A Paw In The Right Direction

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A good read whether or not you have a dog or are looking for one!

A really interesting video and well worth watching!

With dog training and behaviour an unregulated business it can be really hard to know who to ask for help when you are at your wits end with your dog. We have ...severely moved on from the traditional dog training methods of scaring/hurting a dog into submission. We know now how much that damages the canine-human bond, and the behavioural/emotional and even physical health of the dog. Not all professionals are forthcoming with their methods and unfortunately not all professionals use the modern approach. Lets look at some phrases that a professional might use that are a red flag to aversive/outdated methods: 1.) "Correcting bad behaviour". Dogs simply do not perform bad behaviour that needs to be corrected. Dogs do not know when a behaviour is right or wrong - all they know is what behaviour works for them in that moment. We do not correct behaviour, we modify it. Dogs are not sums that we need to get our red pen out to. They are emotional beings whose behaviour is functional. A dog is not being "bad" if they are barking at other dogs for example. They are feeling strong emotion that will actually be made worse with aversive methods. Suppressing an emotion is one of the worst things you can do - whether you're human or canine! 2.) "Bring him down a peg or two/put him in his place". These statements strongly allude to the dominance based methods that are so detrimental to the relationship between you and your dog. Dogs are not trying to dominate you. Dogs are not trying to be seen as "higher" than you in any sort of pecking order; that is just fundamentally incorrect. They do not need to be "put in their place" i.e. made to be submissive against you. All of these sorts of statements allude to physically aversive methods that can actually create more problems than it solves. We've seen it time and time again. 3.) "Show him who is boss/gain some respect". Similar to above only these statements are focused on empowering YOU as the owner to take control. This sets us up to feel it's us against our dog - battle of wills - and this is so damaging. If you constantly feel like you've got to fight to be recognised by your dog as important, more important than them, there will always be some degree of friction between you and your dog. It doesn't have to be that way. Dogs aren't creating that belief, these outdated methods do. 4.) "Overnight change/quick fix". Can you suppress a behaviour overnight? Yes, you can, if you are aversive enough in your own behaviours. However, suppressed behaviours simply come out in other ways. Behaviours are caused by emotions and emotions aren't improved upon by physically stopping our dog from behaving a certain way. True behaviour modification that involves emotional change simply cannot happen overnight. Ask any therapist for us humans how many times they've been able to fix a humans difficulties overnight - likely zero. Can you think of any more? Feel free to add any in the comments. These are the main 4 types of phrases I can think of at the time of writing this! Thank you to Mighty Dog Graphics for this image!

Interesting read.

What do you see?