I'm sick again!

After 10 days of being sick and coughing my head off every night, I was finally able to get rid of it in the middle of last week. So what happens next? My husband comes home for 36 hours and gives me a new strain! I feel really bad for him since I know he has it and it's been raining and cold since he left so that can't make it any better. But why did he have to give it to me?!?!?

So now I'm back to coughing all night long. I've used up all the tissues in my house. I can still taste just not very well. Luckily I still have leftovers from the weekend so I'm good for tonight but I'll have to start making meals again tomorrow. The dogs are going nuts because they're just milling about the house all day. Denny woke me up at 5:00 this morning by vomiting on the floor, twice!

My normal 1.5 hours of dog walking time got shortened to 15 mins of walking and 15 mins of training. I really didn't even want to walk the dogs today but I had a trainer come to my house yesterday and I had to remind myself if I didn't follow through, the lessons would be worthless. So far I think the dogs are a little (a very very little) better behaved. 75% of the time I can throw the ball and get Denny to stay until I tell him it's ok to get it. I am using the prong collars again which I hate using! But my walking around in circles and back and forth to only allow them to walk when the leash is loose was not working. It only made the neighbors think I was crazy and can't walk a straigh line. Plus they love the prong collar because they know it means they're going for a walk so they fight for it when I pull them out.

Now the trainer wants me to consider a shock collar for Scout. I had never noticed it before because Scout seems like the sweet obedient one but she's actually bossy and manupulative. The trainer kept asking me if I noticed what she just did and that it was a form of her dominating me. She won't move out of my way if she's in my way and if you tell her to she becomes an immovable statue. She tells me when it's time to play, be pet, or eat. And I usually just do what she tells me to without even noticing. For the first 10 mins of the trainer being there, she was the perfect angel and the trainer didn't see any problems with her. But after Scout realized the trainer was going to force her to sit after just being asked once and without a treat, she became really stubborn and refused to do anything the trainer asked her to do. The trainer said she's only seen one other case where the dog is that stubborn!

I thought that when I left her in the backyard or in her crate and she flipped out, it was because she was afraid of being left alone and she was suffering from separation anxiety. The dog trainer pointed out that she was simply have a temper tantrum and you could tell by what she was doing and her personality in general. So I used to feel really bad about leaving her even for 5 mins but today when I walked out the door with Denny I just kept telling myself...she's having a tantrum and you can't give into it. So I'm convincing myself that the shock collar is like slapping a child's hand when they are being bad or stubborn. It doesn't actually hurt them, it actually hurts you more, but it tells them that their behavior is not ok. But first I had to feel the shock collar for myself. It didn't hurt, it just surprised me.

It's sad that neither of my dogs see me as a leader. I've had children at the Petstore give them commands that they've obeyed when I had been trying for a few mins with no results myself. Plus they move for crawling babies but not for me when I walk by. Oh well, hopefully the trainer will help me "be the pack leader." If only she used purely positive methods like Cesar Milan...but he also gets bitten a lot when he's training...