Just wanted to give a small update...

Mark & I went to visit our dog trainer at lunch today. I can't even tell you how much I APPRECIATE this woman!! She's absolutely supportive, comforting, and instructive.

Anyway, we described for her both of the scenarios that happened this past week, and she completely understood. She believes that it is the adolescent stage and he's trying to be alpha (exactly what everybody has told me here ) She gave us some pointers and basically told us that when he acts like that, "Don't give up and don't give in" She assured me that it will get better and not worse. I sure hope so!!! I'm taking a leap of faith to believe that it will get better, I guess. My biggest fear is that "next time" it's going to get worse and worse.

So now, we are strongly working with Malone restrengthening the fact that WE are alpha. No sleeping on our bed at all; hand feeding; heeling on ALL walks;putting him into a settle position every day.

The weird thing is, this bad behaviour seems to have come on overnight. He wasn't like this last week!! But I guess it's been a slow progression towards it, and we have been getting lax on formal training sessions. I feel guilty that I haven't spent very much time doing actual training in the last couple of months. And now I'm reaping the consequences. It's not fun.

Meanwhile training starts on September 9th. I do hope that at the end of the 6 or 8 weeks of this training we will see some improvement. I guess I'm just feeling discouraged. Class helps so much because it gives incentive to work with him throughout the week and working towards a goal.

I'm sorry this is so long! It just kind of flew out of my fingers. This really has been bugging me all week, and I guess I needed to vent. Thanks for listening!!