Life in the Dog House

Please imagine that this is not a bagel in his mouth at all but rather a bar of soap.  I am sorry to say that my little Cooper is bad to the bone.

A few months ago, after figuring out that Cooper the Wonder Dummy is the one responsible for messing up my hip with his leash-walking antics, I found an obedience school that would come to my mom's house and train him.  We needed to home school because my dog gets completely nutsy in front of strangers, especially strangers with dogs.  He barks, shakes uncontrollably, drools, sniffs canine private parts to the point where it's embarrassing and occasionally makes an escape attempt or two.  Not pretty stuff.

The lady who trains him is a very nice woman.  She is also, um... crazy.  The first time she was here, she listened intently as I recounted Cooper's early childhood experiences.  When I told her I adopted him from the animal control shelter when he was six months old, she encouraged me to visit a pet psychic to find out what happened to him before we met.  I imagined walking Cooper into a room with gauzy fabric draped on the walls, sitting him in a chair and gazing into a crystal ball while someone recounted Cooper's puppy days and probably revealed that he hates it when I wear blue.  I smiled at the trainer and nodded and said, "Wow, that's something I never thought to do!  Good idea!"  

The trainer quickly determined that Coopie is a very fearful dog.  She advised us to hang a sign on the front door reading "DOG IN TRAINING."  We were to tell visitors to pick up dog treats from a tupperware container on the front porch and enter quietly with their arms up.  Then they should stand motionless while Cooper barked at them, after which they should throw treats in his direction.  After ten minutes or so, they could slowly move into the house.  Again, we smiled and nodded at this poor lady and I pictured how fast I would run if I saw those instructions on someone's front door.  Nobody wants to know Cujo waits right inside a house that they're visiting.  I myself would be terrified.

She gave us a lot of exercises to practice with Cooper, and after a couple of days it actually seemed to work.  When I called him, he'd come immediately.  Before, I could call him thirty times without him even acknowledging me.  He learned some new tricks and seemed less stressed out around strangers.  When the trainer showed up a few weeks ago with a gigantic stuffed dog, Cooper even refrained from making snide comments about how weird she was and never once laughed in her face as she attempted to make him believe the dog was real.  Progress, we experienced it.

Well, that ended quickly.  We had to bring Coopie to the vet last week and he freaked out and released his anal glands on the examining table.  Luckily, I was standing right next to him and managed to absorb most of the leakage.  Lucky lucky me.  He has stopped coming when he's called, he's been tossing baby mice around and he tries to escape the yard every chance he gets.  I swear I can hear him thinking "You're not the boss of me!" when I ask him to do something.  It's bad.

The good news is that he still looks great in a fascinator. 

So I am asking you, The Internet.  Any advice for whipping a dog into shape?  Preferably not involving actually physically whipping a dog into shape?  Should I just sigh and accept that I just have a nutball dog and love him for who he is, hip injuries be damned?  Is it wrong that the dog trainer's stuffed Rottweiler looked like a nice pet to me?  Or should I just accept that when you're this fashionable, obedience is a concern you don't need to worry about?