Training Never Ends

Training never ends when you have a pack of dogs, and I can always tell when I've been slacking. Wyatt gets barky. I know dogs bark but when they start barking at you then you've got a slight problem. When Wyatt barks at someone in my family he's trying to get any attention he can good or bad. He's trying to assert himself above the two-legged humans. That doesn't fly in my home.

In a perfect world all in the house will ignore him, but that rarely happens, I even find myself telling him to hush and all I've done is reinforce his barking. When the barking increases I usually step up playtime and I shut up. Yes, I stop talking to my dogs; well not completely I cut the useless chatter. I stop all the talk to them that doesn't have anything to do with commands or the tasks we're doing in that moment. If we're working on obedience I keep my talking to a minimum and only use my cue words or hand signals with an occasional good boy or girl thrown in with their food treats. Admittedly it makes for an extremely quiet day or days, but the results of that quiet are almost immediately seen in the attention they give me. Instead of ignoring me they look to me for the next thing to do.

It's hard to do, but the rewards are worth it. It's hard for me and I’m their pack leader. When I'm working and I've completed a project usually the only beings around are my dogs and I jabber on about completing the project and when I'm finished with my excited talk I continue and tell them what good dogs they are for listening and I gush over them for being there to listen. While it's not wrong to talk to your dogs, I encourage it. But to talk at them in a continuous manner all the time you unintentionally wear out your welcome and you become the teacher from Peanuts who's only words heard are wonk, wonk, wonk. They tune you out and when you lose their attention, you've lost control. In my house the way to regain control is to shut up, it works for my dogs and me.

Command and obedience training are great, but I've found if you learn how to use your body language it has more influence on how your dog behaves than a command alone. One of my most favorite parts of training my dogs is not really training related, it's behavior oriented. I spend more time watching my dogs interact with each other each day than actual training on commands. I watch to see why Josie and Wyatt lower themselves to Dexter. I observe their movements and try to understand why a particular movement or gesture results in certain behaviors. Doing this helps me be a better leader. It doesn't matter that I think of my dogs as family, what matters is that I remember they are first and always dogs regardless of breed and my human feelings toward them. I need to learn how best to lead them and actions speak more clearly than words. A terrific book that I absolutely love and have read and reread is The Other End of The Leash by Patricia McConnell. While the book does not take the place of a good training program it will add a new dimension to your human canine interactions.

Until later, woof, woof and a roo!