Create a Habit of Learning: Dialog During Pack Leader Learning.
Tami and my approach is to learn together as husband and wife, as well as, pack leaders. So, when we wake up in the morning, have our coffee and we watch some episodes of Doggy Dan video series. In addition, we review one of the five Golden Rule video’s everyday. Finally, we stop the videos, from time to time, to confirm what we just learned. Consistency is the mother of learning and repetition is the father. We both take notes and immediately act on what we learned with the puppy. Having a human partner with the same passion as you have, will make a huge difference in anything we do. In drug addiction therapy, why do you think you have a sponsor. Helps both parties for different reasons.
Put the puppy in timeout: Two warnings and in time out.
I have had some dogs in my life that were literally nuts. Some dogs chewed everything in sight and others would not obey. Not the dogs fault is my reality today. It is obvious that we were not consistent; we didn’t we speak dog and we were not the pack leader. Human error. Could not help it at the time, the darn things were so cute and it seemed so mean. I admit today, we were wrong.
When the dog does a behavior like chewing on a power cord, my wife would make a loud sound and say NOOOOOO. I have been much worse than my wife; I would get really frustrated and YELL at the dog or puppy like they speak English. All the puppy thought, was we were barking at him. The puppy speaks dog and we were not talking dog. We adjusted OUR human behavior which instantly give positive results.
We would correct the puppy’s behavior twice. On the third time, we would calmly with no emotion, pick the dog up and put him in time out. Literally, time out in our small bath room for a few minutes, until the dog calmed down as well as got the message. Then let him out and the behavior would be improved instantly. Simple, consistent and effective. I wish I could raise our kids again, LOL. I sucked as a dad anyway.
Meeting Two Golden Retrievers on the Street: Instantly recognized of the pack leader.
Two golden retrievers were taking a walk on my block. I asked if Otis “The French Bulldog”, could meet them. Getting dogs around each other is as important as getting dogs around humans. One of the retrievers was warm and playful. The other looked a bit stressed and was gentle, but no question was the pack leader. The puppy instantly knew and acted accordingly. What I noticed was a stress or concern in the eyes of the pack leader. When we humans are the pack leaders, we allow our dogs to relax and enjoy. Interesting notion.
Let’s Go Out To Dinner: Dog friendly beach restaurant, here we come.
We live at the beach and one of my favorite on-the-beach restaurants is dog friendly. We sat outside and met most of the folks in the outside dining area. Good for the puppy, good for us as a family. FYI, the puppy did GREAT. I believe it had a lot to do with our NEWEST and hardest rule. NO human food, period. All our other dogs were food focused. Ever had a 40 LBS all muscle English Bull dog who wanted a prime rib bone. Can’t blame him, I tasted dog food before. Not so good. What if I never had a cookie or white sugar. Mind boggling possibilities when you don’t know what that kind of food tastes like. So many rules to learn but incredible results, in short order. The bitch of it will be the consistency in training aspect both as a team and individually. Same holds true with a group of employees on our team at any human organization. Training is training!!!!