My Doberman is not a toy!

I have been bottling up a lot of anger lately. I am furious at how rude some people are when it comes to dog etiquette. Everywhere I take Dobie, some random person who wants to meet him will give my dog a command. I am one rude person away from cursing someone out in public.

Would you tell someone elses kid to go sit down? Or course not! You’ll have an angry parent threatening you to leave their kid alone or they’ll call the police. So what makes you think you can tell my dog to “Sit”? You can’t, period. It’s wrong. He’s not your dog.

1. I don’t know you, how dare you give my dog a command! Even if I did know you, what makes you think I would let you give my dog a command? Ask me first.
2. You are confusing my dog, how dare you presume it is okay to use a hand signal on my dog? I don't want him trained with hand signals!
3. Ask for my permission if you want to see my dog do a “trick”. Even then, you don’t get to give the command. My dog is not a toy!

Cesar Millan is right. He rehabilitates dogs, people are the ones that need training. Maybe other dog owners don’t feel this way because their dog is purely a pet. I want to compete with mine, his training is very important to me. Even so, it’s not right to presume you can tell another person’s dog what to do. End of rant.

Raising a working puppy

So what’s the difference between raising a working puppy as opposed to a pet puppy? Drive. Building and preserving drive is the main difference in their upbringing. All dogs are motivated by the same basic instincts. They come with food and prey motivation built-in. As they grow, they develop the drive to play and earn praise from their owners.

In pet homes, prey drive is highly discouraged. When the puppy chases an object and bites it, that object can easily become a hand or foot or small child. It is difficult to teach him the difference because to the puppy, these items are all fair game. So from day one, playing tug is discouraged, sitting or lying down is rewarded. Over time, these dogs learn that being calm and submissive brings them more praise and attention.

In work/sporting dog homes, the exact opposite upbringing is applied. We want to build more prey drive in the puppy. We give him tug toys and when he plays with them, we praise and praise. Eventually you can train the puppy just by holding one of his toys. He’ll be so motivated to earn a game of tug, food rewards are no longer required. Dobie has already reached this stage. He is as motivated by a toy as he is by food. Unfortunately, to an outsider, a working puppy appears to be wild. Working puppies are corrected minimally when they are little. There is nothing worse than over-correcting a dog and shutting down its drive to play. A dog that doesn’t love playing cannot be trained to work (using reward based method) because we make work the equivalent of structured play.

Things Petsmart trainers have told me:

• don’t play tug with your puppy
• flip him over on his back so he knows you’re the pack leader
• use hand signals, with treat in hand, motion him to do the desired behaviour

Things Schutzhund trainers have told me:

• play play play all the time, teach puppy that playing with you is the best thing in the world
• praise tugging, chasing a thrown toy, fetching
• give commands in a neutral tone and posture, absolutely no hand signals
• don’t let puppy look at treat in hand before rewarding, we want eye contact
• don’t over-correct the puppy, better to under-correct and let them make mistake again
• build self confidence in the puppy, ignore him if he gets startled or scared

Please try to take all dog training advice with a grain of salt. Everyone has their own methods which they think are best. At the end of the day, the best training method is the method that works best for the dog. Each individual dog matures and learns in his own unique way so as a gentle leader you need to choose the best training method for your dog.

Here’s Dobie training with his new frisbee:

Never dominance roll your dog!

Let this be my apology to Dobie. Dobie, I’m so sorry I was naive enough to take advice from a Petsmart trainer who told me to flip you onto your back when you misbehaved. I’m so sorry I did this dominance roll to you in the past. And I’m so incredibly sorry I allowed others to dominance roll you when they had no right to do so. It will never happen again, I promise. I will never let anyone bully you again.

What is a dominance roll?
When you physically put a dog on his back, pin him down until he stops struggling, adverts eye contact and submits to you.

Why is this completely wrong?
Because in nature, pack leaders don’t do this. Within dog conflicts, the more dominant dog doesn’t force the lower-rank animal onto his back. The more submissive dog rolls over to expose his stomach by his own will. When you flip a dog over by force, you are not teaching the dog to submit to you because you are the pack leader. Infact, you are communicating to them that you are a crazy dictator to be feared. The dog may still love you, but you lose his respect. You are breaking the bond of trust between you and your dog. Instead of learning submission, the dog is learning to fear you.

With a pet dog, you might never notice the difference (which explains why it is still widely taught in the pet training world). Since you’re not giving him commands and working as a team, you’ll never know whether or not your dog respects and trusts you. With a working dog, it is as clear as day. A dog that heels because it must has no bounce in his step and no wagging tail. A dog that heels because it enjoys working with his owner has exuberance and excitement in all his movements.

Even though I have not dominance rolled Dobie in a long time, I still feel the need to get this information out on my blog and apologize to him. Hopefully another puppy will not be subject to such rude handling from humans. After I learned more about dog pack behaviour, I began to notice that Dobie will expose his belly when I tower over him and say “bad dog”. He also licks after he is corrected for mouthing. In order to build trust with him again, I always praise him happily when he submits on his own accord. There are no hard feelings to being corrected and in time I hope to win his trust back.

Parading the side-walk with his stick

On our walk to the woods last week, Dobie picked up a rotting branch and insisted on bringing it home. He was so proud of his branch, I couldn’t bear to make him “drop it”. So instead, I found him a decent stick which was not rotting and replaced it!

Every day we go outside for a long walk, he picks up his stick from the porch and carries it for the duration of the walk. When we get back, he has to “drop it” and leave it on the porch. We have been in this routine for a week now and I think he is comfortable with the idea that the stick must stay outside. He is reassured that it will be there for him tomorrow.

Some benefits I have noticed from giving him a stick to carry:

- Less distracted, more mindful of not pulling on the leash
- It is obvious when he needs to potty (he drops the stick, goes potty, picks it up again)
- He’s a working breed, seems happy to be employed carrying a stick
- Good practice for carrying other items such as his water bottle

See how happy he is today!

Beef jerky stuffed pig's hoof

What happened Dobie?  Why did your crate explode?

Oh I see, you were trying to pull the hoof treat out with the towel...

My bff gave him this new treat and Dobie LOVES it.  He can chew on the pig's hoof for 2 whole hours while I watch a movie.  No other object has kept his attention for this long.  Luckily, his big mouth is unable to get all the beef jerky from the tip of the hoof.  So he can only chew on the hoof and lick at the beef.  This treat has occupied him for 8 hours before he finished all the beef jerky inside.  Made by Rollover, it can be found at Petsmart.