Happy Pets

Puppy Pet Socialization

Part of the secret of having a well-trained puppy is the ability on your part to think ahead. You won’t be able to take him for a walk outside until he’s completed his injections, at about fourteen to sixteen weeks. This is far too late to introduce your puppy to a collar and lead and the outside world. The socialization of your puppy at an early age is essential if you require a well-adjusted adult dog. I discovered this, to my cost, with Bracken, my first puppy. I never thought of taking him out on to the streets until he was sixteen weeks old. At home, he was perfectly behaved and afraid of nothing and walked well in the garden on a collar and lead. You can imagine my surprise at our first day’s outing. The moment we stepped out of the gate, Bracken flattened himself to the pavement with terror at the sound and sights of traffic. (more…)

Exactly the same training goes for your first small ride in the car. It would be a great advantage if you could be free to attend to your puppy while someone else drives the vehicle for you. The dominant puppy who barks only needs firm handling. Don’t give up. If he jumps out of his place a thousand times, put him back and make him understand that he is not allowed to dive about the vehicle or bark. Here, it is your patience that is needed more than anything else. Give in once to your puppy and you might as well throw in the towel as far as dog training is concerned. You must always win. The puppy who is afraid will take more time and gentler handling to bring round. Something to chew in the car will probably take his mind off his fear. Extreme fear should be dealt with immediately by constantly putting puppy in the car and feeding him a titbit before and after a short journey. (more…)

The Down position is the one exercise most dogs hate doing. In the wild, a canine lying down denotes submission and this instinct is still very strong in our pet dogs. The exception to this rule is the working collie, who will drop at a whistle when herding sheep. But if you watch the collie at work very carefully, you will realise that his hunting instinct is to the fore, and down he may be but every muscle in his body is alert, ready for the spring. When using and training working dogs, we are only channelling their basic instinct. The guide-dog is a good example of this, for all a guide-dog is learning is self-preservation, but he is extending his own body range, taller and wider, to encompass his human being. (more…)

Jumping

If you own the energetic type of dog, he will no doubt love to race and jump and a dog that is full of beans and wants to be on the go all day long can often be satisfied by five or ten minutes’ jumping in his own garden. But, as with all things you are training your dog, you should show him how to do it. Whatever you do, don’t put a six-foot jump up in the garden and try and clear it yourself, unless, that is, you’re an Olympic hurdler. To begin with, use a very small jump which can be simply made. I usually put the handle of a yard brush across two buckets, giving me about eighteen inches in height. With your dog on a loose lead, run at the jump with him, showing great enthusiasm. Be ready to let the lead go if your dog pulls back or refuses to go over the jump. (more…)

Assuming that you have had great success in the training of your puppy, it would be a shame to stop now. You have obviously built up a good relationship with him and, once this is gained between dog and human being, there are no limits to how much you can train him. I believe the more you teach your dog the more intelligent he will become. Teaching a dog tricks is often frowned upon by the more serious dog trainers. I think they hold a picture in their minds of the old circus dog with a frill round his neck, dancing on his hind legs. My interpretation of teaching a dog tricks is a little different from that and I can assure you, from my own past experience, that a dog loves doing new and more interesting things. Take into account the type of dog you have. With my own dogs, for instance, it is Bracken who loves to learn and he gets so excited when he knows it’s trick-teaching time. He rushes around to grab cushions off the settee or towels off the kitchen rail to bring me as an offering in exchange for a trick lesson. (more…)

We all make mistakes, but do we learn by them? I certainly have learnt by the many mistakes I have made with dogs and I would like to tell you about the biggest mistake I have ever made. There may be dog trainers who think they know everything. These are the people to avoid, for if they have not had problems or made mistakes, they cannot understand other people’s difficulties and, after all, nobody’s perfect.

A couple of years ago, we had a space in our dog population. Rather than treat myself to another Labrador, I bought Don a breed I knew he fancied. I don’t wish to tell you what breed Heidi was, as I feel this would prejudice you against the breed. Far too many people read a little of a wrongdoer—a biter or a chaser or a so-called untrainable dog—and label the whole breed with those attributes. I think that’s very unfair. No breed is all bad or all good and I will not accept the responsibility of Heidi’s breed suffering through my mistake, as I make no bones about it—it was my fault. (more…)

The chaser

My heart aches when an owner comes to me with a chasing dog. ‘I daren’t let him off,’ they tell me. ‘He chases bikes, postmen, cars, children, other dogs.’ Again, we have a situation where the poor dog suffers because the owner cannot be bothered to train against these things. I have heard so many remedies for the dog chaser which, in my opinion, would only make him worse. Many of these so-called remedies take the control of the dog out of the owner’s hands and put the onus on the thing that’s being chased. A good example of this is the dog who chases bikes. Two of the most frequently-used remedies are that the rider of the bike carries a jug or cup of water which he throws at the dog on his approach, or the rider of the bike offers the dog a titbit. (more…)

I count myself very fortunate to have had a really good relationship with Emma. She was with me twenty-four hours a day and I understood her like I understood part of myself. I had to interpret the movements from the handle when she was working at my side and I had to understand her every little whim when she was off duty at home. A gentle nudge would be, I want to play, and a firmer push with the nose would indicate she wanted to go into the garden. Her little snorts or the way she bounced around me all indicated her needs or thoughts and, in the same way, she was able to interpret my feelings and moods. Although the type of relationship we had only comes once in a lifetime, if you’re very lucky, I feel we should all aim for that perfection with our dogs. (more…)

Don’t fall into the trap of many dog owners of forgetting the fun element in your training. If life with your dog has become a drudgery and the time you take to train him basic commands is full of harassment, fraught with anxiety, stop, you have got it all wrong. Dogs, like children, should be a pleasure to us. I see all types of human beings coming along to my training classes with their dogs and I can instantly tell you which ones will fall into the ‘failed owners‘ category. They’re the ones who won’t listen, who won’t try, who think they will make a fool of themselves talking to their dog and putting enthusiasm into their voices. Many of them refuse point-blank to sit on the ground with their dogs and think it childish and stupid to play with them. In my training classes I try and make most of the exercises a game so that the human beings forget their self-consciousness and before they realise it they are having as much fun as their dogs. It is very rewarding to train along with other people and their dogs, as it gives incentive to the owners to come out best. If you train with other people or go along to a training club perhaps some of these ideas will help you and if you’re the stiff and starchy conservative type maybe it will give you enthusiasm to change your dog’s training and have fun. (more…)