Progress Is Satisfying

 Persistence, that is what the trainer is always telling me is the key to training a dog.



I've been training with Sophie for about eight months now, today we made progress. I gave Sophie the command sit, which she did, I then said down and stay. I threw her ball (which she is so obsessed with), she started to move, I gave the command stay, to my amazement she stayed and watched which direction it had landed. I gave her the command to go get her ball in German which she did. 


Maybe I should start at the beginning when we first got Sophie. It's a long story.

It was March 2009, we were in the local feed store when I saw an advertisement for German Shepherd puppies. I told my Husband what a good price that was for pure bred Shepherds. To my surprise he told me to take the number and give the owners a call. At the time we had three dogs already, we didn't need a fourth one. I asked him if he was nuts??? Mr. Aloha, my nick name for him, simply said "You're always talking about getting a pure bred German Shepherd, if that's a good price then lets go look." My reply was simple, "Okay".  He then added, "Just don't get a dog cause it's cute. make sure it's what you really want. Of course I agreed with him, even though I knew the minute I saw a puppy I'd want one.

I called the owner of the puppies and asked if she had any mostly red female puppies. She said the puppies where black and red, would I like to see them. We were going to the drag races the next day, so she agreed to meet us in a town halfway between where she lived and the races. Needless to say I fell in love with the puppy the minute I saw her! We told her we'd call her after the races to let her know if we would be taking the puppy, we also would like to see what her parents looked like and their temperament.

Mr. Aloha and I talked about it all afternoon. I told him she really wasn't the color I was looking for, but, she was beautiful and a great price. I called the lady, asked if we could come over to see the parents and the other female. When we got there, the owner had the two females out for us to look at. We sat with them for a while, I looked at Mr. Aloha and said "Well???" He said " lets get one",  "You choose" I said. He picked the original dog we met earlier in the day. She was six weeks old, I asked the lady if she would keep her till nine weeks, which is the age a puppy should be given away. At that age, a dog learns what it needs from it's mother. She said no, they were weened from their mom and eating puppy chow. Well, needless to say we took her home that evening.

This is the day we got her.

As you can see by the photo, she was very difficult to resist How could I not take her home with me. 

For two weeks we called her girlie. I wanted to name her Isabelle after the dog in Signs. Mr. Aloha wanted to name her Gertrude and call her Gerty. No way was I going to have a dog with a name a cow would have. He said calling her Isabelle or Izzy for short was not a ferocious name for a German Shepherd. Oh, ya, Gerty was real ferocious! How we agreed on Sophia is beyond me! Although on paper, her first name is Isabelle! 

 Ginger is on the left, Butch in the center and Jenny on the right.

Life with her was very interesting, she would bite our feet no matter what we did to try and stop her. Butch loved playing with her, in fact he was the only one who enjoyed it. Ginger tolerated her and Jenny the Alpha dog, tried really hard not to like her. When Jenny thought I wasn't looking, she'd be playing with her. One time Butch and Sophie were playing, Jenny was scolding Sophie for bothering him. I have never witnessed a dog do what Butch did, he actually  yelled at Jenny. It's as if he was telling her to back off, we're playing.

I grew up with German Shepherds before, not one of them was like Sophie. They were all very mellow, not Sophie. She is the most active, hard headed dog I've every had, not to mention perpetual motion.  Mr. Aloha was planting a tree, we thought it was so cute she was helping him dig the holes. BIG mistake, we had holes dug under the steps, in front of the garage. If it wasn't one thing it was another. She would steal our slippers/shoes, oddly she never chewed them and she would only take one side.


Then Summer came, several unforgettable events occurred.

Sophie discovered socks. My nieces and nephews came to stay with us for a few weeks. I can't even begin to count how many times I would catch her with one of my nephews socks in her mouth. She would go into the bathroom get the sock out of the hamper and chew on it. I would find her with one just as she was about to swallow it. I was now the sock police.

One thing I cannot stand is irresponsible pet owners, unfortunately I became one. Sophie was good about staying on our property when she wasn't tied. When we are not home all of our dogs with the exception of Ginger (whose old & doesn't go very far) are on some sort of restraint.  A few times while we were in town we would come home and find her sitting on the porch. I thought what a good dog, she knows to stay home. 

Then the day came, I was in the house, Mr. Aloha in his garage, all the dogs were loose. Butch and Sophie decided to go gallivanting. I called for both of them, nothing. We have ten acres so really there is no need for them to go anywhere. It was getting close to dark, Butch came home, but no Sophie. 

Sophie was five months old, she was black, I was afraid she would get hit by a car and would not know  how to find her way home. Which she didn't. I drove around for what seemed like hours looking for her. That night there was a thunderstorm, she didn't come home. I had a sick feeling in my stomach all night, here I finally got a beautiful German Shepherd and she was gone. 

The next day I put up fliers all over our neighborhood and at the local stores. A friend of mine suggested I put a posting on craigslist. Later that evening, after I had put her picture on craigslist, about five minutes later, I got a phone call from someone saying she saw a posting for a dog matching Sophie's description. I said thank you, and that it was my post. She said, "no you don't understand, there is a posting three or four down the list from yours, stating they had found a dog matching your dogs description". She gave me the phone number. When I called, I don't think I said hello or anything, I just asked "Do you have my dog?" She said "I don't know, can you describe her?" After describing Sophie to her, she said yes. I hung up the phone, burst into tears relieved Sophie was safe and apparently just around the corner from our house. When I got home from picking Sophie up, I called and thanked the lady for letting me know someone had Sophie. It never occurred to me to look on craigslist to see if someone had found her. I also had several emails and phone messages from other people who were looking on craigslist letting me know someone had found her. I thanked each and everyone of them. At that time, I was so relieved to see there are still so many kind hearted people in our world still.

She's about six months in ths Photo

The rest of the summers we had ups and downs with Sophie. Digging, biting, jumping, stealing our shoes and of course disappearing with Butch. At least we knew where to look.

I did manage to teach her how to sit and to play ball. As I stated earlier she is obsessed with her ball. She could play for hours on end. When either I or Mr. Aloha were tired of playing ball with her we would put her ball on top of the freezer in the garage. Next thing we know, all the balls that went missing were slowly being found. Once we had taken all of them away from her, she would go find a rock, soda can or water bottle for us to throw. 

One night in October, our granddaughter's mother asked me if an object on the porch was a rawhide. After looking at it closely I realized it was a sock Sophie had apparently eaten, then thrown up. The next day I went to town to run some errands, when I got home Sophie was under the car, I had to coax her out. I knew immediately she had eaten another sock, she was not her energetic self. I took her to the vet, there it was sitting in her stomach, my guess is she ate both of them, only one came up the night before. The vet said I needed to watch her all night in case she threw it up, if she did, I had make sure she didn't choke on it. This was the last thing I needed, Mr. Aloha was on an overnight trip for his job and we were leaving the following week to go on vacation. Needless to say Mr. Aloha does not leave his socks lying around anywhere anymore!


When we got back from vacation Sophie was just about full grown. I could not get her to stop jumping on me. Nothing worked for me, I tried kneeing her in the chest, scolding her to the point of yelling. I was the only person she jumped on, clearly I did not get it across to her I was in charge. Finally, in January, I decided either I take her to some kind of training or kill her. No, I wasn't actually going to kill her, I just felt like. I posted an add on craigslist asking if there was someone in the area who could help me train my dog. I got a response to call a well known dog trainer on the island. We started training the following week.