Electroshock therapy

We ended up moving to a training collar on Guinness.

We’ve tested it on ourselves, and the shocks aren’t that bad.  They actually don’t hurt - even at the higher settings. It’s more of a phone vibrating in your pocket type of thing.

It seems to be working, and we’ve found a trainer that we like. The first one was all warm and fuzzy, and between her constant reminders to be nice, she was pulling more guilt trips than were reasonable. I know we’re shitty puppy parents and that Guinness is much different from either of the Aussies. He’s a lot more work and we’re doing what we can to adapt to his needs.

But this thing with the cat.

It’s getting ridiculous.

She paws at the bedroom door, meowing, all night long. It excites Guinney, and then he attacks the door. Hard. With full volume barking.

The new (mean) trainer and the training collar have actually been huge. When he flies upstairs to go after her, a quick shock and a “downstairs”, and he’s back with us in the living room.

If you had ever told me I’d be working with a trainer like ours and shocking my puppy when he tries to kill the cat, I would have told you you were out of your mind. (Seriously. It doesn’t look like play and even if it was, he’s too big and too strong to play nicely with someone that little.) But, desperate times and all that. Guinney is big and strong. He’s got a few schutzhund champions, police dogs, and show dogs in his blood. He’s more fearless than pretty and the breeder was going to keep him as a stud. At the last minute, they received a dog from Germany to replace him. Yeah, they’re pretty hardcore.

In the two weeks we’ve been working with him and the collar, we’ve seen a lot of improvement.

And that’s been totally worth it.