In my home there are three teenage girls, three cats, a rat, and two dogs. The cats are the least amount of trouble since all they require is food, water, a clean litter box and love-on-demand. I’m not very fond of the rat, but he was about to become homeless since his owner packed up and moved out of state, so “Spock” now lives with us. The teenage girls? Well, that’s where my gray hairs and stomach ailments have come from, though for the most part our home is fun, if not slightly disorganized.
This brings me to our dogs. Barnaby is an old yellow lab who will be 11 or 12 this August. We rescued him from a pet shelter about seven years ago and they thought he was around five at the time. He’s a big, loving, lazy baby with fur. I prefer adopting older dogs since they don’t need to be trained and aren’t nearly as hyper as younger dogs. With my busy lifestyle it’s difficult to give a puppy all of the training and attention it would need. Besides, Barnaby is set in his ways and I doubted he could deal with the high energy a puppy would have.
Well, this is where Eddie enters the picture. My daughter and her boyfriend were out one day and this friendly boxer-mix came running up to them as if he’d known them forever. He looked in good health and had already been neutered. They brought him home so he wouldn’t become a road-pizza, and we put an ad on Craigslist hoping the owner would look for him.
In the mean time, we were dealing with Barnaby and Eddie becoming acquainted. At first it didn’t go along too well. Barnaby was jealous and started becoming nervous. Eddie was a bundle of energy that wouldn’t quit and would nip and bite and tear up everything from stuffed animals to toilet paper.
Since I never had to train a dog, I went to the local used bookstore and purchased a manual on training a puppy. As everyone knows,disciplining a puppy isn’t the same as disciplining children. I read it cover-to-cover and started working with the new dog. (We soon discovered his owners had dumped him off or were simply not looking for him and he was now ours.)
Something interesting started taking place along the way. Early in the morning when I let Barnaby out to go to the bathroom he would come in, sit patiently with a sweet look on his face, and know he was getting a dog biscuit. That’s his treat for the day. Imagine my surprise when Eddie came right in from the backyard with Barnaby, sat down, and waited patiently for his treat. This dog who hadn’t once sat still since we let him in the house? Wow!
If Eddie got too rough, Barnaby would nip at him, letting him know he was being too rough, and Eddie would quiet down. Over time, he developed many of Barnaby’s gentler habits.
But what about my lazy, old lab? Did Eddie teach him anything? You bet. Barnaby plays a lot more and seems to have more life in his eyes now that we have this young dog. It’s like he’s a pup again.
Although we do need to train dogs to do the right things, it’s interesting to see how much dogs can train one another.