This week A German Short Haired Pointer Doberman mix and a Sharpei mix have arrived for a Maui Dog Training Retreat. Talk about different personalities! It lends clarity to the fact dog training does not have a cookie cutter formula.
There is not a recipe that can be precisely written out and applied to all dogs. Though I hear it a lot from other professional dog trainers, and there were times in the distant past where I was even guilty of saying the rules of dog training are pretty cut and dried, I have come to understand clearly all dogs are not the same to train.
Dogs have personalities. They have things that make them wag and things that don’t. One may bark like a banshie at the neighbor and the other may go get a prized old sock and insist on giving it to them by jumping up to hand deliver it. Another dog may go hide under the table when anything new is introduced. Even if they were raised together, what one is wild about the other could care less about. And so, training dogs becomes something of a relationship undertaking.
Maui Dog Training for Lifestyle
As dog owners sometimes we forget dogs are not pre-trained. And we really forget that all the babbling human talk we are repeating to them doesn’t make any sense. It is our job as dog owners to take the time to not only show our dogs what to do, which could be classified as training, but understand the temperament or the general way we can bring the best out in our dogs.
For some that could be food. For some it could be play. For some it could be a stricter more disciplined set of tasks to complete. For some its about a lot of organized exercise, or it could be about a daily romp on the beach with the freedom to jump in the water and swim with wild abandon after a stick. And for some it’s really about being super calm and steady.
We finesse these things in our relationships with friends, family, lovers, and co-workers. On a conscious level we get to know these people and we know when to talk, when to be quiet. We know when a physical gesture makes all the difference in the world and when a small gift of appreciation speaks a million words of gratitude. We look to get the pono (goodness, do the right thing) response.
The same is true of our dogs. We just have been buying into the idea that to have a well trained dog, it must look utterly military style and there are only 6 words that should be followed through without fail. Sit, stay, down, leave it, come, and heal.
So not true. Your dog could be able to do those things and still not be that well behaved companion we’ve created in our mind’s eye.
The Balanced Happy Island Dog
Max the German Short Haired Pointer Doberman mix needs some big play time. He loves a food reward. He needs structure and he needs an all out speed racer run or big ass swim in the ocean. It’s what turns him on.
Loki the Sharpei mix needs to be with his person. Physical touch, a soothing voice to go along with some exercise and teaching structured things he knows how to do well bring out the playful guy he is. He needs calm to walk him through his moments of fear of other dogs, or of the leaf that suddenly blew up in his face in the lawn.
It’s a bit of time and understanding and a way to speak dog that explains my philosophy of training dogs. It is why I love doing retreats with dogs. I get to spend that one on one time and bring a dog’s personality out, showing off the best side. Understanding what makes a dog tick, what is their passion is truly he best way to diminish bad behavior, or to help a dog get over fears which on many occasions appear to be aggressive behavior.
Maui Dog Mahalos
Mahalo for spending more time with your dog and wanting to have the best life ever together. If you’d like to know more about my retreats with dogs on Maui, sign up below to get immediate information and be ready for some pawsome-ness for you and your dog.
Jt Clough lives in Maui, Hawaii and practices health, happiness, natural remedies and training for dogs and their people. Her way of communication with both dogs and people is healing and her training is effective physically and emotionally. She is a contributor to articles in Runners World, Women’s Health and many other publications.
