The thing is, my husband and I don’t know shit-all about training dogs. We just love them, are kind to them, we’re compassionate, we understand their fears and their insecurities, and we try to make it better. A dog who is fearful will snap, a dog who is insecure will snap, a dog who has had to fight for food is understandably afraid there won’t be any. I’m not an alpha. My dogs love me, they follow me, they won’t go outside without one of us with them (even in a fenced yard), they want to be near us and view us as their security blankets, but neither of us are alpha like that, and we don’t try to be.

I have a pack of six dogs – four are over 15 years old, two seven and under. Different breeds, small to medium, collected from different places (mostly inherited from our kids) – making it work with a pack is a work and isn’t for the faint of heart.

But it can be done, even for those of us who have no formal dog training or, really, experience in how to manage pups. We’ve done a lot of just winging it.

I started this blog because I want to share the hell we have gone through trying to integrate our pack. We believe in a common sense approach to managing our pups – we rely on gut instinct, watch their body language, and know our dogs.

Our first four were easy; we inherited two littermates, Corgi mixes, Koda and Chino, when my son was deployed, and when he was injured in Afghanistan and gone for an extended period, they just naturally became family. We kept them. Of course we did. We next rescued a little Maltipoo, Bo, now seven, who’d been literally kicked around. It took a minute to get him to trust us, but he’s now a confident, secure little boy. My daughter brought our oldest pup, another Maltipoo, Chubs, home when she was in high school. When she drifted off into her own place in the city, and beyond, we held onto him. Those four were the beginning of our journey into creating order out of chaos in a multi-dog household.

A few years ago, my late mother moved into a mother-in-law suite at our place, along with her elderly German Pinscher mix, Petey (who she had rescued from a hoarding house with about 100 cats). He mixed and mingled harmoniously with our dogs during the day, but she took him to her room at night. When she died, he immediately moved in full-time with us. When an only, spoiled dog who had to fight for food early on is forced to join a pack, things can get a little dicey. Bedtime was a nightmare – he liked to be under the covers, and that spot was already taken. It was pretty dicey for a while, and I admit to having had a lot of sleepless nights, but we survived. Petey is now a fully integrated member of our pack, and one of the sweetest dogs we have. The sixth pup, Sage, started out with my youngest son, but wasn’t happy sharing a home with their toddler, and got snappy. She moved on to my eldest son’s house, but was snappy with his grade-schoolers and other pets as well. When she came to us, our pack of grumpy old men quickly put her in her place when she started getting snappy with them, and since we have no small children, life has been a little bit smoother for her – for all of us. She’s a work in progress, but she’s a beautiful, mostly obedient, intelligent, spirited animal, who we love dearly. I look at our work with our dogs less as training and more as “making it work.” We believe that when you take in a dog, it’s for life. You have to make it work. Rehoming any of our pets was never an option, no matter how tough it’s been at times.

During all the chaos in trying to integrate Petey – a resource guarder – and Sage – also a resource guarder and an inherently fearful dog – into our household, I read everything. I read Cesar Milan, the whole “be the alpha leader of the pack” thing. I read dog training blogs, I read blogs like this, I read everything. What I learned is that it’s all too complicated for a novice. You can take bits and pieces, but it seems like you really need to be a pro to master the complex set of instructions. My head would be spinning after reading some of those articles; it seemed like you needed about four people to cure a resource guarder: One to hold a leash, one to move the bowl closer (or further, I can never remember), one to do the clicker thing, one to hold a treat. I’m not taking anything away from these professional dog folks – but it isn’t me. I cured Petey myself, by plopping down extra food bowls (we’re free feeders), and redirecting him every time he rushed the food bowl when another dog was eating. I shuffled them around in bed so I could make room for him. He was grieving the loss of my mother, too, and I tried my best to replicate his previous routines. It took a while, but he’s cured from the resource guarding; he learned there’d be plenty of food, he was never hungry, and he never had to sadly look at the bottom of an empty food bowl. He now sleeps at my feet, covered from head to toe. We made it work.

Sage – well, Sage at first would randomly snap at whichever dog was next to her during treat time. After this little 8-pound dog had randomly attacked every other dog during treat time, I figured out that she never snapped at Petey (I guess one resource guarder was able to recognize the peril in fighting with another resource guarder for food!), so now at treat time I make sure she’s right next to Petey. They line up in a specific order when I dole out treats, and I make them leave the kitchen immediately after I dole them out to avoid the “snuffling” on the floor for some perceived dropped crumb that might lead to a dogfight. Sage has vastly improved – she hasn’t gotten snappy with the other dogs for a couple of months. After I give out the treats, and she behaves, I praise her lavishly (yeah, the other dogs look at me crazy when I do that). She does have issues with other dogs she sees outside our fence, and we’ve watched in awe as this little “puppy bullet” raced from one corner of the yard to the other, panting and barking and going bonkers. I haven’t quite figured out how to cure that. Some things may just have to be what they are. We normally just bring her inside when she does that – problem solved.

This blog is about loving dogs, managing their behavior (without complicated training processes), a kind of life experience type thing. I don’t claim any specialized knowledge, and I will likely quote extensively from others who have it.

We manage a pack of six dogs, successfully. Maybe that’s good enough!