I’ve recently met my long distance partner’s Pomeranian, D. Spent almost a month with her so far. Thought she was cute at first, but now relate to her as more of a tyrant. ;-) D is 7 months old, female. We always had cats in my family so dogs are a bit of a mystery to me. There are some things that concern me. - D naturally wakes up with the sun and demands to be walked, but my partner tends to wait about 30 mins when it suits her to get up. Seems kind of cruel to me? Or should the dog be trained to wait for the owner? - D gets picked up and handled a lot, partly by necessity because we are travelling and have to protect her sometimes from other dogs in the street (the big ones). - D comes with us to eateries because she can’t be left in the hotel...she ends up being fed snacks at the table... - D gets very possessive about certain things, such as my glasses case and my laptop bag. When she’s in a bad mood, she will growl and bite if I try to pick up these things. Generally concerned about whether D will get proper obedience training... is there a “too late” for obedience training?
It is never too late. Rescue dogs have been rehabilitated into all kinds of canine sports stars. Seven months is a perfect time to start proper training. I'I'm not sure where you are, but if you are in GB I would suggest that you joined a Kennel Club Good Citizen Scheme training course, this has graded stages, and uses only positive teaching methods. Once you get some consistent ground rules in place D's behaviour should start to improve. Personally, I wouldn't feed from the table, it is so very hard to stop. I usually save a morsel for my dogs, they get it as a reward - when we finish.
