Barking Blondes: Who trained your dog?
We have never given birth but we reckon books on child rearing must suffer the same wrath as those on dog training – different trends and styles are celebrated and then trashed.
This week it was the turn of Barbara Woodhouse when her infamous dog training techniques came under attack. Many may remember her dressed in the signatory tweed pleated skirt whilst barking commands at owners and their dogs. Barbara was the first celebrity dog trainer, famous for her stern authoritarian and disciplinarian image as a task- master. She often referred to the owner by their outfit: “Mrs blue cardigan – move your pug there please,” being a classic example of her acerbic speech.
Over the years Barbara’s dog manual – Train Your Dog The Woodhouse Way – has been torn apart for its ‘domineering’ and harsh methods, such as using a choke chain to ‘punish’ the dog into obeying the owner. Back then the choke was perceived as a high tech gadget that appeared to achieve results. Times have changed, and these days science has proved that focusing on the positive and rewarding tends to be more effective.
Praise and ‘positive reinforcement’ gets longer lasting results by getting the dog to ‘work with you’ and not against you. Owners shouldn’t have to battle to get their dog to comply. For example moving into a ‘down’ by yanking Fido and nearly strangling him. Present day opinion on how to get the best out of your dog is to reward the good behaviour and ignore the bad. This approach definitely works and is a great way to avoid unwittingly training behavior that isn’t acceptable. A barking dog is often trained to bark, dogs that jump up have been trained to do so, as have dogs that won’t get off the sofa. When a dog barks for attention the worst thing you can do is shout at it to be quiet. You’ve given into your dog and and it’s got the attention he wanted. Fido has been rewarded and in his eyes, praised for a behaviour the owner is trying to stop.
It’s up to you as the owner to take responsibility for your dog, like a child, and take pride in your dog being as well behaved as you can make it. Just as children who misbehave in public get sideways glances, so do dogs. It might seem amusing to some for a dog to jump on a table and steal food, or nose around a friends’ handbag and steal a designer lipstick. It clearly shows pluck and an eternally optimistic attitude on the part of the dog, but a lack of control and no boundaries on the owners.
We’re duty bound to do the best for our dogs – particularly in our world of anti-dog legislation and control orders. With 80 per cent of Britain’s dogs apparently untrained in the most basic commands and manners, its no surprise that rescue centres are overcrowded as owners reject dogs deemed “un-trainable”.
All dogs can be trained with time, energy, patience, lots of repetition, consistency and goals. If you turn your dog’s world into a game based on rules and teamwork, you’ll succeed. But as the ‘supernanny’ series proved, a certain amount of discipline works wonders for unruly children, so maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of pulling out a penalty card? Often simply leaving your dog in a room alone for a few minutes will be enough to get the message across that chewing on a new pair of Louboutins is undesirable but dangling him on a choke chain certainly won’t help. So perhaps think twice about where you leave new shoes?
Barking Blondes by Jo Good & Anna Webb, published by Hamlyn, £12.99 www.octopusbooks.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment