This is the last in a series about the brown dawgs as young pups.  All three of our dogs are great dogs, but each presented different challenges on their way to becoming great dogs.  This series is about some of those challenges.  You can read about Young Thunder here and Young Storm here.

Freighter was a great puppy.  He was easy-going with his tail always wagging.  He loved meeting new people and going new places.  He was great in the house and never even thought about counter surfing like grandpa Thunder.  Freighter did have a chewing problem and pulled more than one throw rug into his crate and chewed it.  But that is normal puppy stuff.

Then last year when he was around 2 1/2 things started to change.  He was becoming a teenager and all those teenage hormones were ragging.  He started testing us and he became a surly dog with an attitude almost overnight.  He was still friendly with people that he met, but in the house he tried to run the show and let us know that he was running it.

First Freighter mixed it up with Thunder and Storm.  He was trying to show them he was boss, but they were having no part of that.  Next Freighter tried to show hubby he was the boss.  Hubby was doing Freighter’s field and conformation training so that did not last long.  Freighter was also being bossy with me and that was more of a problem.  Oddly, he never really tried to throw his weight around with kitty cat.  Either he felt the cat was far above him in the pecking order or not worth his trouble.

We hoped this attitude was just a maturity thing and not a temperament issue.  Whatever it was, it could not continue so we made four changes all at once.

1.  We separated Freighter from Thunder and Storm.  Thunder and Storm have been together since they were young and they are bonded so we kept them together and separated Freighter from them.  We always knew that having two intact male Chessies living together in the house would eventually be an issue and we would have to separate them.  Separating them was pretty easy.  We use pet gates to cut the house in half and they are fine with this arrangement.  They can see each other through the gates and even get nose-to-nose if they want and if they behave.  Neither is on one side or the other of the house all of the time.  Since they switch areas, neither thinks of any one area of the house as “theirs”.  This little bit of separation went a long way to ease tension.

2.  We don’t have very many rules in the house but we made sure to strictly enforce the ones that we have where Freighter is concerned.  For example, he is not allowed in the kitchen when we are working in there.  He must also sit quietly when we are making his food and wait to be released before he eats.

3.  We started using Nothing In Life Is Free training.  This training is not teaching the dog a specific thing such as a trick or a behavior.  It is a way of living with a dog so that the dog learns its place in the household.  It can help change the dynamics between the humans and the dog in a situation such as ours where the dog is throwing its weight around.

It is easy to implement.  Anytime the dog wants something, you require something of the dog first.  For example: before the dog eats it must sit; before the dog gets a treat it must give paw; the dog wants to be petted, it must give paw; dog wants to go out, dog must sit at the door.  You decide how big or how little a thing the dog must do.  You just need to be consistent. Usually I made Freighter sit.

If you google Nothing In Life Is Free you will see lots of explanations and some add in extra steps, but it is as basic and as simple as I explained it.  Here is a good explanation without the extras.

4.  I started walking Freighter every day.  First we worked on him not barking like a freak when I put on his lead.  At first he got so excited he could not contain himself.  I just stood and waited until he sat quietly.  It really didn’t matter how long we walked just so long as we got out.  If we had time we did a longer walk, and if not, we shortened it up.  I made sure that Freighter went potty before we left because I required him to walk at heel and not stop to sniff.  My walk, my rules, but I also made sure to have a pocket full of treats so if Freighter walked nicely, he got a treat.  We also worked on some basic obedience: sit, stay, some turns.  I was firm with him, but I still made it fun.  (You might remember that I did this kind of obedience work with Young Storm too.)

The change in Freighter was almost immediate.  It was like he figured out that he was the dog and could be perfectly happy being the dog and not running the house.  He went back to wagging his tail.  He went back to being a happy dog.

It has been almost a year and surly Freighter has not returned.  We still enforce rules, but we can be a bit more lax if we want and we don’t feel like we need to follow NILF to the letter.  We still keep Thunder and Storm separate from Freighter but we let Storm and Freighter run together as long as they don’t get too rough, (usually Storm is the one to start the rough play).

I am not sure if one particular thing made the difference, or if Freighter just grew up.  I would recommend the NILF training to anyone who finds that they have a dog trying to run things or a dog that is throwing its weight around.  I have read that it is helpful even when dealing with an aggressive dog.

In retrospect, one more thing may have contributed to Freighter’s bad attitude.  Last Spring he had an injury where he had pushed his nail into his nailbed.  Unfortunately we did not know it until it was really painful for him.  You see Chessies are very stoic and they do not show pain.  When they do, it us usually pretty bad.  By the time we realized Freighter was injured he had probably had the injury for a few weeks and we suspect that he kept re-injuring it when he was training.  His attitude definitely improved when his nail healed.

I am so glad Freighter made it through that surly phase so quickly, whatever it was.  He is actually one of the best dogs in the house.  He follows us around as we are doing house chores just watching everything we are doing.  He really likes to be a part of things.  He is the best one when it comes to photo shoots for the blog.  He loves to do them.  Look at that happy face!