So many exciting things have happened dear readers! Oh wait, I don't have any dear readers yet. You know, a long time ago I used to do another blog entirely and it had a great following and I got a little punch drunk form the concept. Nowadays I'm not really concerning myself with that. Life is too full and busy. So, if you are one reader hello and I thank you. But if not, meh. At least I have a record of my puppies first year.
A year which will probably be full of crazy dog stunts. At the big pet chain a few weeks ago we saw a behemoth of a pitbull. He was muscular and huge and proud looking and of course my psycho Buster wanted to jump all over him. I restrained him with all of the training techniques we'd learned. Wait, Leave it. Stay! Heel! Down. Off. Relax. Look at me! Our trainer says he's brilliant and way ahead in self control compared to most 4 month old puppies. Of course, I pay my trainer's salary so he would probably say that no matter what. The owner of the pitbull was a petite woman smiling an enigmatic inward sort of smile that I could have mistaken for smug if I didn't decide to pretend it was indulgent instead. Our dogs magnetically were pulled towards one another and we were going to have to converse. My plan was to get the behemoth's weight class out of her because I wanted to know how huge my mixed breed pup would be someday. Some one reputable once told me Buster K. looked like he would reach 125 lbs. I had no mental image of what that would be like. So I asked her how heavy hers was. "My dog is 90 lbs." she told me. My heart quivered a little but stopped shortly in its tracks when she turned to him and said firmly "PLATZ!"
Oh, he spoke German. Yes, he was classically trained by a police trainer. Geesh, and he sure plunked his butt down quick when she told him to. Maybe this whole positive reinforcement 'we're all buddies, here have another treat' method was just bunko. Maybe what my future heavyweight needed was a K-9 police officer to train him to have some respect. Using giant puffy body suits? Tossing billy clubs? The only police dog training I'd ever seen was for police dogs to attack when commanded. So I'm not sure that is what we're aiming for. But I promise myself to research in the near future just to see what the techniques are and to stay open minded. But I can't get over the fact that no other American will ever be able to get her dog to sit unless they know the secret word. I want my dog to speak the language of his country you know?
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