“Sit” I asked. Slowly Gus lowered his bottom to the floor. I lowered my own posterior onto my study chair – and without him barking. Success.
Readers of “Chaos to Calmish” will know that I set up a problem for myself when Gus was a puppy. My study had just a concrete floor when he was a puppy, and the air squish noise my study chair made when I sat on it echoed round the room. Genetically a noise sensitive dog, it startled Gus, who barked at it a few times and so a habit was formed.
I’ve finally decided to address the problem, so when I go into my study I now ask him to sit by the desk while I sit down, which prevents the barking. It’s still a work in progress. He’s just turned eight and it is by now such an ingrained habit I will either always have to manage it this way, or put up with the barking. I know I should have done something about it much, much sooner, but we are where we are.
The phrase Practice makes Perfect irritates me. Firstly, perfection is an ideal and almost never attainable in any field, but especially dog behaviour. Most of the time, as in this case, the aim is to change a behaviour to something different to manage a problem. And most dog behaviours result from natural urges or responses, which you can change but never eliminate. I’m unlikely to ever reach perfection with Gus reacting to my chair, but I can manage it by the simple method of asking him to sit by the desk.
So, we’ve come up with Practice Produces Progress as our new Down Dog mantra. (You know we love alliteration!) Because training dogs is all about practice and its mate, consistency.
For a while now, we’ve run classes and 121 sessions to help people learn how to train their dogs, but we understand how difficult it is for people to keep up any training – we’ve all got busy lives and it can be difficult to fit things in.
Keep training and stay safe,
Carol