Last night was Max’s second night of training. He actually did better on walking around the store with me when he did not see any other dogs, but once the dogs began arriving he started barking all over again. He just kept going and going and would not do all the things that he has learned at home. He is doing great with the clicker training at home and he could sit and wait and all of the things that they were talking about last night, but he would not show it by looking at his behavior. I told one of the ladies there that he did not bark at home, well because he does not. He never makes a sound unless he hears something outside and she acted like she did not believe me. I could not blame her because of the way he was acting it was hard to believe it myself. There was another Jack Russell at the class as well last night and you could see that mine had never spent time around other dogs compared to that Jack Russell. It made me kind of sad to see the other dog being able to go around the other dogs without barking or snapping at them, but Max he was not having it. I am not sure but I think he was looking for some kind of attention from these actions because he would have never done this before. Like I had stated in another part of my blog he was around my mother’s dog and never did any of this.


He went on so long during the class with his barking that the trainer thought that it would be best to put a muzzle on him to calm him down and give the other dog owners a chance to hear what she was talking about. I do not like muzzles, but I thought it was in the best interest of everyone including Max. He had the muzzle on and I felt so sorry for him because he was crying the whole time, but I tried not to show it the best that I could because I did not want him to get a reaction out of me. He did start to sit once he got the muzzle on and he was listening to me a little more, but when we went for a walk around the store customers that were walking around looked at my dog like “he must be a biter.” It made me feel bad for Max because he does not bite at all, but there was nothing that I could do.

Loose Leash

Last night the thing that we were suppose to learn was how to get our dogs to walk on a loose leash. I thought that would never happen with Max. He was normally the one that was pulling me around by the leash. Last night there was a change in him though. She gave us each a section to walk down and told us to practice by ourselves on how to get our dogs to walk on a loose leash. When he was not around the other dogs he did this perfectly. I learned how to stop and let him loosen the leash himself before I started to walk with him again. The trainer even said that she saw great things from him when he was walking, but once he saw her dog, that she uses to train the other dogs he went crazy and stopped listening to me again and even found a way to start barking through the muzzle.

Needless to say I am feeling less and less confident about Max learning to be around other dogs, but we

Shall see. There are 6 more weeks of training and if he does not get along with the other dogs, then I will just feel like it was a waste of the money. Right now the only thing I can say is that I get the papers that explain what the training in tales for the night like a direction sheet, but that could have been given to me without having to find a babysitter and spend money on that and the training classes as well. I am hoping that he will come around so I can view what the trainer is showing us. Oh and because of Max’s constant barking I have no idea what we will be learning next week.

Whoever thinks that a Jack Russell is not smart, they are wrong. My mom tried telling me that she did not think that Max was smart because he has some pink on the roof of his mouth. I laughed because she is always trying to compete with me, by saying that he dog is smarter. Max does some things that sometimes make him look as though he is not a smart dog like tearing up the trash or my shoes, but that is not a dumb dog it is a typical Jack Russell when they are bored and there are only a few things left for them to do.


He looks at me and cocks his head when I am talking to me and he also makes great eye contact and so I know he knows what I am saying to him and he is listening. Today though it was a funny moment of a dog trying to push his limits in the house but in at the same time use his intelligence. My husband and I do not let Max go into the bathroom because every time he is in there he tends to rip the toilet paper to shreds, and so we have taught him to sit outside the door and wait and he does a great job with this. Sometimes he will even take a nap by the door when I am in the bathtub. We today I was taking a bath and Max brought his fake duck dog toy and lay down. I told him to sit and wait, he did this and because I was taking a bath about 5 minutes into it he laid down. Then all of a sudden he kind of nudged the duck inside the doorway, but not so much that he could not reach it from where he was laying at. I just thought that he was done playing with it and he just did not want it anymore, then he pushed it a little farther in the doorway and moved towards it, this did not really mean to much to me at that moment and so I just let it be, but before I knew it he was nudging it all the way into the bathroom and then I figured out what he was doing. He thought that if he kept pushing the duck into the bathroom that I would not be upset with him for coming in to get it.

Needless to say Max outwitted me for a few seconds today

This blog is mainly a tribute to my dog Max. We have had him a little over a year and we have had our ups and downs. The way I came about getting a Jack Russell was not really like some people would have thought. My husband had said to me that he never wanted to get a dog and so I just kept nagging at him because I was raised with dogs my whole life and so I really wanted my children to experience this. We already had two cats, two parakeets and a fish and so I was at first kind of scared to get a dog, but I knew if I waited any longer my husband would not give me the ok, so I started looking that day. My husband said that he did not want a large dog that small or medium in size would be alright and that is mainly because of younger son, he did not want a large dog that would be jumping all over him. I have to admit that I did not at the time do any research on a Jack Russell and really had no idea what one was.

How I Found Max

I was looking through the local online newspaper and I had seen someone post that they had two Jack Russell’s for sale a male and a female and then only lived about 10 miles from me. I was interested mainly because said that they would only grow to be about medium in size. I called the guy up right away and he said that I could come and look at the puppies that day. So I went and picked up my mom and we went to the town to see them. She had warned me that terriers were a hyper breed of dog, but I did not care because I had 4 children hyper was nothing to me.

Seeing Max For The First Time

When I first saw Max it was instant love at first sight, I knew that this was the dog that I wanted to take home. The previous owners lived on a farm like I did so I thought that our home would be perfect in size. He was running around pulling small tree branches around the yard and chasing after balls. I thought wow he is playful, but boy I did not know the half of it. I did ask the previous owner if he would good with children and he told me that yes he would that he had grandchildren come over all the time to play with the dogs and so I took him home.

My Husbands Reaction

My husband is a truck driver and was out on the road when I bought him. I had sent him pictures of Max so that he knew what he looked like. He was kind of shocked at first because I had went and bought the dog so fast, but once he got home he to feel in love with Max and has a close bond with the dog now, that I think he never thought that he would have with a dog.