Karen A Vass-Deeds

False Bravado: Reframing the Old Dog Training Myths

If you work with dog owners or cruise the dog behavior groups on Facebook you will often see dogs that are labeled 'dominant.'  I hear this most often in client homes where they have multiple dogs and have categorized one as the dominant or "alpha" dog because of his or her interactions with the other dogs. 

He/she is often described as the dog who is stealing all the toys, pushing the others out of the way at the doorways, hoarding all of the chew bones or fighting over them, seeking – if not demanding – the humans' attention away from the other dogs, guarding the food or water bowls, playing too roughly and 'enthusiastically' with the other dogs, or keeping the other dogs off of the comfortable resting areas so they can have them as their own.  It appears to be seen even more predominantly within a household where the dogs are of similar age, especially siblings.

However, if you take the same dogs out of the comfort of their home or familiar territory, or even away from their familiar play mates, you may see a very different dog.
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Karen A Vass-Deeds

“C” the Process of Behavior Modification

As a behavior consultant working in sport, working-dog, and pet-dog environments, one theme remains consistent: we want to set our dogs up for success. Whether we're training for obedience, rally, agility, disc, detection work, or tackling big behavior concerns, positive-reinforcement trainers break training into small, achievable steps. By minimizing mistakes, we reduce stress and build confidence.

To make this simple for dog guardians, I often rely on a simple framework I call the Four C's of Behavior Modification: Control, Continue, Change, and Create.

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1667 Hits
Karen A Vass-Deeds

What Now? My Dog has behavior problems and I don’t know how to decide what to do!

Serious behavior problems are not the norm in the competitive sports world, but they do happen. Training can certainly affect behavior, and behavior can influence training! They are not the same!

Most behavior problems have underlying 'emotional' issues and training alone isn't the answer. If your dog is barking at someone, which is commonly a 'distance increasing' behavior that comes from the place of fear, we need to acknowledge that emotion, not suppress it. We can certainly use positively trained skills like obedience to replace an undesired behavior, but it needs to come from a place of confidence and choice, not force or coercion. 

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3765 Hits