Good Girl
I must admit I’ve been having a Loca issue lately. She was very mellow after the string of deaths in this house – two dogs and a mother – and then was doing pretty good about Tin’s arrival, but then lately she has become super psychotic. Her walks are being usurped by nanny timing and other issues and though every day she does get a walk, sometimes it comes very late in the afternoon and by that time, she is attacking every dog she encounters to the point where there is no place safe to walk.
Yesterday, I walked her and Tin, then I came back and walked just with Tin and then later in the afternoon I opted to take the entire family out yet one more time (I, like everyone else in this city, can’t get enough of the good weather having wintered over long) and we ran into the true Dog Whisperer – her original trainer. She saw Loca in action, lunging after another. And she said, give me that leash and she said here’s what you do, you put her in a heel when you see a dog approach and you grab the leash down low and you yank her all the way to a stand if she gets out of her heel as you pass.
I confessed to her my innermost thoughts – I wanted to hang Loca by her paws or sell her down the river. Another mom told me it is common, that she was going to put both her cat and her long time trusted dog on Craig’s List after having her child, but that two years later, she is starting to like them again.
“Loca is too smart to be being bad. She used to protect just you, now she has a family to protect. Don’t underestimate this dog, she would kill for you and she is protecting you and Tin every time you go out in the world. She doesn’t have the ability to know when a threat is not a threat, and that is where you have to take control and tell her.”
I kept saying Good Girl to Loca as we went through the exercise of walking around the bayou and putting her in a heel by other dogs. She performed beautifully. I said it so many times that Tin started saying it – Goo Gur, Goo Gur, Goo Gur.