Puppy Training Challenges

Zorro's now about five and a half months old. In comparison with a human child he's well past the 'toddler' stage and into the 'naughty young schoolboy' stage. The delights of the tearaway teenage years are yet to come...! He has an outgoing, confident personality, and along with that confidence comes a certain 'let's see how much we can push the teacher and get away with' attitude.

There are certain things that I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to.

For example I love gardening and used to spend hours tending to my flowers. However in recent years I'm sad to say my garden's slipped somewhat. Not quite into decay but it's certainly nowhere near as neat and tidy as it used to be. Since our eldest child was born in 1997 I've had nowhere near as much time to spend on it as in the Before Children years. And as the kids have got older the flowerbeds have taken a bit of a battering with the inevitable small people toppling into them, footballs kicked into them etc etc. So all in all they're a bit worn around the edges now.

One of the things Zorro takes great delight in doing is racing round the garden tearing through the flowerbeds as he goes. He's got a number of favourite spots where he zips between shrubs and deliberately cuts the corner as he banks round tall clumps of grasses. He's a very tactile dog and loves the feel of vegetation rubbing against him.

In years gone by there's no way I would have allowed this behaviour as my plants were too precious. Now, however, I take a more pragmatic approach. I still inwardly cringe when he does it - I haven't become *that* laid back! - but I say nothing. I know that these days I just don't have time to keep the garden up to the standard it once was, so he's not really making things that much worse. And besides, he gets such obvious pleasure from doing it that I can't help feeling it would be a bit mean spirited of me to stop him.

I also know that as he gets older he'll calm down and these bursts of 'garden madness' will become ever more infrequent. So although I certainly don't encourage him, I just turn a blind eye when he does it.

But I definitely do *not* turn a blind eye to what, to me, are important matters. Kitchen counter surfing, for instance. Woe betide any dog in my house that even *thinks* of doing that. And if I've given the dog a command I will *never* turn a blind eye if it doesn't follow the command - doing so would simply teach the dog it's ok to ignore me.

Chances are you can empathise with what I'm saying and you realise there are some battles with your own dog that are worth fighting but equally there'll be some that aren't. Make life easy on both yourself and your dog by only taking on the battles that are important.

But of course what's important to me might be trivial to you and vice versa. But that's ok - it's your dog and you get to make up the rules to suit yourself. Just be sure that once you've decided on the rules you stick to them consistently.

Recommended reading - "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".

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