Organic Training

I call it “organic training” — those tricks your pets learn without much effort on your part. You don’t have to practice; they just happen. Moose — my shepherd mix — is great with organic training. I’ll be the first to say that he isn’t the world’s smartest dog. When I first brought him home to foster, he didn’t answer to his name (Coyote)! When I accidentally found a name that he would respond to (Moose), we stuck with that. He learns well by example. Lally already knew how to sit when Moose joined the family. By watching her, he … Continue reading →

Teach Your Dog to Stay

Stay is a command that is useful in many situations — introducing your dog to new people, keeping your dog away from spilled food, and more. This can be a difficult command for young dogs; puppies often have a very short attention span and are easily distracted! Be patient with your dog and stick with positive reinforcement. If you’ll be using food rewards (most dogs really like food rewards) it might be a good idea to practice your tricks before mealtime — your dog will be hungry and more likely to pay close attention to you and the treats. Here’s … Continue reading →

Teach Your Dog to Leave It: Other Animals

“Leave it” is a very useful command. It can help protect your dog from eating something unhealthy, poisonous, or just plain gross. It can also help prevent an unpleasant encounter between your dog and a strange dog (or other animal). The goal here is to get your dog to focus on YOU, rather than the thing that he wants to chase or investigate. Enlist the help of a friend who has a dog that your dog is familiar with. Friend and dog should walk on the opposite side of the street. (Pick a quiet, low traffic neighborhood if you can.) … Continue reading →

Teach Your Dog to Leave It

Leave it is an amazingly useful and versatile command — it can save your dog from eating something dangerous or instigating a fight with another dog or chasing your cat. Here’s one way to teach your dog to leave an object/treat: Find some treats your dog can’t resist. Keep all but one out of sight. (The one is for training; the rest are for rewards.) Place that one treat on the floor or on a low table that your dog can reach. Your dog will almost definitely pay attention if the treat is good enough! As you set the treat … Continue reading →

How to Use a Choke Chain Properly

When I wrote about why we never leave home without Murph’s choke chain, I mentioned a recent incident where I ran across someone who took exception to my using a choke chain on Murph. It’s not the first time it’s happened. I wasn’t always key on the idea of a choke chain myself. I remember thinking, “Wow. That seems like kind of a mean way to discipline a dog.” But that’s before my neighbor shared a video with me where a guy gave a great explanation on how to use a choke chain humanely. (Unfortunately I don’t remember either the … Continue reading →

Why We Never Leave Home Without Murph’s Choke Chain

Murph’s leash and choke chain Spring fever is most definitely in the air. Since we’ve had some spells of excellent walking-in-the-park or on longer-walks-through-the-neighborhood weather recently, Murph and I have been getting out more. So has everyone else. Inevitably we stop to chit chat. Sometimes with strangers, sometimes with people we already know. Some of these encounters are pleasant, some are not. Lately I’ve had two people on separate occasions comment about Murph’s choke chain. Mainly they’ve expressed unfavorable opinions about the use of them. “I think that is so cruel. Those things are so painful,” one lady said to … Continue reading →

Working with a Dog with a High Prey Drive

One of the main obstacles to cats and dogs living together in harmony is the dog’s prey drive. Basically, that’s the instinctive urge to chase things. Especially moving things. After all, wild dogs need to be good hunters in order to survive. Our domesticated pups still have that instinct. Training will be your greatest asset if your dog(s) and cat(s) don’t get along. Basics you’ll want your dog to know are: Sit (sit down on command) Stay (stay in one place until you allow them to get up) Leave it/Release (give up the thing they’re after — be it a … Continue reading →

Teaching Cats and Dogs to Live Together

It may not be easy to teach your dog and cat to live together peacefully. The difficulty will lie largely in your dog’s prey drive. Your pets’ personalities can make things go quickly or slowly. Cats tend to be independent — much more so than dogs. Most cats aren’t going to obey commands, so you’ll probably have to focus on training the dog how to act around the cat. A dog wants to fit into the pack hierarchy, and obeying commands is a part of that fit. One thing you’ll find especially useful in teaching your pets to live in … Continue reading →

The Dangers of Retractable Leashes

As I wrote about in Deciding to Use a Retractable Leash, I never would have used one with Budly. He would have liked to have more freedom to dash hither and yon, but he was such a wild, bad listening dog I feared nothing but disaster could come of it. But Murph was different. Walking him on a retractable leash was nice. However, we learned retractables come with their own dangers. Leash Burns Our first retractable was the thin string kind. Get a dog racing past you with that line zipping across your bare flesh and you’re going to get … Continue reading →

How Do You Get a Deaf Dog’s Attention When He’s Not Looking at You?

Who knew my friend asking me an innocent question the other night about the little deaf puppy she’d adopted would spark so many questions on my end? But it did, because I’ve never had a dog with a disability and I couldn’t help but wonder, “What would you do in X, Y, and Z circumstances?” For instance, I wondered how you’d train a deaf dog? Turns out, it’s not all that much different from training a hearing-able pooch. Sure, you do have to rely more on hand signals, but you can be creative! Either with inventing your own hand signals … Continue reading →