The Puppers Part II

Last we left our sweet doggy and her unsuspecting owners we had decided that we needed professional help. We needed to find a trainer.

This is when Roni entered our lives. My husband and I still worship the ground he walks on. Roni took one look at our precious Puppers and said, "Oh, she's a Canaani!" This man changed our lives. Even just knowing what kind of dog she was and being able to learn about her breed helped us immensely. We found out that our dog was never going to act like a golden retriever, she wasn't going to run up and lick strangers' faces, she would always be distracted, jumpy, and weary of everything . At least we didn't have to train her not to jump on people.

Now having new people come over to our house goes something like this:
- Put dog on front balcony when we know people are coming and close balcony door.
- Wait for the barking to begin letting us know that our guests have arrived.
- Yell at guests over very loud barking to tell them to ignore the crazy dog, she will not hurt you, she is on the balcony and cannot get in.
- Let guests into house and show them around while trying to ignore the still very loud barking as the Puppers watches the new guests through the sliding doors to the balcony.
- Let puppy in to very wearily sniff guests.
- If the guest is female, one sniff and all is good, if the guest is male, one very scared sniff, jump back a couple of steps, bark loudly for a few more seconds, and then once again sniff and all is good.
-Ahh, now we can get on with our social activities.

And this is after her being fully trained. Life is still not easy with her, she needs to be controlled constantly (apparently Canaan dogs yearn for a leader and to be told what to do, strong pack instincts), she barks on and off really annoyingly from dusk until we go to bed (just to be on the safe side), and bringing new people into the house is always a process. But I wouldn't give her up for anything now. It's really true, the more you put into a relationship the more you get out of it. And we've put so much effort into opening communication with this dog and making it so we can all cohabitate, that I can't even imagine being without her. Having her has really been one of the biggest learning experiences of my life (can you tell from the length of this post?).





Awwwww.

Now, don't you want a Canaan dog too? The point of this whole long post was not to scare everyone off from this breed of dog. She is an awesome dog and a lot of the personality traits that make her impossible also make her extremely loyal, affectionate, and funny. Plus, she even scared off the gas guy, no burglars at our house. The point of this is to show what a labor of love a pet can be, and that being a responsible pet owner is not always easy, you never know what kind of dog you're going to end up with even if you get a puppy from a breeder. I think that one of the most important thing with a dog is to understand your dog and if necessary change your expectations of what your dog will be. For example, E has always dreamt of living on a Moshav and having our dog run free (a lot of dogs do that on the Moshav for better or worse) and do whatever he or she wants. Well, we do now live on a Moshav, but the puppers is fenced in a nice big backyard of her own. She's just not calm and unresponsive enough to be left to wander around the neighborhood by herself.

There really were several times that we almost had to give her up, that we thought we couldn't handle her (I’m pretty sure I've seen some of her sisters back up for adoption at the JSPCA website, *sniff*). But we freaked out, called Roni, who pretty much told us that we are in control of our destiny, reminded us of what we had to do to reinforce discipline in our home, and move on with our lives. And I'm so glad that we did.