I am home for a few days (working but still home) and have decided to make the best of this time with Melvin and do some training. My number one goal right now is to curb his urge to bolt to the window at every noise.

Let me make it clear how intensely he wants to get to the window.  He can be asleep, eating or five rooms away and if he hears even the slightest hint of a noise out front, it is up and 60 mph in a nano-second.  Be dammed the island stools, outta his way all area rugs, screw you foyer table.  He wants to see and bark and so see and bark he shall do.  It must stop.  I’m not even that bothered that he barks.  I believe in freedom of speech.  I’m much more concerned with the intensity that arrises in him the moment he hears a noise.

I have considered several different techniques.  Time-outs do not work so well for him, or maybe I should say I’d have to train him on that before using it as a tool.  I can put him behind a door and open the door one second later and he bounds out as if he’s been in captivity for a year.  He focuses too much on the joy of release to care why they hell he is in there.

Today’s lesson: We are locked in the office de-sensitizing him to all that goes on out front.    Learn to watch and then eventually ignore.