out of the way, blocked her path, and stared her down at every opportunity.  Gypsy Rose made no attempt to fight back.  She’d either leave the room or go cower miserably in a corner.

Attempting to actually catch hold of Dakota after a wrongdoing was a lost cause.  God help you if you even tried.  Dakota could run like the wind and it didn’t take long for her to figure out that she could run circles around the table and not get caught.  They make cartoons out of some of the training methods we tried.

Our dogs both sit down as their way of saying no.  Sometimes it’s a bad thing.  They’re saying, “No, I’m not gonna and you can’t make me!”  Sometimes it simply means, “No, I don’t need to go potty – we can go back inside.”  Learning to interpret your dog’s way of saying no will take you a long way in your dog training.

Not long after, Dakota became ill.  She tried to drink water but it immediately came back out as a projectile – Dakota was vomiting like a scene from The Exorcist movie.

If your goal is to break your dog of needing a crate when you are not at home, then read on.  This is the next installment of Dakota’s story:  our method of weaning her from the crate.  Yes, believe it or not we were successful in teaching Dakota to stay home alone with full run of the house on our workdays.  For nine and a half straight hours, this dog mastered the art of being home – unsupervised – without chewing or pottying in the house.  It was nothing short of a miracle…

Most of our evenings are spent indoors in front of the television.  This is not particularly fun for an active dog but there are things you can do to compensate.

I would have chalked it up to a grand $3 experiment but my husband decided that the ball was defective.  It had a picture of a dog on it so surely it should have lasted more than a minute with our dog.  He took it back to the store.  The store clerk asked the reason for the return.  He told her it hadn’t lasted even five minutes with the grandkids and he wanted his $3 back.  The clerk looked closely at the ball and said, “My, what big teeth your grandchildren have!”  She looked him straight in the eye but she did give the $3 back.

You can also teach your dog sign language.  This doesn’t mean you need to learn sign language for the deaf.  It simply means that you can teach your dog a hand signal that represents a command.

Every dog breed brings a unique set of challenges for the dog owner and Auskies will provide more of a challenge than most.  Be prepared for double the trouble if you decide to adopt an Ausky dog.  Auskies are a mix of two strong-willed, independent dog breeds:  Australian Cattle Dog (not to be confused with the Australian Shepherd) and Siberian Husky.

My peaceful bliss quickly evaporated when Dakota came bounding up the stairs in frantic agitation.  She was foaming at the mouth with long threads of goo flapping as she shook her head in panic, trying to rid herself of… what?  She was pawing at her mouth.  Foamy spittle was flying everywhere.  What had she gotten into?

Dakota came into the house stinking like a dead thing.  She’d only been outdoors a few minutes and in that short time she’d gotten into something so foul smelling that you could smell her from several feet away.  The whole room reeked of the smell of death and all I could think of was that Dakota had found a dead animal and rolled on it.

“Look at the really cool thing I found in the woods!” her eyes seemed to say.  “Can I have it please?  Can I keep it?”  Joy and innocence shined in her eyes as she shared this great moment with me.

There is hope for even the most godawful dog.  Dakota is living proof of that.  She was the absolute worst behaved dog you could ever imagine when we adopted her and for the celebration of her one year anniversary with us, we were taking her on a road trip.

Dakota did not want to go into the truck.  The first thing she did when we tried to pick her up was pee on the driveway.  It was definitely a stress pee and it was not a good sign.  All four feet splayed outward and stiffened in an attempt to prevent being shoved into the truck, Dakota fought hard.  She didn’t wanna.  She was in full panic and we could not allay her fears.  Even though we’d taken her on two short fun rides earlier in the week she was not convinced.  Rides were bad.  Rides meant abandonment.  Owners took her for a ride and she never saw them again.  Dakota was deathly afraid.

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