 | Most of us humans love dogs.Dogs are happy and spontaneous and infectious with their joy. But often when we live with them we find out that they are naughty and uncontrollable, that they bark too much, they run away, they attack other dogs, they make a mess in the house, they smell, they bite, they jump up and the list goes on. So is there a common contributing factor that occurs between the happy, spontaneous and joyful dog and the uncontrollable, messy, noisey, inconvenient dog that they sometimes become? Yes there is, and that factor is the human being. Once this notion is understood and has been established as the foundation to your relationship with your dog, it gets a whole lot easier. |
Recently, a client brought me their barking dog, a dog who pulls constantly when on the lead and who attacks other dogs. The first thing we do is to put the lead on and start walking to see what the bodies of the dog and the person are doing.
The dog is out the front sniffing the ground constantly, going frenetically from side to side – looking, looking, sniffing, sniffing. The owner is stopping in her walk to allow the dog time to sniff everything, to wander off track to look behind the bush. She is also getting pulled back when the dog wants to stop to pay particular attention to a certain smell under a tree. In other words, the owner is getting pulled and pushed by the dog, who thinks he has full control (and he does) of the situation and can do whatever he wants.
No good just training the dog to walk beside the owner, which is easy enough to do, the owner needs to use her energy to tell the dog that she is the authority in this twosome, she is the leader and that he needs to do what she, the human, is asking of him. The human will bring into play the energy of the ‘pack instinct’ of the dog to reinforce who the leader is and will therefore reduce the anxiety in her dog which, in this specific case, caused him to attack other dogs. The reason he was anxious was because he is not naturally a dominant dog and so to take the lead (ie leader of the humans in his house) was too much for him and he was anxious. This anxiety led to excessive barking, attacking and pulling on the lead.
Dogs are energy. We are energy. The relationship needs to be about harmony not perfection. When we train our dogs, we must first feel what is happening, both in us and in the dog , and work with the energy of our own bodies to both build and reinforce the harmonious behavior in our dogs.
The dog is out the front sniffing the ground constantly, going frenetically from side to side – looking, looking, sniffing, sniffing. The owner is stopping in her walk to allow the dog time to sniff everything, to wander off track to look behind the bush. She is also getting pulled back when the dog wants to stop to pay particular attention to a certain smell under a tree. In other words, the owner is getting pulled and pushed by the dog, who thinks he has full control (and he does) of the situation and can do whatever he wants.
No good just training the dog to walk beside the owner, which is easy enough to do, the owner needs to use her energy to tell the dog that she is the authority in this twosome, she is the leader and that he needs to do what she, the human, is asking of him. The human will bring into play the energy of the ‘pack instinct’ of the dog to reinforce who the leader is and will therefore reduce the anxiety in her dog which, in this specific case, caused him to attack other dogs. The reason he was anxious was because he is not naturally a dominant dog and so to take the lead (ie leader of the humans in his house) was too much for him and he was anxious. This anxiety led to excessive barking, attacking and pulling on the lead.
Dogs are energy. We are energy. The relationship needs to be about harmony not perfection. When we train our dogs, we must first feel what is happening, both in us and in the dog , and work with the energy of our own bodies to both build and reinforce the harmonious behavior in our dogs.
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