Good Dog Rules
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Relationship Gaps And Unforeseen Consequences What most folks don’t get, is that everything with your dog is connected. Every allowance or permissive moment, opens the door for another, seemingly unrelated behavior. They don’t realize that over-indulging your dog with love, freedom, and tons of unearned affection, creates perceptions about you that can lead to other issues. That everything you do or don’t do is giving your dog information about who you are and how he should respond to you. That you’re constantly dropping clues to your dog about what opportunities are available, as well as creating openings for instability. When your relationship with your dog is lopsided, unbalanced, and based far more on “love” and spoiling than it is rules and structure, you’re going to have problems. (I think we all get that by now.) But the interesting part is that you never know how that information of permissiveness, allowance, and lack of accountability will show itself. You think the spoiling might lead to begging or barking at you, but instead it leads to resource guarding. You think that allowing the pulling on the walk might lead to barking at other dogs, but instead it leads to growling and snapping at guests in the house. You think allowing jumping, barking, and craziness in the house will just lead to bad manners, but instead it leads to separation anxiety. While the origins of these serious issues might seem dramatic and improbable, I can assure you we’ve seen them all in action. We’ve seen relationship gaps create what seem to be amazingly disconnected issues. The thing is, you don’t get to choose how your behavior (or lack of) affects your dog’s. You don’t know what’s going to come out the other end of a relationship that’s short on leadership, rules, and accountability, and long on chaos and permissiveness. Oftentimes it makes clear sense. The behavior you think you’re possibly creating (and are ok with) is what you get. But just as often it’s not. Often the dog’s individual psychological makeup and personality create an outcome you’d think was totally unrelated. But what happens is, your dog’s personal insecurities, temperament, genetics, and attitude become a giant mixer – a mixer that combines with what you add to it. You both add your parts, stir them up with daily life and repetition, and voila, you get some nasty behavior that SEEMS totally unrelated. But it’s not. We see so many dogs with gigantic laundry lists of issues. From annoying stuff to super dangerous. And the funny thing is, our program almost never changes. But all these dogs, with all these different issues, using the same program, transform. Do we sometimes need specific protocols for specific issues? Of course. But by and large, a simple program of believable leadership, non-negotiable rules, dependable structure, and accountability for poor choices are what make 95% of the changes. Used with permission of a rehabilitation mentor By Sean O’shea Do you know how many resource guarders stop guarding once they experience a few rules totally unrelated to their guarding? Or how many territorial guys stop being territorial once believable leadership is in place? Or how many separation anxiety dogs relax and stop freaking out once they learn that structure, rules, and accountability are prioritized over freedom and affection? Leadership gaps, rule gaps, structure gaps, accountability gaps – accompanied by permissiveness, affection, and freedom are the perfect recipe to create all manner of dog behavior problems. The thing is, you never know which ones. Is Your Dog Too Smart For Training? Relationships are real things. You and your dog have one. It might be healthy, balanced, and awesome, or it might be toxic, disrespectful, and disheartening. Or maybe it’s somewhere in-between. Whatever it is, it’s been built by your interactions. What you’ve allowed. What you haven’t allowed. What you’ve asked for. What you’ve reinforced. Who you’ve been and how you’ve behaved. Everything you’ve done has been information your dog has used to determine your relationship. All this information has told your dog who you are and what role you wish to play in his life. It’s also informed him about the rules of life. What is and isn’t okay, what is and isn’t expected. It’s created the framework your dog makes all his decisions from. While trainers can teach your dog commands, manners, and what is and isn’t acceptable behavior, your dog is simply too smart and too emotionally evolved to take that information as universal. Just like you know who means business and who doesn’t in your own life, so does your dog. Eventually, if you don’t keep up the work, if you start to slack, your dog will see the cracks. He’ll realize there’s two sets of rules: the ones he knows, and the ones you actually enforce. And he’ll choose the latter. Not because he’s a bad dog, but because he’s opportunistic…just like you and me. Like us, when authority and rules are foggy, or not consistently enforced, we tend to take advantage of them. Whether we like to admit it or not, it’s always consequences – or the possibility of them – that tends to keep us on our best behavior. The more predictable and dependable, the better our behavior tends to be. And of course, the less predictable and dependable, the worse our behavior tends to be. Our dogs are reading us. All the time. What are we enforcing, what are we allowing? They’re taking this information and deciding what needs to be adhered to and what doesn’t, who needs to be listened to and who doesn’t. If you ask for less than what the trainer asked, you’ll get less. If you ask the same, you’ll get the same. It’s in these moments that you create your relationship dynamics. Used with permission of a rehabilitation mentor By Sean O’shea And while us trainers can build the foundation for the new, more healthy patterns and choices to stand on, it’s only you – the person your dog lives with, the person who enforces the rules, structure, and expectations daily – that can make these changes permanent. We can only give you the tools to start you on the path, we can’t build the relationship. That part, the hard part, is up to you. Your dog is too smart to have it any other way. The 10/10 Principle What’s the number one question we get from owners? When can we pet him? When can we love on him? When can he be on the couch? When can he have total freedom? Okay, that’s several questions, but you get the idea, right? When people get dogs they don’t get them thinking they’ll have to temper their affection. They don’t think couch privilege might not be on the menu. They don’t think they’ll have to restrict their dog’s ability to roam the house. But, if things have gone sideways with their dog’s behavior and their relationship with their dog, changing or adjusting these things might just be what’s needed to help sort that behavior and relationship stuff out. What many owners don’t understand is that these seemingly benign privileges and interactions can create strong feelings and perceptions in our dogs – feelings and perceptions about us, their owners. Feelings of permissiveness, softness, neediness – feeling like we might just be ripe for the taking advantage of. With certain dogs, these interactions and privileges we share can unintentionally convey that listening, respecting, and prioritizing us, isn’t something they need to worry about. And this can cause lots of problems. You may see horrible behavior on walks, territorial stuff around the house or yard, possessiveness, guarding, neurotic barking, fighting amongst household dogs, fear and nervousness, or even human aggression. But here’s the thing, these privileges and interactions, on their own, aren’t the sole cause of the problems – actually, they can be almost totally benign. So then what’s the problem? The problems arise when these privileges and interactions occur IN THE ABSENCE of their counterbalance – the training, leadership, rules, authority, and accountability. It’s when the conversation is completely lopsided that things get funky. Owners don’t realize they’re having a one-sided, dysfunctional conversation with their dogs that is leading things astray. They don’t realize they’re giving all the privileges and freedom and love, without asking for anything in return. And when things are given excessively, freely, with no boundaries, and no demands for corresponding good behavior, things can get ugly, fast. Respect goes out the window, and dogs get stressed, anxious, nervous, opportunistic, and freaked out! Used with permission of a rehabilitation mentor By Sean O’shea So trainers, looking to shore things up, even things out, and re-balance the human-to- dog conversation, ask owners to remove or reduce certain privileges and interactions. The goal is to shift the way your dog feels about you and your household back to a more healthy space, and thus, get your dog himself to shift back to a more healthy space. And usually, when things are just beginning, when you’re just starting to work on resetting your dog and your relationship, we want to create as much leverage as possible; to create the strongest perceptions we can.