Many people seek training because they have a particular goal in mind, which is excellent! However, it's important to understand that every goal requires small steps to become a reality.
I don't know how many times I've tried to get others to understand that what they have in front of them is a DOG and that they have to see the dog that is THERE not some ideal. Dogs can and do amazing things. They do these things whether humans are involved are not. If you harness the naturalness of the dog, show them how to use that to live in a human world, then you have "man's best friend".
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Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving & understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other.
Louis J Camuti
Think about exercise as a method of handling the symptoms of stress like a human alcoholic. The normal methods of relieving stress, built by centuries and eons of evolution, are denied you, so you drink to escape. You get drunk and feel as though you can at least cope. The muscles relax, a filter is placed in front of your eyes and your mind and your stress is shoved to the hindend of awareness. Eventually you are not affected by the alcohol and the hindend is shoved to the forefront. Eventually it takes more and more alcohol to create the filter of perception and less and less time between drinks as the body and the mind develop a tolerance.
This same things happens to a dog who is being forced to exercise to handle behavior issues. As the days go by, the body gets stronger, the heart beats easier and the lungs learn to process oxygen more efficiently. The recovery time after exercise is lessoned and the issues resurface. More and more exercise is used as a means of solving this problem. But the dog only turns into an Olympic athlete capable of running all day if necessary and turning on the first dog it spies and now more capable of chasing the neighbors cat and catching it.
Exercise is needed, don't get me wrong, but it is not the solution to bbehavior issues. I think, also, that most of us would agree that exercise without an immediate purpose, without a tangible goal is boring and pointless. Wolves and wild dogs don't exercise just for the sake of exercise, they play to hone skills and create the muscles, flexibility and speed necessary to hunt - to survive. Why not use what dogs and other related canids use to handle stress.
Reason To Train #6
Training your dog in how to live in your world, an alien world to a dog, prevents abuse, frustration, punishment and sadness in both you and your dog.
"I cannot argue with people who believe it is right to dominate others (including non-human animals) as, even though I can illustrate how dominating others does not lead to harmony, I can’t make anyone choose harm...ony or define it in a particular way. I cannot argue with people who think it acceptable to hurt others in order to achieve their goals because such means are inadmissible to me. I cannot argue with people who deny or affirm a particular matter of fact as a means of justifying their moral conduct, because my mind rejects invalid, unsound arguments. With time, the rational principles that govern my mind and the moral principles that regulate my conduct may prove to be the fittest. Meanwhile, as a result of genetic pre-programming, social conditioning and evolutionary biology, I do enjoy being kind to other animals, respecting them for what they are and interacting with them on equal terms; I don’t believe it is right to subjugate them to my will, to command them, to change them; and I don’t need a rational justification as to why that’s right for me*."
Roger Abrantes
Reason to train #5
Training a dog teaches a human how to organize and plan.
Do you know where to start in your dog’s training? Do you have a flexible training plan or are you surfing YouTube for videos on how to and hoping you can get it right? Do you ask questions of people on social media who may be only a step or two more knowledgeable than you, hoping to find answers?
Is the advice you are getting confusing or wildly different between those giving it? Would you just love to see a list of things you need to train your dog to do? But whose list is right or will actually fit your situation?
What you need is someone who can see the pitfalls coming that you don't, who can answer questions you don't even know you have and can help problem-solve when challenges come up. Someone who has been where you are.
Hello everyone. I know I haven't been active on this or my other pages much. But hopefully that is going to change shortly.
For those of you who live anywhere near New Port Richey, FL, for the next few months I'm going to be developing a new training program that has never been tried, or if it has, only very locally elsewhere.
In the last 3 years, crime has been rising, inflation is staggering, gas prices were crazy, food has gotten more expensive, and many have turned to crime to just make ends meet. But we are all in this boat and would like to protect ourselves and our homes somehow. In just one article I read recently, some guy, probably doesn't even have a record, stopped in the street, ran up onto the driveway of a disabled person trying to get her groceries out of her car, grabbed her purse dragging her halfway across her lawn before she finally let go of the purse.
This type of activity got me thinking. I've trained protection dogs in the past, in the generally accepted ways with the breeds that are recommended. But just about any breed can be effective in its own way. Even a Shih Tzu can bark up a storm, run at a dangerous person, basically warning their human of impending danger.
Many people already have a dog (or 2 or 3 :) ). Probably not a recommended protection breed, but most likely capable of some type of effective action.
So, like I did for the Snake Avoidance Without Shock program, I would like some beta testers to see what works (and what doesn't) in training a dog to 1) warn of danger and/or 2) take effective action ON CUE in a dangerous situation.
This would be a group class meeting once a week for $5 per session.
If you are interested, please PM me.
Teaching dogs to think for themselves reduces stress and eliminates force from dog training. When you teach your dog how to solves problems rather then become the problem you create dogs of higher intelligence and better temperament.
Service Dogs can be dogs apart from the rest of the species due to their focus on their jobs. I get questions all the time about whether service dogs can be played with, by their partners family members and even sometimes if playing at all is good for a service dog.
Service Dogs are at the bottom, just dogs. Dogs with jobs and enhanced training for those jobs. But they are still dogs. They have needs that any dog has.
So I created a group just for Service Dogs and how to keep them happy, healthy and enriched !
https://www.facebook.com/groups/449865886339735
