I decided I needed to back up the bus a little. I might have jumped the gun proceeding to Lesson 2: Trial and Error. I thought of something else that’s crucial to modifying a pets behavior before you get to this step.
It’s determining YOUR style of discipline.
As I alluded to in The Dog Whisperer: The Latest Craze in Doggie Discipline, I’m not too crazy for his techniques. Or, rather, I’ve never been too impressed with the people needing him on the few shows I’ve watched. I felt that using a little common sense in the first place would have prevented the bad behavior period.
But I also don’t really think much of his “be the pack leader” philosophy. He can be a little too aggressive and domineering for my tastes. I have no desire to be the captain, emperor, or dictator of my dog, or any of my other pets for that matter.
So that’s why I personally wouldn’t adopt any of his practices to my disciplinary style. I’m not comfortable with them.
However, as I’ve also alluded to many times before, I happen to really dig Tamar Geller’s training methods. She’s got a lot of enthusiasm and uses games, fun, and lots and lots of love to teach dogs how to behave.
That’s sort of the approach I’ve always taken with my dogs. (And now these crazy cats.) I watch them to figure out what they like, then I incorporate that into training them to do certain things. Be it tricks, listening better, or making sure not to do something I don’t want them to do.
Take Budly for example. He was our problem child. (Murph’s been a dream from the beginning. He listens extremely well and picks up on commands immediately.) But Budly? Nightmare puppy.
But he wasn’t entirely to blame. Wayne and I were new pet parents. He was our first dog to raise (a) without our parents’ help, and (b) on our own. We made some mistakes in the beginning that we needed to correct later. And we experimented with a variety of training styles before we found the one that finally worked. (Which, by the way, was called the tennis ball. It was truly astounding what we could get Budly to do simply by using a silly, stinkin’ tennis ball.)
So that’s what I’m getting at it when I suggest you should “know thyself.”
There is no one right training method. There are a bunch of them out there and you can get results with them all. But you’ll get the best results with one you feel most comfortable implementing.
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