Laurie C Williams CPDT-KA

My last post was entitled Being Honest About Our Dogs and told of the pact I have with my friends to call each other when we start making excuses about our dogs' behavior or issues. However, I guess I took it for granted that being honest about our dogs should go hand in hand with being honest about ourselves and examining how we may have reinforced, encouraged and/or enabled our dogs' behaviors. If we take credit for the good, then we have to at least take partial credit for the not so good, right? Granted, there certainly are behavior issues that can't be directly attributed to training, environment, or our relationship and human interaction with our dogs, such as some fears and phobias that really do seem to come out of nowhere. For example, my beloved Dalmatian Tucker developed a fear of thunder and loud noises around the age of 5. Up until that time he never exhibited any sound sensitivity and then all of a sudden, he became fearful of those two specific sounds.

We dog people are a tough lot. We're opinionated, oftentimes judgmental, and let's face it, we're much harder on humans than we are on dogs. We'll forgive dogs over and over again for sometimes horrible infractions and give them multiple second chances, and rightfully so. They're animals and have no moral code. But with humans, not so much. After serving a nearly 2 year sentence, Michael Vick, once the highest paid NFL player ever, was released from prison yesterday morning.

Okay, let's be honest, when it comes to competition obedience, how much of an underdog could a Border Collie and Aussie really be, but believe it or not, in my neck of the woods, the two dogs pictured, Logan and Phoenix, kind of are. Dog sports within the mid-Atlantic area (PA, NJ, VA, MD) is highly competitive. Earning an OTCH (Obedience Trial Championship) has become more and more elusive through the years, and has become limited to trainers who view competition almost as seriously as a job, rather than a part-time hobby. For us part-timers, particularly those of us who use only positive methods and have more of a pet person mentality (those of you involved in dog sports will know exactly what that means), no matter what breed we have, we're definitely considered underdogs. No matter how you train or what methods you use, you never really know what a dog is going to do in the ring.

In one of my first posts here on DSD I shared some information about some clients of mine who'd become frustrated with their highly active, adolescent Shepherd mix, and showed up one day in class with him wearing an oversized choke chain at the recommendation of some neighbors. I pulled them aside and re-explained why I thought that was a bad idea at this point in time, encouraged them to stay the course, yadda, yadda, yadda, and then they disappeared. It bothered me. I know we can't save them all, but still, I knew I'd always wonder how Rebel was doing. This was just before the holidays and I hadn't seen them since. Well, I'm ecstatic to report that they're baaaaaaaaack!