Training a pretty good dog

High-fiving can wait. I just want this dog to not drive us crazy.

Today for the first time, Octavia is interacting with Gogo and getting his attention without assaulting him. It has taken us a week and a half to get to this level of peace in the house.

Octavia is a two (ish)-year-old hound mix whom I agreed to foster, beginning a week and a half ago. I had been in charge of two darling (though challenging) small puppies, but was persuaded to trade them in, to take on a less predictable assignment.

Remo and Ruthie, the puppies, went to a new foster home, where they are continuing their training to become good citizens of the world: to sleep when it’s time to sleep; pee and poop in recommended areas; chew toys not furniture; and charm someone into adopting them.

Enter the clueless adult dog. Whether Octavia, the new recruit, got any citizenry training when she was wee, is anyone’s guess. We’re pretty sure she had people experience. At least some of the experience was negative; when she was first in foster, if a human raised their voice, Octavia cowered. She was found as a stray, pregnant, health status unknown, somewhere in the southern US.

The dog rescue group I volunteer with answered a request for help, back in January or February. “Please foster this dog, or she’ll end up euthanized.” Most rescue requests are some variation of the same. Most come from the South, often from the shelters themselves, who are just plain out of room. But that’s a story for another day; today it’s Octavia.

Octavia’s initial vet care, once in rescue, revealed she is heartworm positive. Heartworm is a new topic for me. Before this, all I knew was that heartworm often kills dogs who have it. Also, I had heard that treatment takes a long time. What “long” meant, or how the disease is transmitted, wasn’t really my concern, other than following my vet’s recommendation to give my dog heartworm preventive treatment year-round.

I live in the northeastern US, in a hilly area where winters tend to be snowy, and temps can dip below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, especially in January and February. Time was, up here one only needed to give heartworm preventive in Spring-through-Fall. But now, as climate varies, and can gift us with a 70-degree day on Christmas Eve (as happened in 2016), the appearance of mosquitos can happen ANY time. And besides, if one wants to travel with one’s dog to the South, where mosquitos have no “off” season, it makes sense to protect from mosquito-borne diseases year-round.

Just to review my background: not only am I not an expert on heartworm, I’m not an expert on dogs. I was drawn into foster due to my willingness, not my expertise. And for Octavia’s case, the group wanted someone who was home more than a few waking hours per day (me: check). And ideally, someone who had a confident, calm dog who could be a good role model (me and Gogo: double-check). And for bonus points, someone with a fenced yard so the new dog can safely explore without running off (me: score!).

Gogo was fostered when he was little. Gogo is great. Therefore, I foster. Whether it was a good move for me, psychologically, to take in a new untrained dog before I had even had a chance to clean the stealth-poops left by the puppies under the guest bed, despite all the duct-taped and wood-screwed barricades I had built, is another topic. And maybe a good place to start a therapy session….but I digress.

Octavia’s good qualities:

• She knows to do her business outdoors.
• She is highly food-motivated. This makes her much easier to train using treats.
• She is very eager to please her humans. This makes it much easier to teach and reinforce new behaviors, by either heaping attention on her, or withdrawing it.
• She does not bark. At all. I think she may be a hound breed that just doesn’t.
• She is happy to sleep in her crate, all night.

Octavia’s challenging qualities:

• She is insecure, and seeks attention constantly. Initially this meant she whined all day, unless she was asleep or being attended to. This is improving.
• She does not know how to interact politely with other dogs. She moved quickly from being docile and shy, to approaching, pawing, jumping up on, and chewing on Gogo every chance she got. By day 3 of being with us, she was humping him to express dominance.
• Fortunately, also around day 3, her post-surgical spay restrictions were lifted, so she was allowed to vent some of her energy by running in the yard. And at the same time, I let Gogo know he did not have to be so gentle, and did not have to put up with her shit. Gogo is more than twice Octavia’s size. They are coming to a new understanding.
• She has minimal experience living in a house, and being polite with people. Her first impulse is to crowd, paw, lick, and generally be in a person’s face or whatever body part is accessible to her. It is well-intended, but gets old very fast when you’re the human at the receiving end.

Octavia has been here in my house for 9 days. So far, she has learned these commands:

• Sit.
• Come.
• Lie down.
• Sshh. Sshh. Sshh (be quiet).
• OFF. (quit putting your front paws up on me/ furniture/ the dog/ the cat’s food shelf etc.)
• Drink the water.
• Eat the food.

And she has learned these life-affirming, don’t-wear-out-your-welcome concepts:

No-no. (works as shorthand for don’t chew that; quit whining; that’s not a toy; hey those are my good shoes; quit putting your paw on my leg, in my face, etc.)

Relax, or We relax now. (just learning)

Be peaceful, be gentle (when she is being too rough, or just too relentless, with Gogo, or me. She knows what this means, but inconsistently applies it.).

Nine days in, our journey of fostering Octavia is just beginning. She still has to survive three more months of heartworm treatment, a couple of trips to the vet, and lots of training. By the time she is up for adoption, my plan is that she will be healthy, sleek, fast, and a pretty good dog. Let’s see if her goals align with mine.