Odie came to me on an odd day, one of those rainy, grey days, when the only thing you want to do is stay at home, listen to good music, watch the fire roaring in the fireplace, hold a hot cup of punch in your hands and feel sorry for yourself. Odie, an ugly duckling of a Pekinese, was awaiting ...
We don’t have a pack of dogs – we have a patchwork.
For me there is no such thing as ‘What breed?’ – partly because it takes so long for me to describe the various mixes we own, but also it makes me feel uncomfortable.
By talking about breed, I am somehow defining our dogs in a way I ...
This is the second installment for this series Filming Fido.
I am not a professional photographer or have any legitimate experience with filming or making films. In fact I know so little about it from an actual schooling or practical stand point that I should not even be allowed to write about it. ...
One of the barriers to improving the welfare of animals in shelters is a lack of resources. This can mean a lack of volunteers, staff, funds or space. For every idea that a shelter has for improving their program there is a list of required resources to make it happen.
Often, this is ...
With graduations and wedding season approaching no matter if it is family, friends or perhaps new folks coming in for a visit from out of town; when you have a party or a holiday event and a big dog that may be challenging you need a plan to reduce stress! Even friendly dogs can cause stress by ...
A "Muzzle grab" (as shown in this photo of Marco de Kloet) is a common behavior shown by social canines, e.g. wolves (Canis lupus lupus), dingoes (Canis lupus dingo), and dogs (Canis lupus familiaris).
So, my last blog upset a few people who thought my description of many shelter dogs as ill-mannered and untrained was derogatory and unfair. I found it very sad that these people felt such simple truths were so damning. Personally, I think the dog-adopting public is much more ...
When you live day to day with young children, especially a child with special needs, just getting through the day can often be daunting. Unless you are especially good at paying attention or you've instituted specific (usually with professional help) interventions, recognizing significant ...
We’re sometimes known as bossy
Yet never need a posse
To help a dog be understood
What we do is find the good
And go from there to depths explore
All about the canine core
Nature, nurture and ...
Start out ahead by searching for a puppy that has been raised with errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training programs underway, that has been safely socialized with and handled by at least a hundred people and has been taught some basic manners.
Breeders, Veterinarians and Pet Stores are the first point of contact with puppies and any successful puppy raising program depends on you. Please do your best to ensure that puppy owners contact trainers as early as possible to prevent them from going to shelters.
Puppies must be safely socialized to people and taught to enjoy being hugged and handled (restrained and examined) before they are three months old, otherwise, during adolescence they will likely become wary and fearful and maybe aggressive towards people. Socialization is an ongoing process and must start very early and is on ongoing process.
Puppies need to be raised with housetraining, chewtoy-training and alone-time-training programs up and running from the outset in order to prevent housesoiling, destructive chewing, excessive barking and separation anxiety.
Puppies benefit from early manners training — lure/reward training is as quick and easy as it is enjoyable.
SIRIUS® Dog Training has lead the pack since 1982, when Dr. Ian Dunbar redefined dog training with the world’s first off-leash puppy socialization and training classes. Shortly thereafter, the critically acclaimed, SIRIUS Puppy Training video set the standard for positive lure-reward, dog-friendly dog training. However, the classic SIRIUS video was created to teach people how to train their puppies, not to demonstrate the action and energy of a real puppy training class.
Now, for the first time, the new SIRIUS Redux DVD shows what a puppy training class should look like: puppies playing off leash with owners on their feet training their pups for nearly the entire time. Both the original SIRIUS Puppy Training Classic and the new SIRIUSRedux DVD are available now as downloads from our Digital Storefront or as DVDs from James & Kenneth.
Pairs of dogs race against each other and the winning dogs go through to the next round. Each dogs is held at the Start Line by a steward who releases the dog as soon as the judge says, “Ready, steady go!” The first dog to sit across the Finish Line wins and goes through to the Second Round. Dogs are disqualified if they leave their racing lane. Winning dogs from the Second Round go through to the Quarter Finals. Eventually, two dogs compete in the Final to determine who is the fastest dog of the competition. Training Tips
In Week 6, the last class of Puppy 1, the owners test their pups for stays in all three basic body positions, they review the Take It & Leave It game and see what an advanced Leave It can look like. The pups demonstrate how difficult a simple sit command can be when there’s a puppy play session in progress, and the owners learn the importance of practicing around distractions.
Even though few of us are fluent in the many dog languages, most of us can tell the difference between a friendly dog and an unfriendly one. The dog seems to get the message across with very little difficulty. It is as easy to sense the aura of a confident, relaxed and easygoing dog as it is to observe specific behaviors and body postures. Such dogs fairly exude warmth and friendliness — head held high with a big doggy laugh, gamboling gait and curved tail wagging the dog's rump. Similarly, one can literally feel the tension emanating from a dog that is not friendly — head lowered, ears flattened, piercing stare, teeth bared and growling, pilo-erection along the back, stiff-legged, and tail held high, straight, stiff and usually vibrating.
A dog's adolescence is the time when everything starts to fall apart, unless you make a concerted effort to see it through to the stability of adulthood. Your dog's adolescence is a critical time. If you ignore your dog's education now, you will soon find yourself living with an ill-mannered, under-socialized, hyperactive animal. Here are some things to watch for.
Household etiquette may deteriorate over time, especially if you start taking your dog's housetraining and other good behavior for granted. But if you taught your pup well in his earlier months, the drift in household etiquette will be slow until your dog reaches his sunset years, when housetraining especially tends to suffer.
Today I saw a lovely video that brought tears of joy to my eyes. It was about the story of Rufo, a shelter dog that spent six years waiting for a new home. The video is sweet and full of hope, however, even though Rufo has a happy ending, his story is both quite sad and unusual.
While I understand why the shelter and all of Rufo’s friends and supporters really wanted to celebrate his triumph, I also fear that Rufo’s story may send the wrong message. I fear more shelters will try to keep dogs languishing or suffering for too long because “they might be the next Rufo”. I fear that people may be comforted by Rufo’s story and feel that it’s okay to surrender their dog at a shelter because “they all find good homes”.
Six years is a very long time to spend in a shelter, even a very good one. The video mentions that while Rufo got out for exercise every day, he generally spent 22 hours of each 24 in his kennel. That’s no way for a dog to live.
It’s a true testament to Rufo’s personality that he was able to withstand shelter life for so many years. It is not the norm. Most dogs show signs of mental deterioration within just a few weeks of constant kenneling and very few are still mentally healthy after over a year at a shelter. Many dogs learn bad habits in shelters and become reactive, de-house-trained, or fearful if left kenneled for too long.
Shelters are extremely stressful, they are smelly (even if they are very clean the chemicals used to keep things sanitary have strong odors), often noisy, and full of anxious and confused animals. The frustration that comes from being helplessly confined behind fences and in confined spaces can often lead dogs to become agitated and barrier aggressive or the overstimulation causes them to emotionally shut down.
The video also mentions that Rufo received regular one-on-one time playing ball with his favorite people and that he had been trained during his shelter stay as well. I’m sure this regular physical and mental stimulation helped to keep Rufo healthy over the years.
Kennel enrichment and training programs are essential for every shelter, because every animal has the right to live and learn with dignity, but programs such as Open Paw are particularly important for shelters that keep animals for long periods of time to keep them from deteriorating mentally and behaviorally. A good shelter instills the necessary skills in it’s residence to help them get and keep a new and permanent home.
So while Rufo’s story is inspiring and I’m very happy for him, the reality for most shelter dogs is not as sweet. Please help Rufo's legacy be a good one for all shelter animals. Please consider volunteering at your local shelter and help make the lives of all shelter animals a bit brighter and more bearable.
For more information on how to do so, visit OpenPaw.org
Punishment is one of the most misunderstood elements of dog training. There is certainly a place for punishment in dog training, but there is no reason it has to be painful or mean. Successful punishment decreases the frequency of an undesirable behavior, and can be phased out as the dog learns. The Dunbars explain how to tell your dog when it is misbehaving, without hurting or scaring it, which is likely to aggravate most behavior problems.
The wicked witch of Wycombe paused to howl at the full moon before ripping another mouthful of flesh from the freshly killed rabbit. Lycanthropy — a temporary transformation of witch into wolf? Or perhaps a form of madness, wherein the patient imagines himself as a wolf and develops a growly voice and a depraved appetite for raw red meat. Unbelievable? A dog becoming a person? A person becoming a dog? Not necessarily. Many people treat their dogs as humans in furry suits. Some trainers fancy domestic dogs to be wolves and yet other trainers go the whole lycanthropic hog and imagine themselves as wolves inflicting wolfy-punishments to dominate dogs and convince them to tow the line.
Your puppy can learn so much from puppy class! Your puppy can learn good bite inhibition (gentle jaws), confidence and social savvy for interacting with other dogs and people, to enjoy being handled by strangers (including vets and groomers), and to respond quickly and reliably to verbal cues to come, sit, lie down, stand and stay in the midst of heavy distractions and without the reliance of training aids.
Alternatively, a six-week puppy class can teach your puppy not much at all. And yet again, an improperly run off-leash puppy class can teach your puppy to be fearful and afraid of other dogs, or to be a hyperactive social loon who ignores all your requests when distracted by other dogs.
It all depends on how carefully you select your puppy class.
