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Figuring out Fido: The myth of dog training guarantees

Dog training advice from local business owner Lynn Gagnon
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Lynn Gagnon. Stoked Dogs. Figuring out Fido. (Contributed)

Lynn Gagnon

Stoked Dogs

It’s time to bust a common and pervasive dog training myth: that someone can guarantee specific results in dog training and behaviour modification. That’s right. All those ads you see online for guarantees to resolve barking, separation anxiety, reactivity, even puppy mouthing, they aren’t telling you the truth.

Dogs are sentient, emotional, individual beings. That essentially means that dogs aren’t robots. Instead they are able to perceive the world around them, understand that they are individuals, feel and process emotions, and most importantly, make their own decisions.

Most dog training is pretty straightforward and easy enough to actually get good results. Puppies can learn skills like sit, down, stay, and others with ease by just using a treat with a bit of patience. However, behavioural modification and training of complex skills is not so black and white.

When it comes to training complex skills, these usually involve off-leash skills. Most commonly, recall is at the top of the list. You might be asking yourself if I’m saying that not all dogs can learn a reliable recall, what I’m saying is it’s not all going to be the same for every dog. Many dog breeds have been bred for generations to work closely with humans. Hunting dogs like retrievers and pointers and herding dogs like border collies and heelers (these are only a couple of examples) have been selected for traits that make them more successful at working with people. That means traits like responding to people, looking to people for guidance and always keeping an eye on their people. This makes it much easier (in general) to teach these dogs reliable recalls. Other breeds like livestock guardian dogs (great pyrenees are a common example) have been bred to work without people. It’s not that they can’t recall, but they aren’t naturally predisposed to looking to people for direction so the process will be different.

With behavioural modification, a number of variables are always at play. For example, a dog who is dealing with reactivity to other dogs will need to develop a new response to seeing dogs. This requires a process that takes time, replacing negative associations to more positive ones and avoiding negative experiences in that time. Variables like having random off-leash dogs running up to them can set back progress. Other variables include health, injuries, other sources of stress and anxiety, as well as your dog’s learning history, early life socialization and genetic predisposition.

With so many variables at play for both training and behavioural modification, guarantees are impossible to provide. Dogs are complex individuals and sometimes this comes with limitations or caveats that we need to consider as we work with them. Keeping your dog’s individuality in mind can help you target what motivates them, what distracts them, what they are predisposed to so that you can use these variables to your advantage.

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@josh_piercey
josh.piercey@revelstokereview.com

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