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We have since discovered the Victoria Stilwell, world renowed British dog trainer has indeed set up shop right here in Atlanta .. and has been filming her spectacular efforts to help families train the dogs.  In this episode called The Not So Great Dane, we see her zipping around the streets of Atlanta in her Corvette convertible letting the audience come along for the ride.

Owners Jodi and Rick have a six-foot tall, 150 pound great dane named Harley, plus another dog Abby.  It turns out that Harley is a replacement for the dearly departed Apollo .. and Abby has been depressed ever since.

Oh No! Not only does Harley have a bad habit of stealing people’s food right off of the counters and tables, he has taken to the pool room as his own personal outhouse on occassion.  No wonder these folks aren’t inviting the friends to dinner!

It’s definitely a touchy situation around the house because hubby is letting the dog get away with everything while the wife is getting more and more upset.  And when Victoria says she’s never met anyone with “instincts with a dog are so wrong”, Jodi gives him a see I told you so look that would make every husband cringe.

Step one for training is keeping Harley off of the carpeted areas of the house so he isn’t comfortable relieving himself in the house.

Victoria works on the overpowering greeting that typically greets the family at the door, by waiting him out and only rewarding as Harley backs away from the door.

It’s amazing that she has to deal with this, but the husband wouldn’t bother to fill up the water bowls and lazily encourages the dogs to drink out of the toilet instead. It’s a simple solution here .. train the husband to fill the bowls.

For the marketers in the group, Animal Planet has sold a nice ad package to Volkswagen called “Behind the Breed”. Each episode there is a question about that particular show’s breed with prominent branding for VW.

They’ve got to get away from the unbranded laptop fake video shots though .. It’s so stupid looking that it’s distracting.  Victoria should just view a video screen.

The owners have done a good job of implementing the training that Victoria provided for them.  Harley has really changed his ways, and even the depressed Abby has decided that he’s fun to be around and has started to respond properly.

This is a Great Dane after all.

She’s come thousands of miles from England to save American families from their unruly dogs, one owner at a time …. That’s right, it’s Victoria Stillwell!

In this episode called Triplets of Terror, Samson the three year old boxer is causing mayhem in the family of episode two.  The family owns two other dogs, Delia the BIG beagle and Iggy the Italian Greyhound.

Apparently Delia has been eating because of the stress of having Samson around the house, and nice little Iggy is showing the signs of battling for alpha dog supremacy.

Are these people it Atlanta too? … Oh, sure enough, Dekalb County Dog park!

Victoria tells the mom that Delia is the fattest beagle she has ever seen in her whole life, “and I’ve seen some fat beagles!”

She’s no fan of electric fences.  Apparently they can cause heart and lung issues, seizures, emotional issues … and for the most part they aren’t completely successful in keeping dogs in the yard.

Grandpa Kal comes back to the house after already stating that it’s He or the Dog! .. Funny, he’s wearing the same clothes LOL.

Great moment at the Dog Park when the owner is trying to tell Victoria that Delia doesn’t have very much self esteem because of how fat she is .. “I don’t think she knows she’s fat per se, but I think people make fun of her” .. Victoria gives her a great sideways glance.

Victoria introduces a special walking harness that discourages the boxer Samson from lunging during a walk by slightly lifting his front legs whenever he starts to pull away.

As a side project they decide to weigh Delia and find out that she is pushing 50 lbs., instead of the normal 20 – 30 pounds for a beagle.

The exercise of these pets becomes a major component of the training that Victoria is demonstrating, and takes them all to a pool! .. “Let’s go swimming!” Ava the Aqua Therapist comes to be the personal trainer for the dogs once a week. What no Victoria in the pool? Come on .. throw us a bone here.

For whatever reason, Victoria loves putting cutouts on each owner’s refrigerators .. she did it in the first episode too.  We’ve got pictures of the dogs, the mom, the daughter, mom’s dad and even some kind of scales of justice thing trying to demonstrate a point.  Jeez.

Que the fake video of the family on Victoria’s laptop computer again … and she comes up with a good idea to get Samson his exercise by taking him to a tennis court where he can run around without getting over the fence!

Well, well, well … here we are with our old dear friend Victoria Stilwell, world renowned dog trainer!  You may remember her from the fabulous Season One of The Greatest American Dog. It was reality TV programming at it’s best with a house full of dogs and owners competing to win the coveted title.

Victoria and her judging companions Wendy Diamond and David Reznik were the weekly authorities overseeing the Best in Show Challenges.

Now we have Victoria starring in her very own show on the Animal Planet called It’s Me or the Dog in which she performs acts of heroism similar to the well know Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan.

In the season premiere called The Prince of Chaos we meet Prince, an eleven month old Neapolitan Mastiff who is ripping the house apart, drives away the kids friends and loves to hump any leg that moves.  Mom really thinks he’s the cat’s meow and wants to breed him.

Victoria cruises in looking hot in her black Corvette to get Prince in line, and fires off the best line to get the season started – “It’s a ninety pound humping dog, and soon it’s going to be a 150 or 180 pound humping dog!”

She feigns shock and horror at the destruction that Prince has caused when left out on the porch of the house .. which is nothing more than any other puppy would have done.  The problem is that he is a very large puppy.

When Angela the dog owner has to leave the house she has been putting Prince in a crate.  Victoria asks to see the process, which is a laughingly hilarious wrestling match.

Oh .. Victoria comes down hard on Angela’s plans to breed Prince with the drippingly sarcastic statement, “Right, Great, so you are going to contribute to the pet overpopulation problem in the United States” .. staring Angela down with her piercing pretty brown eyes.

A nice training that she demonstrated was the use of better / warm food to make Prince eat better and get over his anxiety about eating alone.  Warming the food releases the scents of the food and made him much more willing to devour the entire meal.
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Here we are … our three finalists

We know we are going to have the final showdowns, plus the classic reality show tactic of the cast reunion!

Oh Yeah . by the way I don’t think i’ve ever mentioned that the prize is $250,000.

In a finals format, there will be two best in show challenges with the judges doing an interview and requesting some impromptu tasks.

At this point before I’ve watched the episode, I am going to put my guess that Laurie and Andrew

are going to win this competition.  I think that Travis & Presley

are just too inexperienced to demonstrate the abilities that the other two dogs can, and we’ve seen all along that JD and Galaxy

are awesome, but the judges aren’t too thrilled with JD’s style.

So, here we go!

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Twelve down .. Four to Go!

The show opens with a recap of the fact that Galaxy has pulled up lame after flying off the giant scaffolding in the bravery challenge. This would be a very unfortunate way for the competition to end for the team, if Galaxy’s injury has to prevent her from finishing the competition … because they are clearly on their way to the finals and could possibly end up The Greatest American Dog!

Do Dogs have nationalities?  Would you consider a US born German Shepherd to be American of German heritage?  I digress …..

Fortunately, after a night’s rest and a visit to the veterinarian for some x-rays, she is looking fine!

Today’s Dog Bone Challenge is a lineup of owners standing on tree stumps on one side, and the dogs sitting on stumps across the way.  The challenge is for each dog to remain standing or sitting on the stump without lying down or getting off.  Last dog remaining wins.

It demonstrates a pointed difference in styles in the dog owners….. while all the others are hand gesturing and speaking commands to their dogs, Laurie tells Andrew one time to sit and stay and then just folds her arms and looks at him.  Good training that seems to work, right up until the point when he decides to lye down!!!

Next out is Galaxy who lays down, but we’ll give her a break as she might be still needing recovery time from the trauma of her injury.

As it nears the 20 minutes of standing mark, Travis decides that it’s no longer fun for Presley and tries to convince Teresa that they should both quit and share in the goodness of the leg up.  However, after failing to convince her Travis simply calls it quits and Teresa has won the challenge.

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