My last post took us through the first couple of weeks worth of having Bennie in our lives. This final post contains the big secret that I learned about Bennie, which is that he was 110% obedience trained when I rescued him. How do I know that, you ask? Simple. We put a Dogtra on him, dialed it WAAAY down and started giving commands. He had basic obedience down inside of 15 minutes.
Of course, getting him to comply was the trick.
After a couple of months of regular collar training sessions, we learned that Bennie isn’t really responsive to the collar. (Ernie and Ollie, on the other hand, respond awesome to the collar.)
Bennie is crazy for food. To get him to internalize the training and get it to (sorta) stick we went the treat training route. It works pretty well to this day, although he’s still very much a wild child.
Other fun Bennie stories:
- During a dog rescue event he lifted his leg and urinated all over me – intentionally. We were outside standing halfway between a fire hydrant and a tree at the time, so I know using me as a target was not for lack of other options.
- When we (foolishly) let them have the run of the house, the dogs once threw a frat party, knocking over a pomegranate vodka infusion I was making, drinking 100% of it and treating my house like the dumpster out back behind a slummy Chinese restaurant.
- 3 raw yams. 1 sitting. No kidding.