Dog blog # 9 : Therapy and dog counselling...

Dog blog # 9 : Therapy and dog counselling
“Hi, my name is Libby and I am an out-of-control dog, with a compulsive chewing habit”.

First step: acknowledge that we have a problem. Done that. Our household needs therapy.

THE DOG is creating havoc. We can’t…take…it…anymore.

We are living with a fluffy poltergeist. We wake up with scratch marks on our arms, scratch marks on door frames, broken dishes on the floor…cue eerie music…and I was convinced she was in the room 5 seconds ago? She must have supernatural powers.

But the ani-magic does not stop here. She is destructive, chews non-stop, jumps on people and furniture, has no manners or social skills. We have a monster living in our house. We have googled. We have gone to training. We have browsed through the self-help section at Exclusive Books. We religiously tune in to the Dog Whisperer and marvel at his magical command of dogs. Cesar Malan is our hero. Even though there is a disclaimer stating that techniques should only be attempted by a professional, we have secretly tried a few…without success.

But we forgot that our Labrador has a stubborn streak. She also has a mean back-chat bark. She also weighs more than me. You see the problem?

We are now venturing into the esoteric. Chanting, burning candles and running around naked…(not really) but if things do not improve we might have to. Until some old fashioned advice, proved to yield some results: EXERCISE.

Now, those who know me know that this word does not exist in my vocab. I would rather sit through an exorcism (which might be what Libby needs) than gasp….exercise. We now take the hound for a stroll around the block each day to rid her of “negative energy”. It is not really walking.

Libby has a naught-to-sixty equivalent of a racing smurf-mobile upon starting. She has some bloodhound in her, because the nose is never further than 5 cm of the ground. Every telephone pole, shrub, post box, stone, stick and puddle is thoroughly sniffed. She also likes to change GPS coordinates at short notice, resulting in hog-tied human losing her balance.

Neighbours can’t wait for the daily dose of hound-humour and are all strangely out watering their gardens when we make our daily trek around the block. Libby likes to wrap her leash around humans' ankles, bark at everything that moves and drag us around like rag dolls. That is two humans, two leashes, one dog. And it is a very noisy walk. Hysterical screams, frustrated yells, with Libby picking up speed. We also suspect there is some Alaskan racing-husky in her genes…

The “Double-You, Ay, El, Kay” (WALK) but don’t say it out loud, only seem to tire out the humans and not the hound. There is no scientific formula that explains the amount of exercise x the energy that is required to bring Lab’s excitement levels down to zero. It seems that math and magic are incompatible when it comes to Labradors…