02/25/2023
"Medicate & Neuter/Spay your Dog" 🙄
I get several owners a year who come in who just lack direction and confidence with their training.
The previous trainers before myself tell them to medicate (for life) and to spay/neuter their dog. It's very rare that I will agree to medicating a dog for behavioural issues. But I, in certain situations, will be for the idea, but only in the beginning! Only to get the dog to focus (these are the severe cases when all else has failed) to get that initial training to start then wean them off and continue on with consistent training.
Sometimes I’m disgusted with this industry, so called trainers, failing dogs in the name of Force Free Training and I hate to bash on training styles I do, but this is becoming more and more.
99% of the time the dog doesnt need neutering.... it surely doesnt need medication!
Can you imagine getting a trainer and paying a trainer just to be told this !! To be told that you need to alter or medicate your dog because they refuse to teach the dog how to cope with stress or certain situations.
The training mantra was Avoid, Walk at unsociable hours and ignore the bad behaviour and reward the good.
Almost always the dogs that come have the same "problem".
It’s dog reactive, it stems from fear, add the owners fear or lack of knowledge and the dog is so much worse.
Now if we actually teach both the dog and owner how to handle the REAL WORLD where it’s impossible to avoid triggers constantly, if we teach them how to handle this stress, how to communicate with the dog, how to lead by example, the dog can and will walk past dogs no issues whatsoever.
Dog training isn’t about avoiding triggers, that’s insane, it’s not always about working under thr threshold, that’s not realistic, you can’t control people, dogs, cats, squirrels, joggers, bikes, weather, so you learn how to deal with this.
If I had a headache every day and took paracetamol, the headache might stop, however it’s only masking an underlying issue, getting to the bottom of that issue is the right thing to do, not blanket it, with medication.
