Uncategorized

If you work with Magnus K9, and many other professional trainers, you will hear that crate training your dog is a requirement.  So you’re saying that you will not work with clients who do not put their dogs in a crate? That is what I am saying.  Let me explain why and hopefully you will be convinced! Safety This is above and beyond the most important reason for crating your dog.  Dogs can get into just about anything in the house- we know they are stealthy creatures.  Dogs’ behaviors are also constantly ebbing and flowing day by day.  There is almost no guarantee in this life that just because a dog hasn’t done something, doesn’t mean he won’t.  I could never with full certainty say to someone “Well he knows he isn’t supposed to counter surf so I will leave him at home for hours with a few steaks on the counter because I know him.” Absolutely not.  He is still a dog!  Our homes are full of objects that are deadly for dogs and throughout my career I’ve seen and heard of some totally unassuming murder devices dogs have gotten into.  Things that have seemed harmless, like a water bottle for example, dogs have digested and either it was fatal, or the owner now had a few thousand dollar bill on their hands.  Where is your dog when it travels with you in the car?  This topic gets sad pretty quickly so let’s just remember that if we as humans are buckled up in the car because we care about our lives, why are we not treating our dogs the same? One other note about safety that I like to remind owners.  If your dog has to go to the vet for any sort of procedure or extended stay, they are putting your dog in a kennel/crate.  If the first time your dog has to be in a crate is also during a traumatic and highly stressful situation, you may have a long recovery ahead of you.  They actually like it!? When our son was first born and everyone in the house was starting to realize that crying was now part of our lives, I’ll never forget this one day that Onyx just got up off the floor and went to the other room to lay in his crate.  It still makes me laugh.  He was like “yeah, I’ll see you guys later but I would prefer some peace and quiet.”  He wanted a place that was all his own and he had that established. There was a study conducted that showed where dogs go organically when there is an extreme disturbance like an earthquake.  Do you know where they go?  The bathtub.  A tight, smaller space that provides them a feeling of some sort of security or comfort.  They like that feeling and it’s exactly the environment we want to create.  Management This is critical for your success as a happy dog owner!  We cannot supervise our dogs all the time and seeing that you’re spending lots of time and money on dog training, I don’t want your progress to go backwards!  The fastest way to kill dog training is lack of management.  If you are working on your dog not scratching at furniture but you leave her out when you go to the grocery store, how could you ever keep her from doing just that?  A lot of clients come in trying to break their dogs of bad habits.  Let’s say for example that you are a cigarette smoker, you are trying to quit, and your partner is very supportive of doing everything they can to help you.  Each afternoon your partner leaves you alone in the house and they put a fresh pack of cigarettes on the counter in plain sight.  How are you supposed to not indulge?!  There is no accountability and you’ve been provided the exact source that’s problematic.   That’s what leaving your dog out to wander the house freely is to them.  “Why would I NOT” do that bad behavior.  Enjoying Life  A mental health professional told me this quote I’ll never forget:  Boundaries exist to strengthen a relationship, not to weaken it.  That has really changed my perspective about the way I go about many things, one of them is training dogs.  If you haven’t experienced it yet, there will be many times in your life where it is for the good of everyone around you to have your dog put away in a safe and comfortable environment.  It might be when guests are over, it may be when a friend wants to bring their dog who isn’t super friendly.  If you’re like me, it might be at the end of a long and exhausting day when I put my son to bed and I think, “I just want to be completely left alone right now.”  Those boundaries make it so I don’t get frustrated at my dogs for a silly reason.  It is great balance and equates to a long and happy relationship for you all.   It also means that I get to bring my dog tons of places because as long as I have a crate for him, he gets to visit new spots and I don’t have to worry about any safety concerns.

Why does my dog sit by the back door perfectly and then when I tell it to sit, it doesn’t? Why does my dog carry its food bowl to me but if I ask it to hold something, it looks at me like I am crazy? Why the barking? Why the leash pulling?  Why? Why? WHY?? We as humans do this thing where we create stories and try to rationalize our dogs behavior when we don’t know what’s actually going on.  “Oh he is whining because I left the room, he must miss me.”  It’s natural and we fill in the blanks because many of us have no idea, but we think we might know what’s going on in our furry friend’s mind.  “Anthropomorphism is the use of human characteristics to describe or explain nonhuman animals.”  It’s where we as humans make up stories to explain why the dog does what it does.  It’s a topic that’s discussed a lot with scientists and advanced dog trainers. It’s an important point I discuss with my clients because once you break yourself of this habit and understand actually WHY a dog does what it does, your training will excel. Here’s the real answer: a dog does what it does to better its situation and to find its advantage.  It wants to feel good, it wants to avoid stress. It’s that simple. In any behavior your dog taught itself, it did it to better its situation or to find better, more positive feelings.  An easy example of this is when your dog comes inside from playing on a hot day and lays in a specific spot in your house.  Maybe it’s in a room with a fan or near your AC vent.  That dog taught itself that when I pant a lot, I can get relief from some air source and that made her feel good!  Once you start looking at every annoying behavior your dog does from this angle, you will start to feel a lot less frustrated.  Next time your dog grabs your shoe and takes off for the back bedroom, instead of getting instantly angry, try to think what’s the cause and effect that’s making that dog think it is bettering its own situation to make off with your shoe?  What’s your usual reaction when things like this happen?   Now the big question in dog training is HOW do we help a dog find its advantage?  That is the secret sauce and where I start with all clients who train with me.