11/28/2025
•Obedience Goes Overboard•
I have clients ask all the time “Is it really that serious?” And my response is normally something along the lines of “well it can be, just depends upon the situation”.
There are so many reasons why to put your dog through obedience training. We want to fulfill our dogs natural drive and we want create a more safe well rounded dog.
Yesterday my husband and I set out to go duck hunting. Upon loading the boat with guns, decoys, and the dog, I gave gritty a small mat at the back of the boat and told him to “place”. This was only Gritty’s second time in the boat but as you can imagine it’s fairly important for the dog the not run around while we are driving in the dark with hunting equipment on board. Once we arrived at the blind my husband stepped to the front of the boat to unlock our blind. Now imagine it’s pitch black at 5am, it’s barely 40 degrees outside, we have a steady wind, the floating blind is moving, the boat is moving, and my husband is leaning over the edge of the boat to fiddle with the lock. SPLASH, in goes my husband, fully dressed in boots that have instantly filled with water and insulated bibs that are now drenched and weighing him down. I rush to the front of the boat to grab him and together we somehow manage to pull him back in the boat.
Can you imagine how much harder this could have been if my dog had panicked? Running around the boat and possibly knocking me in the water or worse jumping in the water after my husband?
So yes, obedience is important and it is that serious when the occasion for it arises.
