It’s December, when loads of people get the strange idea in their heads that a dog would be a swell gift for someone in their lives. The trouble is, a dog isn’t an object that can be set aside and forgotten when a play session ends. Dogs are living beings that require a great deal of care-taking and compassionate attention, 24/7. And a lot of people are not up to providing for those needs.
We live in the age of technology. A world of entertainment and convenience is at our fingertips: on demand movies and entertainment, 24-hour shopping online, pills to help us sleep when we need it, fresh produce of any kind regardless of the season, cars and jets to take us where we want to go in mere hours. You get the picture: we’re pretty used to getting what we want when we want it, on our schedules.
However, some things in life do not come with a power switch or auto-programming options, and a dog is one of them.
Lots of people want their dogs to “behave” in particular ways, often in spite of having never been trained, or they want them to be “fixed” by a professional trainer. But these people are not willing to put in the work to teach their dogs what is expected of them. Dogs don’t inherently know what we humans want them to do. They’ve got their own built-in doggie rules of conduct that include things like barking at squirrels and sniffing butts.
If we want dogs to learn human rules, we’ve got to take the time to teach them and to reinforce our desired behaviors, period. Training takes an investment of time because behavior change requires plenty of repetition. There are no quick fixes when dealing with living beings. There are no short cuts or secrets, either.
I was going to say that dogs don’t come with remote controls, but in our age of technology you actually can get a remote control trainer for a dog. But what most people who go that route don’t realize is that even that remote trainer is not a miracle worker! It’s just another tool that must be used properly to be effective. Just because it has batteries doesn’t mean it’s a quick fix, or the best way to go.
Recently a trainer friend of mine had a client ask if a shock collar could “fix” a dog that was bringing mud and sticks through the door. Huh? Over the years I’ve learned that being “fixed” to many dog owners just means the absence of unwanted behavior. People who think in these terms don’t really want their dogs to have real lives. They’d prefer to be able to turn their dogs on and off at their convenience, like they do their cell phones and computers.
But animals have needs and requirements that must be met; you can’t just shut a dog down to stop behavior. Stopping an unwanted behavior is just one piece of the training puzzle; you’ve got to replace what you don’t like with an acceptable alternative that simultaneously meets the dog’s needs. Otherwise you’ll get a behavioral pressure cooker that will eventually burst.
If that special person on your gift list is not willing or able to take on this kind of commitment, perhaps you should select a different kind of gift, not a dog.
As someone wise once said, dogs aren’t for the holidays, they are for life.
Kelly Gorman Dunbar is Director of the Center for Applied Animal Behavior, where she recruits and trains the instructors for the Dunbar family business, SIRIUS® Puppy & Dog Training. She is the creator of the SIRIUS Sniffers scent-detection program, and is in the process of bringing the French sport of cavage (truffle hunting) to the US. Kelly is also Founder and President of Open Paw and consults on various matters.
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