Wonderful News About Mandy

At Mannerly Mutts we go on a journey with both our canine and human clients.   It's sometimes a hard and scary journey that is filled with stress that this might not work out for the team.   Our success rate is high (in the 90% and above), but still every case involves new individuals and new circumstances.   Mandy was a dog that came from an unusual circumstance, as much of her life she was tied to a garage before she was rescued and finally adopted by her wonderful owner.  Her situation and reactions to the new life were not easy.   Compounding that was the fact that Mandy is a very powerful Lab/Golden Retriever mix.   She is responsible for me loosing ten pounds in her two weeks here.  Mandy's desire for freedom and thus her bolting were entirely understandable.   Plus she was attacked and impregnated while tied to the garage by her previous family.

Mandy was one of the harder cases due to her sheer strength and determination to get to a dog in order to attack it.   Very high defense drive due to her previous living conditions.   We only had two weeks with Mandy.   The main areas were to get her walking on leash controlled in normal circumstances, and to start her education that all dogs were not out to attack her.   Also, to teach her that when on leash with her owner, she would be perfectly safe.   The garage did not take care of her that well that her previous owners had tied her to.

Freedom and exercise were what motivated Mandy towards becoming more trusting and obedient to her human partners.  Here is Mandy's owner's update (Mandy trained here in March 2010):

Robin and Robert:

I'm way overdue in letting you know how Mandy and I are progressing, this because of frenetic happenings with my work that have left little time for personal notes of late. I've just finished working 37 days straight without a break, often long hours, and spent most of this first weekend at home in close contact with my pillow!

I continue to learn new things about and with Mandy as we go through our first summer together. She has recently discovered hummingbirds (with awe), fireflies (quizzically), watermelon (yum) and kiddie pools (having her own). She totally enjoys boat travel, having come on two recent day-long lake trips (see picture), but is still awful in cars.

Recently the two of us looked after a provincial park for three days and she was quite good at greeting people and dogs as they arrived. It was beastly hot (no pun intended) and I knew it was time to take her to the lake for an extra swim when I found her standing with her front feet in her water bucket!

She has also had her first dog sleep-over, as a good friend of mine and her golden came to stay for 4 nights. This went wonderfully: Mandy had no trouble with another dog sharing her house space and in fact we were kept busy early and late giving these gals the play time they craved. I'm including a picture of me, Mandy and her golden friend Emma at the beach.

I continue to work on Mandy's attitude toward unfamiliar dogs, with notable gains. She still tends to approach new dogs a bit too quickly but has not done this in "attack mode" in the last two months. She is learning to greet in more proper dog fashion.

A prime goal has been to get past a fenced yard with a very yappy terrier without Mandy ripping me off my feet. I'd hoped to achieve this by fall but have made faster progress. She can now make it by this yard with just minor whines and no bolting, although some days I would gladly strangle the damn terrier myself!

Also she is now good at being within a quarter block of unknown dogs without stress, and recently had a face-to-face with an unknown aggressive and equally-sized dog, and she pulled back on my verbal command. More work to do here, but remarkable progress from where she was just months ago.

She no longer bolts out the door and down the street when I come and go from the house, but instead greets me when I come home and (mostly) takes it gracefully when I leave. My office moved recently, so I can't take her to work with me as before, and we're working that out. She sits obediently for leash and food, with some big wiggles when excited.

I've been admittedly slack on leash "heel" lately, as I've been so bone-weary that we more often go the to ball field, where she can run, rather than walk around many blocks. We do have a daily 20-minute walk date (weekdays at 7am sharp) with an older dog, which she looks forward to, and do some heel work on this.

Once my frenetic summer season ends (mid-September), I'll be more structured in Mandy's daily routines and my own, and will be focusing on leash work.

The electronic collar, while rarely needed, continues to be a god-send. It has allowed her much more freedom, me knowing that I can use it to save both of us if exceptional circumstances arise in her heat of the moment.

All in all, she is now well on her way to becoming a normal dog and wonderful companion, in spite of her difficult past. It has not been an easy journey and we're not entirely there yet, but I am hopeful and the two of us continue to work at it.

Thanks for your support.

No thanks to my client for being dedicated and working with Mandy:)   This is what makes my job and my business the absolute best!!!

Maine and New Hampshire Dog Trainer
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My New Assistant

Meet my new friend.   This wireless Toshiba Satellite is replacing my husbands castoff compaq, which had long ago seen better days.   In fact, I never liked that computer.   It came preloaded with all the viruses that my husband picked up after my far more awesome VPR died.  As nifty as my VPR died, this computer is going to save me a lot of time in downloading graphics, posting, and generally just not hanging up or slowing down for years to come.

Plus now I am mobile, so I can blog post while watching the dogs in the backyard.   Perhaps even take pictures of what I am blogging about right there and instantly download them just as the blog mood strikes.  The battery on this baby lasts a reported five hours.   That is a lot of wirefree time for blog posting.  

Now I have moved to my bedroom and typing in the dark of the morning with my trusty canine companions by my side (sound asleep and snoring of course)!   Course the movement through the house of a previous potty trip for my dogs and this trip have caused both Jake and Lucey to now be barking.   New houseguests often take a few days to get acclimated to their new sorroundings.   Other than that, both slept very well last night.   Now I just hope the husband is able to sleep through the current turmoil.   Jake should quiet down first, and then Lucey may go for the rest of the morning.   Her first night here she went almost all night.  

Now very soon I am going to most likely need a more flesh and blood type of assistant.   I figure my little Toshiba Satellite is going to save me hours and hours of rebooting, uploading, and freeze time alone.   I am talking about per day!!   The last thing a dog trainer needs is non productive freeze and reboot time!!   So then all I will need is the videoing of lessons, cleaning of bowls, vaccuming and mopping of rooms, daycare supervision when I have lessons, walks, pickup and drop off, and feeding.  These last couple of years I could have really used some relief during the day.   Now that I am eating better and taking care of myself more, my energy has been up so that I can keep up with the work load.   However, my days or hours off are few and far between sometimes.   I need a little boosting period or nap to reenergize sometimes.

Now instead of reaching down to turn off my computer so it can turn on again and check some drives, I can get my paperwork and correspondence done much faster and get on with training!!

Maine and New Hampshire Dog Trainer

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