What I learned today

May 12, 2009 at 7:51 am Leave a comment

DISCLAIMER: This blog post was written in 2009. We no longer do Obedience Training using “dominance”-based methods. We no longer use collar corrections. These methods made Boogie MORE TENSE, MORE TRIGGERED and more prone to aggressive behaviors. We switched over to reward-based methods in February 2010 and saw improvements. THIS BLOG POST IS OUTDATED.

…. More DOMINANCE/SUBMISSION stuff

Posted Date: : May 12, 2009 1:42 PM

When Boogie lies on his back belly-up, this is not a submissive position. He is actually being DOMINANT and demanding “a belly rub”. He knows he will always get a belly-rub because we always give him belly-rubs.

There is a difference between lying down when asked to “Lie Down” vs rolling over for a belly rub. So far, Boogie ain’t submitting to the LIE DOWN command. He won’t do it and I think we might have to try hot dogs, as Jill suggested.

Things we mustn’t do while Boogie is in Training:

He isn’t allowed to jump up onto us anymore when we come home. And the solution is neither to pat him nor to turn away and ignore him.

According to Rob (Cesar Millan-style trainer who btw, agrees with Jill on her training methods), we should STEP FORWARD as you would if you were invading someone’s personal space… walk right up to them. We claim the space until he backs off. If Boogie follows us around nicely, then it’s ok to pat him and say hello. Patting a dog when he is “following” is good, but NEVER when he is jumping up on us.

Me: “But he’s so cute when he’s up on his back legs!”

Rob: “That’s because he is a small dog. People always find small dogs cute when they jump up onto humans. Imagine if he were a large pitbull jumping up excitedly to greet you. Jumping up onto humans is not acceptable behavior, it shows that he doesn’t respect you as his Pack Leader”.

I talked to Rob about the YELPING on correction. I was worried about the prong collar still having this effect two weeks later. How much of a drama queen is Boogie?

Rob said: Try correcting him again each time he protests. In other words, you would be correcting him for not doing as he’s told, and correcting him again for having a tantrum.. See what happens … As a mother would say to her bratty kid: “You wanna complain? I’ll give ya something to complain about.”

Most important thing: Staying CALM and ASSERTIVE. Don’t get frustrated. Don’t get angry or anxious, don’t give in. Our energy affects the training.

Rob’s tip – Be like a traffic officer with a speeding driver: “I need to see your driver’s licence”.

Yeah this is hard. Establishing and maintaining Pack Leader status is HARD with a cute, willful, demanding, stubborn little dog!

I have two books on order:
– Jan Fennell: THE DOG LISTENER
– Cesar Millan: BE A PACK LEADER

To all readers of this blog, please free to leave comments!