I have a bone to pick with Dee! The weekend seminar at Stockton set me to thinking a great deal more about the importance of self control for dogs and pups and this post just added more food for thought. And now I realise I have a bone to pick with you, Dee………………………. I’ve run training classes for nearly 18 years now, and my goal has always been to help owners to understand their dog and to learn how to use kind, positive training methods to achieve their goal of a happy, responsive, well-controlled family pet. I’ve always tried to evaluate and improve my classes based on my practical experience, reading, talking to others and attending seminars etc. but I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with what I was offering those owners with ‘bouncy’, ‘boisterous’, ‘over-active’, ‘hyper’, ‘wired’, ‘distracted’, ‘wilful’, ‘difficult’, ‘mouthy’, ‘lead-chewing’, ‘attention-demanding’, ‘trouser-grabbing’, difficult-to-settle’, ‘adolescent’ (add any other expression you like for ‘no self control’) dogs. The dogs that, let’s face it, are 80% of most training classes to a greater or lesser degree! Despite this dissatisfaction, I’d become a bit lazy and complacent and thought I was doing OK, thank you very much (grin!) and hadn’t really changed the content of my classes very much at all, just tweaked the way that content was presented. Enter Dee Ganley………………………. I now realise that trying to teach a great many dogs basic obedience skills without first spending a good deal of time teaching them how to chill out, calm down and control themselves in the face of a range of stimuli, is like trying to ice and eat a cake that’s not cooked, or asking a first year med student to do heart surgery – messy, not easily digested and sometimes downright dangerous! So now after all that, here’s why I have a bone to pick, Dee. After 18 years, at the age of 53, and just when I thought I could finally relax a bit, you’ve shaken me out of my complacency and I now find myself in the process of completely overhauling my curriculum for classes, concentrating on exercises designed to teach self control first and foremost, with this then as the foundation for the ‘obedience’ elements that I need to teach. In other words, you’ve been responsible for producing a great deal of work for me! :)) I forgive you. <very big grin!> Regards, Jan Westby |