Happy Pups make Happy Dogs. Great attention given to each pup to prepare them for their forever homes
01/26/2025
I had a conversation last night about "being nice" to the dog.
I'm still kind of at a loss over what that's supposed to mean, so I just merely started asking questions.
Some people see the tools involved and just think that there is no way that they can actually benefit the dog because of how they feel about the item...
I even passed off Ghost's e-coller hit the button multiple times asked if they could feel that...
They said "no", and I replied, "well he can, how do you think he knows how to understand what it means?"
Ghost's normal operation level outside is a 6.
He was set up with a 2.25 prong which most people would look at scale wise and assume that it's "nicer" than one of the bigger ones, but the 2.25 is far more sensitive.
He was desensitized to prong pressure when I originally met him...
Now 90% of the time he's prong free, e-collar is on as a safety as he's off lead 90% of the time now with just about anything we do...
His crate time has increased and been slow going because of the amount of anxiety he carries.
Personally I put more time in helping him settle outside the crate over inside to begin with, but he's building on that more and more...
I'm not making Ghost into what he's not with these things, I'm bringing out the true reality of who he is.
In the two years that I've known this dog, we've had an exchange of information in learning what we mean to eachother.
He's my partner.
This means we do things to the best of our ability to help eachother grow.
Both of my dogs are in public view, nearly daily.
I show as much work as possible on what goes into my dogs.
I even don't mind showing and acknowledging handler errors when they are there.
We constantly have stuff that we're working on.
In two years with Ghost, most people think he and I have been at this longer than we have.
In the 6 months I've known Mae, we flipped her life upside down.
Life is always changing.
There is always work to be done, adjustments to be made.
Nicole and I offer the best we have to these two on a daily basis because that's what they deserve.
So, if that's hard for some to understand, that's ok.
You can make all the assumptions you want, but the dogs don't lie.
People do...
And a lot of us are really good at lying to ourselves...
I'm always willing to talk about my dogs, what we've done, what we're doing, why we are doing it and what we're looking to accomplish.
Sometimes I do ask for help so I can learn and be better...
But if you don't have any depth to your answers beyond the surface of what you think about it, then you really shouldn't be assuming someone else is wrong.
It's ok to disagree, but if you don't know, you don't know...
