It has been over a decade since my fearful dog Sunny came to live with us from a rescue camp set up to help care for the animals impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I met him at Camp Katrina where I went to volunteer several weeks after the hurricanes hit. As much as I thought I knew about dogs and dog behavior, training and ...
Sometimes we have to do something because it needs to be done. If we grab someone about to fall off a cliff we can worry about having to apologize later for having touched them without their permission. But we need to be careful not to use the excuse that needing to get something done absolves us from understanding what it is we are doing. If ever ...
Photo courtesy of Olathe Animal Hospital If you happen to be privy to the chatter that goes on between dog trainers, what I am going to say will not be new to you. Daily, dog trainers are contacted to help an owner with a dog, a normal, healthy, fully functioning dog, whose behavior has become untenable or even dangerous. Sometimes we're contacted within ...
Dogs who grow up in a home have dozens of opportunities a day to approach people and be reinforced for it. This means it's a good thing from the pup's perspective. They might get a treat, a cuddle, a scratch or the chance to tug on your shoelaces. Dogs, like my dog Sunny who spend their first months or years kenneled with little positive human ...
Nothing to worry about here! When we are training our fearful dogs we are facilitating a change in how they respond to events or objects (including us and other animals) they are exposed to. There is likely an endless array of ways we can come up with to do this, but ultimately what we are doing is making the scary stuff either neutral ...
I heard an interesting piece on NPR's This American Life radio show. The topic was institutionalized, racial segregation in housing in America. During the 1960's when people protested, often violently, against this practice a comment made by then President Nixon went something like this, if the demands were met (end policies that perpetuated segregation in housing) the protesters would be rewarded for protesting or rioting, ...
At my first appointment with a new dentist after I moved to Vermont I asked if he'd like me to have my charts sent from my previous dentist. His reply was, "I don't need them, I have your mouth." Everything he needed to know about my teeth was in front of him. When we begin to work with fearful dogs it's not uncommon for us ...
Giving My Dog A Life Please feel free to "like" my latest Facebook page and post your own pictures of the good life you give your dogs. Let's stop shaming dogs and give them a life!
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 ...
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