Are You Killing Your Dog With Kindness?

  Sound crazy, it’s not. As a professional dog trainer, the things I see are unbelievable. Matter of fact I wrote a book about it, “Tails From The Barkside”. A book about my experiences as a dog trainer and some of the craziest clients I’ve had the pleasure of working with. If you send me an email, I’ll email you a free copy.

  There are some people out there that bring the word “anthropomorphic” to a new level. That means “humanizing” your dog. Now don’t get me wrong. My dogs Heidi and Fritz are the king and queen. Fritz sleeps in my bed and they both eat home cooked meals. I love them dearly. But I always let my dogs be dogs. I don’t try to make them human and I don’t treat them like a human. That is one reason they are “balanced” dogs.

  I had a girlfriend once that had two small breed dogs. She had more different outfits, raincoats and such than you could shake a stick. Now that stuff is ok as long as you don’t lose perspective. I guess sometimes that stuff is kind of fun. Fritz has a shearling coat for really cold days. But other than that, he gets treated like a dog. Now that doesn’t mean being mis-treated. That simply means you must maintain the human/animal relationship balance.

  One big deal in the dog world is security, in the human world as well. That is one reason why dogs jump on people. Because the want to feel secure through dominance. When you over humanize your dog, the dog may interpret that as a sign of weakness on you part and start to lose its confidence in you as the “pack-leader”.

  Also some accessories people put on their dogs are outright dangerous. I have a client with a Shih Tzu. I saw them the other day and they had just gotten the dog back from the groomers. The dog had a small bow on top of its head. While looking cute these things can come off. The dog can ingest these things and can either become lodged in there throat or swallowed, causing blockages.

  One more thing. Many people who own dogs just give the dog love, with no discipline at all. This is a problem. When we train protection dogs, many times the decoy will act afraid and retreat when the dog barks and acts aggressively towards him. The reason why he does this is when the dog makes advances he will act afraid to give the dog more confidence and make them more “powerful”. I have a client with an aggressive Shih Tzu. He told me that several times he approached the dog and tried to put his leash on, and the dog growled at him. I then asked “how did you respond” and he said “I back off”. Now what is that telling the dog? The natural progression here is he will continue to make this dog more and more powerful if he doesn’t discipline the dog. This will reach a point of no return and eventually the dog will end up in a shelter. Now these are nice, well intentioned people. All they want to do is to give this dog love. But if you really love them, treat them like the dogs that they are.