“I want x. My dog wants y. Therefore my dog is wrong.”
Stubborn, headstrong, wilful, disobedient, difficult, challenging, pain in the ****, you name it - the dog gets called it.
And it all adds up to WRONG.
But hang on a minute! Who made these rules? That if you want x, x is therefore right, and your dog should comply.
Just because you want something, does this make it the right thing to do? Does it make you right?
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Look at it from your dog’s point of view
You may be asking him to do something that seems straightforward to you. But your dog is not doing it. Why?
Maybe he didn’t hear you
Maybe he heard you but didn’t understand
Maybe you haven’t yet taught him
Maybe he’d love to do it but is unable to do so at the moment
Maybe he doesn’t think it’s worth doing
What we need to do is look at your dog and run through these questions to find out why he’s not obliging. Only then can we see a way forward to change.
Let’s take a look
The first three reasons are fairly self-explanatory. And in no case is your dog wrong.
The last two bear closer scrutiny.
“He’d love to do it but is unable to do so at the moment.”
He’d love to sit when you ask, but there’s someone at the door who has to be seen off, or greeted ecstatically (depending on your dog). What you have here is a lack of training round what you want your dog to do at the door. It’s not about not-sitting! This links back to the third reason - you haven’t taught him yet.
He’d love to do what you ask, but there’s a dog over there staring at him. This is either terrifying him or exciting him (depending on your dog) and he cannot possibly focus on what you’re saying. Teaching him how to manage other dogs in the vicinity will give him a “recipe” to follow. Back to the third reason again!
He’d love to sit when you ask, but he’s a sighthound with an almost bare bottom, and the ground is cold and muddy. The best you’ll get is a bit of shuffling and a grudging stoop. Why spoil your nice snappy sit for the sake of being right?
“Maybe he doesn’t think it’s worth doing”
And here we get to the nitty-gritty.
If someone asks you to do something, you need to have a reason to want to do it.
Maybe it’s your work and you get paid to do it
Maybe it’s someone you love who you want to help
Maybe it’s going to benefit you too
You need a reason!
And so does your dog.
If you expect blind obedience with nothing in it for your dog, the response you want is going to be given more and more grudgingly, less and less accurately, with less enthusiasm, less willingness, less FUN!
There will be endless conflict, endless battles of will, endless frustration.
Why not discard notions of right and wrong, and look instead at building a strong and loving relationship with your dog?
A relationship which has you understanding his needs and desires better, and has him happy to fit in with your reasonable requests, which he understands, has learnt, and is able to do - with pleasure?
As Viktor Frankl, a man who refused to be broken, said,
Between stimulus and response there’s a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Dogs don’t arrive with us with all the operating software installed. We get Dog 1.0. It’s up to us to do all the teaching and shaping to get the companion we want, and perhaps the companion we visualised when we first decided to invite a dog into our home.
It’s all about learning! We learn, and our dog learns. We’re not keeping score! It’s not Owner 10, Dog nil.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Wayne Dyer
A happy partnership will change your expectations (which will be totally unreasonable if you’ve been watching those ghastly tv programs about dogs being wrong). It will give you a far better way to interact with your chosen pet. It will end those senseless battles of will and frustration.
And it will make life so much easier!
Start out with our free e-course here:
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And let me know how you get on!