Our Dog Training Story

Read our story and see how important it is to develop a plan for dog training

Also see dog behavior problems advice and dog separation anxiety cures

One day in early January 2004, we went to the Houston S.P.C.A to take a look at the dogs available for adoption. We saw a male brown and white, 10 month old hound dog that looked pretty friendly, so we asked to see him.

The staff volunteer told us that the dog had only been in there for a few days; he was brought in right after Christmas.

As soon as the dog got into the “meeting” room, he let us pet him and rolled over to show us his cute little belly covered in brown spots. As they say, he had us at “hello.” We quickly filled out the adoption papers and two days later, we were allowed to bring him home.

We named him Lucky because we felt fortunate to find such a sweet dog so quickly. Lucky fit right into our family and we had a hard time understanding how he ever wound up in the pound to begin with.  At this point, we did not develop a plan for dog training because we assumed that our dog didn't have any undesirable behaviors.

After a few days in his new home, Lucky started showing us the probable reasons why his last owners gave up on him.

We’d leave Lucky in the house alone for a few hours and then come home to a huge mess – he chewed through furniture (sofa cushions!), oriental carpets, cd’s, $275 worth of coffee-table books, shoes, a TV remote controller, and shredded any magazine or newspapers he could find.

Though he didn’t do any of this while we were at home, there seemed to be nothing Lucky wouldn’t chew on in our absence. Due to the fact that we adopted Lucky only 7 days after Christmas, my husband had a sneaking suspicion that Lucky had destroyed his previous owners’ Christmas presents and that’s why they had taken him to the S.P.C.A.

There were also some other things that made Lucky hard to live with. Whenever we would come home to Lucky, he would wildly jump up on us and subsequently scratch us with his claws. He constantly pulled hard as he walked with us on a leash and didn’t know many basic dog commands like come, sit, stay and lie down.

 The sweet dog we found at the S.P.C.A. had far too many not-so-sweet habits. He sure was cute at 10 months old, but Lucky had all of the undesirable traits of a dog who hadn’t been consistently trained. It was easy to become frustrated quickly, and that’s exactly what we did.

Certain times, we actually felt a little scared to come home knowing that we were bound to find another horrible mess when we got there. We had to do something. We loved our new dog, and we weren’t about to give up on him, so we made a decision to develop a plan for dog training and look for solutions to our problems.

As avid readers, we got our hands on any book about dog training that we could find. Many of the books we found were made for people who wanted to show their dogs professionally or used harsh punishment techniques. We just wanted a book that showed regular people how to overcome problems and to perform basic commands. We also wanted techniques that weren’t complicated and that could be used in a variety of situations.

After finding some solutions and altering them so they would easily fit into our daily lives, we began to develop a plan for dog training and we worked with Lucky on a consistent basis every day.  Within a very short time; he dropped all of his bad habits and blossomed into a well behaved dog. Using the techniques in this book, we went from being frustrated dog parents to proud and happy ones.

We now get compliments everywhere we go because our dog has such wonderful manners. You too can go from being upset with your dog’s behavior to being overjoyed with the results of training. All it takes is for you to know the techniques and practice them with your dog.