Phase Reports and Citronella

Every Thursday I recieve a phase report from my leader. This is a list of dogs and what phase they're in. I have a list of dogs going that I've been watching for a while. A few of the dogs who were in phase 10 were off the list this week...as well as Freya. I know Judy won't mind me posting this, but her puppy, Toledo, will be graduating with Freya as well. I'm so happy that they're graduating together. Judy and Toledo aren't from our group, but we knew them well and went to a few events together. Judy just had another dog graduate last weekend as well. She takes older dogs, problem dogs, and fixes them. She's really good at fixing the dogs. Pierre, the dog that graduated last weekend, was throwing up and loosing hair and Toledo had horrible crate manners. I don't know how you fix the throwing up and loosing hair, but I do know how you fix whining in the crate because I'm doing it right now.

We got permissiong from Jim to use a citronella collar on Rocco. The citronella collar is a last resort thing. We tried leash correcting him, but it didn't work. Then we tried sprying him with water and that worked for about a day. Next after water is listerine as a spray. When the spray didn't work we were allowed to use a stream. It's been sort of working, but he still has this nasal whine that won't stop. He doesn't whine when we can correct him or spray him with listerine. He whines when we're in the shower or getting ready or getting his food ready. The citronella collar is a remote collar that sprays in front of his face with citronella. It doesn't hurt the puppy, but they really don't like the smell. So if I'm not ready to get up and he is whining in his crate I can spray him. I don't mind if it's 6 or 6:30 in the morning. It's when it's 4am. Mary says that it's working really well so far and that he's learning fast that if he doesn't whine he doesn't have a horrible smell hangning around him. Maybe I'll actually sleep in this Sunday. I can't Saturday because I'm working.