Living With Dogs OR Training Dogs?

I recently heard someone say that they weren’t interested in training dog, but rather in living with dogs.  They mentioned lifestyle and relationship as things separate from dog training.  My reaction was to cock my head at the statement, chuckle, feel confused, then say to myself, “But they can’t be separated.”

To try and separate living with dogs from training dogs is like…hmmm…trying to separate living with children and raising/teaching children.  It can’t be done.  If you live with a child, you are teaching them things constantly, whether you intend to or not.  It works the same with dogs.

This can be a serious issue, as it is often the lessons we DON’T intend to teach that cause us the biggest problems!  It’s these same unintended, nearly unconscious lessons that land so very many dogs in shelters.

Maybe it’s the word training that throws people off?  I suppose a lot of folks imagine a specific time set aside to do planned exercises with a specific end goal in mind.  Of course, some training is like that.  But most of the training for pet dogs happens in the course of their normal life with their owner.

Take my dogs, for example.  They have learned how to lean into the curves while riding in the car because we live on a winding mountain road.  They have been trained to do this, but it happened through the natural course of our daily lives.

An owner who shares their dinner at the dining room table with their dog is training their dog to sit nearby at dinner time and share the meal.  My dogs know that when I finish my meal and go to the kitchen, I will give them any leftovers I might have.  So, when I finish a meal and go to the kitchen, there are five dogs who follow me and sit politely in expectation. 

I have been just as guilty as the next person in saying, “I just don’t have the time to train them.”  The truth?  I’m training them all the time!  It’s not that I don’t have time to train, it’s that I don’t have the willingness or the patience to change my own behavior!

I recently got into a VERY bad habit of giving my dogs treats right when I got home.  I would come in the door, say hello to my husband, walk to the kitchen and dole out treats right away.  Why?  Well, it was a quick easy way to settle everyone down, talk to my husband for a minute and transition to home. 

Well…now we have a problem.  When I come home, the dogs are getting increasingly frantic about the time it takes me to get from the front door to the kitchen.  My Yorkie-Poo even started giving a high-pitched yelp as if to hurry me along.  THIS must stop!

I didn’t mean to train them to act this way…but I did.  Un-training them will be just as simple and will probably take just as much time as it took to train them.  All I have to do is stop doing what I was doing before.  Yep, that’s it.  They don’t have to do anything but notice that I’m not doing it anymore, so there’s nothing to get all excited about.

All they have to do is live with me, watch me and figure out what to do next.

What is your dog learning from living with you?