A Comment Left By A Dog Owner On Rumble.
It does my heart good to see that people are listening and understanding. Posts like these make all the battles and frustration worthwhile. Dog owners don’t need to become a Psychologist to help their dog – just some basic understanding of Psychology – the very study of the Mind and Behavior will help you immensely.
This message HAS to come from dog owners. Why? Dog owners need to see the successes from other dog owners in order to choose and decide to understand. I’m just another “dog trainer” voice in an ocean of “scientific consensus”.
To be honest, just watching you an reading everything you’ve put out on both of your websites, doing a little of research by myself an understanding the dog body language, understanding that heavy pressure can damage the thyroid, parathyroid, trachea or salivary gland causing behavioural issues that you don’t take into account.
Understanding that your dog is just reacting to a cortisol response produced by the adrenal glands in a state of fear or stress towards an external stimuli makes so much sense, once I understood that I understood why corrections (punishment) isn’t needed an why it could make a dog worse or show far aggressive behaviours if you keep shutting down the symptom an not figuring out the underlying cause. I’ve noticed it’s either fear(lack of trust and understanding), lack of mental outlet(not having a job that the breed actually needs), too much excitement, diet, are the issues that are 95% of the cause.
Once I understood that we are similar to the dog, they can just express their insecurity or fear with barking or growling which we don’t, which makes it look far worse than it actually is. I still have a dog that’s insecure but after throwing training into the garbage, focusing on a relationship, giving my dog the choice to disengage instead of distracting or correcting on a slip leash I’ve noticed the bond becoming stronger.
Yes she still barks/growls at things she’s uncomfortable with but enough exposure and making things not a big deal an showing her I’m not bothered and that I’m confident, she begins to get over things a lot easier. It just takes time depending on how they’ve conditioned themselves to react, you need to break that conditioning with positive consequences that’ll become a positive reinforcement.
That is so well written and clearly shows your excellent understanding of the dog.
Thank you Ben.
