Adolescent Trouble!

Yeah...that time of Walley's life is here already! We've all heard of the terms- adolescent, teenager, puberty and many other terms attributed to them. Rings a loud bell in the ears, I'm sure! We've all gone through the adolescent phase sometime in our lives. Dogs go through that phase too! Yes, they do!

Walley is going through his adolescent phase now and he really acts up sometimes. It started when he was about 9 months old. First, he was very picky about his food. We were giving him dry kibble food in the morning and canned chicken or beef entrees in the evening because we thought he would get bored of just eating the dry kibble all day. After a few days though, he liked the canned food so much that he didn't want to eat the kibble food in the morning. The kibble food is more nutritious and wholesome than canned food and it's crucial for dogs to have at least one meal of dry kibble. But, Walley would just stare at his kibble food and not eat it and mind you he's been eating the kibble food twice a day since he was 2 months old. He would just stare at the kibble for a few minutes and look at our faces as though we were feeding him something he shouldn't be eating. But he wouldn't even touch it. How stubborn can that be! However, we quickly found a solution to that problem. For a few days, we mixed a little bit of canned food with his dry kibble just so he would eat the more nutritious kibble food. It worked!! After a few weeks of success with mixing canned food and kibble, we began mixing a little bit of warm water with the dry kibble instead of canned food. That worked too! Now he eats his dry kibble twice a day very happily just like he used to eat before without mixing anything in it. Mission accomplished!

Just when we succeeded in overcoming the food trouble, another bigger problem began. This one is called "outdoor trouble". It began when Walley was 10 months old. He wanted to become the leader of the pack. The pack, of course, consists of me, Elwyn and Walley.  Our Walley still thinks we're his litter mates so he wanted to take control of the litter-mate group. He wanted to become the leader who leads us whenever we go out for a walk. So we would be out there walking with him and he would be on his leash but he always wanted to take us for a walk and not the other way around. He would just pull on his leash, sometimes really hard just to go where he wanted to go. In the beginning, it was not so bad but then it became a misery. Walley weighs close to 60 pounds and you can just imagine when something weighs so heavy and pulls you around, it just can't be fun. It was literally straining on our backs. He would walk normally for about 2 minutes and then suddenly pull on his leash! It was just dreadful. But there is always a solution for every problem. And even this one quickly resolved. We got him a "HALTI". Now, I don't believe in harsh training for dogs, that's just not me. I don't like the choking collar for dogs even if it is recommended because who would like to be choked when they walk. I mean, that's just brutal! I do believe that dogs should be trained but only in a gentle way. And HALTI does just that! It's a gentle way of training dogs to walk when on a leash and "no" it's not a muzzle although it looks like one. A muzzle is for dogs that bite and Walley doesn't do that, not in a million years! Now, I am sure some of you are wondering "What is this HALTI?" I will save myself time and words from explaining because I found a really nice website, actually one that inspired me into buying a HALTI for Walley. This site has a really good explanation of a HALTI- what is is, how it works etc. Below is the link to the website:

http://www.allourpets.com/htmls/halticollar.shtml

And yes! The HALTI has been working really great so far! Initially, Walley didn't like it so much because it goes over his mouth and face so he would try to get out if it. But now, he doesn't mind it. He walks just fine. Walking has only become fun and easy for the three of us. I guess he's only not too happy that he couldn't become the leader of the pack. But then again, no one is the leader of the pack. There's no "win or lose" here, there's only settlement!

Apart from the above adolescent issues we had with Walley, he has been a really good boy. He's such a darling! There was one other thing he did just once and never did it again. Walley has never been a tough or destructive chewer. He likes all of his colorful squeaky toys so much that he only gets attracted to chew on them. He has not damaged a single thing in our house. As surprising as it may seem to you, yes it's true. He never chewed on our couch or shoes or anything that rambunctious little puppies do for a living! He does like nibbling on our socks sometimes for some strange reason but doesn't destroy it. So it's not so bad. But there was this one night when "Marley" got into him. I don't know if he watched the movie "Marley and Me" earlier in the day (just in case you didn't know, we leave the Television switched on for Walley all day) when Elwyn and I were out, but that night was a truly memorable one! It was 2 months ago and Walley was 9 months old. We trusted Walley to sleep with us that night in our bedroom because he has had sleepovers in our room several other nights and he never touched a thing in the room because he had his bed to sleep on and toys to play with if he got bored. But, God alone knows what got into him that night because we were fast asleep. We woke up in the morning to Walley's kisses and hugs. When we looked around the room, we were shocked! Walley had pulled out a small rug (which we had bought from India) from underneath the bed and chewed a portion of it. The rest of the rug was just fine but there was a small portion just missing! Also, he chewed up a section of the wire of our automatic steam inhalation system. Again, the equipment was way under our bed. We don't know how he got in there to pull out these things and have so much fun with them! It made perfect sense though why he woke us up with so much love to show us the mess he made overnight. Luckily he didn't have any tummy-trouble after all that tough chewing. Of course, we were a little annoyed with him. Walley knew we were not particularly proud of what he had done that night. But he's a Golden Retriever! He knows, he understands, he learns. That was the last time he did anything of the sort. We grounded him from sleeping with us at night for a month and now he has sleepovers once in a while in our bedroom and he's very well-behaved! He wakes us up in the morning with only good surprises. It's all well. In fact, we just crack up now when we talk about the chewed-rug and we have decided to glass-frame it and hang it up on the wall as "Walley's Masterpiece".  It was already an expensive rug when we bought it but now it is truly priceless!! As for the steam inhalation device, we bought a new one!

Well, that's about the clownish Walley for now. 24 days to go for our munchkin's birthday!

Wish you all a wonderful weekend! Have fun!