To kick start the post; I am not at all interested in training a dog. Today's dog courses all seem to have a philosophy and mentality that I cannot get behind – because I just don't think it's conducive to me and the type of dogs I'm interested in. I am convinced that positive training in the way that is advocated right now is great – for a certain type of person with a certain type of dog.
For other dogs – not so much.
It is not difficult teaching a dog to sit, lie, stay and so on. It is also not difficult to train it in the environment, socialize it and so on. For this type of learning, positive methods can be great – although personally I think they have their downsides too. Now Ella is a piggy bank, which is entirely my fault because I used a lot of candy in the training we did over the years.
But the fact is that whatever kind of reward is used, the result may be that the dog expects the reward but the state of mind does not change for the better – it might even get worse.
I sat and thought about this a bit with how the positive training method people argue their case. That by correcting/punishing/reprimanding you risk hurting the dog and ruining the relationship with it. I wonder if the same rhetoric would be accepted and tolerated if it were used in the case of men's violence against women?
I experience really that so many people place an incredible amount of human emotions and reactions on their dogs. This means that you also place absurd amounts of expectations and demands on your dog, which I don't think it should have to live up to. Why? Because it is a dog. Not a human.
Ella is, for example a very pushy and pushy dog. If I threw a meatball (which is always used as an example) every time she acted steam locomotive, would she run and eat it, then come back to get another one, partly she would become quite fat. When she's that pushy and pushy and actually very demanding, it's nothing more than reasonable – I think, that my demands are of the same strength as hers, if not stronger; namely that she calms down. The meatball only serves as a diversion, it does not make her automatically stop her rude behavior.
If I were her would I see the meatball as a reward for doing the right thing.
Ella's big advantage is that her energy never becomes negative or destructive. One of her greatest strengths is her zest for life, that she loves people and becomes best friends with everyone we meet (within ten seconds). What makes the whole thing stressful is that she has so much energy, and energy boost you can't really train away, I feel. It is something that must be mitigated in other ways – through communication.
I'm a little intrigued over the fact that we are generally so bad at communicating with our dogs. We are good at training them; we go to dog courses, teach them, lie, stay, beautiful paw, roll around, play dead and so on – but we don't learn the dog's way of communicating, and in my world it's something we lose a lot on. It is as interesting and exciting as it gets to consciously delve into the way dogs communicate. Everything that has to do with training is, in my eyes, completely uninteresting and more or less just for pastime. And, except for everyday obedience, of course, because you need it. But even that can be achieved through communication with your dog rather than training.
When I think closer to the point, then it strikes me that many people have a very paternalistic attitude towards dogs. Instead of seeing the dog as a life partner to a much greater degree than we do today, then we see it as someone who needs to be taken care of in an actually rather demeaning way. Certainly, if the dog gets a wound we may have to go to the vet – and we know better than the dog. But you might be able to look at yourself and the relationship with your dog in a different way?
This is not a way for me to humanize the dog. Rather the opposite – to me it feels like celebrating that is just a dog. That we work differently, but learn to communicate in a way that benefits both parties. A way that is so close to nature it only works in a world ruled by humans.
I wish to more people realized the difference between dog training and dog communication. For me, they are two completely different things, and in the long run I believe that dog communication is more important than training. Teaching a dog something goes quickly, then only maintenance of the knowledge is required. Communicating with a dog is something you do throughout the dog's life. It requires a little more, but is significantly more favorable for the relationship in the long run.
I wish too that more people realized that there is a difference between a dog and a dog. There's a hell of a difference between Ella and a chihuahua. It is not possible to use the same methods with two such different dogs. Some dogs have a soft mentality, and then you have to adapt your communication to that. Other dogs – like Ella, has a much tougher mentality, which means that they both need and can handle tougher communication from their human. Meeting hard with soft will not be good, just as little as it will be good to meet soft with hard.