Sit. Stay. Good Peep.
September 26, 2006 at 8:24 am
· Filed under
Parenting
Learning How to Be a Dog Owner
Owning Joey Jojo Jr. Shabadoo did a very good job of highlighting what is good about my dog ownership, and what is bad. A large portions of the difficulites we had with Joe were my personal deep non-understanding of what it takes to parent a dog.
One of the restraints I gave myself if I was going to get a new and younger dog was that he would have to have obedience training. Properly. No more pulling on the leash. No more pretending I didn’t exist. I was going to have a properly trained pooch.
We’ve had two training sessions so far and I have to say that I would have done this a lot sooner if I’d known how much fun it would be!
First of all, prior to training an awful lot of our day was spent with negative or semi-negative encounters. “Bruno, get down!” “Bruno, no teeth!” “Bruno, no barking!”. Quite a bit of our day is still spent telling Bruno not to do stuff because he’s a teenage dog and likes to bark and dig and chew, but now that’s balanced with the greater portion of our encounters being good.
Bruno has learned a trick called, “touch”. He touches my hand with his nose and gets a treat. It sounds very simple, but because it’s a quick, active way for him to get something he likes it’s remarkably useful for getting his attention away from something and back on me.
Along with “touch” is “leave it”. We use that for when Bruno is getting all hepped up and barky and pulling at the lead. For example, if he sees another dog.
“Leave it, Bruno”
“Yes” (treat)
“Touch”
“Yes” (treat)
“Touch”
“Yes” (treat)
Voila! He’s back to looking at me and not focused on ripping my arm off to get at the other dog.
So we have “leave it”, “touch”, ”sit”, ”watch me”, and “stay” so far. Bruno is the class troublemaker, as befits his Poopyhands family rep, but is coming quickly along despite his habit of refusing to follow any and all instructions after 50 minutes of class, with all the other good doggies still attentive and sit-staying. He’s a husky. Huskies will do things within reason. WITHIN REASON, MOM.
However, the largest part of the training is training the owner. That’s right, I walked in all thinking that that dog would be taught how to behave, and instead they very kindly keep pointing out how I’m a totally crap boss.
It turns out that when they’re working on obeying, dogs don’t like being touched. The teachers likened it to someone massaging you while you try and balance the checkbook. They want to concentrate. Petting is for another time.
Being calm and still encourages calmness and stillness in your dog. WHO KNEW? These crazy people with there modern whacked-out ideas.
The dog should be told what to do, then told a quiet but nice “yes” when they do it, then given a treat. No jumping up and down or screaming with glee.
Also, the dog should be given a treat every time it does something that is not inherantly doggified. Dogs do not automatically sit when meeting new dogs. If he sits then that is anti-dog behavior, he gets a treat for it. Dogs do not turn away from where they are going in order to look at you, so if your dog will tear his attention away from the pee-mail and attend to you, he gets a treat.
I can’t even tell you the change this has brought about in our walks. Bruno can now be relied upon to look away from a strange dog and meet my eyes to wait for instruction. He now sits happily at every corner. Most importantly, as I said, our contacts now are full of instances where I tell him to do something, he does it, and he gets praise and tasty things to eat. It’s totally win-win.
We’re both very happy and doing well at school, thank you. If you have a dog I would advise you to do the same. Yes, it’s effective at controlling your animal, but it’s also effective at controlling your expectations. Not to mention, FUN!
Go. Do.
KP
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