Jeff Silverman

Drayton Michaels recently posted an impassioned condemnation of trainers who employ training methods that involve fear or pain and advocated forcing people to adopt more positive training methods.  I’ve felt that kind of frustration myself.  There are some truly horrific and abusive trainers in my area who I would love to put out of business (and worse).  I’ve seen quite a few dogs whose minds and spirits have been destroyed by a small number of self-styled local dog trainers.  I’ve looked into the eyes of owners who saw me as their last hope and told them that I didn’t know how to undo enough of the damage to make their dogs safe.  One dog traumatized by these abusive hacks injured my wife badly as we worked to undo the damage.  I watched the woman I love endure months of pain due to their cruelty, stupidity, and greed.  I understand the rage.   

At first, Steve’s story sounded pretty typical: a family with three small children had lost control of their dog.  Murphy constantly grabbed, chewed and swallowed toys, sippy cups, socks, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down.  He ignored basic obedience commands.  The family’s impressive efforts to manage the environment ultimately failed.  When Murphy was loose in the house, they spent most of their time chasing after him and prying things from his mouth.  Unable to control him, they reluctantly resorted to putting Murphy outside or in his crate almost all the time.  Then one day, he bit the nanny as she went to pull something out of his mouth.  He did no damage, but his place in their home was now in danger.  I get calls like this all the time, but one thing was different about this family.  They had already spent thousands of dollars on intensive dog training.      

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve provided an update on my puppy Chaos.  He coasted through January and February without offering much to write about.  Now that he has reached 6 months of age, however, adolescence has reared its ugly head just in time for me to realize that I overlooked some of the challenges of raising a winter puppy.   We had a long snowy winter here in Ohio.  I never thought of it as a disadvantage for raising Chaos because I did so much with him.  He went to classes, visited vet clinics, played with boarding dogs, and went to lots of people’s homes.  I failed to do enough of 2 very important things:  leash work and building Chaos’ frustration tolerance.

There’s been a great deal of socialization to report on in the last 3 weeks for Chaos.  Going home to visit my large extended family over Thanksgiving weekend set the gold standard.  Chaos made 3 trips to a nursing home, where he met people in wheelchairs, people using walkers, and people who move a little oddly for a variety of other reasons.  He made especially good friends with a dog lover who had suffered a stroke.  I’d put Chaos in her arms and he’d lay his head on her shoulder bathing her face in puppy kisses.  We made a point of visiting her every day.  I've never done therapy dog work before, but I might be hooked.  The joy that lit up people's faces when they met a puppy was really wonderful to see.  I don't know how many therapy catahoulas there are, but who knows what the future holds?