As a little boy, my friend Jeff and I concocted a plan to thwart robbers and heroically assist the police.

Potions.

Yep, potions.  Here was our plan:

We would make the most disgusting mixture of elements we could think of – mud, soy sauce, hair, bugs, mustard, Worcestershire sauce (we couldn’t say it so it had to be gross! and yes I had to get it out of my fridge to spell it right), grasshopper legs, cat poop, and anything else we thought would make those bad guys seriously sick.  We combined these ingredients into a plastic bottle, put the lid on, and shook them up.  Then, knowing that robbers running from the police would be super tired and thirsty, we took our poisonous potion and threw it into the road.

Judging from our knowledge of cartoons and countless hours of playing cops and robbers, we were certain it would work.

We had made our contribution to society.  All we had to do now was wait for those robbers to come down my street, see the potion, and, in their parched and pathetic state, drink it!  With any luck, they would collapse on the spot and we would get to see the police catch up with them and take them in.  We had it all planned out.

The first day, there were no robbers.

The second day, none either.

The third, yep, no robbers.

But something interesting happened on the fourth day…

The police showed up at our door!

With our eyes wide and our mouths gaping, the policeman asked to see the boys who had been throwing potions into the street.  He told us he had heard of our efforts, thanked us for our brilliant idea, gave us each a 50 cent piece, and asked us to stop.  He assured us the police could take it from here.

While this is a fun, memorable, and cute story, the reality is we were never really going to catch any robbers.

While sometimes cute, we often do things with our dogs we think will help, only to find that our actions  are not producing the results we envision.

For example, saying the same command over and over again thinking that sooner or later the dog will understand – they don’t.   Letting our dogs rule our homes with uncommunicated boundaries hoping they will instinctively know what’s right and wrong – also not going to work.

While well intentioned, these acts, and others like them, usually don’t produce the results we would like.

You can’t do the same things over and over and expect to get different results!

If you feel like this is your story with your dog right now, just keep smiling and contact the professionals!  🙂