Wednesday 4 April 2012

The Gran Whisperer


I came across this today and thought it was a good way to show why the dominance myth is not the best method to use when rehabilitating dogs. The dictionary definition of rehabilitation is -  Rehabilitation is a treatment or treatments designed to facilitate the process of recovery from injury, illness, or disease to as normal a condition as possible.

Most dogs who need "rehabilitation" in the form of behaviour modification are not suffering from injury, illness or disease but are more likely to be misunderstood or untrained or they don't meet their owner's expectation.  Behaviour modification is about changing the dog's behaviour to enable it to fit in with human society, or even changing the owner expectations of what thier dog is and is not capable of and managing the situations.  For instance, if your dog sits in the chair by the window and barks at all the people who are going by, move the chair and give your dog more mental and physical stimulation as this type of barking is often the result of boredom and the dog has learnt that s/he can get your attention by barking.

If this behaviour is happening during the day while you are at work and you have neighbours that are complaining, why not book your dog into the local day care facility for a couple of days a week?