The big quesiton is - Is crate training dogs healthy or harmful? The debate is unabated!
‘Crating’ means placing the dog in a cage approximately the size of the dog, for a time period during the day or night.
Advocates contend that crating gives the dog a feeling of ‘material possession’, a place it can call its […]
Dogs, like humans, have differing ranges of tolerance for others. Some are friendly right away with every new dog, horse, sheep…even cats (!) they meet. Then at the other end of the scale some are lifelong hostile to even the opposite sex of their own breed. Considering dogs are territorial by nature this diversity is […]
Read full post...One of the foremost ways to assert your leader status and a key control command is ’stay’. The stay requires the dog to remain stationary while you move. Easier said than done in many cases!
First the dogmust be doing the ’sit’ command with no problems. This gets the dog’s attention and shows the proper direction […]
Few behaviors are as fundamentally important as ’sit’. Beyond the need to establish that you are the alpha (leader), it has a number of benefits.
When a dog sits he’s more attentive, making it easier to follow commands.
As important is what he is not doing! In a sit dogs can’t chase cats, knock over furniture, run […]
Dogs have a natural inclination to adhere to a hierarchy with an alpha (leader) at the top. ‘Down’ is one effective technique for imposing your alpha position.
It also has practical benefits. When a dog is ‘down’ it can’t knock over furniture or children. It also leads to behaviors like ‘rollover’ and ‘crawl’.
Fortunately,”Down” is usually easy […]
Dogs often don’t clearly know what’s wanted and so appear stubborn. Make it clear by quickly establishing dominant leader status and exercise patience and modest, firm force to get the desired behavior. This can be challenging when training a ‘come’.
Dogs naturally want to explore, to sniff everything, dig and snatch small objects. So when training […]
Most dogs jump up at people at times. How often varies by breed and individual. We think that some are trying to get closer “face to face” to “pack interact” smell or explore - Not attack. This is something dogs to do each other all the time.
A good way to deal with this type of […]
Dogs “walking” their owners, pulling and straining as if they’re pulling a cart.
Dogs who pee in other peoples houses (it happened to me)
Dogs who run off and won’t come back. Big dogs who jump at little ones as if they want to kill and eat them for breakfast (and maybe they do)
Small […]
Adorable maybe - But also at times smelly and messy! So no training is more elementary for pet owners than that first crucial lesson: Do it outside!
A critial point to understand is that dogs under 8-12 weeks don’t have the bladder muscle control so you can’t do much about that. In most cases though, if […]
A dog’s jaw muscles are among its strongest. An average-sized Golden Retriever can undo the knot in a rawhide bone (or just chew it off) in minutes. If only they’d stick to those and not try the same with your shoes, hanging clothes and wicker baskets (etc etc!)
The tendency to chew varies from breed to […]
