Doggie School

Our beloved dogs have been less than beloved lately. Bentley has been picking fights with my parents' older lab, Hinckley and both dogs have gotten into some scuffles with other dogs at the dog park. We've had a couple of questionable incidents while walking in the neighborhood, and last weekend was the icing on the cake. While walking the dogs at a local park, with Griffin in the stroller, I stopped to nurse the baby and tied the dogs to the park bench. When I finished, I had to unhook their leashes for a second to untangle them, but at that moment, and woman came walking by with a dog. My dogs took off, with Bentley in the lead, towards her dog and attacked him! It was a disaster- just awful, though thankfully none of the dogs were hurt. But the woman called and reported me to the police- so even though Steve is halfway across the globe, the police STILL showed up at our front door! Doh! Luckily the officer was very nice and very understanding and didn't give me a ticket (the leash laws carry a hefty fine around here). But that was that. You have to understand, we have NEVER, EVER had aggression issues with either dog. And they're both extremely socialized to dogs, kids, people, etc. So all of this is quite shocking for us, but we know we need to deal with it ASAP. So yesterday we went for a private consultation with a trainer and today Bentley and I started doggie school, a class called, "Creating Calm: Your Dog's Self Control."

Essentially the trainer thinks that Bentley is very insecure, and combined with being exactly at puppy adolescent age of 1-1/2, he's acting out aggressively out of anxiety and stress. She thinks that Bentley doesn't have a good enough relationship with us (i.e. humans) and takes all her cues and learning from Portia. Which is totally true, in fact, we always used to say how we worked so hard to train Portia but we never had to do any of that with Bentley because he just copied her from an early age. But now when he's acting out (probably the move here, the baby, steve leaving, seasons changing, etc. all affect things also), he doesn't have structure provided by us, nor confidence, security and positive reinforcement from us. And he can get away with trying out aggression on other dogs because Portia ALWAYS backs him up. This is so true. So basically, it sounds to me like pretty classic second-child syndrome maybe (not sure- I only have one child!), because we didn't spend as much time with him and let him learn from Portia and now he "listens" to her better than us! So Bentley is going to get some individual mom time now, and he gets to go to the class all by himself. We may take Portia to another class once in a while for some obedience refresher, but she really just needs a reminder of the basics, because she is very confident and secure for a dog.

For the first class, Bentley did okay! In fact, he was a bit of a super star! It was somewhat easy though, and he is decently trained. But we didn't get to socialize with any other dogs, and that's what's causing trouble at the moment. Maybe next week. This trainer is big into positive reinforcement with treats, and also using a clicker, and both of these techniques are new to me. It sounds like a hell of a lot of work to reinforce this all week and also keep treats and the clicker on you. But we'll try! I mean, what else do I have to do all day anyway- I have LOTS of free time!