Free Finally Home-Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog by Elizabeth Parker

He never appreciated when another dog would do it . Any time I would ask another dog for a high five he would growl, come closer to me , and give me a high five. That one was his.
    The two dogs became inseparable and actually began to look forward to training. If I brought out a cookie, they would immediately sit, give a high five/give a paw, beg, lie down, crawl , and then roll over. I did not even have to issue the commands anymore. They just did it automatically. Training became fun for all of us.
    Once we got the important commands down, Michael and I were able to teach them little tricks here and there. Michael taught Buddy the popular trick of guessing which hand the cookie was in. He always figured it out on the first try. Brandi, not so much. It took her a few attempts . She wa s beautiful but not as smart as Buddy , which wa s most like ly the reason why she was so well-behaved and easy to train.
    As for Buddy, w hen I say I literally had “blood, sweat and tears” during our beginning training sessions , I truly did. His mouthing, while playful, was extremely painful , as he did have strong, adult teeth. It sometimes left me with bruises , and occasionally he even broke the skin. He was playing the entire time, but he did not realize his own super strength.
    It was tough to break this awful pattern, since his previous owners had handled this by letting him gnaw on a bone as a way to remove his mouth from their arm. Buddy continued this habit, thinking that he would get a treat and did not comprehend that he was actually doing something bad .
    I’ve heard some people say to shove a fist down a dog’s throat to stop him, while others advised us to bite Buddy back. We chose not to do either , but we did take one word of advice which was to shrill y cry “ouch” as he bit down.
    This suggestion seemed to have worked the best as he soon understood that he should not bite all the way down , and h e learned to mouth in a gentle way. He never bit down again after a few sessions of this technique.
    Michael would tickle Buddy’s tongue if Buddy went to mouth him too hard. This, as funny as it sounds, worked like a charm.
    I had never realized that there were so many different tactics to learn about training a dog. Basically, any dogs that I had previously owned while living at my mother’s house were taught to sit, come, and stay , and that was the extent of the training . We never had any issues like the ones we were experiencing with Buddy.
    With Buddy, we had to think way out of the box if we were going to make it work.
    Each aspect of training had to be car efully planned out, and we always needed to overcome new obstacles with this dog. While that sounds easy, it was probably one of the most exerting things we had to accomplish , both physically and mentally.
    Even walking him was a strenuous activity as he was in credibly strong and pulled like a tempestuous beast. Amongst the items that were given to us in our “Buddy care package” was one of those medieval choker collars. It may sound inhumane, but we had no clue how to deal with his behavior . We put the collar on him, and it seemed to facilitate his walks. Even though he still pulled a lot, he was a little bit more manageable .
    While walking one morning , we met our neighbor for the first time, who smiled as he noticed our obvious struggle with Buddy.

He walked over, introduced himself , and simply said “M ay I?” before grabbing hold of the leash. He whispered a few words to Buddy , and we could have sworn that Buddy was an award-winning show dog, and that he and our neighbor were long-lost pals.
    Our neighbor even wondered if he had met this dog before. Buddy strolled calmly, right by his side, and did not pull one bit. It was amazing. We were in disbelief as we had been struggling for months to get this dog to listen, and it took our neighbor all of five minutes .
    “ So, h ow did you do that?” In the months that we had owned Buddy, we ha d