This dog has only gotten more out of control. For starters, she is starting to fight with us more– a very bad habit. Also, she does this thing where she barks, growls, and then runs in circles in one spot, runs across the hall, comes back, circles herself again, and then tries to jump on you. I do not know if it is because our family has gotten to the point where we don’t know what do with her anymore so we are just doing what we can to keep her calm, or if it is because she has gotten more comfortable with us.

A part of me thinks it is because my family members are starting to stop her antics in different ways, even though we all agreed upon a majority of the commands that we were going to use. The problem is that she goes wild and we all just forget about what we should do and we do what we think will get her to stop and calm down. Instead of focusing on basic training, we are now just trying to get her to stop acting so ridiculous. It then gets to the point where we get frustrated so we do not even bother trying to teach her “sit” or “stay”. Instead, we just expect her to know what we want her to do. Don’t get me wrong, we have already taught her sit and stay, but the reinforcement of these commands is starting to fade. It would be nice if we could get her to be really good at sitting and staying because I think that once she responds promptly to that, we can get her to stop when she gets into one of these ridiculous moods she keeps getting herself into.

Basic training is extremely important. I think that it is extremely important that my family must try harder to get her to understand that we are in charge, and that we won’t tolerate her silly antics. I think that the training class that her and my mom are signed up for is going to help a lot. We shall see…