sit...stay...fetch...

OKAY. Frank-monster is a monster only because his mommy (um...me) totally spoiled him as a puppy and honestly did absolutely NOTHING to quell the horrible demonic behavior.

"we" learned 'Sit' a long time ago, we're finally at the point where it does NOT take a 'yummy' to get a 'sit'.

My dad who has had fabulously trained hunting dogs my whole life even threw his hands up at Franklin, who well..is a pug...and food oriented...he does NOTHING (except sit) without food in your hand.

SO....now I have Cameron, whose mom has two angelic Shit-zu's...and its not that he expects perfect dogs, but when you compare mine to his moms'...its pretty obvious.

So, at almost 5 years old, I've decided that Franklin really needs to learn some basic commands.

We started with "stay"....with cheese in hand, I can walk about 15 feet away and he'll "stay" where he's at, the minute I'm out of his sight though he comes running for me...

1. How do I make him "stay" once I'm out of his sight????

next...fetch....

he'll chase a toy after its thrown and he'll come back to you (me or cameron) the issue is "GIVE". he will NOT let go and if you take it...we get the low gutteral noise that quite honestly coming out of a pug is kinda funny but scary that you could possibly loose a finger over a loofa dog.

2. How do I get him to LET GO of fetched toy???


I can't really afford to take him to a 'class', so I'm trying to do this on my own.

Housetraining was hard but its been accomplished, no accidents on carpet for over 3 years (yay for my carpet)...no biting, an no jumping on furniture...

God, I'm no help. ALL my girls have been thoroughly DISobedience trained. Good luck!

What is this thing you're calling "training"?

I am no help. I know it takes patience, repetition and consistency. Thurston has never had those opportunities. He seems to regress to untrained puppy at the slightest change in routine.

Hi, I just wanted to tell you that I have had GREAT luck training my pug! I read a book called "Let the Dog Decide" and used a lot of his methods in there. He recommends that you use a long lead to "interupt" bad behaviour, so essentially, you always have the dog on a very thin (I used nylon) lead and you step on it to keep your hands free. This tricks the dog into thinking that he made the decision, not you. To get Juneau to "stay" I use the command "wait" and I can leave the room because I have my son step on the lead (and nonchalantly look away at something else, because the dog is not to know that you had anything to do with this) and it holds pug back. When I say "go" my son will step off the lead. We did this for about a week and now Juneau just "waits" and "goes" As for dropping the ball, I have lots of treats. Now all I have to do is say "fromage" (cheese in French) and he will drop whatever he has in his mouth. If I say "cheese" he will drop it and wait for a treat. If you can get that book, it is awesome! Having a pug (and my first dog) I just assumed that he is trainable because he is a dog - only now am I learning that my pug is pretty impressive when it comes to pugs. Here is a video of Juneau:

Tarrington, I am impressed. Juneau is so good with taking the treat and not your fingers! If I tried to give Lady Penny a treat that way, I would have two bleeding stumps where there were fingers!

Great! Now teach him to wave. It's really easy after they know high five. Just put your hand in front of him like you would for high five, but not close enough for him to touch it and tell him to wave.