The Dalmatian Diaries Blog

Widget and I trekked across Austin today to meet with a new trainer. It's not that Widget hasn't been making progress - she has - it's just that I didn't feel that she and I were "understanding" each other like we should. I know she reads me like a book so I wanted to learn a) what she was seeing/learning from me, and b) how to better respond to her during training.

One thing that the trainer confirmed was something we already suspected: Widget doesn't do well when left to make too many decisions on her own. We encountered this when she was a puppy and we were trying to housebreak her (I posted about this I think somewhere WAY back in the early days of the blog). When we removed some decisions from her daily routine we found that she was housebroken in no time!

I think Widget's biggest problem is that she feels that she is supposed to take control of all situations. She doesn't have the confidence to do so (as Tara the trainer pointed out) so that's when the crazies come in to play. Tara taught me how to respond to Widget (to remove some of the decision making from her list of responsibilities) and some great exercises to work on to help build Widget's confidence.

I don't expect overnight miracles but I will say that just after today's lesson Widget was looking at me differently. She did what I asked (and she got rewarded) and I think understanding the rules of the game a little better made her feel better.

She's such a cool dog, I really want everyone to see the Widget I know. Hopefully someday they will!