Truffle makes "Sit Happen" - Part 1 of 2

Truffle is my first child, albeit of the canine persuasion. He had never through any formal puppy training. He didn't walk on a leash well at all. In fact, we had a random neighbor scold us about Truffle. While we knew that we probably should, truthfully? We were lazy. Then Jack joined out family. Luckily, Truffle loved Jack and vice versa. Truffle is very protective of him.

However, it was at that time that the tide really turned. A few weeks after we brought Jack home, Truffle stopped wanting to go outside. He would freeze at the doorway. It was so bad that J would have to carry him across the street to get him to walk and relieve himself. We took him to the vet, who recommended we put him on Reconcile (doggie prozac) and also give him doggy anxiety meds for when it would storm badly (Truffle would get major shakes and anxiety, even with the Thundershirt on). She also recommended we pair this with behavioral training and provided us the name of a guy to contact.

Well, we ignored the training recommendation, but took her up on the meds. We had a newborn. There was no time!

Did the meds help? It seemed like they did for a while. But there were side effects on the Reconcile. Especially when there was a shortage of Reconcile and we switched to generic. Truffle would get super aggressive with people he didn't like. It got so bad that we stopped having people over, other than those he did like (our families etc).

Last spring, we moved from our 2nd floor condo to a single family home, complete with a big yard. We figured Truffle would have his own space to run and wear himself out. We weaned him off his meds as well. For the first few weeks, it seemed like things were getting better.

We were wrong.

Truffle continued to not listen to us. I could yell for him to come inside and he would ignore me. He would still be aggressive to people. He even nipped at some people.

One night, after he was circling around the living room and jumping all over us. I yelled to J, "Maybe it's time we got rid of Truffle".

I could not believe it. I never thought I would say those words.

So we knew what we had to do. We needed to call the dog trainer.

To be continued...