By David Ponce
Famed dog trainer Cesar Milan would probably say: “Keep that dog in check, foo!” Or maybe he wouldn’t. What Cesar says doesn’t matter, really. All I’m getting to is you should train your dog to obey you, be sociable around other pets and not pee in your cereal. And not tug on your leash. I read somewhere that clicker training is a good way to teach Fido who’s who and what’s what. But that looks like it requires effort on your part. Better to purchase this $40 gadget instead. It wedges itself between the leash and the collar and has an ultrasonic whistle and a sensor. If it starts to detect tugging, it whistles unpleasantly in proportion to the tugging effort. The sounds are “aimed” at your dog so no other canine is inconvenienced and the volume level is adjustable. Only your dog will be miserable. And maybe he’ll learn. Or he’ll secretly get back to you in ways you don’t want to imagine…
This product doesn’t sound like a bad idea, to be honest. Anyone want to try it out and report back here?
[ Product Page ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]
My wife and I have a Jack Russell terrier called Bucky (see previous
story!). We’ve had him since he was a pup and we’re both fairly familiar
with dogs, having grown up with them, but Bucky turned into quite the
nightmare.
We had to get him a cage for the car because he hated
cyclists – traditional and motor – and was literally bouncing off the
windows to get at them. He had quite a few other dislikes around the
house, virtually anything that made a noise.
When he was almost a
year old he developed an attachment to a mahogany cane that belonged to
my grand-father. Bucky chews through everything. He has favourite toys
that are little scraps of fabric, but he still gathers them up and puts
them into his bed at night – you have to see it to believe it, he has Mr
Snake and Mr Camel that no sane person would ever identify as such but
he gets frantic if he can’t find them and I can not tell you how many
times I’ve had to move the refrigerator to retrieve them. He stuffs them
in there on purpose and then whines and yaps until someone gets them
back.
The cane isn’t like an heirloom, it was simply something my
grandpa bought and decided he would rather die than be seen with. He
actually suited it but male pride and such. So Bucky navigates his way
across the backs of sofas and from window ledge to window ledge until he
can pluck the cane out of the coal bucket we had it in. He knocked over
various crap on his way back with this in his mouth. My wife would call
this crap cherished heirlooms but I think the little fellow did us a
favor.
As I said he normally chewed his way through everything,
but he carried the cane around, set it down, lay on it but never tried
to demolish it. He would sit with a paw on it as he was chewing rawhide,
or lay his whole body across it when he was chewing on some sock
puppet. He carried it over to his food bowl and had like a toe on it
when he was eating. So frigging dainty you wouldn’t believe.
He
loves that cane. But he was still a real handful. We had to take him to
the vet because of his aggression towards cyclists – he was smashing his
face off the glass in the car, or if we put him in his cage he was
hanging off the bars until his gums were bloody. It was heart-breaking
for us but he literally didn’t care. Russells are just balls of muscle
and they were bred to kill things in dark tunnels. They are Special
Forces dogs.
When he was acting up in the car we figured out that
if we took his cane away he spent around half his time wanting to know
where the cane was, and only half the time trying to faceplant his cage.
After that it was like the scales fell away from our eyes.
Now
whenever he misbehaves, we beat him with the cane. The effect is
startling. He’s become a well-behaved dog and a pleasure to be around.
Oh my god. This is the best thing I have read in a year or more. Thank you.
That dog looks exactly like my dog. Can someone identify the breed?