The Dog Whisperer

Joe and I had a dog trainer come to our house today to work with Crumley. Crumley seems to think he owns the neighborhood so we have had problems walking him in the near vicinity of another dog without him totally freaking out; it's extremely embarrassing and makes him a bit of a problem. This is also why we don't take him to the dog park.

Our trainer was amazing. He showed up and immediately took control of Crumley. First he took him out on a walk alone and then later he had Joe and I go with him after he'd made his own assessments. We got lucky and saw several other dogs outside today. The first few times Crumley totally freaked out, as predicted, whenever we'd see another dog. By the end of our hour with the trainer, Crumley was walking right past other dogs and not even turning his head to look at them - wow. I had him at the end during those times while Joe and the trainer just stood back and watched. I almost wanted to cry because I was so proud of him! What a totally different labradoodle! So we'll see if we can keep it up. Right now, we need to walk both dogs seperately and do some "work" with Crumley inside...and Iris, too. And the trainer gave us some tips on how to teach the dogs to not freak out every time someone is at the door. That will be for a whole other day. But we are trying to change Crumley's way of thinking. He was in the routine, especially with me, that his job was to be the protector and now we are teaching him that his job is to just be a dog and we'll let him know if we need anything else from him.

We have to change other "little" things, too. Like no more sitting on us. Joe and I both think it's adorable for our big dog to come sit on our lap whenever we're on the floor but that's a no-no. And no more feeding the dogs breakfast or dinner until after we've eaten first. Just subtle changes that will hopefully add up to a little more dog obedience. This might prove to be the best money we've ever spent. Keep your fingers crossed!