Snowbound Kennels

Fearful dogs.

Formalize obedience, meaning compliance is not optional. Not old-school yank/crank but first teach, then show them how commands will be reinforced and then reinforce those behaviors as you gradually increase challenges to the Dog complying with those commands.

You are now a leader for your dog.

Dogs understand leaders will not ask them to do things that are dangerous or they can't do and now it's your responsibility, as the leader for your dog, to thoughtfully help your dog overcome what it is fearful of.

Person I think working on "behavioral issues" without having formalized obedience isn't a great idea.

Leader.

 Not best friend asking if they want to comply.

Not a boss/dominant/Alpha/give me a break with that ridiculous doctrine.

Be a leader for your dog.

Dogs love leaders and lacking leaders most will become one.

AI synopsis:

Become a leader for your dog.

A leader wouldn't teach their dog to heel/sit in the backyard for a hotdog and then take it to the farmers market expecting to help it overcome its fear.

A leader wouldn't confine their dog letting it wallow in its own fear forever.



It was just brought to my attention by someone I consider very intelligent that my post may go off the deep end a fair amount as I try to put my thought process into words.

For whatever reason, the way my mind works, is to question absolutely everything and not just look for an answer but to try to determine how accurate the answer I have been given truly is.

In elementary school I was arguing with a teacher that if there was more water on earth than land isn't everything on island? Why is Australia a continent? It looks like a huge island to me!

Of course, the answer was, "because."

I don't take because as an answer.

A long rambling way of finally getting to the point.

Don't be concerned if you need to read and reread some of my post multiple times.

They're put down as my stream of consciousness and not necessarily for user-friendly interpretation.

I used to post a fair amount 20 years ago on a very popular Gun dog forum, all these out of the box ideas and my training philosophies.

A great acquaintance told me a couple years ago that it had taken him all the intervening years as his skills advanced training dogs to finally "get" what I was saying all those years before.

I think the point of this is you have to be really willing to give some of these ideas an awful lot of consideration for them to make sense and quite frankly and my experience is, most people don't want to do that. It's easier for them to take "because" as an answer.

And I certainly don't have all the answers.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

I think sometimes very intelligent dogs could be more mentally sensitive but as I give it more thought, I think a lot of those dogs perhaps because they have been intelligent and cooperative have never had any guard rails on their behavior.

So maybe it's not just intelligence, maybe it's the environment intelligent dogs grow up in.

I've raised and owned some very smart dogs that were totally fine with formal behavioral guard rails being installed because they had experienced some form of guard rails their entire lives.

I definitely do see consistent mental sensitivity in certain breeds of dogs I work with though.

And relating to the post from this morning below...

Some but not all of the dogs that seem most mentally sensitive our dogs that have never had any formal guard rails on their behavior.

They have either had almost no training or the training they have has always been voluntary, yeah, I will sit because I'm getting something I want.

Many of these dogs for the first time in their lives are learning they actually have to comply with commands as opposed to they just want to comply with command commands.

Working with the dog this morning that is physically very stoic but mentally very sensitive because to this point in the dog's life all compliance has been optional/voluntary.

If the trainer wades in guns blazing and heavily reinforcing behaviors because the dog "knows them" I think you just further exacerbate what a dog is already apprehensive of.

Easy I'm down that funnel towards accuracy helps them understand guardrails are no big deal because I can have all the fun I want on the road.

"My dogs sensitive."

Mummmmmm k.

You have dogs that are physically quite sensitive.

Ow, that bothers me.

Easy, be super artful with any physical pressure.

And then you have the dogs that are mentally sensitive....

"Oh, I don't like that!"

They could be incredibly complex because they appear to be upset with any physical pressure regardless of its intensity or duration.

To further complicate matters some of those mentally sensitive dogs could be physically quite stoic.

I believe mentally sensitive dogs are generally much more complex to trained than physically sensitive dogs.

Only the troglodytes that think a dog needs to tolerate some certain level of physical pressure or the physical pressure other dogs can tolerate struggle with physically sensitive dogs.

But I guess inept, in experience, unobservant and generally poor trainers might struggle with physically sensitive dogs too.

Physically sensitive dogs manifest that sensitivity in a generally observable fashion.

Mentally sensitive dogs? I think we're all just guessing what's going through their minds because we will actually never really know.

I think it helps to stop thinking like a person thinks a dog thinks and just think like a dog though.

This is what I know.

Fat has twice as many calories per kilogram as protein or carbohydrates.

Fat also is what satiates very well.

Dogs on low-fat diets seem to always be hungry and need a larger volume of food than dogs on a high fat diet.

I'm forced to use a lower fat pro plan food when I am trying to take weight off an extremely heavy dog I drop down to 14–16% fat.

They get fed the same volume but get dramatically fewer calories.

My personal experience has been that when I've tried a couple different foods well over 20% fat, there is a real tipping point and how much you can feed without losing stool integrity.

I feed the same food cradle to grave with my personal dogs and I've developed a super complex algorithm to determine how much they get fed and this includes dogs here for training.

If they're fat I feed them less.

If they're underweight I feed them more.

For $1 million I couldn't tell you what the feeding requirements on the bag suggest because there's way way too many variables so I would imagine I would only consider that a vague guideline and then refer to my sophisticated algorithm to manage weight.

I think a lot of people have heard the statement, "establish a standard and stick to it, that's what's fair to your dog."

I think it should be obvious that, with a trained dog, you don't want to vacillate in your requirement of accuracy too greatly from one day to the next.

But.

I think with young or inexperienced dogs that needs a more thoughtful approach.

Clearly some dogs are mentally or physically incapable of performing with a high degree of accuracy. People following the philosophy that quote frequently try to demand and enforce accuracy the Dog really is incapable of.

Many times they use tools and pressure at a level to force the dog down that narrow pipe of the accuracy they desire because they think "they are being fair."

Shockingly, yeah, I know, I have a different approach.

I want to end up down that pipeline of accuracy but on the end of my pipe I have a large funnel.

As the dog becomes mentally and or physically more capable of being accurate I will require more accuracy and I end up down that same Darrell pipe of greater accuracy but I've gotten there with a happy dog that attain that level at a pace that suited their physical and mental abilities are not crammed into that narrow pipe with a hammer because "that's what's fair to the dog."

 oh most certainly don't know everything about all this dog training but what I try to do is think about everything I've seen, been told or learned about from some external source and really try to analyze the pros and cons not just go forward following some doctrine because that's what I heard, saw always told.

Following that question everything in detail approach has clearly led me to some different conclusions then many other trainers.

A great great many of us and our dogs, even some working /sport dogs lead a life that is compromised by the environment we exist in and how we move in that environment.

Yeah, we run, we train and work out but we also run in these giant cushion shoes, .so much of our training and working out is in a straight forward single plane.

Dogs can't lower their head to eat or drink, they need raised feed and water. We have to sit in ergonomic chairs to promote spine health that much of the world takes for granted because they sit or squat on the ground.

Most people can't do that because they don't do that so they've lost the ability to do that!

Properly condition dogs that need a ramp to get in and out of a vehicle and cyclist now with modern gearing never standing even on steep climbs don't develop the same upper body and overall strength they used to as they had to muscle giant gears standing up steep climbs.

Lots of dogs get hurt when they jump and run around because they've almost never been allowed to jump and run around.

Movement is natural and if you don't use it you lose it, the same for people, the same for dogs.

Yeah, but, my dog was injured doing XYZ.

Movement carries risk but I think the risk carried with non-movement is probably worse.

If your dog's terribly deconditioned, or you are, start slowly and gain mobility movement progressively.

Both we had our dogs now in the western world can exist in a level of comfort that was unheard of even 40 years ago and I think it shows. And what I see showing isn't a great thing.