Preface

I am the proud owner of a 2 year old Toy Manchester Terrier named Murry. Although I have owned other dogs, including those with terrier blood, he is first TMT I have had the pleasure of welcoming into my family. The ideas, thoughts and opinions contained in this essay are therefore those of an amateur. I do not profess to be "right" about anything. I offer my experiences to those interested because I think they might be helpful and I enjoy sharing my love of my dog with Charlie and Wanda and through them, readers of their website. I am not interested in debate, although I am always open to the ideas and opinions of others.

The most critical decision I had to make with Murry was how much freedom was I willing to give him during his training. I received Murry when he was only eight weeks old and our bond was instantaneous and strong. As Murry grew older the characteristics of Manchester terriers became more and more pronounced. He barked at every strange noise or person he saw walking down the street. To this day he will still bark once or twice at the sound of a family member coming down the steps on occasion if it startles him. He has never been neutered and he is extremely protective of me. We have worked on limiting this behavior so that it is just a minor nuisance.

The more serious behavior that TMT's have is that of chasing anything they see, and Murry does so with a vengeance. If he sees a bird, a cat a squirrel, anything in his backyard he runs out the backdoor growling and hopping his way with incredible speed to his intended victim. He never actually does anything because Murry is all bark and no bite.

This tendency to run without thinking of the consequences becomes problematic once we’re out of the backyard. Charlie once told me of friend of his who opened his door to the mailman or something and her two TMT's peeking out the door saw a squirrel, ran after it into a street and were killed by a car. I can’t even think about the emotional devastation that poor woman experienced.

How do you avoid having such an experience happen to you? That is the central point of this essay. I don’t think it’s possible to always prevent your dog from having access to freedom. Accidents will always happen. For example this morning I was raking leaves in front of my house and I left Murry in the bedroom with the door closed with my wife, or so I thought. I came in the house and left both the gate and the back door open. I came into the house to get something to drink but evidently my wife had awoken and before I knew it Murry had run out the door and out the gate. I found him at the end of our driveway barking at some people walking down the street. Having to make a quick decision, I decided to walk him back into the house. I would neither reward nor punish him. On one hand he did not run in the street. Very good dog! On the other he should not have run out the gate. Bad dog! So I considered this a wash: I didn’t reinforce him by letting him play outside but I didn’t put him in his cage and scold him.

Why didn’t Murry run into the street? Against my wife’s wishes, during Murry’s upbringing I occasionally would bring him to the car off the leash. In the beginning he sometimes ran into the street. And yes, once a car had to slow down because he was in the middle of the street. Fortunately I live on a street with a limited amount of traffic and obviously you cannot do this if you live next to a four lane roadway! On another occasion he had me chasing him all over the houses of our street. But gradually Murry learned that going in the street was verboten. He was allowed to visit the houses adjacent to ours on our side of the street, and there is a dog at the end of the block he likes to visit.

My wife objected to the risks I was taking with his safety, and believe me I did not do this without thinking it through. But I felt there were risks doing and risks not doing this kind of training. Because I knew the day would come when I would have to rely on Murry’s self control to avoid a terrible accident, and if I did not train him to have that self- control I would have only myself to blame.

My primary method of punishing Murry for misbehavior was to put him in his "cage". I kept his cage from when he was a puppy in our living room and the word cage is a misnomer since it’s more like a playpen than a cage. It simply limits where he can go and separates him from the family, which is unusual for him because he follows me everywhere I go and sleeps with either me or my son. To demonstrate that the cage is not all that terrible, Murry sometimes prefers to sleep there as well, I think because it’s next to the vent with the greatest amount of heated air coming through it.

I’m not one of these people that think you give a dog (or a kid) a two or a five minute time out and then let him off the hook. I want Murry to feel that separation is a negative experience and depending on what he has done I will leave him in there anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Sometimes he howls his displeasure, which I totally ignore. That lets me know he is getting the point of the punishment.

Of course along with this I use tons of verbal praise and hugging and kissing when he is a good dog and I say "bad dog!" when he is disobedient. I will sometimes add a treat for good behavior. Murry understands it when I say " What do good dogs get? Do they get a yum-yum? Murry was a good dog!" Never hit your dog. It doesn’t work, you’ll regret it later, and your dog will be afraid of you.

Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not. Everyday with Murry is a learning experience, one which I enjoy and hope there will be many more to come. Bob Lazar