I was blessed with very stubborn children. Not all of them are stubborn, but 3 out of the 4 are. :P Well, now I have a stubborn dog to go with them. I had heard that terriers were stubborn, but never saw it for myself until now.
We have been taking the dogs to the school yard to play occasionally. But the gophers have overrun the yard, so the dogs sometimes dig in the holes. We are constantly chasing them away from the holes. Every morning we take our dogs to the park that is located below the school yard. Yesterday we discovered that some of the gophers have migrated down the hill to the park. It's sad to see because I know it will only be a matter of time until the gophers take over the park too.
With this new gopher infestation, my dog has become obsessed with digging in the gopher holes in the park. I can't let her dig there because it is a public place where people play soccer regularly. But she is so dang stubborn that she keeps going back to the gopher hole every chance she gets.
Today I decided to take my rubber door mat up to the park and put it over the gopher hole while the dogs played. I thought it would discourage them from digging. No such luck. Sally not only continued to dig, but would pick up the mat with her teeth and move it. So I decided to do a "Cesar Millan" trick and "claim" the gopher hole as my own. I shooed the dogs away and stood on top of the mat. Miss Stubborn Sally, however, didn't give up that easily. She continually circled me looking for an opportunity to move in to the hole. I took my dominance up and notch and increased the circumference of area that I wouldn't allow her to enter. So what did my stubborn dog do? Did she give up and go play with the other dogs? No, she sat right down in front of me and waited for me to move. What she didn't count on is that I'm more stubborn, so I held my ground. My only problem is, I have to stay next to the hole the whole time. I guess in one sense I won the round because she wasn't allowed to dig anymore, but in another sense I lost because I had to stand in one place the whole time. It's not fair....I got stubborn children AND a stubborn dog!
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4 comments:
I trained Duchess (what little she was trained) with a four foot length of 1" cable---
Terrier's were bred to be hunters and that's part of why they are difficult to handle. My Jack Russell Terrier was such a stubborn little thing and she had a lot of energy. They're very smart dogs, though, another reason why they can be stubborn. You should get a book and read up on her breed if you haven't already. I got my book AFTER I bought the dog and was reading in horror to JD, "Oh my gosh...they dig up sub-floors, chew through walls. No way!" Thinking to myself, my sweet little puppy would never do that. :) Let's just put it this way, I had to learn how to patch holes in walls.
L* I loved your Jack Russell--it made me happy just to watch her run around in circles.
I liked your trick - maybe after a few days of that she'll learn (or not) lol good luck!
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