Tuesday 20 August 2013

Starting small

When we adopted Caesar, the only issue that the rescue centre knew of, was that he would 'drag' people along rather than walk beside them when on a lead.  The rescue had worked tirelessly to solve this problem and eventually bought Caesar a small black head collar to combat the pull.  Ironically, pulling on the lead turned out to be the least of our problems when we actually brought him home.

Caesar's issues are numerous and include anything from running crazily at other dogs, for what reason we are still unsure, to destroying areas of our previously well-presented home.  Gone are the days when I could rest assured that I would return home from work to find my furniture in the same state in which it was left.



However, Rome wasn't built in a day.  Actually, I'm not sure at all how long it took to build Rome, but I'm willing to bet my fairly new, slightly damaged, beautiful wardrobes that they had made more progress than I have over an eighteen month period. Sometimes, we decided, it's important to start with the small things like lead pulling and have a wider time frame in which to work towards the bigger issues like destroying things and terrorising other dogs.  So, wisely, we began by working on the pulling first and ignored the fact that the contents of our house were slowly reducing themselves to a pile of broken furniture around us.

Caesar's special anti-pull head collar is made by Dogmatic and is, or should I say was, bright blue.  It is decorated with small yellow puppies dancing around.  I felt that the colour scheme radiated 'friendly dog with slight pulling issue' and was less serious looking than his previous jet black head collar which we inherited when we rescued him.  Unfortunately, it seems that many people still aren't sure what these head collars are used for and I was shocked when an old lady asked me "he has a little bite sometimes does he?"  I assured her that the head collar was only for his pulling problem and that, if he wanted to bite her while wearing it, he could.


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