The Dog Diary

The following are just some of the strategies that Paul Connolly of Wolfspeak taught me to put in place. I can promise you, they work! However, as with anything, you must stick at it, as the most important things with dogs are repetition and consistency and these strategies are all in dog language.

Feeding

Don’t leave the dog’s food down for him all day. Alter the feeding times within an hour and a half slot each day. Preferably, feed him after you’ve eaten, but do it like this….Prepare his food as normal, but ignore him while you’re doing it, don’t talk to him. When the food is prepared, YOU pretend to eat it, again saying nothing. Hide it, guard it, pretend to eat it yourself, even munch a cookie or something to make him think you’re eating it. When you’ve ‘finished’, put the bowl down for him, then walk away, again not talking to him - this makes him think you are Pack Leader and you are eating first, giving him leftovers. If, after about 15 minutes, he hasn’t eaten it, PICK IT UP and don’t give him a second chance. He can starve until next mealtime as he’s missed his chance!

Another tip, once every 7 days or so, go through the same sequence again, but put down an EMPTY bowl to him. This will make him think you have eaten everything, as is the Pack Leader’s prerogative, and there is nothing left for him. The other benefit of this feeding process is that it gives his tummy a chance to clear out which, in an adult dog, is a good thing. Don’t do this part with puppies as they need their food to grow! Remember not to talk to your dog while all this is going on, no matter how puzzled he looks!

Toys & Playtime

Do you leave the latest line in dog toys lying scattered all around your house? If so, put them away in the cupboard or the dog chest. YOU decide when dog playtime happens and what the game is. If he likes ‘tug’ which is Dexter’s favourite game, you as Pack Leader decide when the game commences, then play with him, let him win sometimes and make sure that you win other times. Make sure you put all the dog’s toys away at all times when dog playtime finishes and you decide when the games begin and end.

Space

Does your dog lie in the middle of the floor or by the stairs and instinctively, you step over him? Instead of stepping over him, invade his space and shuffle into him, forcing him to move out of your path and out of the way. Even at times when he’s lying comfortably snoozing in his bed, go over now and again and shift him out of his bed. Again, this is you being Pack Leader and you will decide what space he has, not him. Do this fairly often.

All this sounds cruel and is in total contradiction of how we humans respond to each other, but this is DOG LANGUAGE! Yes, it’s difficult to do, especially with cute puppies like Dexter, and no-one knows that better than me, but it’s good for them, as they are ill-equipped to take on the role as Pack Leaders and we are actually relieving their stress by taking their responsibility away and establishing ourselves as Pack Leaders.

Dexter & His Favourite Tug Toy

As I said, Dexter was an incredibly cute puppy, but that was part of the problem. It’s so easy to ‘humanise’ dogs them when they’re small and they look so defenceless and helpless, but really, they’re not, as the previous post highlighted!

I guess most of my problems occured with Dexter after I moved back home to Scotland at the beginning of 2005, when Dexter was only 6 months old. A stressful time for me affected him in such a huge way, but it’s hard to notice at the time.

It’s an absolute fact, and well worth bearing in mind, that dogs have something of a ’sixth sense’ and can pick up on what you and I might think to be the slightest ‘vibe’ but it’s really noticeable to the dog and they act accordingly.

Dexter was my ‘little rock’ through my stressful times, and he was showered with lots of love and cuddles and lots of trendy doggy gear, the most stylish I could find on the internet! However, none of that meant anything to him in his dog brain - all he was seeing was that I was elevating him up to ‘pack leader’ status and he was so ill-equipped to cope with it. He was taking on a role that was too much for him and it was my fault!

He started to suffer from nervous aggression which manifested itself by him snapping and snarling at whatever he wasn’t sure about. Now, this can be misconstrued by many people as pure canine aggression, and people don’t look any further than that, so it becomes very frustrating when the people around you don’t understand that there might be a reason for this kind of behaviour and that the dog is not bad or vicious, he is purely unsure and doesn’t know how to deal with certain circumstances, so all he’s really doing by snapping at it, is telling the ’scary thing’ to go away!

I knew my dog wasn’t a bad dog and I wanted to help him. I still didn’t fully understand the root of his problem, so I called in the services of a Dog Behaviourist. There are lots of Dog Behaviourists around but to this day, I feel I landed lucky and feel totally blessed that my random selection in the Yellow Pages led me to meet the most wonderful man, Paul Connolly, of Wolfspeak.

My next post will describe my learning curve.

A Little Confused About Life

Dexter was such a great puppy and a cute puppy. He slept all night, every night, from Day 1. I put him in this huge cardboard box in my bedroom from the start, determined I wasn’t going to let him sleep on the bed, but I didn’t want to isolate him altogether at that point. After all, he was only 8 weeks old and had just left his mum and his little siblings, so he’d had the company of others all along.

His potty training wasn’t too bad either. I had some puppy pads by the back door and he did his stuff there for a few days then always went outside. The only problem I had was when it was raining…he’d always pee on my expensive rug then, as he hated getting wet, something which, to this day, is a problem for him. This is the dog who walks AROUND puddles and hates getting his feet wet! Even when I let him out in the morning after a long night, if it’s raining, he won’t go out, but he’ll let his little iron bladder get to work and hold it in until the rain stops!

Such a cute puppy, he was so tiny when he first came home with me. He was shorter than the height of one of the stairs and I was always worried that he’d fall downstairs while he was upstairs with me as I was working from my home office. So, I placed a step ladder on it’s side and strategically positioned it along the top of the stairs so he couldn’t fall down the stairs.

This worked well for a couple of days until the day I tripped over it and the ladder came crashing down on my poor little 9-week old cute puppy! Well, have you ever heard a dog scream? Scream he did and then shot straight under my bed, yelling like I’d tried to murder him!

I coaxed him out and he was wimpering like mad, holding one of his front paws up in the air as high as he could. I thought I’d broken his leg - I felt sick!

So, a quick call to the Vet followed and I took him there straight away. We saw the vet and the diagnosis was…..nothing wrong with him, but of a bump, that was all! The vet gave him a painkilling shot and I sloped off home, a bit embarrassed about my panic. To be fair to the pup, he did get a bit of a shock and slept for the rest of the day, but that was when I learned how clever he was!

You see, dogs are the single, most successful species on our planet. Why? It’s their ability to manipulate, to be a pack, to fool you into thinking that something is one way when it really is something else quite different.

My 9-week old puppy had managed to make SUCH a song and dance about his little injury, that he had me running around him like a slave, pandering to his every whim, giving him lots of attention and not letting him out of my sight, which all had the effect of giving him his spot as centre of attention, of leader of the pack, which was exactly what he wanted.

I didn’t realise this at the time, and unfortunately it did store up some problems for me, which I’ll come on to, but believe me, dogs can make such a fuss when there’s nothing to worry about, and they can play you like a fiddle! So BEWARE!!!

Poor injured puppy?