The long, low hound gang

As I hinted in my last post, there is now a new certain someone special in my life who happens to come along with a great dog - a beagle-basset mix named Toby. When I had J. over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, it was great to see how great he got along with Quintin and Jewel and how much they liked him. I've since had the opportunity to hang out with Toby a few times and he is really sweet - unbelievably he never barks! My dogs, on the other hand, can be barkaholics and are not exactly known for their fondness of other canines (just remember how they were when I rescued the boxer back in November). I sometimes call them little breedists, but they have even lashed out at other dachshunds for no reason at all. The thought of a meeting between our dogs terrified me - but how is a relationship supposed to work if we can't bring our dogs together? Obviously this is a hurdle that has to be overcome, so today we took our first step towards facing this challenge (4 miles worth of steps to be exact).

I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about today's canine encounter. We decided to meet at a local walking path around a lake and walk our dogs together. Usually when my dogs encounter other dogs on our usual walks they go nuts, barking aggressively at any canine they see. I tried to put my negative thoughts behind me - in particular that image in the back of my head of Quintin attacking Toby - and focused on positive energy. When our dogs first met my two barked a bit, but with some mild correction were eventually quite well behaved. At Quintin's first attempt to lunge at Toby, J. promptly scolded Quintin and made sure he knew that such behavior was unacceptable. Before anything else could happen, we set off on our walk around the lake. J. has done such a great job with Toby and has clearly taken Cesar Milan's tips to heart; J.'s calmness and composure seemed to be positively transferred to my dogs. Of course it also helped that he had come prepared with plenty of reward treats! It didn't take too long before all three of our dogs were walking together as a gang of long, low hounds. Quintin only acted up a couple of times, but the correction seemed to work. What was even more amazing was that my dogs not only walked together with Toby (who often took the lead), but that they were even quite calm as we passed other dogs of all shapes and sizes. In fact, as I was leaving the park I ran into my former dog trainer who was impressed to see how well my dogs behaved around other dogs. Definitely confirmation that something is going right!

While there is certainly a long way to go, I think we are headed in the right direction. Hopefully the day when all three dogs can calmly hang out together in the same room isn't too far away!

(I didn't manage to get a picture of the three hounds today, but I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities.)