Helping fearful dogs
We are familiar with the experience of living with an aging creature and being caught by surprise when we realize how much they have changed before our eyes. This routinely happens to me when I look in the mirror, "When the heck did THAT happen?!"Â The same thing can happen with our fearful dogs. Their progress can be so slow that it's difficult to notice until ...
Recently I added a scanner to the array of equipment cluttering my desk. I am working on a project for the family which includes scanning old photos. It's been fun to look at the images of the dogs I've lived with, and will continue to enjoy subjecting my Facebook friends to them. Memories of each dog include a lightbulb moment or two when I learned ...
It stands to reason that if we have not ever lived with a seriously scared dog that we would not have developed the skills to work effectively with them. Even if we've assisted other people living with a dog like this, there's nothing quite like 24/7 to put our feet to the fire. I regularly speak with people embarked on the bumpy journey to change ...
Stop in for a visit to any one of the thousands of forums or groups devoted to dog training and behavior and you're likely to bump into a discussion about whether or not it's acceptable to punish dogs during training. There will be both reasonable and unreasonable comments from either side of the table. Punishment is a very effective consequence to apply in order to ...
Childhood milestones in my life could be measured by learning how to swim. There are grainy, black and white home movies showing me leaping up, wiping the hair out of my eyes after demonstrating the newly gained skill of putting my face in the water at our lakeside cottage. I remember learning the "deadman's float" and pretending to swim in the shallow water, my hands ...
In order to simplify training for pet owners, and to incorporate training into daily life, eliminating the need to set aside a specific time for it many trainers recommend the Nothing In Life is Free protocol (NILF)*. It has its merits, though an unfortunate name. Tagging along with the technique is a fuzzy notion of "we're in charge here and the sooner you figure that ...
Imagine creating a website where pet owners could commiserate about their sick dogs. They could post pictures of their dogs to share with others who were also dealing with life with a sick dog. Now imagine that people were also sharing advice about illness in dogs (you don't have to imagine it, just go online) and someone posted in response to an image with the ...
Along with the most recent shipment of dog supplies was a flyer for a new service for pet owners. A website has been created as a portal to connect pet owners in need of overnight care for their dogs, with people who would provide the service in their home. No doubt there are people who have been happily connected with a caregiver for their dog. ...
One of the often misused techniques for getting new behaviors from fearful dogs is luring. And the most often used lure is food. Besides being unfair, it can backfire, big time.The unfair part of it is that dogs need to eat. It's one thing to bait a trap to catch a dog and count on the dog's hunger to be motivating enough to get them ...
I stood in front of the copy machine, not so silently cursing the manufacturer, the store where I purchased it, and the salesman who recommended it. The darn thing wasn't working. I pressed the number of copies button, hit the start button and nothing. It didn't work and if that wasn't bad enough, after setting it up I was going to have to pack it ...
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