Weds 25th April: There go the clippers!

Waiting for the rain that never came (at least not until the evening) I watched a few old episodes of Victoria Stilwell’s TV show, “It’s Me or the Dog” on YouTube, and in particular the ‘ Top 10 Most Difficult Dogs’.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUREXCizjb0)  If you consider that these are just a few examples of how people and their dogs (barely) co-exist, it’s pretty sad and scary, and even more so when Victoria Stilwell shows how simple it can be to change behaviour patterns.  It’s really not the dogs that need training, it’s the humans.  Dogs are what they are and they become a problem when they are made to be that way through a lack of understanding, and there are really only rare cases where there is no ‘cure’.  (These are when inbreeding has produced conditions such as spaniel rage, or other brain defects which result in completely unpredictable and dangerous aggression).   The key to all of these problems is simple, and that’s to take the time to learn dog language so you can understand what your dog is thinking and saying, and can communicate your own feelings and thoughts back to him/her. Without being able to read dogs and what they’re telling me, I would never be able to approach many of the those that I deal with at AFCD, dogs that are completely unknown to me.  I have to be able to pick up the cues that they are sending and to understand the meaning.  And the best thing about non-verbal communication is that it doesn’t lie!

The internet is a great source of information for dog and puppy owners, but you have to be selective about what you see and read.  Here’s another clip from Victoria Stilwell’s show, and without naming any names you might recognise the type of “training” method used by this Tibetan spaniel’s owner.  All I can say is, it doesn’t work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha2iukEz2Sc

Gala had her summer clip just in time

I can’t say I’ve got the best behaved dogs in the world, but puppy mischief is something I just have to put up with.  I’ve just removed parts of my dog clippers from various puppies’ mouths, plus the bag that they were in.  It makes a change from mobile phones I suppose, and luckily I’d just finished giving yak lookalike, Gala, her summer haircut.

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