Comments and suggestions needed, please!

It seems that Lacey is having trouble integrating into her family.  She is refusing to eat – she only eats a few kibbles and then she wants to play with her human – and she is misbehaving quite a lot.  This past weekend, she got into and ate half a box of chocolate, half of a chocolate-milk carton, and she tried to eat some of her human child’s toys.  She tried to take food from her human child, and she tried to take food from the table.  She is also not listening well to either of her adult humans.

We do not have these issues when Lacey is with us. But when she is with her forever family, she misbehaves and she gives little to no respect to any of them.  She is making the decisions about when she will eat, how she will eat, when she will play, how she will play, and so on.  Interestingly, when she is alone with her human mom, she does much better on all fronts.  It’s only when she is with the whole family that she starts to act out.

On Sunday, the family had some friends over for supper.  Lacey behaved very well and listened well when the guests asked her to lay down or sit.  This shows that she can and will be respectful to other humans. But her family?  Not so much.  All Lacey seems to want to do is be with her human child – to the exclusion of literally everything else.

Lacey’s human mom feels that it’s best for Lacey to be with me during the day not only for training purposes, but for socialization, too.  She also feels that Lacey’s human dad needs more time to learn how to be calm instead of frustrated when Lacey is misbehaving. I feel that Lacey needs to spend more time with her family so that she and they can bond with each other and create mutual respect and trust. Which, in turn, will create a calmer environment for both Lacey and her family.

It has been suggested to me that Lacey’s misbehavior and refusal to eat is happening because she sees us as her pack and she is missing us when she’s with her family. Is this the case? If so, how do we address this in a way that will make her integration with her forever family easier?  Comments and suggestions are greatly needed, please.  This is a serious problem that has to be resolved…

Lacey has been home with her family for two full days, now.  They have been enjoying her and working with her, and things have been going very well for all of them. While she has been with them, I have shopped for – and bought – counter bells with with to teach Lacey to alert when she needs to potty.  For reasons I am not understanding, she alerts her family when she needs to potty, but she does not alert me.  In fact, she doesn’t even try to alert me; she just stops whatever she’s doing, and does her business on my carpets.  By employing the “Pavlov’s Dog” method, I’m hoping to house-break her once and for all.

This coming week is going to be busy for Lacey. She is going to be working on everything from basic obedience and interruption-response and grounding, to ignoring food and anything else that is dropped on the floor.  She does an excellent job of laying quietly under the table when people are eating, but she has to learn not to touch any food that falls to the floor.  She also has to learn not to take food away from small humans (read: children).  For this particular exercise, I’m enlisting the help of my granddaughters; they have assisted me before with this exercise and the results were fairly good.

Lacey turned 15 weeks old yesterday (Saturday).  She is gaining weight, and she’s gaining height and length.  She is thriving and happy, and she loves to learn new things.  She does tend towards impatience when it comes to food rewards, but that will change as she gets older.  She’s still a puppy, after all.

Have a great day. Thanks for visiting. Please feel free to comment!