more wally pics

action shot!

 

cooling off in front of the air conditioning vent on the one hot day we've had so far this year

lookin' grumpy in the morning

training - walking & boundaries

the first thing we learned is the proper way to walk on a leash, which has been so, so, so important!  part of that training was teaching wally that he’s not allowed to go into the street (or cross any boundaries that we set, actually) without my or joe’s command to do so.  steve wanted to make sure that we taught wally things that will keep him safe first and foremost.   

when we first got wally, he was pretty good on the leash.  he didn’t do that dragging, pulling thing that makes it sound like he’s choking himself to death, but he did definitely walk out ahead and pretty much lead the walk.  steve taught us how to make him walk either beside or behind us, that wally should stop and start when we stop or start, that he has to keep up with us if we’re walking slowly or running, and most importantly, to not ever cross the street until we tell him to do so. 

I think this command has been wally’s shining moment.  I very rarely have to correct him for going into the street without my command.  joe tests him sometimes with different words to make sure that he’s listening for the right word before crossing the street, and I’ve even started testing him by walking into the street myself and then tugging the leash a little bit.  you’re never ever supposed to say his name or the command “come” when you’re testing your dog with boundaries because you always want your dog to respond to “come” or his name, and testing him to go into the street like that is unfair.  but with the gentle tug, he’s been doing phenomenal.  every time we cross the street I tell wally what a smart boy he is.  :) 

teaching him not to cross the street, or the boundaries of the street, has been really helpful in training wally around the house, too.  he’s not allowed in the laundry room – originally because that’s where I kept the cats’ food and I didn’t want him getting in there.  now, though, in lieu of a shed, we’re using that back room to keep lawn and gardening stuff in… the weed whacker, plants, pots, tools, weed killer, etc.  so needless to say, it’s not a very safe place for any animals to hang out.  so we practiced with that boundary, and he’s got it down. 

next, we started removing the baby gate from the staircase so that wally could come with me if I go upstairs to get changed out of work clothes, go to the bathroom, whatever.  he’s got one boundary at the bottom of the stairs, and also one before entering the bedroom.  he’s got the stairs down with very few mistakes… but the bedroom is a whole different story! 

I thought that we had made enough progress with wally that we might be able to have him start sleeping upstairs in my room at night.  he’d still have to sleep in his bed, not mine, but just to have him in the room with me was nice.  you see, since we got him, I’ve been falling asleep on the couch every night until joe comes home from work because wally will whine at the gate if I go up to bed by myself.  so I fall asleep on the couch, joe comes home, then I shuffle upstairs to go to sleep again.  it’s a little annoying, but worth it to me to spend a little time, even sleeping time, with him. 

so he was sleeping in our room at night for a couple of nights in a row… and then we started to notice his behavior was becoming more and more beastly.  he was acting up on walks, ignoring our commands, and even growled at joe’s friend tom!  unfortunately, we had to admit that wally was clearly not ready to sleep upstairs with us.  steve said that if he sees the bedroom as the place to be, even if he has to sleep in his own bed, he’ll start thinking he’s the boss again.  funny how quickly wally fell back into his old ways!  but, I guess he was used to getting his way and being the boss in his last house, and old habits die hard.  it’s back to the couch for me, and the downstairs level of the house at night for mr. bear!

training

let me just say up front that the dog training sessions I bought were fairly expensive ($295), but it is WELL WORTH IT.  steve comes to my house about once a week and works with me and wally.  the commands that he guarantees when you’re through with the sessions are:  “sit”, “down”, and “go to bed”.  the way he teaches these commands are easily translatable into other commands like “go to kennel” or “roll over” or others like that.  I think that was pretty much the most important thing I learned – that there are specific ways to teach a dog that are much more effective than anything I was trying.  true, after working with wally for three weeks, joe and I were starting to get some results, but after I started learning from steve… well, the results were unbelievably faster.

just as a plug here, in case anyone reads this and wants to have steve spence train help them train their dog, here's some info: 

steve spence

ahassteve@yahoo.com

almost home animal shelter

a strong case for neutering your dog

after the initial night, I immediately noticed a difference in wally.  he was much more focused on me when I was talking to him, much more likely to obey when I gave him the sit command.  I didn’t really see the really stubborn dog who had lived with me for a couple of weeks.  every once in a while, he would dig his heels in, but if I challenged him he didn’t growl at me or look at me with that rage in his eyes.  I read so many mixed reviews about whether neutering an adult dog would help with aggression, but luckily in my case, it worked pretty well.

so, the only command that we could get wally to reliably obey was “sit”.  we were wary of trying to teach him any new tricks that involved touching or pushing him in any way because of his previous aggression towards that.  he even bit my friend gina’s mom when she came over to try and help us teach him “down” before he was neutered.  he just did not like being pushed or pulled.  I had this dilemma, because I knew that he was very smart – if you ever looked into his eyes, you could tell that there was lots of intelligence bouncing around in that little skull.  he was very smart, and I knew I wasn’t challenging him in a way that was stimulating that part of his brain.  after much hemming and hawing, I decided to hire a dog trainer.  the shelter where I got wally offered a dog-training seminar once a month, so I decided to go check it out.  I was reasonably impressed with what I saw from the speaker, who was an animal control officer and a long-time dog trainer.  he offered classes, so I decided to splurge for the classes.

this has probably been the most important investment that I have made in wally so far.

end of february

so, february was a rough month for me.  actually, this whole winter was really hard on me.  we had tons of snow this winter, and joe's schedule had changed for him to work nights.  i spent a lot of winter alone in my house.  when i went outside it was cold and bleak.  it was a hassle to go anywhere or do anything.  i was really depressed.  one of the big reasons that i wanted to get a dog was because i wasn't really comfortable being in my new house by myself.

february was particularly bad, though.  i had tons of stress going on at work on top of my seasonal depression.  adding to that the new knowledge that instead of adopting a dog who was my new best friend i adopted a dog who would kill me if he could... well, it was hard.

when we first brought him home, he was very shaggy and very dirty.  the friday after i brought him home, i had him at petsmart for a serious grooming sesh.  when i got him home, he looked like a whole new dog!  he was clean and shiny and soft...  and i discovered upon his "rub my belly" pose - an intact dog! 

nancy, the woman who runs the shelter where i got wally said she'd always be there if i had any questions.  i called her when he bit me and asked her if he had been aggressive with anyone else.  she told me that he wasn't crate trained and i shouldn't have tried to "force" him into a crate.  the next day he growled at me for pulling his face out of a cat food bowl at my father's house.  she told me that i shouldn't have brought him to my father's house since he still didn't know or trust me yet.  she basically told me that wally's aggression wasn't his problem, i just wasn't communicating effectively with my new dog. 

i called her the saturday after wally's grooming appointment and i told her i found two reasons why wally's aggression was his problem, and not that i wasn't communicating effectively with him.   since he was supposed to have been neutered when i brought him home, she asked me to drop him back off at the shelter so that she could take him to get neutered.  that night, my car died.  just to add to my stress.

i borrowed my sisters car to bring wally home from the shelter after his neutering appointment.  he was chilling on the rug in the kitchen while i was cooking.  i walked past him to get to the fridge, and he growled at me.  i totally lost it at that point.  all the stress came out in that one moment.  i called joe up and i told him that i wasn't going to be able to keep doing that with my life.  every waking moment i had was spent trying to train this dog, trying to make him trust me and respect me.  and it wasn't working.  i felt like a failure.  i couldn't handle his rejection anymore.  joe told me that we should wait a few days to see how he'd do after being neutered before we brought him back to the shelter.  i agreed with him.  i didn't want to give up on him, but it had been two and a half weeks straight of hard work, with almost no results.  taking him back to the shelter wasn't an ideal situation, but i really was at my wit's end.

thank god, and joe, i didn't just flip out and give up that night.

the first night

when i decided to adopt a dog, i had this image fixed in my mind.  i heard "so happy together" playing over a montage of me and my new dog running on the beach, playing frisbee, hanging out in dog parks... it was going to be perfect!  joe and i started looking online and putting in applications at different shelters on petfinder.  we didn't have much luck... many of the dogs were either already adopted, or we just didn't get responses back from the shelters, or, in one case, i got told that i'm a neglegent pet owner because i don't have my five cats vaccinated yearly.  they're inside cats!  why would i vaccinate them if they never leave the house?  anyway, we finally physically went to a shelter near our house that a friend of joe's recommended.

wally was the second dog we met at this shelter, and we absolutely fell in love with him.  a few days later, i was driving home from the shelter with my new shaggy, smelly dog!

looking back, i really should have waited until a weekend to pick him up from the shelter.  picking him up on a work night wasn't the best thing to do since we wouldn't be able to spend a lot of time together before going to bed.  i had him for a couple of hours before i was ready to go to bed.  i figured that he was crate trained since he came from a shelter... i was very wrong.

i started to put him into his crate.  i pulled him a little by his collar to guide him into his crate.  he did NOT like that.  the first night i had him home, my dog snapped and bit me.  it wasn't just a scared bite, either.  he bit me on my leg and on my arm when i tried to push him off my leg.  i was bleeding and bruised, and before me stood this tiny, shaggy, pissed off dog.  and the most confusing thing to me was that five seconds after it happened, he was back to sitting near me and wanting to be petted.

i was actually pretty traumatized by the whole thing.  i never owned an animal who wanted to hurt me before.  i washed my arm and put wally in the bathroom for the night, then tried to sleep in my room.  it was impossible.  every time i heard a noise, i woke with a start.  my arm and leg hurt every time i moved them.  and i was seriously doubting bringing an adult dog from a shelter into my home.  he hurt me, really hurt me... and i had five cats to worry about. 

the next day, i decided that i wasn't going to give up on wally.  i thought, what if everyone gave up on the abused and/or tempermental kids that happened?  the human race would just die out.  so i decided i was going to hunker down and work hard with him to make him more comfortable with me, to trust me, and most of all, recognize me as the pack leader.

meet wally!

wally the first day we met him at the shelter

sir shaggy himself, pre-grooming

smiling at joe in the car

after his very first grooming appointment... we could actually see his eyes!

i fell in love with those butt cheeks...

my all-time fave!

starting to get shaggy again...

why so sad, mr. bear?

shorn like a spring lamb!

wally bear taking a walk with papa bear

who you winkin' at?  ;)

i love his big nosey!