Do you know her? Her name is
Victoria Stilwell, and
she definitely knows her stuff.
We've never had a dog who would run away from me.
Naughty Jimmy, on the other hand, when he had something
he knew/thought he shouldn't (i.e., DH's leather slippers,
a dead squirrel, etc.) would tear off a mile a minute in
the opposite direction. Thus, the Naughty.
When we were on vacation, we would crash in front of the
TVs in the evening. We do not have cable, or satellite,
here at home (nope, never have--one of my mommy rules),
so Miss Victoria and her dog training show on Animal
Planet was an immediate hit with the DD and I, as we were
trying to train that Jimmy.
Like any good homeschool mom, I'd already hit up the library
for 20 or so books about dog training, but they did NOT
address the issues with which we were concerned. Namely,
how to get a puppy to quit eating nasty stuff, how to get a
puppy to not run away with said nasty stuff . . .
ANYWAY, we learned the "trade" technique from Victoria,
and honestly, after maybe 5 minutes of training, Naughty
Nasty Jimmy is now just Jimmy! First, he brought me the
safety goggles. Then, a leather work glove. I assumed
that these things probably weren't all that exciting for
him, so I was interested to see if the "trade" would
work on something really juicy and disgusting.
It worked, perhaps a little too well--he traded his
bone (actually three bones, still jointed together,
quite a find!) for a dog cookie. This wasn't TOO nasty,
but the dead and decomposing mole, that was the final test,
and Jimmy passed. He actually brought the little nasty
to me from out of the yard and dropped it at my feet!
Thank you,
Victoria!
Now, if we could just teach him to do laundry . . .
