Cairn Community

Suggest you move him off the bed for starters thus also removing a chance for him to growl and boss you. I have always crated mine at night, in another room. You could try letting him sleep on the floor in bedroom or in his crate in bedroom. Lots of exercise - physical and mental. Go for walks together, play a game. This often helped to keep my busy active guy calmer in general making it a bit easier with the formal training.  You both have a tough time recently. Give yourself and Sparky time to regroup. Do things with him you know you both enjoy.  Good luck to bpth of you.  

We've been doing scentwork classes with Dundee and Elroy long enough that it seemed time to tackle the Odor Recognition Tests that are prerequisites to entering actual nosework trials. So on a (somewhat unexpectedly) snowy Saturday we drove out to Beavercreek OR to see how we stood. Peggy ran Dundee and I ran Elroy.  Birch was the first odor. Dundee, pass Elroy, pass Anise was the second odor. Dundee, miss   Elroy, pass Clove was the third odor. Dundee, pass Elroy, miss   So Peggy and I both got to experience the thrill of two passes and the pain of failure on one odor, and neither has to endure the other going "nyah nyah, my dog passed all three"   Oh well, every test is a learning experience and while I know intellectually what I *should* have done in the Clove test I will need to practice actually doing it! 

I'm sorry for your year  Condolences on your loss.  Remote "diagnosis by internet" is a crap shoot so all anyone can do really is attempt to relate the difficult situation you're in to our own amateur experiences with dogs we've known personally.  Whenever we're in the throes of difficulty with a dog we're sure there is something drastically wrong with the dog; often, and usually, it's more a matter of adjusting something, or improving consistency, or some other means to sort out, outlast, or somehow resolve ordinary behavioral variances. Yet, some dogs really *do* have terrible temperaments (and the person experiencing the problem understandably generally believes that's *their* and their dog is the broken exception to the rule, etc.)  so even while it's not usually true (most dogs are just being dogs in a ways we don't happen to like), sometimes a dog really is a genuine outlier. We have no way of knowing. All to say, these are just some random thoughts in a feeble effort to help. We once mentioned to our vet that our old dog was increasingly snappy waking from naps. Our vet at the time was delightfully old school and down to earth. He sincerely suggested that best way to wake an old sleeping dog was to poke it gently with a stick. He was suggesting that since we knew what was going to happen we should just accommodate reality in a way that prevented us from being hurt or blaming the dog for being old and self-protective. Similarly, we deal with all sorts of unwanted behaviors primarily by trying to organize our environment so that the behavior can't happen. Things like belly bands if marking is a problem; gates and expens for containment if that solves a problem. It's almost always easier in the sort term to control our environment than to force a behavior change. Doing this gives the time, space, and emotional freedom to *also* work on training in a much less stressful atmosphere.  Were I in your spot, I would indeed stop letting him sleep on the bed, simply to moot the issue of waking up snappy. Our current bed-sleeper is 13 and getting grumpy at night when we move our feet etc. We still let him grumble and whatnot but the day it becomes an *actual* problem for us, we will probably move the bench he uses to get up to make the bed inaccessible; then he can sleep on the floor in the room. Worst case we might have to shut the door or even crate him at night.  My other suggestion for behavior in general is to 'work' the dog in ways that don't escalate conflict. If he walks on leash you might be surprised at what adding a couple long walks per day can to do to mellow a dog out. A tired dog is usually a good dog. If you have access to a good obedience instructor formal training often has *huge* benefits — not so much the specific exercises being taught but the development of communication and relationship that comes from learning arbitrary exercises.  Apologies for the length of this! Good luck. I hope you can get to a place where you can enjoy Sparky rather than endure him.

I think male terriers are a tough “retrain”.  I would recommend a huge dose of  patience, calmness and the assistance of a belly band.  Sorry about your sister.

Hi..I am going thru it with a 4 month old. I am having some success but it is work no doubt about it. We take him out every 1/2 hour to hour and say "time for pee pee and he gets a reward for his efforts if he does his thing. I actually set an alarm. He does not get run of the place. We watch him like crazy and he gets crated when we go out. But not for too long. It is work for sure. I am told it will happen and the penny will drop eventually, Cairns are very smart. I would read as much info as you can about house breaking a puppy and go with that.  Good luck.