A new day for Levi

Levi, as you can tell, is a bonafide hound dog. He is the sweetest dog on earth, but he can also be the loudest if he feels it necessary. When I first adopted Levi, he immediately began showing his tendency towards the anxious, nervous side of living. I lived in an apartment complex and would often come home to hearing loud "rooooooooooos" of a beying hound dog. This was not an option. I tried several attempts at training and ended up relying on a citronella spray collar. It did the trick immediately. A citronella spray collar does just as it says--it sprays citronella whenever it detects a loud noise (a bark) from the dog's neck. The citronella is completely harmless to the dog but it tastes and smells nasty. (I imagine even worse for dogs who smell everything we do times ten, and many things we don't smell). I believe it not only kept him quiet, it also may have calmed him down a bit. The more he would bark, it seems, the more anxious he would get.

Well, it is now been about a year and a half since Levi came into my life. He has calmed down significantly and he does not seem to suffer from separation anxiety anymore. And, he knows the collar so well that if he glimpses a flash of it, he immediately runs into the bedroom and "goes to bed" in preparation of me leaving for work. It was a monumental occasion last week when I (nervously) put away the collar and hoped for the best. He's such a good dog!! Not a peep came from my apartment. What a wonderful dog!