Bottom Line: All Dogs Bite
There is a trend in modern behavior talk to pretend that dogs bite people because of some event in their background. Then they propose that you must change the underlying emotions to change the behavior.
Behavior Clips
Ignorance Is Always an Excuse
It’s pretty common for dog owners to blame themselves for their dog’s problems. The majority of them have nothing to feel guilty about—but still do. They don’t really have a justification for their feelings because, (Big Reveal), they aren’t trainers.
Clicker Training: What’s It All About?
From a dog’s point of view, obeying a command boils down to two simple problems; “What do you want me to do?” and “What do I get, if I do it?” To put this in human terms, the dog needs information about what to do and a motivation why he should do it.
Groomer’s Guide To Aggressive Dogs
Right now I am working with a miniature Poodle who used to bite if you tried to pick him up. His owners didn’t feel comfortable attaching a leash to his collar for the same reason. At the same time, his groomer had no problems with handling this dog.
Scare-Less Or Scar-Less: How Dogs Interpret Human Fear
I have worked with dogs since 1977. I have handled tens of thousands of dogs—many of them dangerous. There is an old piece of folk–wisdom I have heard hundreds of times. The ‘wisdom’ includes a term that is almost universally accepted and rarely challenged.
Finding A Trainer With Balance
As a groomer you cannot be completely isolated from the world of training. First and foremost, if your client has a dog behavior problem it is very important for you to be able to refer them to someone good.
Learning By Doing: Aggression And Practical Solutions
When I was starting a private behavior practice, I had already trained two working dogs for my municipal animal control agency. I knew dogs. I knew training. To broaden the scope of my services, I spent a great deal of time learning about behavior modification.
Rubbing A Dog The Wrong Way
From my experience, dogs have varying sensitivities to human touch. I say this after almost 40 years of handling between 20 and 30,000 dogs. Some dogs don’t like being petted. Some dogs don’t seek physical affection (I owned one for almost 15 years).
Ivan Pavlov… Ring a Bell?
Pavlov is a name well known in the field of psychology but almost nothing about his work is known. At best, you may know that his most famous experiment was to ring a bell and then give a dog a piece of food. He traced the physiological reflexes associated with food – salivation, reduction in heart rate, etc.
Finding the Right Trainer for Your Clients
Behavior Clips
Many of your clients need training services and ask you to help them find a qualified trainer. Trainers that come to your salon may solicit that kind of recommendation. They will undoubtedly sell themselves in the best light possible – an understandable and normal thing to do. This is where it gets interesting.
From Pack to Play Group
The last 30 years of dog training lore revolves around the connection between wolves and dogs. You can buy 100 books that prattle about dogs being descended from wolves; animals that voluntarily live in groups, called packs. This perspective invariably assumes that dogs are likewise “pack animals”. The underlying implication is that dogs possess the same wolf-like ability to live in harmony with their own kind.
A Barking Matter
Barking is a problem for just about everyone other than New Zealand shepherds. They use “Huntaway” dogs to drive sheep with incessant barking. For them it is functional. For the rest of us it is problematic. People can be driven from their apartments or condos because their dogs bark incessantly. Shelters have trouble featuring adoptable animals because they cannot hear amid barking dogs. OSHA noise level standards require kennel workers to use hearing protection.