The Dog Blog

My first visit to Morris' home was not out of the ordinary.  When I entered the home, his mom was clinging onto this very big wiggly 2 year old Black Lab mix's choke collar for dear life, attempting to prevent him from leaping at me. Clearly friendly, I instructed Mom to let Morris loose, and he predictably jumped all over me, mouthing my arms hard, grabbing at my clothes. I ignored him the best I could, but he was very persistent. For the next hour, I observed Morris repeatedly pushing boundaries... jumping on counters, jumping right on top of a coffee table, snatching at my treat pouch... he was a nightmare of obnoxious adolescent dog behavior.

However, it didn't take long to figure out that Morris wasn't a bad dude. In fact, he was pretty amazing. Playful, engaged, and smart as a whip, Morris picked up on everything I threw at him within seconds. He learned with excitement and vigor, always seeming to ask “What's next???!”

Some forty years ago, when I started to re-popularize the use of food lures and rewards in dog training, many trainers were adamantly opposed. ”I don’t want to bribe my dog.” “I want the dog to do it for me.” “That’s sissy training.” I knew these knee-jerk statements stemmed from a lack of understanding of basic learning principles and so I wrote a number of articles, explaining how the temporary use of food as lures and rewards was very different from using food as bribes.

In my previous blog, I pondered the issue of how to best educate pet owners on safe and responsible travel. Naturally, making information available is very sensible and a major oversight when I wrote “Lady, Your Dog Is Miserable.”  When I became immersed in the social media of Face Book and Twitter, Amy and Rod Burkett, of Go Pet Friendly became friends.  This lovely couple is devoted to making pet travel easy; they blog about all that encompasses pet travel. I am positive you will be delighted after visiting them at www.gopetfriendly.com