how to walk the dog

I read a book last year, a friend who has been involved in seeing eye dog training and dog obedience recommended it : The dog listener, by Jan Fennell. It was quite a fascinating read, explaining how dog have descended from wolves, but still their inherent behaviour is like that of wolves. Wolves have an alpha pair (the two leading dogs in a pack) who all the other wolves obey, you know, by eating after the alpha pair, walking behind the alpha pair when going out hunting etc. So...(Ok, I am simplifying it from my memory but) all we humans need to do is become the alpha pair in our dog's eyes, and they will WANT to cooperate with us. We won't have to yell and scream and pull and push. But because wolves are always vying with each other to see who is the strongest, and are often changing the alpha pair status, you have to continually reinforce your status as the leader to your dog (can be done by simple things such as always making your dog walk out the door after you, never before you).

E.g. in our case - actually, R has very sensitive skin. She is a Jack Russel Terrier, and apparently they are prone to it. Probably one of the major things that aggravates it, is the fact that she still thinks she is the leader and I am her pack dog. So she likes to lead me off on our hunting adventures, aka morning and evening walks, pulling so much that her lead rubs on her neck. I did try the methods suggested in the book last year, and we came some way to improvement in R's overall behaviour, but I admit to being lax and just letting her pull sometimes. So we are back to the situation where she has a very sore looking neck from pulling on her lead. Sooooooo, today I have been trying to follow the Dog Listener's methods again, and whenever R pulls on her lead during our walk, I simply stop dead in my tracks, ask her to sit down, then when she has done that, I take a step forward and she follows me, knows I am the leader. Sounds all very peace-loving and hippy, but it works. But my goodness, it takes FOREVER to get 100m down the road doing this every 2 or 3 steps, which is how much she is pulling!! So today's walks were a bit stressful. And as I was doing my take one step forward, make R sit routine tonight, a stupid woman comes out of some shop and goes "oh, she is so cute".
Now, our little R-chan understands the word "kawaii" (cute) and she laps it up whenever anyone tells her she is kawaii. I said to the woman, "I am in the middle of training at the moment" and she was like, "oh, but the dog is wagging her tail, she wants to play" and starts patting R. I was sooooooooo livid. I wish R was a more aggressive dog and I could have used the "sic 'em" command, hehe. So I still have a lot of work to do with R. She is still only just over 2 though, and as a Jack Russel is probably quite high strung anyway. Hopefully tomorrow's walks will be better though.

Now if I could only find a solution to her freaking out whenever I even touch the vacuum cleaner. I currently put her in the toilet while I vacuum or else she would destroy everything in her site - she just goes ape. It is not the sound that bothers her, I think she may want to play with the vacuum head? Whatever it is, it is annoying!

But we still love ya, R-chan.

And K just *adores* you!!