I found a Craigslist ad for a 5-month-old pit bull needing a new home.
After meeting her, I agreed to take her. At the time, we had a 9-year-old male lab and a 2-year-old female lab mix at home.
For the first 3-4 months, everyone was getting along fine. Then, one night after returning home late from work, all the dogs came running to the door to greet me as they always did.
The two girls got into their first fight.
We kept them separated, my wife and I on high alert. Over time we let our guard down hoping it wouldn’t happen again, but it did.
They got into several more fights: over food, toys, or getting too close to the couch when sitting with mom or dad.
In time, we found Ruby a doggie daycare. We were hoping interacting with other dogs would help her. One day we got a call from the daycare. Ruby had snapped at another dog, and we needed to come to pick her up. They told us that she could not come back when we got there.
Not sure what to do, we enrolled her in some training classes. She is super smart, and did great with everything we were taught, but unfortunately wasn’t helping with the issues we were having at home. We were at the point where we were discussing possibly giving her up.
One day, a friend recommended that we try My Dogs Mind. With not much hope, we set up a consultation with Terence, and explained the issues we were dealing with. He scheduled a few private lessons, inviting our other dog to join us, observing how they interacted with each other. Later, came group classes with other dogs. Terence gave us several tips to work on at home, such as: being on the lookout for things we thought were cute and playful at first, but became a big problem later.
His advice has resulted in a huge impact in finding the relief we so desperately needed.
Ruby spent about one year training at My Dogs Mind, before graduating to the Big Red Barn daycare, where she has been attending one day a week for the past two years.
Ruby loves her day at school, she always seems to know when it’s her day. She can’t wait to get inside, and is so excited to see the girls greet her in the morning.
We’re proud to say that there has been no fighting for more than two years.
There are a lot more rules than there used to be, and pretty sure we will never to be able to fully let out guard down, but we have all learned to live together.
We wouldn’t have been able to do it without all the help, advise and knowledge from the My Dogs Mind staff.
Thanks to all of you!
Russ Menter and Teri Satz
