Another great picture from FailDogs.com It looks like he saw a ghost!

Sometimes two heads are not better than one! Great picture from Faildogs.com

Great video of dog walking on his front legs while going to the bathroom. I’m not sure what kind of dog potty training method they used to teach him to do this but it would definitely be considered advanced!

In this article published by the BBC shows, breeders and continuing to get more and more upset at the practices of puppy mills.  Puppy Mills are an extremely unethical way to raise a dog. 

And for good reason!

Puppy Mills take puppies and raise them in extremely cramped quarters.  Among other things, one extremely frustrating consequence of raising a puppy this way, is it robs the puppy of the opportunity for it’s mother to model the behavior of NOT pissing in it’s own bed.

Puppies raised in these tight quarters get used to peeing on themselves, and as a result are extremely difficult to every potty train, and some are NEVER able to master the habit.  I run into this problem a lot when I coach my clients on how to train a puppy, and one of the easiest ways to have a well trained dog is to make sure you don’t buy puppies from Puppy mills.

Mid-Hudson Correctional Facility in Warwick instituted a program w here 21 inmates trained 15 puppies to be therapy dog’s for soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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Does a dog really know if he’s in trouble?  And what does that really mean?

Just because your dog tucks his tail and runs, does that mean he knows he’s been bad, or is it something else, behavior specialists call an avoidance response?

For an interesting perspective on this question check out this article:

Do dogs know when they’ve done something naughty?

You might realize that if your dog is consistently “misbehaving” and you think he’s doing it on purpose… that you have a much bigger problem on your hands.

This is often a sign that you are not communicating clearly with your dog in a way he understands, and that you probably are effectively listening to what he wants either.

This is a common problem with people who try to stop dog barking.

Their dog’s will tuck tale and run when their owners yell at them over a long period of time.  This causes the dog to fear the owner, and doesn’t necessarily mean the dog knows what he did was bad.

And it certainly doesn’t even begin to address the owners complete lack of understanding the underlying issue of what’s really causing the dog’s barking in the first place.

Take this as a reminder to always try to get at the root ‘emotional’ cause of your dog’s problem if you want to have the most success.

Are dogs aggressive? Do they form hierarchies? Where do you fall into your roll of a dog’s hierarchy and are there ways to do a better job then you’re currently doing?

Aiden Bindoff post on dog aggression addresses some interesting issues worth considering.

Personally, I think one of the best thing you can do for helping set youself up as a better leader for your dog, is to set up LOTS of rules that your dog has to follow to get what he wants out of life.

Rules like:

• Hold down stays on bed while eating dinner, instead of begging at the table
• Sit down, or obey a command before you pet him, making him earn his pets
• Training him to stay away from the door when guests come over to avoid chaos, etc.

Do any of these things guarantee your dog will never have a dominance or dog aggression problem, no.

But I do think the more rules you set up, and the more structure you put into your dog’s life, decreases the likelihood of aggression problems ever occurring.

For some reason the world seems to think that the only way to cure dog aggression issues is with dominance.

The people who defend this position like to argue that dogs are decsendants of wolves, and that the Alpha relationship in a pack of wolves, is why we should use domination to make our dog’s think of us as leaders too.

But the APDT has published on their website that they feel this approach is off base, and back it up with their own counter argument that you should go read if you’re the kind of person who’s been brainwashed into using dominance by some particularly popular TV show trainers.

Go read their statement here:

http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/2009/11/08/dominance-training-position-statement-by-apdt/

>>> My Thoughts:

The APDT says that you can not use the observation of wolf behavior to explain dog behavior, as you can observe chimpanzee behavior to explain human behavior.

But I’d like to caution people reading this statement and offer my thoughts.

I believe the APDT is using this argument to say you can’t explain ALL behavior, and not some behavior.  And I think they’re right about how Wolves do not determine who the alpha of the pack is by how dominant a dog or person is to them, and instead rely on social structure and support from one another.

But they do have a leader, and knowing how they determine who the leader of the pack is, I think is something worth studying and applying to your dog, especially since how they really do it is NOT with aggression.

To understand where we come from genetically, and what our DNA has been hard wired into us to do, is an important thing and not to be completely ignored.

Just my two cents.

What do you think?

For any of you struggling with how to stop dog barking, especially dog’s who bark at certain types of noise, I thought this video would be helpful:

What I really like about this video is when the trainer talks about how we need to realize that the reason our dog’s are barking is to communicate an underlying emotion.

Traditional training techniques seek to PUNISH the communication, where newer training strategies like the one being used by the trainer in this video, attempt to change the emotional reaction that causes the annoing communication.

So the next time you find yourself wanting to punish your dog’s communication, try to think about what the underlying emotion of that behavior is.

Treat your dog’s emotions like personal workout trainers approach working with a new client who’s never been in a gym and who’s bodies aren’t in the physical condition to go all out right away.

Our dog’s emotions are a LOT like a person’s muscles who’ve never been to the gym… they need to practice on some easy weights before they’re ready for the big stuff.

I thought this video expressed that perfectly, which is why I wanted to share it with you.

Please leave me any questions if you have them!

Today I thought I’d share a great article on Retraining Manic Alert Barking.

In this article, Debi Davis really lays out some interesting points about why using suppressive or punishment techniques don’t work to stop dog barking.

She believes that when you are dealing with a dog who just ‘locks on’ to a person or thing and continues to bark at it, that adding more emotion to the situation actually reinforces it…. positive or negative.

To put it in my own words, and forgive me Debi if this is NOT what you mean, but it’s almost like the thing that causes a dog to Manic bark is the amount of “heightened emotions”… or in her words “stress”.

Because stress can be both positive and negative, a dog who get’s ‘positively’ stressed when he sees a person walk by the car he’s in at the grocery store parking lot has more stress, then if he were in a state of rest… and if you then have an owner come in and reprimand the dog, what does that do?

It ads MORE stress.

Stress can become addicting, and trains the dog to continually expect, prepare and get ready for more and more stress, with each day the Manic Barking behavior is attempted to be stopped with training techniques that add more stress to the situation.

Debi’s article puts it more clearly then I can though, so I’ll just shut up and let you go read it.  Here’s the link again:

Retraining Manic Alert Barking