Porter's Boycotts Doggy Daycare and Continues His Training

Once we got Porter's exercising and crate training figured out, we sat back and at Bon Bons. Just kidding-we were far from done. We still had some big issues to deal with, namely his dog and human reactivity, but more to come on that later. For now, we were still dealing with his training basics and added the steps below to our routine:

1. Daily Obedience & Training: We would also do a few minutes of obedience training each day. I would literally set the timer and do 15 or more minutes. He is an oddly focused little guy, so sometimes he would willingly do 30 or 45 minutes before tiring out. Porter knows all the basics: sit, stay, roll over, down, bang, and even some fancier tricks that I got from the book 101 Dog Tricks

   
   

   

   101 Dog Tricks

   
   

2. Here is a video of Baby Porter's training in progress:

   
   

2. Socializing: ***Train wreck alert***: At this point, a trainer would have been a good idea, but I didn't know any better. I knew Porter needed to get used to other dogs, so I would take him up to the dog park a few times a week. Once I got tired of that, I signed him up for doggy daycare so that he could get exercise while I was at work. This worked for a few times, but one day I got him there and he went boneless at the door. Classic toddler move, but I had to get to work and here he was dicking around. I had to leave him at the doggy daycare that day, but after that, I started thinking maybe Porter didn't like doggy daycare. Sure enough, this is what he did the next time I tried to pack him up to take him in:

That was that for daycare.

Porter used to lunge, bark, or snap at other dogs walking on the other side of the street, which is why I was dragging him to dog parks and doggy daycares. I felt like his behavior around other dogs would just get worse if he wasn't around other dogs, but taking him to the dog park and doggy daycare was a little too optimistic of me and too unstructured for Porter. (Also, he hated it.) I did later learn how to socialize a dog with Porter's personality, (more in future posts), but in the mean time, he did eventually get used to walking past other dogs because I would carry a can of stinky cat food with me and give him a bite whenever another dog walked by.

Stinky cat food that I used to give to Porter when we walked by other dogs.

3. Leash Training: Porter was such a menace on the leash and would turn around and rip my gloves off if he got too excited. He would drag me for two miles while also somehow stopping to pee every ten feet-not to mention barking and lunging at other dogs. We were still using a Martingale collar at that point and one time he pulled so hard he squashed his trachea and sounded like a wheezing duck for a few days. Finally I read a book that talked about the stop/go method, which is that you simply stop walking when the dog is pulling and you start again when the leash goes slack. This helped A LOT and was easy to implement.

   
   

   I also paired the stop/go with "life rewards." (I definitely got this from another book-I do not remember which one-but it's one of my favorite tools.) Basically, you look around to see what the dog is pulling you towards, and then instead of just letting them drag you to it (and rewarding their pulling), you ask for a trick (a sit, down, heel, whatever) and then once they deliver, you let them get whatever it was that they wanted as their reward.

   
   

   We were not able to train a proper heel until 2020 when we were home a lot and had a lot of time to practice, and it involved a lot of cheese sticks. It was worth the practice but I don't keep him in a full heel during our walks-I only ask Porter to heel when we pass another dog or another person

Baby Porter in the snow

4. Night-Night Routine- We finally realized that there was also such thing as doing too much and implemented a night night routine. It would be 10:00 at night, after we had spent a full afternoon doing everything, and Porter would still be destroying the house. At first, I would take him on yet another walk at 10:00 at night, but I finally realized that I had to be doing something wrong and that maybe he was OVER tired. For our night-night routine, I would put him on a leash and have him sit on the bed with me. I gave him a few bones to chew on and then we would sit together while I got some work done. I had to put him on the leash for him to understand that he was not supposed to be wandering all over the house destroying things and barking out the window. For dogs that like their crate, you could probably just pop them in there. Porter chewed the shit out of everything so I would give him one rawhide and one Whimzee and maybe even a third thing to keep him busy, calm him down, and ultimately tire him out.

   
   

   Porter's favorite bones when he was little were the small Dentley's rawhide rolls.

Dentley's Rawhide Rolls did not give Porter the shits.

He also liked these Whimzees things that I thought were hilarious since they were gator shaped.

Porter liked chewing on these.

Porter was really picky about food and snacks so it was just a lot of trial and error to figure out what he liked, what he did not like, what gave him diarrhea, and what would last more than 10 minutes. Some bones he would gobble down in 30 seconds, which was not helping my cause. So whenever I bought him a new chew item, I would literally give it to him and start a timer. Anything that made it past 10 minutes and did not give him the shits, I would buy again. What works for one dog does not work for all, so just be prepared for your own trial and error period.

The Big Issues

Once Porter had some basic obedience and a lot of exercise we could get down to the real issues. 

What was left after we got him exercised and tired, was his dog reactivity and his nipping of the pants and fingers of people that he did not know or did not know well. I think we started noticing this…? I’m not sure when. The dogs we noticed right away because we would have them out on hikes and things and whenever we saw another dog this is a big issue because he would bark and lunge and snap and overall make a scene. More to come in my next posts.

Porter sitting still for two seconds.