A New Door Opens

Before I continue with the story, I’d like to say a quick bit about trainers and training. It didn’t start out well for us but as the story continues you will see that I was lucky to end up getting help from a good friend, Carol. I was lucky again later because when I finally decided to trust another trainer I let my ‘gut’ guide me to Michele at Connective Training (real name and company). Now, Chili has a great trainer who has become one of my very best friends. What made the difference? Trusting myself and finding people who care. As I’ve said before, I’m not a trainer so this is just my opinion. Training is really an exercise in patience, observation, and both human and dog psychology. A trainer can work all they want with the dog but if the human doesn’t change - if they can’t get through to the human - all the work is for nothing. I’m nowhere near the dog mom that I was when I started, and I’m so thankful for that. This is due to the people who helped me, or at times, beat me up, along the way.
OK, let’s continue. On we go to our training classes for now at least, and we also go to another private session. Things aren’t coming together. I’m shown techniques that just don’t seem to work for us. I’m frustrated because I really want to be shown how to stop Chili from lunging. I had this idea, yes another idea, that they would have dogs that could work with us in the training. You know, I’m walking Chili while one of them walks by us with their dog and through continual repetition we work through the problem. No, we just roamed around the neighbourhood hoping to run into another dog so we could practice. Waste of time. I also stupidly end up buying a leather leash that I can’t even use from the training company. Every time it gets just a little bit wet, it turns my hands black. That doesn’t work for me. One day, Mary even witnessed the jack-in-the-box unloading of Chili out of the truck. She didn’t say anything. Why didn’t she say anything??

Needless to say, I’m frustrated. I’ve wasted so much time and money and we’re not really getting anywhere. Yes, she’s getting better at the basics but it’s almost as if they’re trying to convince me that she’s aggressive so we’ll keep coming back and paying for more private sessions. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I don’t think they were willing to step outside of their box to help us. Yes, I’ve spoken to many people since then who have had positive results from this company but I’ve also spoken to many people who had the same experience as we did. For us, they missed the point. They were supposed to help Chili by helping teach me to work with her. Instead, I got, she’s aggressive. I was told many other things about Chili that just were not true. For example, she’s not the type of dog that you can send to daycare or that you can take to a dog park. Don’t play tug of war with her because she’s stronger than you and will think she’s the boss. They almost had me convinced. Almost. Now I’m just pissed off. It’s time to shake my head and make a move.

It’s funny how things happen. Here I am pissed off and choked for letting myself get screwed and not making the best decisions for Chili. We need a door to open. Oh look, there’s a door, and it’s opening.

I was driving down the highway (you never know where a door might pop up) and I just passed the turnoff to Carol’s house. In case you missed it in an earlier post, Carol was a part of our Chili adoption story and she also knows quite a bit about dogs. She has a Rottweiler and a Papillion. No, she doesn’t just know a lot about dogs because of the dogs she has, she’s done a ton of training with her Rottweiler and has a special interest in caring for dogs. Anyway, driving past her turnoff made me think to call her. We talked for a few minutes and I told her about our training experiences and how frustrated I was. She told me to come on over to her house so we backtracked to Carols.

When we got there, she was already waiting for us in the yard. We chat for a few minutes then I proceed to ‘unload’ Chili from the truck. Jack-in-the-box. I open the cage slowly, then hold her back with my hand, get the leash onto her, open the cage and she flies out of the back of the truck. Ready for action. Carol just looks at me with this ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ face. She asks, “Is that how you let her out of the truck?” I’m a little stunned. What the hell am I supposed to do? So, Carol loads her back in the truck and into her cage. Then to unload her, she just opened the cage, shoved Chili back when she tried to jump out and made a sound like ‘aghhh’. Chili just looked at her as if she was thinking, “What the hell.” It was like Carol was willing her to stay there. You could see Chili’s mind working through this. Then Carol gently let her out and put her in a sit beside her. What the hell just happened? When did she switch dogs? Was I drugged?

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, she then took the leash and started ‘working’ with Chili. She put her in a ‘heel’ and began walking back and forth and in circles asking Chili to look at her and stay in the heel position. Chili came alive. She had the biggest smile on her face and for the first time looked like she was really enjoying being trained. Honestly, I was stunned and elated. Carol offered to help me on an ongoing basis if I was interested. Are you kidding me, IF I’m interested? Of course I’m interested. I couldn’t wait. That’s how it began; the real story of training Chili. It’s effective, not always pretty, and not just about Chili. It was also about how I had to change to be the mom that Chili really needed.