Everything Matters
Before you dismiss your dog as dumb, think about the last time he pawed your leg under the table and gave you those big sad eyes. He was letting you know what he wanted, and this is far from dumb!
One of the reasons why the thousands upon thousands of years of love between people and dogs has lasted so long is because we communicate in a way that they understand. When a dog comes to you with his frisbee and drops it at your feet, you know without being told that he thinks it’s time to play fetch.
The two above examples tell us that our dogs can learn very complex behavior and that we can teach them even more.
Through language and body posture, they communicate with us, but remember that they process it very differently from the ways than we do.
Remember that your dog’s eyes will respond very differently to color, and they can see very well in low light. They can turn their ears around very quickly and accurately, which lets them figure out where sounds come from, and don’t forget that famous sense of smell.
These differences will equal difference in the way that their minds work. Their ability to understand cause and effect relationships is quite different from ours.
Consider classical training, where you learn to associate a stimulus with a response. This is something that humans can ignore pretty easily. For instance, we can shake off an undesired response to a car accident or a visit to a doctor much more easily than a dog can.
Operant conditioning, where positive and negative reinforcement is used, is something that dogs and humans respond very differently to.
Consider the fact that I always go out the back door with my Golden Retrievers when we are going to play fetch. Whenever we go out that door, we play fetch. On the other hand, when I let them out the side door, I don’t go with them; I just leave them for half an hour or so. Of course, they always go to the back door when they want a game or see one coming.
When I train my dogs, I always use a certain tone and a unique hand gesture with every command, and this lets them learn a wide range of behaviors. They will lie down, roll over, release their jaws, come, sit, fetch, drop it and even eliminate on command.
However, on the other hand, I still cannot prevent them from eating something off of the floor because they cannot connect the bellyache a few hours later with the food that they ate before. This is just something that takes too much time.
What you need learn from this is that your pet dog, whether he is a Husky, a Retriever, a Shepherd, a Chihuahua, or a Beagle, is still a dog. He can learn all sorts of things as long as you are patient, but don’t ever expect him to understand things the way that you do.
For instance, look at dogs that can dance on command on the show circuit, or search and rescue dogs that can locate small children and pull them from swollen rivers and bad avalanches. Service dogs can do everything from opening a door to pulling a wheelchair to guiding a blind person.
Just keep in mind, though that they are not people, and that there are some doggy activities that you cannot train out of them!
Learn how to pick the right Dog Bedding for your dog. Don’t let Puppy Potty Training become a prolonged or frustrating experience. Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.
Tags: dog bedding, dog beds, dog training, family, Home, Our Pets, pet beds, pet supplies, pets, puppy potty training
Posted in Our Pets · November 9th, 2009 · Comments (0)
No comments yet