| | Have you given any thought to what you want to get out of training your dog? |
I grew up in a country town where we expected our dogs to be in the yard, to be tied up outside all night and to be able to hang around and do their own thing all day. Maybe they would go across the road to the park, maybe they would sleep in the sun in the backyard, maybe we would take them in the ute to the tip or maybe they would just hang out at the back door waiting for the next thing to happen. We didn’t fence them, we didn’t spend time training them, we just expected them to fit in…..and for the most part, they did !
How the majority of people live with dogs now is very different to the years when I was growing up. Now, what we expect or want from training deserves some consideration before starting to attend classes.
Working with a range of different people and dogs as I do, I have found it much more inclusive to firstly not work in a way that is looking for perfection. Rather, I have found that allowing everyone to be who they are in the class and to work without the expectation of herding people and their dogs into a perfect fit, everyone gets so much more from training. If we are basing our training on the first foundational brick being ourselves, then we need to be solid in who we are and feel the authority of that throughout our body. Just getting to this can take some of us a few classes !
Only once this is ‘mastered’ can we make the move toward instructing our dog. If I instruct my dog from a body
that is full of anger or anxiety or doubt, then the dog can feel that and that feeling can cause confusion in the training session.
Once we get to the instruction part of the class, then it is usually as simple as consistency and supporting the dog to understand what you asking of them. I don’t know why but it seems that dogs need the same instructions over and over their entire life, so get used to being the instructor and get used to being very verbal with your dog !
Only once this is ‘mastered’ can we make the move toward instructing our dog. If I instruct my dog from a body
that is full of anger or anxiety or doubt, then the dog can feel that and that feeling can cause confusion in the training session.
Once we get to the instruction part of the class, then it is usually as simple as consistency and supporting the dog to understand what you asking of them. I don’t know why but it seems that dogs need the same instructions over and over their entire life, so get used to being the instructor and get used to being very verbal with your dog !
 | Many classes offer straight up pet obedience and others offer the opportunity to socialize as well as train your dog. Harmony 4 Dogs offers the socializing and training plus a wider perspective by putting the human-canine relationship first and making sure that is the foundation for everything else to be built upon. Any of these dog class options can work well, its just a matter of you choosing which one fits best with both you and your dog. |
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