Lord Oscar and I just finished our morning constitutional. Compared to day one, when he nearly took my arm off, he's doing really well walking on the leash now. We discovered very early on that he is a little too food obsessed to learn to be walked using treats. One of the trainers we've been using gave us a great alternative, which has been working like a charm. As we walk, if he starts to get ahead and pull, we immediately turn around and start walking in the opposite direction. You look like a totally crazy person doing this (especially in the beginning when you turn around a million times and it takes 20 minutes to walk 15 feet), but it really does work. He is learning that *I* am the one in charge and leading the walk, not him. *I* decide when we're going to go and which way we're going to go in. It's so simple yet so effective.

Unfortunately, Oscar isn't doing quite as well with distractions on our walks. He does not like bicycles, children, other dogs (or any other animal for that matter), large men or joggers. He's still doing a lot of growling and lunging. If he had been a larger dog, we probably would have taken him back to the shelter because of this behavior. There's no way I would have been able to control him had he been a big dog. However, since he's only 11 pounds and I can out muscle him, we're going to work through this. Currently, we're taking private obedience classes and also talking with our vet a lot about it. We are also planning to hire a behaviorist to come to the house to work with him as well. In the meantime, we just have to get out there and work on it.

Normally, I take him up the street from our house and sometimes completely around the block. The only bad thing about this route is, on weekday mornings, we rarely encounter anyone or anything. Hard to tell him to "Leave it!" when there's nothing to leave. This morning, since he's been doing so well walking on the leash, we tried a new route. I took him over to a small park nearby with a walking path. I figured we would encounter all sorts of people there and we did. As people get close, I let them know well ahead of time that he is in training and to expect barking, and ask them to just walk on by. Oscar is lucky he's so darn cute and small because no one has had any issue with this. Much to my delight this morning, he did really well. He had a hard time coping with the lady jogger who came from behind us first, but, once I got him focused, he calmed right down. And, with each new encounter, he got a little better. There was still a lot of pulling and a bit of growling, but the barking eventually stopped and he responded to me quicker each time. It's small progress, but still progress. And, once we get a behaviorist here working with him, I know he's really going to turn around. He's come so far already.


Me? Be bad? It's not possible!

EDIT: Yes, that is a wet spot on the couch. This photo was taken the first night we had him here. He marked the corner of the sofa and I cleaned it with a good dose of Nature's Miracle. What you're seeing isn't a giant pee-pee. It's the cleaner.