Dogs’ Dogs

14/10/2024

28/09/2024

From a vet.

Having been a veterinarian for almost 3 decades, I have seen the tide of how animals are treated change drastically. When I graduated dogs were dogs, now dogs are considered to be higher ranking than people. In our crazy world, people love their dogs more than they love their own families and they treat their dogs better than they treat other humans and I am sorry to say that we are destroying our dogs mental health because of it.

It is increasingly common to go into an exam room and have a dog that is growling at me and trying to bite and the owner is petting it telling it that it is a good dog. It is NOT being a good dog and it should not be rewarded for growling and trying to bite. It is important that we train our dogs properly and we use right language with them. Never is it ok for a dog to growl and try and bite in an exam room where nothing horrible is happening to them and feeding into that behavior does not make it better for your dog, it trains them that their fear is a good thing and it is not.

Mental disorders are exponentially increasing in our dogs and it is us owners fault. Please stop treating your dog like it is some fragile child and start treating it like it is a dog. TRAIN them and teach them commands and correct them when they are wrong and stop thinking you are going to hurt their feelings if you do. Dogs are dogs, not small humans. They need training and proper instructions or it leads to horrible anxiety issues in them and I can assure that that behavior is going to hurt your feelings way more than being an adult and training your dog to be a good dog instead of a spoiled child.

The following are a few copied excerpts from an article that I read this morning from a dog trainer. I feel like there are a good reminder for all of us on exactly what are dogs are and what they need.

"Your dog is a dog, not a human child. Constant unearned affection is a killer and creates an unhealthy addiction for both dog and owner. Your dog will love you unconditionally but will never respect you unless you give it reason to.

The most basic of basics, your dog must learn how to be still in any situation. If your dog can’t be still around any distraction, you will never have control.
Recall
Sit
Down
Walk nicely on leash
Out, meaning release anything in your mouth

You MUST have a language dedicated to your dog that your dog can learn by you being consistent and applying meaning to the words you use. Your dog MUST know what yes means, but also MUST know what NO means. If nothing comes after those words, yes equals reward for good, no equals correction for bad, your dog will never give meaning to either. Your dog’s name is not a command, or correction. NO should not be your dog’s middle name.

The training starts the second you bring the dog home."

11/09/2024

Controversy surrounds the efficacy and welfare implications of different forms of dog training with several studies asserting that electronic shock collars have negative welfare impacts while not being more effective than non-aversive methods. However, these studies did not specify the schedule and....

28/06/2024

There isn't a day that goes by where someone isn't making a comment somewhere on the internet about dog collars. What should be used, what shouldn't be used, why one is better than the other, etcetera.

You would think that one's proximity to heaven is hinged on one's beliefs about collars. I find it pretty odd that the folks condemning a particular collar's use do so not out of any real experience, but by clinging to the mantras of a loud but incredibly ignorant sect of folks who have repeated the shibboleths so many times, they lost the courage to discover the truth for themselves.

A collar is a tool, just like a leash, a crate, a dog bowl, or any other device we use. The collar itself isn't really the problem. The perception of the collar as 'cruel' or 'inhumane' is.

There isn't a device out there I haven't used. There are some I prefer, and even of those, some I use only occasionally. I am thankful I have them in my arsenal of tools.

My selection process starts with using the most 'basic' tool and judge from there. Decisions are always based on the animal in front of me, the goal, and the conditions under which the dog will be expected to perform when handled by someone not *me*.

This becomes an important distinction. Especially when the owner is a tiny woman or senior who happens to own a young dog that promises to achieve a certain size or a large dog that has grown up thinking it was the Emperor of the Universe.

I work with people of all ages and abilities, and what becomes exceedingly apparent is the necessity of helping them (the owners, not the internet experts) effectively control their dogs with maximum efficiency and authority.

I am not above putting a Starmark collar on an enthusiastic puppy or a micro-prong on a toy dog. I will counsel an owner to consider an e-collar for quite a few different scenarios, especially if there are dexterity and ambulation issues.

The tool itself isn't the problem. If people would smarten up, start their dogs' training earlier, and not wait for undesirable behaviors to emerge and strengthen, we wouldn't have half the tools we currently have. I wouldn't spend a ton of time Frankensteining a couple collars and cludging together something for a specific client to help them with application and control.

Many folks disregard the *owner's* need, fixating only on their misguided interpretation that a given device is 'cruel' when in fact, the vast majority of collars were originally designed to make training ~less~ confrontational.

Humans' misuse doesn't make the device less effective, regardless of how it's design is interpreted by folks who can only see the forest, and not the variety of trees within it.

The human equation is the unknown quantity, with their petulance and infantile lack of emotional control, and their dimwitted willingness to blame the dog's 'stubbornness' instead of their own ham-handed insistence that the dog perform to some exceedingly lofty expectation after a repetition or two of any given exercise.

Humans are the ones that made that dog that way. They continually justify their smug superiority with unreasonable physical handicaps and call it preservation breeding. They pursue unnatural aesthetics while disregarding temperament and trainability (both influenced genetically, regardless of what pseudo-science is saying), and leave the mystified owner in a cesspool of nonsense and conflict.

They have no place to turn. The information they find is contradictory and full of half-witted nonsense that leaves them confused and uncertain.

Owners are blamed for their dog's behavior, but aren't offered solutions that would remediate that issue clearly, quickly, and without fallout. They are made to feel shame for their choices, when all they wanted to do was get help.

Cruelty is everywhere. The human that chooses to kick, beat or slam a dog against a concrete floor didn't use a tool. He used his arms, hands, and feet. The girl that bludgeoned several dogs to death didn't do it with a collar. She did it with a blunt instrument.

Having the latitude to help people is the grand design of every tool known to man; to facilitate convenience, or to create additional control without having to expend additional effort.

Any of us over a certain age should remember what it was like driving some tank of a car without power steering and power brakes. Many of us recall the 'mom arm' because shoulder restraint sat belts hadn't been invented yet.

Every thing out there is a derivative of some other thing, and dog training tools are no exception. Some form of slip-type training collar has existed since Xenophon or before. Prong or pinch type collars have existed for over a hundred years, and electronics have been around since the 50's

Tools are and can be innovative. They are a gift that helps us communicate with our dogs in a succinct and graceful way. Learning about them requires more than an opinion on social media.

I deplore intellectual laziness as much as I deplore cruelty. Tools aren't the enemy. Ignorance is.

27/06/2024

21/06/2024

Let's talk about this photo. It's cute, except it's not. I see a dog who cannot get up without telling the child to get off. How do you think a dog is going to do that?

The 7 Golden Toddler Dog Rules:
#1: If a dog walks away from you, you DO NOT FOLLOW.
#2: Always leave room for the dog to walk away from you.
---that right there is 90+% of dog bites eliminated---
#3: We do not climb on the dog.
#4: We do not grab or pull on the dog.
#5: We do not hit or throw anything at the dog.
#6: We do not touch the dog's food.
#7: We do not go into the dog's kennel.

I promise these are not overly difficult concepts for littles, nor will they rob a kid of their bond with the family dog. It will deepen that bond, while keeping everyone safe.

"Oh, it looks like Moose is walking away from you. She is saying she wants a break. Let's play with this instead!"

"It's Moose's dinner time! Let's give her space to enjoy her yummies."

"That is Moose's room(kennel) and only she is allowed to go in there."

"If Moose wanted a break, could she walk away from you right now? No she really couldn't. Let's move away from the play house. You can keep playing but now she can leave when she wants a break."

In conclusion, ***parent your child or your dog will do it for you, and you will not like how they do it.***

29/05/2024

Angus.

29/05/2024

Baku.

21/05/2024

Angus with Mac and Chunk.

13/05/2024

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT KAREN PRYOR,
THE QUEEN OF CLICKER TRAINING

Karen Pryor, the author of “Don’t Shoot the Dog,” and the queen of clicker training, kept her own much-loved Border Terrier behind an Invisible Fence with a powerfully aversive electronic collar that delivered several thousand volts if the dog tried to cross a buried wire.

Did punishment make her dog aggressive?

It did not.

Did punishment make her dog fearful?

It did not.

Did punishment ruin her relationship with the dog?

It did not.

And did punishment work to keep her dog in the yard?

Yep. Like new money.

Did Ms. Pryor need to know WHY her dog wanted to leave the yard?

Nope. She just needed to provide persuasive and consistent punishment when it did — and an electonic fence collar did that, and does that.

And so we get to the bottom line: Punishment and only punishment will stop a powerfully self-rewarding unwanted behavior.

A tug on a web collar is punishment, same as a tap on an e-collar.

If you do not know what punishment means — or how to apply it in the context of dog training — then you need to go read up on that.

Punishment is not torture, nor is it ongoing, nor does it create a massive amount of psychological damage to the dog, nor does it always need to be powerful. Electric and electronic fences do not torture the dog or the cow — they provided perfectly timed negative consequences and the “no go” lesson is quickly learned.

You do not need to know WHY the dog is doing the unwanted behavior.

The Invisible Fence does not care if the dog is chasing a deer or a squirrel.

It does not matter if the dog is interested in the bitch in heat seven yards over, or if they hear a yowling cat on the neighbor's porch.

The Invisible Fence does not care if the dog is bored or excited, curious or enraged.

The Invisible Fence does not care because correcting unwanted self-rewarding behavior is not about psychology; it's about sending a clear, consistent, and insistent NO signal. And, in a well trained dog, that signal can be fairly subtle and slight.

If you are talking to a dog trainer that does not understand this one basic thing, go elsewhere, because it's a simple and provable fact that you cannot keep a dog inside a small yard with cookies alone.

Karen Pryor knew.

What did Karen Pryor NOT know?

Believe it or not, she did not know how to walk her Border Terrier off-leash in the woods.

Cookies and a clicker, it seems, were no match for the prey drive of a 15-pound working terrier.

—————-

For Karen Pryor, in her own words, see >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2017/04/terrier-training-that-works.html

14/04/2024

10/04/2024

Kara facing some Level 100 challenges.

07/04/2024

Maverick is home!

His owner was unexpectedly hospitalized about a month ago. Now that she’s on the mend, it was time to bring this guy home, too! The biggest change is that things need to be easy and slow for his owner during recovery.

Teaching Maverick how to walk next to the walker safely is our top priority. He’s picking it up very quickly and is going to be a great help in his owner’s return to health!

01/04/2024

Find the way your dog wants to use its mouth and shape that into how you play with them.

30/03/2024

Gee, what a surprise.

Over the years since electronic training collars first appeared they have been refined to be effective and more humane. While the technology and learning about how to use it has come a long way, misconceptions based on the old unrefined devices have persisted and are used to condemn them. Recent clinical studies offer conclusive evidence that the proper use of modem electronic training devices does not lead to adverse physiological effects on dogs.
https://sitmeanssit.com/article21/