Understanding dogs & the problems

The majority of dog owners are aware of the joy and companionship a dog or two can bring to our families, if you are new to owning a dog or puppy we hope you find our site useful as we try to cover the many areas new owners experience problems with from toilet training to training puppy to follow you or do high fives! We also describe in detail early preventative techniques to prevent fears/phobias in later life.

DOGS BEHAVING BADLY

sometimes difficult to understand that some dogs could develop such severe problems that many owners feel unable to cope and may feel the need to give the dog up or re-home it. With help from a good dog trainer and/or dog behaviorist the majority of problems can be reduced if not eliminated fairly quickly.

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIALISATION

If we start training early we can prevent many problems from developing into more serious issues in later life.

We therefor would like to share our knowledge in the hope that we can help you to better understand your canine companions behavioural development needs, how they learn and think and if you are experiencing common problems we offer simple solutions and insight into  what their issues may be, why they have developed and how you can start to put thrings right.

Through small changes ususally in our own human behaviour and the way we perceive problems and address them we can quickly get on top of things and begin to get the behaviours we want.

We want to help you to work with your dog/s and any issues you may be experiencing and we want to help new owners to understand all of the steps they must take in order to raise safe adult dogs in todays society. Up until now we have been seeing too many problems developing knowing they can easily be prevented or changed and how to instigate early preventative measures such as early aocialisation and teaching bite inhibition iskey to helping dog owners and those that work with dogs on a daily basis whether in rescue, kennels or working dovgs to raise safe friendly happy adult dogs.

DOGS IN CRISIS

Th situation we now find ourselves in is that more and more dogs are developing problems - the rescues & shelters worldwide are full and overflowing with dogs - young dogs, old dogs, happy dogs, healthy dogs often discarded through no fault of ther own due to owner circumstances. Many dogs are turned away and sadly too many thousands and thousands are losing their lives as their simlly are not enough homes. We want to change this!

The majority are healthy friendly dogs that are unwanted, past the puppy stage and no longer cute many people discard them treating the rescues as an easy solution to their now problem or unwanyed dog and this simply can' continue! People give up on  dogs for many reasons some through bad training or lack of socialisation have developed problems some have been hit, smacked, abused and worse these are the hard cases trying to teach a dog to trust a human again - the rescues have to work on many issues and not every new owner wants or can cope with taking on a dog with issues. The rescues simply do not have the funds to employ all the people they need. There are hundreds of thiusands of dogs without behavioral issues so those with more serious problems often are not given a chance.

DOGS ARE AMAZING

We want to work to change this. Many of these dogs are highly intelligent and in the right hands we believe they could be trained to become useful working dogs in society; assistance dogs, search & rescue dogs, medical alert dogs, ptsd dogs, detection dogs, rherapy dogs, medical dogs and so much more.

We need to make use of their skills in the best ways we can & try tonoffer at least some of these dogs a chance.

Sometimes an owner may need to give up their dog simply through circumstance and many charities are now working to try to assist given the horrendous rise in homelessness often caused by nothing more than a givernment computer glitch a delay in payment or a lost job. There is always more we can do to help  #foster #rescue #dogwalk #talk #learn #share #information is key to change.

HOW CAN WE HELP DOGS

We cannot begin to make a dent or reduce the numbers of young healthy dogs losing their lives until we begin to control the numbers of puppies being bred & sold. Many are bred by so called dog lovers wanting their dog to have at least one litter others do it for financial gain some hobby breeders some professional breeders and then there are the puppy farmers an industry we have been fighting to expose and close down for over 30 years!

WHY NEUTERING IS THE RIGHT THING

Dogs need our help we have bred them to the point where we are over run I love dogs AND YES  it is so much kinder to castrate or neuter your male dogs (reducing aggression & risk of testicular cancer)  and female dogs (reducing aggression preventing unwanted/excess puppies & pyometra - womb infection) yes there is a cost but in the Long run the cost of not doing it early can be so much greater!

PREVENTING PROBLEMS

Sometimes puppies and Older dogs may develop problems simply through a human owners lack of understanding, or failure to meet some of their needs. Our aim is try to provide as much information  as we can to assist and advise dog owners both new and old how they can use different techniques to prevent problems as well as reduce problems if they have developed.

Prevention is key, so with puppies we recommend very early socialisation to a whole range of experiences both inside and iutside the home to prevent fears and phobias developing in later life. we go into this more depth later.

YOU CAN TEACH OLD DOGS NEWTRICKS

With older dogs we will help you overcome problems such as biting, pulling on lead and aggression using quite simple yet effective techniques. Learning pack rules and changimg how we react to many situations is key.

Sometimes simply due to the differences in how humans and dogs learn it is a misunderstanding that a human actually inadvertantly rewards or has been rewarding a behaviour they did not want.

The best example of this is the cute little puppy that jumps up and is rewarded with lots of strokes love and affection. Its the act of jumping up that is rewarded and at 8 weeks is not seen as any issue however reward this continually 6 months later you have an 8 month old beligerant teenage dog who has grown and is jumping up for attention.

Start early - think ahead!

So right  from the start we must ty to think in terms of what behaviours we want and which we dont as well as which we reward & those we should not.

It is estimated nearly 1000 happy healthy young dogs are being killed in the Uk every day I fear the figures are far worse and in the USA the figures are worse.

Millions of animals are being let down by humans not just our pet dogs and cats but we also work to help wildlife being persecuted at present and educate on many topics relating to animal health welfare behaviour & training.

It is only by sharing knowledge and changing the things we have done thus far to create the problems that we can begin to change things and reduce the problems.

LIFE EXPERIENCES

Dogs like humans are a product of their life experiences so we must work to ensure their experiences with us are good ones or risk a dog developing an aversion or problem with humans children or certain objects.

In order to understand dogs we have to understand how they think, how they learn, what motivates them, what drives them, how they communicate and how we can adapt our own behaviour to imcorporate some pack rules so we too learn to raise safe happy well trained dogs in our society.

Many issues that have developed with domestic dogs have been as a direct result of our own failures  to meet their needs and our own anthropomorphic behaviour in attributing human emotions & reasoning to other species & their behaviours.

We have to recognise that dogs are dogs and not 4 legged furry toys with human like brains for humans to amuse themselves with. We must start to understand their needs and not overestimate their ability to think like us to reason, to feel guilt or remorse, to understand resentment or right from wrong in a human world. We have to learn their rules as well as teach them through kindness some of ours.

DOGS ARE AMAZING

Dogs are capable of great things we only have to look at all the great things they do in our society however each dog and umits life experiences are different and they all have individual personalities - the amount they learn fron us and the amount we can learn from them depends on our ability to understand them.

They rely on body language more than human words although we can teach them (like we teach babies) word association between actions and our words often using handsignals in addition to 'verbal cues' works best. Our dogs abilities and the behaviours they kearn are dependant on our ability to think up new tricks and behaviours to teach them.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

The learning and development process in dogs is extremely complex so it is of paramount importance everyone working with or living with dogs realise the significance of knowing and being able to teacb  correct methods of approaching, handling, interacting with and training thise animals we choose to live with in our society and our homes.

We must learn to understand our own errors and mistakes and see things from the dogs perspective and work to reduce problems developing. We cannot continue to blame the dogs for developing problems.

We now have information and knowledge on preventing problems but we must start to implement these and clear rules and boundaries from the beginning as well as try to ensure every human individual in the home knows the rules & is consistent in training & using same words and hand signals.

All humans must try to be consistent in how they reward or distract dogs both in training and whilst living in our homes or protecting our premises otherwise learning is slow and dogs are confused. Dogs also learn how to work (train) humans individually!

Dogs are the best friends humans could ever want they are loyal, trustworthy dependable, they offer uncondutional love and are known to help people overcome many issues.

We owe dogs a lot, me perhaps more than most so we must start to do our best by them, all of them and try to understand even the aggressive dogs in our society - most were not born that way they have become that way through their experiences both good and bad (or lack of them) with humans.

When you can begin to understand that an outstretched hand may not appear as a friendly gesture to a dog that has been smacked - that the dog did not 'growl for no reason' the dog will always have a reason we just may need to look at their past or their pack rules it and in order to be able to undestand them better.

All animals bite!

Dogs after all are animals and all animals are capable of biting therefore it is our responsibility to work to reduce situations arising in the future, hence the importance of teaching 'bite-inhibition' from an early age. Teaching dogs not to put their teeth on human skin even in play is the most important thing we can do with our puppies in the early months.

It is our responsibility as dog owners to do the best we can to raise safe friendly dogs in society and we will do our best to give you all of the knowledge to do this.

We also offer in depth assistance and advice in dealing with training problems and behaviour issues from toilet training, pulling on lead, food aggression, guarding, barking, biting, seperation anxiety, recall, training tricks to specialist skills,  assistance dog training, search dogs and even guard dogs.

Many dogs instinctively guard us and our territories and this is something that we can utilise if necessary in this dangerous world we live in.

Our aim is to help you understand your dogs and make training not only fun but easy!

DOGS LEARN BETTER WITH REWARDS

Reward based training is the only type of training we discuss. Punishment should never be used in training if the dog makes a mistake we simply do not reward.

The rewards we work with are food praise and toys, all the things that motivate dogs and help us build a strong bond with them helping raise safe and secure dogs.

Not all of the rescue dogs we have worked with have problems although way too many have had so we hope by sharing our knowledge we can begin to reduce a lot of the problems uncover some of the myths debunk some of the old school methods as I believe most if not all are destructive to the human animal bond - we want to help people to build a loving rewarding relationship with their dogs &  puppies -  your new family member and best friend! www.dogtrainingsolutions.siterubix.com