Hannah Update

          In case you were wondering, our little Hannah is doing well. She goes in her crate on her own at bedtime and sleeps quietly through the night. Well, unless I wake up and hear her snoring. She’s been alone loose in the house for up to three hours at a time and causes no chaos. I’m sure all she does is sleep. She’s only gotten into the garbage one time, and that was retrieving a granola bar wrapper that might have had a trace of something edible on it. Does her business outside like a champ, no matter the weather, and usually chooses a far corner of our yard to go number 2.

          I’m not happy she has taken over this chair, but she is just too cute lying on her perch. I’ve heard some Corgis think they are cats, so this makes sense. And she still gets along with our cat Emma fine.

          Oh, but the things she needs to work on!

          We quickly trained our last three dogs to stay in the yard with the shock collar. For many years, we’ve had a unit in the basement that sets up a perimeter about fifty feet away. Two shocks, tops, and a few reminder beeps and they all had it.

          We’ve been walking Hannah on the leash around the yard on the trails through the snow that were already there. But now that the snow is melting, I’ve been trying out the shock collar and walking her closer to where the boundary would be.

          The first few times, I carried the collar, and when she heard that beep, she knew something was up and returned to me. However, nothing made sense to her when I put the collar on her. 

          As soon as she hears the beep, before even getting zapped, she starts digging. She seems to think the beeping is underground, probably because she is so low to the ground. She’s frantic about trying to get to it.

          When I try pulling her away, she fights the leash and is even more obsessed with digging faster.

          So, I reach down and take the collar off of her. Once she hears that beep coming from my hand, she comes right to me and tries to get the collar.

          As long as I have her on the leash and stay close enough to her for her to hear the collar beep in my hand, she won’t cross the invisible line. But how can I let her off leash so she can roam far enough away from me and the collar so that she won’t hear the beep?

          We’ll figure it out. At least she mostly comes when she’s called, whether a collar is beeping in my hand or not. 

          She won’t sit for us either. She gets angry if we try to push her little butt down, so we wonder if she had been spanked on her butt in her previous home. That’s all we can figure. And lastly, she is horrible in the car, struggling the whole trip to sit in the driver's lap. Not happening, Hannah, let it go! The joys of getting a rescue baby. 

          We start obedience training the first of April. We’ll see how that goes. But in the meantime, she still has my heart.