Urban Tails

"How do correct a puppy for unwanted chewing and destructive behavior?"
What do you want me to do, yell at her or slap her butt? Tell her it's $16.99 at TJ Max and she better find a ride?
If I react in a scary way out of anger or frustration the only thing I'm going to teach Buffy is that I am unpredictable and untrustworthy. Puppies explore their world with their mouths. They teeth and shred and it's normal canine behavior. There's nothing "bad" about it and I'm sure that foam felt great to her. The only way to deal with unwanted chewing is prevention. I left the room for 8 seconds and she only needed 5. As she ages and starts to learn what things are ok to chew and what the phrase "leave it" means we can talk about correcting unwanted chewing. Until then supervision, crate and anything I don't want chewed should be out of her reach. 😳 Puppies are fun. 🐾

When I was 17 I worked at a personal protection dog training kennel. It was horrible. They would cross tie the dogs and agitate, hit and scare them with sticks to get them to start to aggressively protect themselves. I was wildly aware of my age and gender and that I had no way to advocate for myself or them and knew I couldn't convince anyone of anything without proof of work so I started to secretly train one little female named Ariel. I taught her to show teeth, growl and bark with a small, quiet intimidating sounding word and rewarded her heavily with food. She looked and sounded like a protection dog and would bite on cue. I did it and by the time I knew she could do exactly what I wanted her to do without fear and intimidation I didn't want to show the other trainers, I just wanted her out of the kennel so I stole her. In my 40's I was titling one of my dogs and I was working with a specialized trainer and she said that I reward my dogs for being cute. She called me out, saying they're not doing anything and I either praise them or treat them and I needed to stop. It made sense in the moment. It's a miscommunication and it can slow the teaching process around specific behaviors. Later I thought , but we weren't in the ring. We weren't training, we weren't competing. We were enjoying each other's company and sharing ourselves just because we were lucky enough to have eachother. After all these years, I think about what's the end goal? Get the dog to do a certain behavior or be with the dog?

Won't be long now. 🧡
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