mbfoley

Thanks!

Thanks, we really like him hehe

I can't advise on whether to add another to your household (I personally could be a hoarder if I didn't watch myself carefully and have a husband to keep me in check lol) but that is one seriously adorable pup!! Oh and welcome (back) to KY, I am about an hour away over by Lexington/Nicholasville.

Ours is about 900 but ditto lol

omg that place is fabulous. I don't want to leave KY but if I had $2mil I'd take that place and move to Montana in a heartbeat.

Happy birthday Jett and hehe love the pic!!

Thanks everyone again for the advice. When I got home from work Friday night I went in and sat on the floor with Ebby for about 45 minutes, loving on her and telling her how sorry I was for my attitude and behavior for the last several months and especially of late. Yesterday morning we went for a walk and then last night when I got home we played outside, just her and I for a while. This morning we again went for a walk, just the two of us. I feel like, between figuring out the likely cause of my problem and talking it out on Friday that the "fever has broke" so to speak. I have felt none of the previous anger or annoyance I had been feeling, only sorrow for my behavior towards her and the old amusement at how silly she can be. We will go on as is for a while, until I can be sure that we are back to normal, and then I might try finding a trainer to work with. Right now I just want to make sure I am back to loving her for HER, not for what she could be if we got help. She's a GOOD dog and I have always loved her. If our relationship had been like this from the get go then I would have viewed it more as people were saying, an incompatible match and that finding her a different home in that case would have been best. But she has been my silly girl for long enough and I have loved her for long enough to realize that that was not the problem, the problem was *I* was going through something that was causing the rift and *I* was the one that needed fixing. It's only been a couple of days, I am not going to say all is for sure fine and perfect but at least now there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I have renewed hope that we will be ok.

Thank you guys for the continued support, ideas and book suggestions. I am headed home now, I will be back on sometime tomorrow, not sure when but it won't be for long, I'm not always on the computer for more than a few minutes outside of work. Oh and for the umpteenth time I AM NOT GETTING RID OF MY DOG. We got along just fine until I started trying to "fix" her and we will once again once I figure out how to get back in my previous state of mind.

Hmm that's possible too. I am a seriously non confrontational person. I often have bad dreams and I have always said that I get my fighting out in my dreams so I don't have to in real life. Maybe it's found a spot to leak out. Guess I'll have to see what I can do about that. I knew this wasn't HER problem but rather MY problem. I LOVE clicker training! I did it quite a bit with Henry when he was younger and a little with Ebby as a puppy but I didn't have much success at the time. I should find the clicker again and do some playing with it.

That is a possible cause as well. This has been kind of a stressful year. My grandpa died in early January, my dad had a heart attack/triple bypass in late January, Pixie died during the two weeks I was in Louisiana taking care of dad, put my other horse down due to infirmities of old age in late February, a summer full of personal problems, in August my mom called me from the hospital saying she had had an ambulance come get her and they thought she was having a heart attack, a very stressful 24 hours with her at the hospital as they struggled to figure out why she was in so much pain, last month my cousin was diagnosed with cancer and died 3 weeks later, last week in one conversation I found out that my grandma had another stroke and is stable but basically comatose, dad got laid off and he thinks he's having the signs of early Alzheimers (grandma is advanced Alzheimers in addition to several strokes), etc etc etc. I don't remember when it was exactly that I started "training" on her and getting frustrated but it was early in the year. Thanks for the support and the ideas. I am hoping now that I have an idea of what started this that it won't be too much trouble to get back to square one. Then further down I have gotten some good ideas to try and work through some of her issues - with the explicit understanding at all times that if it doesn't work it doesn't work, she's just my quirky psycho dog and that's all she ever really needs to be. Well I figured someone would eventually have some helpful advice if I spewed enough information. I have been on enough forums to know that I wasn't going to get all positive results but I knew some would come eventually. Thanks for the advice. First is to get back to being ok with her quirks, then we will worry about working with them. I am already not a fan of dominance training in general and certainly not for a sensitive dog like Ebby. I have in the past thought about finding a trainer to work with us, just haven't done it. Perhaps it's time to do so. No she's not a BAD dog at ALL. Just...quirky lol. Not to the extent you have talked about no. I will do some research and see what I can learn, it sounds interesting, thanks! You have definitely given me lots to think about, thank you so much! I think now that I have a pretty good idea of the root problem that I can get us back to where we were at least and you guys have given me lots to think about on how to get even better.

No, his dogs are far from perfect. Wonderful and awesome, yes, just like my dogs, quirks and all. I understand. Even long before these frustrated feelings I have had, when Ebby was hit by the car, I remember going through immense guilt trips for being so grateful that it was her and not Henry that was hit. I think while replying to the last note I had an epiphany. I have recently become aware of Henry's impending mortality and I think I was subconsciously trying to turn her into him so it wouldn't hurt so bad when his time comes and have been getting frustrated that it wasn't working (duh). I think I need to have a heart to heart with Ebby when I get home from work tonight and see what her and I can work out.

No that's not it, trust me, they have quirks of their own, we have a house full of personality going here. Besides which the timeline doesn't fit, we have lived together for 3 years, it's been months that I have been dealing with frustrations. I think it's possible that for some reason I decided to try and train out some of her quirks and got frustrated when it didn't work. Now to just get back to the "before" when the quirks didn't bother me, they were all part of my "psycho dog" as opposed to problems. Besides which, Henry, my mini schnauzer, is the love of my life, my once in a lifetime dog. If I was going to hold her up to a dog and say "Nope, she's gotta go, she's not as good as this dog" it would have been him long ago (he's 11 and been with me since he was 11 weeks old). OMG now thinking on it I have been worried about losing him as he is starting to show his age (not that he's old, but he is poorly bred and is showing age related problems already), I wonder if subconsciously I was trying to change her to be more like him because I'm worried I'm going to lose him? Since he's been showing his age and my mom's dog (that she got as a rescue just months after we got Henry) is on his last legs, I have been more nad more aware that someday I am going to lose him.

Yep, I got it, I was stupid enough to let them "play" together but not quite stupid enough to let it continue after there was an injury. They have not so much as seen each other since then since she can't get to the barn without me letting her. Ebby's quirks aren't dangerous or serious or even enough to seriously warrant me being upset with her. She's scary smart but teaching her is difficult because if she even THINKS she's being reprimanded during training she shuts down and quits trying. Teaching her can also be difficult because it's hard to keep her calm and off of me. If I talk to her or even look at her, she thinks she needs to be plastered to me, lifting her leg for a belly rub, flinging herself onto her back, whining and wriggling the whole time. The only way to get her away is to tell her "back off", then she totally leaves, only to come barreling back for act 2 of the same play if she thinks I really did want to pay her some attention. *IF* I can get her to stop and sit before getting to me, things go much smoother. She has an awesome recall. Her sit and down are 100% except it's hard to get her to do them WHEN I say rather than flattening herself to me first. She has a solid stay. Fetching is good, if she can figure out WHAT I want her to get she is hugely enthusiastic about bringing it to me, targeting the right item can be frustrating, going back to the problem of her shutting down if she gets things wrong. Even a slight "uh uh" or "nope" or "drop it" makes her give up the game for a few minutes, a couple of repetitions makes her leave if I even ask her to get me something. She screams like someone shot her ANYTIME the front door opens if she is crated. No matter why the door is opening. I know what caused it, just not how to stop it and I have given up trying. She is my husband's "yawn alert dog". He can yawn and no matter where in the house she is or what she is doing, even snoring, but let him yawn and she is screaming and jumping on him in seconds, making sure he's ok I guess lol. Cuddling on the couch with her is IMPOSSIBLE. She starts out nice, lying up against me, then she starts wiggling, then whining, then she's on her back, pushing anything she can reach with her front paws. If I pet her she wiggles harder, if I just hold my hand on her she flails trying to get me to move, if I ignore her completely she is on the couch, off the couch, on the couch, off the couch. If I make her stay off the couch she paces from one room to the next or sits staring at me whining. Toys, kongs, filled kongs, all are ignored. The only way to interrupt all of the above is a down stay or crate her. If I am on the computer and call either Bilal or Henry (Chloe is dog aggressive and is never in the house at the same time the other dogs are loose in the house), Ebby comes flailing up onto me, screeching the whole time. I can only pet the boys if they come to me or if they are close enough that I can get their attention without getting hers too. See it's nothing, just an overly enthusiastic dog. I always said she was just waiting to grow her brain and maybe I got upset that at almost 6 years old she still hasn't grown it, maybe she's not going to lol. *sigh* in some ways talking about this is helping, in other ways it's making me feel worse because it's so clearly NOT her fault, there is no way I can lay any of the blame on her. She's just her and until recently that's been ok. Maybe it's like jedismom said and made me realize that it's possible my frustrations are coming from my inability to "fix" her quirks rather than from the quirks themselves.

Well imagine how stupid *I* feel for obviously needing to hear it. I got it, lesson already learned, she has not had the opportunity to so much as see a horse since that incident. Nor have any of the other dogs, nor will any of them. You know, you may be on to something there. If I remember correctly, I think I probably did start feeling more frustrated with her about the same time I decided that I should work more with her, to "turn her into" a more normal dog. Maybe that's been the problem all along. I thought I could turn her into a different dog (not sure why I felt the need to, I liked her fine before I started feeling frustrated with her) and then got frustrated when she just kept being her instead of morphing into some other dog. But she doesn't avoid me, not even slightly. She doesn't seem to act any different than she ever did. If I said she did I am sorry, I meant exactly the opposite. She is the same, happy go lucky "psycho dog" (her nickname) that she has always been. What's different is ME. THANK YOU! I shall see if the library has it, if not I'll order it.

She does not have access to Marquis unless we let her and she no longer goes to the barn with me. Lesson learned, I don't need a second warning on that. If sending her away was the best thing for her then I might consider it down the road but I would rather fix MY problem rather than dump her so I don't have to. I loved her for 5 years (and still do, being frustrated with her does not negate that), I do not believe that this is unfixable, I just have to figure out how. Why is it than when someone tries to rehome a dog, all the responsible dog owners hoot and holler that the owner is giving up on the dog and they should work through the problem, try this, try that, etc but when someone says "I have a problem, any ideas?" a dozen people come forward with "Get rid of the dog"?