Designer Dog Blog for sands904

by sands904 on 8/15/2009 at 7:54 PM in Training

If any of you have caugth Animal Planet's latest dog training show, I am very sorry! I just finished watching my first (and last) episode of 'In the Dog House' with Brad (the incompetient trainer). He is a horrible a$$ who jerks the dogs around while yelling at both them and their owners.

I am currently studying dog behavior in hopes of becoming a trainer someday and am appalled by this show and his techniques. If anyone is using such techniques on your dogs I urge you to reconsider.

I have a very fearful dog who *used* to bark/lunge at other people and dogs but with positive reinforcement, counter conditioning and desensitization we have made huge progress. Logan is now walking loose leash next to me 90% of the time and very rarely reacts to people and it getting much better with dogs. I have been working with him for about 6 months but during the last two months I have begun reading about dog behavior and it has extremely progressed our training. If I had tried yelling at him and jerking his leash he would be even more scared, fearful and stressed.

I just don't understand. We stopped hitting children with a ruler in school because we thought it was cruel and didn't really help so why do we use similar techniques with our dogs? People learn better with encouragement and positive feedback and so do dogs!
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by sands904 on 4/20/2009 at 10:36 PM in Training

After our recent woes at the Dog Park we decided to attend some classes with Logan and then after our other two. We went to our orientation tonight. It lasted almost 2 hours and we learned so much information. I do a lot of reading and learning about dogs and training and this was great. We have only taken our dogs to PetSmart/Petco courses before and this was totally different (as I expected...).

The trainer was wonderful and very knowledgable. We were able to discuss some of our issues with her one on one afterward. She gave us some great pointers and reconfirmed that we were doing the right things with each of them. I have no problem with training my dogs as far as obedience commands but they each seem to have their own issue to deal with.

Lacey is actually very good. She is a little over attached to me and needs some extra socialization but overall a very good dog. Logan is very shy and scared of new things. He also needs some socialization. If you have read my other entries you know that he is also very protective of Lacey to a point where he whines and gets stressed when she is out of his sight. Lance is very well behaved for a 9 month old puppy. He has shown some early signs of aggression toward other dogs. We have been working with him and things are improving.

I don't know if I am just 'lucky' in that each of my dogs has their own issue or if this is common for all dogs to have things they need work on just like people. I am very excited about our first night of class next Monday with Logan and can't wait to start. For any of you in the Kenosha, WI area I highly recommend her. (Loving Paws LLC)
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