Carrie's Canines & Friends

Things I hate, well hate is quite a harsh word I think, so things I dislike – carpet shopping, getting my van cleaned, filling up with fuel (as I always leave it to a bad time when I know it will be busy), being wet through all layers of your clothing, wet socks, the end of a book, dark mornings, rush hour, being late and boggy, deep, muddy woodland walks – I don’t mean just a bit of mud I mean when its rained for weeks and not dried up and every step you seem to slip and slide all over the place, so much so you quite often fall over.

It was like this recently and it was a lovely sunny Sunday morning when I was off to my local woods, but remembering how bad it was getting in there (it is like it each year to be fair, but I do seem to forget how bad it gets) so I kept on driving straight past the wood of doom and mixed it up and go to a different woodland walk with my dogs to another wood close by, but this beautiful woodland has a fabulous gravel pathway running around it, so less chance of me falling over flat on my ass (well maybe, fingers crossed).

It is a popular walk, especially it seems at weekends and the later time I had chosen to vacate the warmth of my bed. Plenty of dog walkers out, dressed for the brisk walk around the woods in their woolly hats and knitted gloves and kids being dragged along behind them. 

Dog training Coventry

I do tend to say hi to people I bump into on walks, I do usually have a bit of an ulterior motive though, as I really can’t help but check each person’s dog out. Happily plodding along with my pair in the sunshine, when I saw a young dog that was very similar colouring to a couple of puppies I have in my class. So I had a brief chat with the owner as I can be a bit nosy at times, but no she (the dog) was a bit older than the pups I had – but he was having a few issues with her.
By what he said, there were a few things they are working on that he would like fixed ‘we seem to have ended up with the naughtiest dog in the litter’ but the main issue was jumping up. 

Motivating Good Dog Behaviour

What he said next surprised me, they had got a specialist in who had advised them to clap and bark at her every time she did it – ‘so don’t be alarmed if I bark at you’ he then went on to say. I must have looked a bit shocked, I don’t think I have ever been barked at before. He had told the trainer that they didn’t want to use treats to train her, so this was his expert advice.
I tried to explain very briefly to him that there is a nicer way to show her what you want, if you just start by dropping a few treats on the floor each time you see someone it will help it reduce her jumping up and make the floor more valuable place to be – but no he didn’t want to use treats. I showed him that when I say treats I don’t necessarily mean sausages and venison and produced a handful of dog kibble from my pocket, which is my dog’s breakfast I had brought out with me to feed to them.  ‘This is just my dog’s breakfast that I will give them whilst we are out on our walk’ which was met with a wall of silence, so I just wished him good luck with his training and carried on my walk with my dogs.

There are a few things I didn’t like about this idea of fixing this issue. It just didn’t sit right with me as I know there are kinder ways to show your dog what you want from them, but also it always confuses me why you wouldn’t use food to train your dog?

I know some people are reluctant to carry food round for their dogs, but why should your dog get paid when they do a good job?
Do you go to work for free? and when you have worked hard to meet a deadline which in the past you may have potentially got a bonus for, but this time you just received a pat on the head instead? Would you try as hard the next time?

In the next blog in this series, I will tell you what I would do instead.

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