My New Best Friend

So as you may know from our family site we have a new dog (a great dane nonetheless) named Apollo. He is, at once, the most loyal and disobedient dog I have ever owned. 4 years old at the time we got him, means he doesn't like a whole lot of change. Well, his previous life has mostly consisting of his doing pretty much what he wanted in a yard where he was completely separated from the other dogs because they beat him up. His new life consists of a list of rules and expectations.

This dog will not leave my side, will not allow anything to come near me that he percieves as dangerous, and does not want to do anything he thinks I'm am telling him to do. At first he thought it was okay, but when it turned out that I was going to give certain commands and always expect him to do obey things got dicey.

At first he would just look at me to acknowledge that he heard, and that he clearly understood. Then he would go back to doing what he wanted to do. This was most evident in learning the yard boundary. While on a leash of any kind he was pretty good, but when we tried to build a little trust with him off of a leash he made it clear that I was stupid and he was going exploring. Lucky for he's not the brightest dog and he doesn't know that he could out run me if he wanted to. After chasing him down and putting him in an alpha about ten times he finally started coming around. Believe me putting a 4 year old great dane in an alpha role is not an easy thing (especially since he was not trained that way to start).

The most stubborn lesson was sitting. To really drill it it I was making him sit at every street corner along his walk. When he decided to see if he could outlast me, I started sweeping his back legs (this is much better than pushing down on the dog's back). Well, that surprised him a little and he didn't like it so he started doing a little better until he realized that I wasn't really putting any effort into. When he caught onto that he started bracing himself so that I wouldn't sweep his legs. Well, that really got my attention. So the next time he disobeyed and braced himself I really wound up. I knocked his back legs out so fast he scooted on his bum for an inch or two. It stunned him enough that he didn't know what to do for a second. Then he continued on as if nothing had happened, but he sat down everytime after that for the rest of that walk. I only had to do it once or twice more before he realized that everytime I said "sit" I meant it.

Now that we've had him for a couple months he settled down into how things run at our house. He's kind of a grumpy stubborn dog anyway, but I think we'll keep him.