Pumpkin | Chihuahua | Los Angeles, CA | In Training
- Alex Kruse
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 hours ago
Meet Pumpkin! She's a 1-year-old Chihuahua from Los Angeles, California, and she's here for our Three Week Reactive Board and Train Program. Pumpkin really loves being around her people, and is generally sweet and loving at home, but like many chihuahuas, she isn't a big fan of strangers. When people come close to her she'll lunge and bark and generally let them know she doesn't appreciate their presence. She also has a hard time being left alone and will bark nonstop whenever her people leave without her. Over the next three weeks we'll work on getting her more acclimated to people so her immediate response isn't to lunge or try to bite, teach her all of her basic commands to give her a more solid foundation to work with and build up some of her confidence, and show her that it isn't the end of the world if she has to hang out by herself for a little while. Stay tuned for Pumpkin's three-week transformation!
3/22/26
Before we left the park today I spent a little time walking around with Pumpkin just to get her used to me a bit more, and also to see if I could get her to do any commands for me. She was a bit reluctant to walk with me at all, but once I did get her moving, she wasn't too bad at sticking close. She didn't do any pulling until we got closer to the cars again and she was trying to find her own. Not unexpectedly, she wouldn't give me any sort of Sit or Down or Come, but she also did wind up letting me touch her a little bit before we left the park. She was giving me the stinkeye, but she didn't try to bite lol. The only time she growled at me was when I was taking her photos. She apparently was not okay with the camera being in her face!
She did bark pretty much the entire drive home, but once I got her inside, she actually settled down with me better than I thought she would. I let her explore her surroundings a bit, then brought her over to sit with me in a penned-off area where she did lay down and let me pet her behind the ears. She did some grumble-rumbling at outside noises and when she'd hear the voices of my housemates, but generally she wasn't quite as grouchy as I thought she might be. Basically she's off to a pretty good start considering!
3/23/26
After a little bit of a rough start, I finally eased Pumpkin into trusting me enough to handle her. I was letting her hang out in the room with me last night before bed and she kept slinking off into little hidey holes. I had to loop her up with a slip lead to get her out, but she finally settled in near me and allowed me to pet her. It was a little bit of push and a lot of give and reading her body language to see if she was actually thinking about biting, or just giving me some warning signs, but as of today she did let me actually pick her up! Then we set about the process of discovering what treat she might take from me while she's still a little anxious so I could find something she might want to work for. Naturally, she went for the cheese (they always go for the cheese lol), so we set out to the park to start doing some light work. Once there, I started working her on her Sit and a little bit of her Recall. We went from being pretty (cautiously) hands-on with guiding her into the Sit, to her doing it for me without me having to help her into it outside of using the treat lure. For the Recall, the first several times I had to use the leash to reel her in, but those last few rounds she realized it was better to just wander back over to me on her own so she could get her cheese. After that I let her wander around the park for awhile and just sniff around, then we headed on home. She seems to be pretty smart, so I think once she gets comfortable and trusts me more, the rest of her training should go pretty smoothly!
3/24/26
Today I think Pumpkin has officially decided that she likes me. While she still gets a little stiff when I reach around her or move to pick her up, she relaxes pretty quickly into it, and I even got a few kisses from her today on my hands. She comes over to sit with me automatically when I'm just hanging out, and she's eating better today. I also had her with a couple of my dogs this morning for a little bit before they went out for the day, and she had zero issues with anybody there. She wasn't even afraid of my border collie, who is gigantic compared to her! So I think she's settling in well into the house finally. For her training work, I introduced Wait to her at the doorway, which means she has to sit and wait there for me to release her before she goes through. We're still working on the sitting on command part, but she only broke the Wait a couple times before she seemed to grasp what we were doing. She's also still very much learning what the release word even means, so it wasn't bad at all considering how new to all this she is. For session we went out to another small neighborhood park. There were other dogs around, but again, she didn't care at all about them even when they were barking and lunging at her. We worked more on her Sit command and getting her to hold it until I released her, we did a little more work on getting her to come when called, and I introduced her to the Heel a little bit. We worked more today on learning about leash pressure and mitigating her pulling more than the formal Heel position, but I made sure to capture and encourage the moments when she wound up walking by my side where she should be on Heel without the leash being tight. She definitely was more cooperative with me today than yesterday, so I'm sure her learning is only going to get faster from here as she gets more comfortable with me. It was a good improvement day for her!
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