"Shock Collars"

These are pics of our little puppy Chip. He's almost a yr old and was SOOOO cute, calm and cuddly when we first got him. He's still as cute as can be but he's in an extremely rebellious stage right now. (The pic of him with blue hair was from Halloween. We knew he would'nt be ok with having an actual costume on so we spray painted him. Don't worry, it was a dog friendly spray that came off after just one wash :) )

Soooooo, for the past week he's been trying his very best to run away. I think our neighbors are beginning to get concerned because it seems like at least once a day every day this week, they had to return him to us. I'm so glad we live on a military base where everyone knows everyone and he won't get stolen.

Anyway, hubby and I have found every block possible in our yard and covered the holes that seem big enough for him to get under but he still continues to dig the dirt to get out of the smallest of holes. This is not to say that we leave him out there all day, we actually don't. We give him about 5 minutes to use the bathroom or play a little because he doesn't like getting stared at while using the bathroom. So in that short 5 minutes, he manages to find a hole and dig it instead of using the bathroom. I'm sure he's hurting himself in the process but he doesn't seem to care. I do realize now that he does this whenever the boys head outside to play. Since Chace is still so little I can't get to play with Chip that much anymore so maybe he's lashing out at not getting my attention so he figures he'll go look for the boys to get their attention. Oh and the other day we had guests over and while they were leaving he tried to dash out the front door and both Ethan and Mekhi went to grab him and he actually tried to bite them in the process. I had to grab him up to calm him down. Luckily he didn't try to bite after me but it still concerns me that he's so aggressive now. He knows what the words "stop" and "no" means but it's like he's gone deaf whenever anyone other than me tells him to stop or tells him no. At times, he ignores me until I come close to him.

It's a lot to have to deal with right now so we're gonna have to take some drastic measures here pretty soon. We have decided to get him a shock collar to get him trained and hopefully it won't be too long before he'll actually listen to us or not run away again. I'm definitely putting in some serious reasearch time to make sure I get the right one. I was hoping it would'nt be necessary but since he's taken such an aggressive turn in his behavior we have to make sure we stay on top of keeping him trained. Hopefully it'll take him a few times of this type of training to get him back on track. I surely miss the days when we could cuddle with him and he'd follow us around and be sooo sweet. Poor little Chippy...