Air it Out Thread

Dear boyfriend,

I hate your dog. I don't hate dogs, but YOUR dog stays on my last nerve. When we adopted her, you said you'd take responsibility for her and train her and I told you I wasn't BEFORE we even adopted her. It has been 5 months and she knows two commands, and hardly listens to either one of them because you don't make her listen. Ever. You let her do whatever she wants to do, and you even think it's friggin CUTE. What the hell? I trained my dog when I got her, and she learned about 50 commands in less than 6 months. She's well-behaved. She listens. She lays down exactly where I tell her to, when I tell her, and I never have to tell her twice. I don't even need a leash for her, I trained her to walk right next to me everywhere we go. Why can't you do even half that with yours? I told you I wasn't sure about this dog when I met her because she seemed dumb as a box of rocks and was chewing on everything in the visitation room (and later, my coffee table and about $50 worth of my clothes and she has DESTROYED the **** out of my garden that I worked so hard on and ripped up so much of our stuff in the backyard). I told you I wanted a smaller dog, too. And an older dog. In fact, this dog was everything I didn't want in a dog and you got her anyway. You said you wanted a dog very unlike your old dog and she fit that criteria but I cannot for the life of me understand why you'd want a dog like this. When I'm at home, I'm working. I'm busy trying to finish my work, not babysit your twit of a dog. I resent you both and I wish I was the kind of person that could give the dog away when you're not home and tell you "oops, she ran away" so I could get some frickin peace when I'm at home working. You know how many times I had to stop my work and yell at your dog to shut the **** up today? Ten times. TEN. It's 1:30pm. She's in her kennel now. It was that, or sell her to someone at the gas station. Because I have deadlines, MANY deadlines, that I have to make right now. And no, I won't give a **** if she's all riled up when you get home because she's been in the kennel all day. She's YOUR dog, YOU deal with it, dammit. I resent thinking I've got years of this horse**** to put up with. Next time she runs off when we're out camping in the woods, I have half a mind to NOT send my poor dog to fetch your stupid idiot. I TRAINED my dog to hunt and rescue, but that doesn't mean you can leave yours off the leash because "Molly will find her." For all I know, one of these days, your dog is going to lead mine to her death via bear or mountain lion or god knows what. You both **** me off.

Signed,
Your angry, responsible dog-owning girlfriend.

Um...yeah. Ms. Dog Trainer? I'm gonna need you to share your housebreaking tips. Cuz I'm not doing so well. 

I am crate training our puppy and that's going well but I'm just not sure what approach to use when she's out of the crate. Go outside? Paper train? And she doesn't exhibit "I'm about to go" behavior. She doesn't sniff and circle. She just squats and goes. I do as the websites tell me and take her outside when she goes. I know that the basic concept is operant training but dammit our dog is not Pavlov's dog. She is simply not as smart as Pavlov's dog!!!

Sigh...

Take her outside before she goes. Don't give her the opportunity to need to pee in the house. Every hour, and every 15-30 minutes after she drinks, put her out. When she goes potty, praise her for it. When she does it in the house, tell her NO! and then take her outside immediately, mid-pee if you have to. But try to keep her bladder empty!

Has she been good about not going in the crate? If yes, that's a good start already. Dogs won't pee in their home, and if she's seeing the crate as her home, all you have to do is expand that boundary to the house.

Also, is she leashed when in the house? The first few months I have a dog (a dog that's mine, that I agree to train, ahem..) they stay on leash with me constantly unless they're in their crate or having free time in the yard. That way, it establishes me as leader and anytime they even start to do something wrong, I can immediately correct them. This includes for house breaking. It's a pain in the ass for awhile, but they learn much more quickly and there's fewer accidents and mistakes. They learn to listen when they have to work for everything they get from you including their food and water. The first week, all they may have to do is sit and "leave it" ("it" being their bowl) before I give them to command to 'take it" (and I enforce the "leave it" command with the leash -- they can't get it if they're on a short leash and I jingle the collar and say NO when they try to go for it after I've said "leave it." Usually, after a couple of tries they sit back and look at me, which is perfect. They're waiting for my direction.) but my dog, since she knows so much and is a high energy working breed anyway, sometimes I put her through a round of acrobatics before she gets dinner. She loves it. Dogs love having jobs to do and love being rewarded for it but you have to show them that. Sorta like a kid that kicks and screams at first when given rules, but then does much better living under them. They don't know what's best for them until they get it.

Read up on the NILIF - Nothing In Life Is Free training method.

I have a dog that will not signal as well. I started out with the crate training and tried to do the outside to potty thing but this dog would just not get it.. Outside waiting and waiting, come inside and splat right on the floor. I tried and tried even tried the leashing her to me at all times and the leash to the door knob. nothing seemed to work. I finally bought a tray and some wood shavings and taught her to go there. she caught on to that quickly and would run to her box to go. After a time I moved the box outside and when we were outside she would find it and pee. Then I just put down the shavings in a spot and she would hold her pee until she got inside on the floor. no matter how I try she will not learn to not potty inside. I have never had this problem with any other dog (all my life) I have ever had. as long as she has the box she will go but no where else.

You must have a little dog? 

My dogs never signal they need to go except in the car, and even then they start acting antsy. So it's not them signaling me, it's me picking up on their needs. But nonetheless, they know that they're not supposed to go in the house and they learned the habit of going only outside because that's the only place they ever went.  I still just let them out regularly. A puppy may not be able to hold it more than an hour or two, but a full grown healthy dog should be able to hold it for 8-10 hours until they get outside.

Yes,I know we have been together for years.(11 to be exact) I know he loves me. I still don't want to get married, so stop asking me and telling me I should!
Love ya mom and friends
lol

I have a silly one and an important one.  you can pick whichever one you think is silly.

Item #1: My husband fights like a girl.  I get annoyed or hurt from time to time, but I usually forget about it because he's a super-nice guy, so it's never anything big, and he is very quick to apologize once he sees I am bothered by something.  But it doesn't matter if I apologize when he is upset.  He will get over it in his own sweet time, and even if it is something totally stupid, I have the choice between grovelling or getting the cold shoulder for a while and then grovelling even more.  It's so stupid.  We can't get on with our lives until I have listened to his whole harangue (which rarely varies, because try as he might to convince me otherwise, it all boils down to how often we have sex), and I have figured out some new thing to say that will appease him.  And then two seconds after we make up (and you know what I mean by that), he will forget whatever it was that upset him.  Okay that part is not girly, but the sulking until I have apologized a million times is pure 16-year-old girl.

Item #2: When I ask for Diet Coke, and the server asks, "Diet Pepsi okay?"  Oh, sure!  Why not?  I can pay my bill with Monopoly money, right?

 GAH! I need this today. 

I hired an employee this week because I was getting overrun and overwhelmed. She's a stay at home mom, and all I need her for is an extra pair of hands. Someone to wash dishes as I make them, help me clean, keep counters wiped up, help with packaging, etc. I don't expect her to be a truffle artist or a master baker or anything. 

Anyway, she has a three year old son, and I told her she could bring him as long as he was well behaved and not underfoot,. She assured me he wasn't, that he was very independent and just needs his sippy cup refilled occasionally. Okay. 

So day 1-- he's underfoot all the time. I'm constantly tripping over him, he's always whining and dragging her away to go play with things, help him in the bathroom, etc.  *sigh*  Alright. It's the first day, he's excited. No biggie. She's useful, but not as proactive as I want. I need her to be a bit more intuitive and not just stand around waiting for direct instruction. But that will come in time, I suppose. 

Day 2 - The kid is better today, not so underfoot, not so distracted. We had just finished the last of a large batch of very detailed cake pops, we put them in the fridge to set, and went downstairs to package up some previous orders. We only had about an hour left before they had to get shipped out. When we got back upstairs, he'd gone into the fridge and eaten the damn cake pops. I shrieked. His mom stood there, all flowers and sunshine, coddling him. "Oh, crazy kiddo, what did you do? Oh wow, okay, go play."   I was SEETHING. Like, I wanted to strangle him.   Because she clearly was not going to discipline him, I called him into the kitchen and told him firmly that he was NOT allowed in the refrigerator, nor to touch anything in the kitchen. And of course, he crumpled and bawled and threw a massive temper tantrum, which Mommy had to calm while I went back to work, hurriedly remaking the truffles from scratch. 

So I don't know if this is going to work out. 

It's our first week, so I know there are boundaries to learn and rules to adjust to, so I'll give it another week. But this isn't acceptable if it continues. I hired her to keep me from GETTING so crazy, not to make me moreso. 

You've got way more patience than me. If I had seen her just tell the brat to "go play" after doing that I would have fired her on the spot. That is just plain irresponsible and disrespectful of her.

This kid is just...ug. He's so spoiled and she's SO passive. I'm a really firm disciplinarian. I lay hard rules and I enforce them, often to my own inconvenience, because I believe strongly in consistency. Sometimes a tactic doesn't work (like recently, I've been struggling with my 2 year old's mood swings) but I'm usually quick to figure out something that does, and it often involves me being a figure of stern authority.

This is not the case with this woman. She is sweet. And sugary. And he walks ALL over her. Her pat reply to almost anything he says, no matter how rude or rebellious, is a giggle and, "Okay, baby."

Her: Sweetie, are you putting those blocks away?
Him: NO! I don't have to!
Her: Teehee! Okay baby!

*eyeroll*

For someone as frenetic as I have been lately, I would think this kind of calm and passive partner would be a refreshing, tempering change of pace for me, but it's really quite obnoxious.

I will see how next week goes and gauge her future employment by that. Mostly because I just don't have anyone else, and if I fire her, I'm back to square one. Not to mention, my own kids and hell, even my dog, have done worse to my client's projects, so it's not something I'm unfamiliar with. But she needs to lay down the law with this brat, because if she won't, I will. And I'm willing to bet nobody will enjoy that.