DOG DAY AFTERNOON

At the start of each of my training courses I frequently tell my clients that their dogs dont love them and that all they are doing is satisfying their basic needs. The need for companionship, food, water, exercise and play. I tell them that if someone else was to come along and offer their dogs these things then their dogs wold go with them. I then usually make an example of this by calling one of their dogs over to me with the promise of a nice piece of cocktail sausage. It always works, what dog can refuse a nice piece of cocktail sausage. So I was intrigued to come across an article which suggested that dogs can indeed declare their love for their humans by displaying certain actions. This is a summary of the article and the points highlighted. So I thought I would share an article I read recently that was extracted from an interview by “60 minutes” Anderson Cooper and Brian Hare supposedly a well know Dog expert. In the interview they were discussing how do...

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.) As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.  Horrors! We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.  We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the ...

By the stoneage some 14'000 years ago, man had developed close social interactions with dogs. Some of the benefits that dogs provided were recognised and exploited by those early hunter gatherers. In order to get these dogs to assist in guarding, hunting and killing prey, some form of training involving  an 'agreement' or 'pact' between man and dog would have to have been made. This pact would take the form that says if you do this you will be rewarded by that. To think this is probably when positive reinforcement training first started out. Dogs as a species have been by mans side side for more than 14'000 years. It is not beyond reasoning to think that it was the dog who helped man conquer earth and make it into the world we have today. No other species has evolved quite in this way. Although the earliest archaeological records indicated the earliest remains of dogs at 14'000 years. Molecular genetical analyses has been carried out in the United States of...

The ‘Socialisation period’ lasts from week 3 of your puppy's life to week 12. At no other time in the dogs life is he more receptive to training based on affection and reward. Early behavioural training can ‘inoculate’ dogs against many adult dog behaviour problems such as hyperactivity, excessive fearfulness, aggression, separation anxiety and general disobedience. Its never to early to start your puppy in training or taking training classes.