The gift of communication

Dogs bring us a huge gift - of communication.

"The golden gift is this: Intimately connected with his own emotions, the dog cannot lie. What he feels, he expresses. What he shows in his body posture is true, without guile, completely and utterly honest." Suzanne Clothier 1996 

A wonderful quote by Jeffrey Masson from his book called When Elephants Weep:

"Training an animal will meet with little success if the trainer has no insights into the animal's feelings."

Sadly, for some "trainers", where knowledge ends, violence begins!

Working in a holistic way with dogs means we should have a willingness to learn how and why a dog operates and behaves as he does.

Leaps and Bounds

Another little update on Freya's integration with the other two.

Management

People often ask me how to change their dog's behaviour and are surprised when I explain the first thing is management.

Manage the environment to prevent the behaviour taking place.

This is key. The more times the dog practises the behaviour, the more frequent it will become.

Take the simplified example of a dog that lunges at other dogs.

Every time he practises this behaviour he learns that the behaviour works - the other dog goes away.

In order to change how the dog feels about other dogs, we need to prevent him practising the lunging. We use distance.

At a distance, we begin to change how the dog feels about other dogs. Seeing other dogs at a distance leads to sniffing, play, food or whatever it is the dog enjoys most.

Take the simplified example of jumping up on strangers.

Every time he practises this behaviour he learns that the behaviour works - he gets attention from the person (however, it could be a number of things that reinforces jumping up, including attention from owner and it is important to identify why the dog jumps up first).

In order to change how the dog feels about strangers, we need to prevent him practising the jumping up. Again, we use distance.

At a distance, we can wait for the dog to be calm, reinforce calm behaviour and give him permission to say hi. Or we can reinforce him for not jumping up at a distance.

Thought it was time for a little blog.

I have just been listening to the person who has had the biggest influence on my training - Suzanne Clothier.

She reminds us to always ask the elemental questions. One of these is:

"How is this for you?"

If you are not familiar with Suzanne Clothiers work have a look at her website - so many free articles to read including this one:

Elemental questions

We are contacted to help with various behaviour problems, ranging from pulling on lead right through to aggression directed to humans. We always look at the foundations -

Calm

Connection

Choices

Confidence