I have a friend in need of help with there now 8 month old Chihuahua that is 'running the show' at her house. She is not a dog person (always been afraid of dogs until now) & has had no idea how to train this little 10 lb rat dog & neither does anyone else in the house. He brother gave the dog as a gift to her daughter (collece freshman) & she didn't want to say no to her. Her brother will just say, no you shouldn't do that with the dog, but then doesn't really offer any real guidance when she tells him what the dog is doing wrong. My friend works fulltime, her daughter has classes but lives home & her husband has his own business & is in & out of the house during the day. This dog is pooping in the house, not coming when called, etc, etc. There is not much that I can do to help her from CT, so I am hoping to find someone in her area & then convince her to have them come & help her before things get any worse. I really hate to send her to Petco or one of the box store trainers for the obvious reasons. I have suggested that she get a crate & explained how to use it etc. Positive training methods would be preferred, as it seems that this dog does have some food drive. Any ideas would be appreciated. Hopefully if I can find someone to help, I can convince them to take advantage of it. Thanks.

I should have added that you can PM me if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

Hello,
I am actually in the Orlando area which is a couple of hours away from Port St. Lucie so I think the drive would be too much for some of the trainers I have had experiences with in the area.

I would suggest that they pick up both the your puppy 8 weeks to 8 months and the Basic Dog Obedience videos and start working with those. The videos are great because you can choose certain topics and just watch those sections if you do not want to watch the whole video but I would suggest watching everything.

I have a 5 month old German Shepherd and we got her started on those videos and she has absorbed all of the things that are taught in the videos and now we go to a trainer that is helping us with more advanced training.

We looked into trainers for the puppy and a lot of the classes are both expensive and are not as helpful as Ed's videos.

Let me know if you have any other questions but she will save both money and time by looking into these videos.

Good luck!

Anne, you could pm Howard Knauf; he's in Melbourne, which is in the general vicinity of Pt St Lucie. He might know of a trainer...

Thanks everyone. I did find someone for my friend. But my friend, unfortunately for the dog, has not contacted the trainer. I have done all that I can do to help, short of shipping the dog to CT & taking the dog in here & training it for her. The old saying: 'you can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink' applies well here. I figure when they get tired of cleaning up the mess that the dog continues to leave behind in the house they will get help. I have done all that I can to help. Poor dog.