News
ENLARGE
Being a good parent to children involves setting reasonable boundaries and teaching a child to respect them. Teaching a dog is the same. Decide what your dog will be allowed to do and what not to do so that you may be proactive with training, rather than reactive toward unwanted behaviors.
While boundaries are a personal decision, I have found some universal ones to be helpful:
1. Greeting manners: Dogs need to learn that they will get attention only when they have all four feet on the ground and are showing some self control in their greeting. This includes taming the torpedo nose.
2. Grabbing a glove as a toy. This is especially important for living in Summit County. Dogs cannot distinguish between the empty glove toy at home and a glove with a person's hand inside on the hiking or ski trail. A tragic bite could be the consequence. So prevent an accident, and keep gloves off the toy list. For obvious reasons, hands or any other human body parts are also off the toy list.
3. Chasing cars, bikes, skateboards, children, skiers, livestock, wildlife etc. This is very dangerous and can be a hard habit to change. For most dogs chasing is instinctual and it is also self-rewarding. It's fun. The more they are allowed to chase, the more they will. Teaching self-control, attention to you and a strong “leave it” and/or “stay” can help prevent chasing. If you notice something that will trigger your dog to chase, get their attention on you before they take off at mach 10. As a cheetah trainer once wisely told me “pay attention to the precursors.” If your dog does not have 100 percent recall with any distractions, keep them on a leash when around livestock or wildlife. Even working herding dogs are not allowed to freely chase livestock. Their movements are under voice control of their handler and are purposeful and calm.
It is important to decide on these and other boundaries so that you can be proactive, clear and fair with your dog.
It is also important to realize unwanted behaviors you may be inadvertently reinforcing by how you play with your dog, or what you allow them to do … sometimes. This brings us to next week's segment,
“C is for Consistency.”
Louisa Morrissey is a certified professional dog trainer (CPDT-KA) and owner of Skijor-n-More. She is also a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and a licensed Victoria Stilwell Positively Dog Trainer. www.skijornmore.com
While boundaries are a personal decision, I have found some universal ones to be helpful:
1. Greeting manners: Dogs need to learn that they will get attention only when they have all four feet on the ground and are showing some self control in their greeting. This includes taming the torpedo nose.
2. Grabbing a glove as a toy. This is especially important for living in Summit County. Dogs cannot distinguish between the empty glove toy at home and a glove with a person's hand inside on the hiking or ski trail. A tragic bite could be the consequence. So prevent an accident, and keep gloves off the toy list. For obvious reasons, hands or any other human body parts are also off the toy list.
3. Chasing cars, bikes, skateboards, children, skiers, livestock, wildlife etc. This is very dangerous and can be a hard habit to change. For most dogs chasing is instinctual and it is also self-rewarding. It's fun. The more they are allowed to chase, the more they will. Teaching self-control, attention to you and a strong “leave it” and/or “stay” can help prevent chasing. If you notice something that will trigger your dog to chase, get their attention on you before they take off at mach 10. As a cheetah trainer once wisely told me “pay attention to the precursors.” If your dog does not have 100 percent recall with any distractions, keep them on a leash when around livestock or wildlife. Even working herding dogs are not allowed to freely chase livestock. Their movements are under voice control of their handler and are purposeful and calm.
It is important to decide on these and other boundaries so that you can be proactive, clear and fair with your dog.
It is also important to realize unwanted behaviors you may be inadvertently reinforcing by how you play with your dog, or what you allow them to do … sometimes. This brings us to next week's segment,
“C is for Consistency.”
Louisa Morrissey is a certified professional dog trainer (CPDT-KA) and owner of Skijor-n-More. She is also a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and a licensed Victoria Stilwell Positively Dog Trainer. www.skijornmore.com
