Kirby: “But, I wanna!”
M: “Nope.”
K: “Fine, but i’ma hold it….”
Kirby has officially been here for 48 hours at the time of writing this post, and in that time he’s responded very well to love, discipline, and training. I’ll peel off and rant about dogs being labeled in shelters in other posts, but the very very short version is, “It’s fucking stupid, and it needs to stop now”. Ok, back to Kirby. 🙂
Part of training is correction, and correction comes in three main forms (another post). One of the indicators I use is how quickly can I move UP the list, from the worst to the least? With Kirby, he’s already responding well to voice correction for almost everything, which reinforces that he IS a great dog, and all he needs is a little love, care, and discipline (all dogs need that, and people, too).
So here I am, working from home, doing all the stuff I do, and now having a dog that I keep a 24 hour watch on (it’s my system). The staff at the shelter he came from are no doubt eager to hear of his failure (or mine) because he’s on their list of dogs to destroy. We know he came from a ‘breeding house’, was not socialized, was not taught how to ‘play nice’, and because of that some people marked him as ‘aggressive’. Well, they were wrong.
The biggest problem I have with Kirby is that if I sit down on the floor with him, he’ll either come play with me, or, he’ll flop himself into my lap and press his whole body into me until i’m rubbing his head and his belly. He demands both hands, both, none of this, ‘one handed nonsense’.
It really irritates me that people are so quick to want to destroy this dog without spending any time, putting in any effort, or giving him anything close to love, care, patience, discipline, training, exercise…..
Luckily, Kirby is full of love, happiness, and smiles, and he’s been happy to share those with me!
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