You will hear the chant everywhere! Then, the dog comes running up full boar to the other dog or the other human with his hackles raised and a stiff tail! Or the other chant is, “He just wants to say hello!” Honestly and respectfully, these are excuses for poorly trained or untrained dog.
We all know how incredibly important early baby experiences are for human children. We have wonderful mobiles for them to watch while in their cradle. We leave beautiful lights twirling around the room at night, play music for them to listen to when they sleep and read to them every chance we get.
Dog Behavior Consultant and NADOI Certified Obedience and Tracking Instructor #1096 AKC Farm Dog Judge, CGC Evaluator Recently, I had a lovely black German Shepherd guide dog that I trained for a blind woman 4 years ago. She was back to me to help her stop barking at other dogs. Why does she bark at other dogs? She was attacked by a pit bull in a grocery store about a year ago and now her blind owner can’t use her anymore. This isn’t a comment about pit bulls, it’s a tragic tale of how a fake service dog can destroy another, fully trained service dog in a flash of a second.
If you have ever visited my website, you will find a page called “No Bones About It” which is my two bits of free advice and how I arrived at this newspaper column title. This is where I tell it like it is without any sugar coating. I talk about having two puppies, especially from the same litter:
I just watched a home video taken of a coyote jumping a 6’ fence up onto a shed roof next to the fence, and further up onto the rooftop of the house. This was an astounding feat of athleticism that not many animals can do. As many of us know, the coyote is a formidable predator invading many urban areas. The availability of videos capturing these incredible animals is almost overwhelming.
Most of us realize that teaching our dog to “come” is extremely important, especially in areas where dogs are allowed many times of the year to run free on Forest Service land (except during the summer) and on many trails. Due to an active lifestyle, people take their dogs everywhere.
Just how does a dog lose her identity enough to call it a crisis? The big word to describe this crisis is anthropomorphism or humanizing dogs. The media and pet suppliers, the dog training community and dog care specialists have begun to refer to dogs as “fur babies”, or “fur children”. Not a day goes by that we don’t see dogs in clothes that make them look like little children. They wear dresses and jackets. Now, it’s dyed hair and tails, too! I saw a Weimaraner on FaceBook with painted toenails and a bracelet on her leg. A Weimeraner is a hunting dog with huge energy and the need to run, and hunt. In order to paint her nails, her “guardians” had allowed the nails to grow especially long. As a result, this dog will end up with health issues with her feet and structure, especially her spine that could result in pain the rest of her life and unable to run. For what purpose? So her “guardian” can enjoy their dog looking like a human “princess”.
I can hear it now, “You have got to be kidding!” I am hard serious! I talk at end about leadership and how critical it is to dog mental health. Very few dogs these days do not have some sort of anxiety, whether it is separation anxiety, approval anxiety, inability to calm themselves in the house, re-directed aggression, even reactivity to events or other dogs. What is even more unfortunate is that so many people do not recognize the signs of anxiety and continue to let their dogs live in quiet misery. Our dogs cannot tell us or even talk about how they feel. To top it off, we place feelings on them as if they were people instead of dogs, which is good old-fashioned anthropomorphism. This doesn’t mean dogs don’t have feelings, but they do not have feelings for the same reasons as people do. This is where the dog identity crisis begins.
Most of my Facebook friends know that in October, black long coat shepherd, Kalidor was diagnosed with Lymphoma. That began a very difficult journey. I thought I would share some things I learned along the way that might help others. Since I am not a veterinarian, my approach is from a dog training instructor point of view and from some personal point of view.
These days, if you do an internet search about dog training, you will find extremes from one end of the spectrum to the other. I read an article the other day that talked about “the state of your dog’s mind” in how it relates to the dog responding to a simple command like “sit.” It was encouraging that we consider what the dog was feeling before we ask a dog to do something.
AFTER AN EXTENDED MEDICAL LEAVE, I WILL BE RETURNING TO WORK MARCH 1st!
