Phoebe is a great dog. Everyone who meets her loves her. Even people who don’t really like small dogs like her. She’s just a likable girl (she takes after me). She’s also generally really well behaved.
However, she’s not perfect and being 17 months old she’s going through a phase where she is constantly testing her boundaries. It drives me crazy. The thing about dogs is, it’s hard to correct behavior. If you wait a split second too long they have no idea what you’re correcting. Even if you don’t wait too long it’s always questionable if they have any idea what you’re talking about. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “Why don’t you just speak English?!” to her.
Obviously I don’t expect perfection (ok maybe I kind of do) but when she acts like “come here” means let’s play a fun game of tag, barks at us for no reason or uses our legs as chew toys I get really frustrated. There’s just not much I can do. Obviously yelling at her won’t work because of the whole not speaking English thing. Everything I’ve read says that putting her in her kennel isn’t a good idea because that’s supposed to be her safe spot. We’ve tried just walking away and shutting her out but that also gets annoying when we have to do it every couple of minutes. Sometimes I think she wants to kick us out of the room.
There are times when she just needs a time out. Where to do it though? Not in her kennel because that’s not supposed to be used as a punishment. Not in any particular room because she always seems to find something to get into so I don’t think she’d view it as a punishment. Our little one bedroom apartment only offers so many options.
In a moment of desperation I stuck her in a confined area that we just happened to have laying around and surprisingly it worked! She easily could jump out but so far she doesn’t. When I went back and took her out she listened very nicely… at least for about five minutes. Trust me, at this point I’ll take what I can get.
Behold, our very own naughty spot.
Super Nanny would be so proud.