I made a promise to myself when I started this blog that I would always be honest, which is why there were two very emotional and raw posts last week.

I was extremely disappointed in Delilah last Monday and in my abilities to train her.

In two short months, on May 26th we will celebrate the five-year anniversary of Delilah’s “Gotcha Day.”  Which means I’ve been working with her for a very long time, as I am not one of those people who get  a dog and think by some miracle they will know exactly what is expected of them without any training.

We went through all the training classes with Sampson and he did marvelously, I figured we had this in the bag.  I quickly realized Delilah would need formal training.

We enrolled in classes.  Sara reminded me last week when she yelled at me to quit writing bad stuff about Delilah on the blog, of our first class.  Our classes were stubborn meets stubborner and I don’t know which of us was which.  That first class I had to practically lay on Delilah to get her into a down.  I’ve since (thanks to all of you) revised my training philosophy and will never again lay on her to get her into a down.

My walking friend also made me realize that she hasn’t been working off-leash for very long at all, just over a year.  It was only January of last year when we started walking the trails.

Saturday I went to pick up dog food and spoke with Sandy our raw food mentor.  Somehow we started talking about Delilah and I was explaining how excited Delilah is around food and how she jumps backwards all the way to the place where she gets fed, never once taking her eyes off her food bowl.

Sandy just stood there, nodding her head up and down with a huge smile on her face.

“What?” I asked, “Why are you standing there smiling?”

“Embrace who she is, someday she won’t be able to do that” was her response.

I get that, I really do.  I already see the white in Sampson’s face and it makes my heart hurt.   But I want the best of both worlds, I want a dog that can run around and have fun but listens to me when I need or want them to.

Is that even possible?