Jordan Klein wanted a dog for a while after moving to Philadelphia in 2011. Some years later, after buying a house, she came across some photos of a pit bull rescue named Fiona. “I thought, ‘Oh, that might be my dog,’” Jordan said. “I went out and met her. She was super shy, which is hilarious now. I really liked her. It wasn’t like our eyes met across the room. I’d had that vision in my head that that was what it would be. But she was super sweet, and I thought, ‘Yeah this what I want to do.’”
Jordan works as a freelance museum exhibition consultant, providing design and content development for museums and cultural organizations. The flexible schedule made it feasible for her to bring home Fiona, who she renamed Fern.
They started training with Philly Unleashed a month later in May 2017. “For the first few weeks I had her, I was convinced I had a silent dog,” said Jordan. “A friend of mine asked me how she was doing. I said, ‘She’s great. She’s perfect.’ He said, ‘Just wait. She’s going to wait until she knows you won’t get rid of her, and then all of her stuff is going to come out.’”
Fern’s personality started to emerge. Jordan found that Fern is always up for snuggles in the morning, and she’s not always aware of her surroundings, which can make for some funny moments on walks. “I think one of my favorite things is that she is incredibly strong, but has no idea where her body exists in space at any moment in time,” Jordan said. “As a human, I can relate to that. I’ve been an athlete my whole life, but I’ve been very accident prone. She can do anything, but she’s a klutz. She walks into things all the time. She’ll be distracted by things behind her and walk into a pole on a daily basis. She’s all limbs and no brain.”
Along with being goofy and sweet, Fern is also sometimes both dog and people aggressive. “Training has been everything in my relationship with Fern,” Jordan explained. “Training is how I can manage her aggression. As her reactivity has gotten worse, her obedience has gotten better. I have the training tools to get her through situations that are stressful for her. She’s perfect in the house, but the world can be a stressful place for her, so training is how I get her through those day-to-day situations. Also, it’s fun. She’s focused. She loves to learn, so to have things to be doing all the time is helpful for us.”
The duo has taken Level 1, Level 2, All Levels at Rammytime Farm, and Dogs with Attitude. Now, they are increasing their training by developing Fern’s heel focus while walking, along with learning some tricks. “Getting that level of focus on me has been really helpful for walking her in the city,” said Jordan. “It’s also been interesting and fun to watch her to develop a more long-term focus activity. She can do something and be really distracted by something else. She has to maintain that engagement for a longer period of time.”
But it hasn’t always been easy, and Jordan advises other dog owners to have patience. “We were stuck in Level 1 for a really long time and I thought we would never leave,” Jordan explained. “I remember my first few classes being so frustrating. I thought that this will never be something that happens for her. She’s so defiant, she’s a two-year-old dog with so many behaviors already developed.”
A few months into training, Jordan noticed a shift. “The more I stuck with it, the more I saw that it would help,” she shared. “There are definitely times she can be really challenging, but I have also seen so much change — she’s a different dog from even six months ago. It’s important to work through frustrations and know that some classes are going to be really bad classes and some will be really good classes and that’s all part of it. It’s a good perspective for me to keep on training her.”
Jordan found it’s important to ride out the good days and the bad, and she noticed she’s learning, too. “I’m becoming better at handling,” Jordan said. “Separate from developing obedience skills, developing my handling skills have been a game changer in managing her. That’s just practice.”
