Let’s face it, us humans are prone to be a little lazy (me included!) and what’s not to love about a cue that you can use in all sorts of different scenarios and for a variety of different behaviours.
Plus, we often forget our dog’s cues when we are caught up in a stressful situation, so having one or two words to fall back on will make every day management delightfully smooth.
Here is how to teach your furry friend these cues.
First things first, dogs bark! It’s a dog, it’s what they do. You wouldn’t ask a lion to stop roaring.
However, the fact that dogs live in our homes makes this often an issue for us humans. And of course we often expect our furry friend to behave perfectly, in all sorts of ‘human’ situations.
This article is about understanding why your dog barks and how to deal with it, including teaching alternative behaviours, providing outlets so they don’t need to bark in the first place as well as preempting, managing and, let’s say, tone it down a notch, or two.
Before I delve into the different types of barking and how to deal with these, here are some things to consider that can impact on most barking behaviours:
I've just received a wonderful review from a client who I've been working with on separation distress (for their rescue hound mix Daisy, isn't she the cutest).
We've been working together for a while, months! As that is what it (mostly) takes to help a dog over separation related issues (commonly known as 'separation anxiety').
We went from helping her to get over initial departure triggers (I.e. the human putting on shoes or a coat - slowly changing her association from panicked to relaxed) to slowly building up duration of absences (3mins, 5mins, slowly slowly is most often the key to success, teaching the dog a routine that surrounds the human coming back).
Daisy happily copes with 90 minutes now, sometimes even longer. Any longer is still difficult for her though so we are taking it back to baby steps, to help her over that hurdle gently.
Also, she went from hating long car journeys to breezily traveling along now. And from pulling like a truck on the lead to happily bouncing alongside her humans. All down to her humans' effort and care, being patient and understanding and just so so wonderful with her.
I do love my job!
Go Daisy!
Porch.com have recently asked Wolfgang’s Way to contribute to an article about how to care for your pets (in our case dogs, of course) at home.
I love the fact that there are now so many companies outside the pet industry that show interest in this subject (Porch provides software and services to several home service industries including real estate, contractors, moving and much more).
After all, we need to spread the message about how to look after our beloved pets positively, there’s way too much misleading information out there as is (especially when it comes to dog training and behaviour)!!
Our question was about how to ‘keep your dog active’ and whereas this is a rather broad subject (and one would ideally like to write a ten page essay about this), we’ve tried to accommodate the most important bits within a few sentences.
If you’d like to have a read of what we’ve contributed, plus what other industry people have said about everything from how to start training to how to care for your reptiles and cats (diverse!), click here.
If you want your dog to learn and understand your language, then it’s only fair you can talk ‘dog’. Communication should always go two ways and understanding what your dog is telling you will result in a strong, trusting bond, which should be the basis of any training.
To talk ‘dog’ you have to look at your friend’s entire body (eyes, ears, mouth, tail, body stance, etc) as well as listen to the sounds he or she makes. Context and looking at the bigger picture is equally as important; for example a dog who yawns in the morning when he wakes up is tired, whereas a dog who yawns when a dog runs up to her in the park, is worried and potentially stressed.
Some subtle signs of communication to look out for when your dog feels stressed: eye blinking, lip/ nose licking, yawning, averting face/ gaze, lowered or tucked tail, frozen body posture, tightly closed mouth and much more.
