The Art of Raising a Puppy

The book should have been titled, "The Exhaustion of Raising a Puppy". As you may have heard, we have a new puppy. His name is Kisho, but we've nicknamed him Satan. Just kidding. He's a sweetie but he is verrrry stubborn. Much more so than I remember Kuma being. If he wants to bite a rock and you block him with your leg and tell him no, he'll try again and again and again. Fifty times if you don't distract him somehow.

Crate training him has been a matter of choosing your pain. Either you watch him with 110% attention (meaning you can do nothing else), or you hear him crying and wailing in the cage (meaning you can do nothing else because you can't concentrate). Bottom line, zero productivity.

I've been disappointed with how conflicting the online resources are for crate training. Most of them say things like, "If the puppy starts to cry, firmly strike the cage with the palm of your hand and sternly say 'No!'" They've obviously never met a puppy like Satan... erm... Kisho. Only one guide I read even really discussed the dog crying in the cage and said, "Ignore him. Period. If you let him out while he's crying, you're setting yourself back a week in training." My breeder agreed. She told me yesterday that he was a handful in the litter. Not because he's aggressive but because he's stubborn. She said she'd never have given him to a first-time Akita home.

But we both love him to death. He's a sweet dog and when he's not being a rambunctious little shit, he's adorable. His face would turn a heart of stone into mush in seconds. Yes we have accidents, yes he wakes us up at 5:45 AM. Yes he wants to put everything in his mouth, but that's part of having a puppy and we wanted the experience.