Over the course after a few weeks, we saw Paulie's true personality come through. Some good, some bad. Since we didn't know about his past life, we were actually training an old dog new tricks. It was very clear that Paulie was seriously a reactive dog. Taking him on walks was very stressful. He would bark at everything that moved. When he saw other dogs, and especially when I was walking him, he would get all fired up, trying to break loose of his collar to run towards the dog. A few times it was a coyote! We figured that his past owner was an older lady for which he was very protective. I was at my wits end every time we walked. Immediately, we contacted a trainer at our vets office for help. She came for a few hours to teach us the basic skills and left. Well, that did nothing. We were then told of a 5 week dog training class which was an hour away. On our initial meeting, Paulie was very excited and the staff told us their class would fix him. After shelling out more money, My family and I went to the orientation with other dog owners. This didn't tell us anything new. The following Saturday, my husband drove as I sat in the back of the SUV with Paulie, enroute to attend our first class. Upon arrival, I saw a major issue as we entered the training room. The other dogs and their owners were all in the same room, separated with a partition. The dogs knew there were other dogs there so the barking started for 90 minutes. By the time we left, we were frazzled and was now dealing with a dog who was a hot mess. I guess we liked punishment because we went back the next week. Things weren't getting better, however, we figured let's keep on going. During the second from the last class, clicker training was introduced. That sealed the deal. Paulie didn't like this method at all and again, we were presuming he associated the clicker with something bad. After that, we never went back.
After this roadblock, we contacted a few other trainers. One recommended a prong collar to teach Paulie when not to bark. That seemed to help to a point then when he was in the tantrum zone, it didn't matter, actually, nothing mattered. The last trainer he saw was a husband and wife team. They swore their training worked. We even sent them to doggie training for a week and he stayed there. Plus, we tossed in some additional one on one training. The training helped, however, the barking at other dogs was still happening. I even bought a bark collar and some other collar to train him not to bark. Personally, I didn't like these tools. At this point, we gave up and continued to use the techniques that all the trainers used hoping something would stick. This training process ran a few years and thousand of dollars later, we felt defeated. We agreed that working with Paulie and giving him a lots of love and attention was the best thing we could do for him right now. That's what we did.
So, the best suggestion I can give about training is try it with your senior. There's a 50/50 chance it will work. We tried because we didn't know what else to do. I'm glad we went through the training because it taught us things since we never owned a dog before. When we adopt again, we have that knowledge in our back pocket. To me, that's priceless.
Paulie and I on the way for training.
