Pain and Its Effect on Your Dog’s Behavior

Often a dog doesn’t even reveal that anything hurts. A change in behavior that may seem completely unrelated to pain is sometimes the only indication a dog gives.

Patterns of Behavior for Safety

You can greatly reduce dangers to your dog and to people around your dog by establishing patterns in how you handle the dog every day.

Picky Eaters

Getting a dog to eat is one of the most complicated management, health care, behavior modification, training, and communication tasks you’ll ever do with a dog. If you’ve been through this, you’ve surely learned a thing or two. You’ll also have discovered what a lot of time this can take out of your day.

Pointing Breed Field Trials

If Pointer or Setter breeds interest you, learn about these special events called field trials that have shaped both the appearance and the behavior of the breeds that participate in them.

Pointing Breed Hunt Tests

Hunting Tests are noncompetitive, with the goal of qualifying rather than winning. The three levels are Junior Hunter, Senior Hunter and Master Hunter. A dog need not earn a lower title in order to enter and qualify for a higher one.

Police Dogs

Assisting with police work has put dogs in a position to save many lives. Training is meticulous for control as well as for on-the-job tasks. The police dog is an incredible example of genetics and training combining to consistently produce dogs that help make the world a safer place.

Poodle Perspective

Poodles, including all sizes, currently rank 8th in popularity of AKC-registered puppies, indicating that an awful lot of people are willing to cope with Poodle coat! It also points to the number one job dogs are doing in the world today: companion to humans. No breed does that job better than the Poodle.

Poop! Cleaning Up After Your Dog

Dog waste contaminates the ground and becomes a means of passing intestinal parasites and infections to dogs and people. Your own dog can be repeatedly reinfested by parasites in this way. Picking up the feces prevents a great deal of the contamination.

Potty Areas

The first place to take your new puppy or dog when you come home together is the spot you want your dog to use for potty purposes. This means you’ll decide in advance where that will be, and make the necessary preparations. Having all in place right from the start helps the dog to form the desired habits as quickly as possible with the least confusion.

Protection and How Your Dog Can Do It Best

Dogs can provide protection in a variety of ways. The critical factor is to prepare and manage the dog to provide the right kind of protection for your situation. Confusing your dog in this matter can lead to true tragedy, in more ways than one way.

Puppies and Where to Get One

A puppy is a baby dog. Like many other species of babies, baby dogs are built to appeal deeply to the emotions of adults. The normal human response to a baby is a deep desire to nurture the young one. This is good for the survival of babies. However, it’s not good for you in making the best decisions about adopting a new dog.

Puppy Aggression

What behavior from a puppy constitutes aggression? Broken skin on a human is one cause for concern. If your puppy breaks the skin on a human—whether someone in the family or not, whether in play or not—be sure to get started promptly with a veterinary behavior specialist or other expert who can assess the situation.

Puppy Biting

Puppies bite. This is not a form of aggression, but a form of play and communication. It’s important to train a puppy not to bite in play or to communicate, as this behavior can become unacceptable and even dangerous in an adult dog. This is a very important lesson for a puppy to learn.

Puppy Kindergarten

Puppy kindergarten can give you and your pup a great start together. People with limited dog experience benefit tremendously from well-run puppy classes, where instructors explain the mysteries of puppy behavior and teach handling skills. Unlike training classes for adult dogs, puppy classes tend to include instructions in issues such as housetraining and other management.

Puppy Mills and Backyard Breeders vs Responsible Breeders

Does it really make a difference where you get puppy, provided you find the breed you want? Yes, absolutely. If you’re not planning to breed the dog to produce winning show dogs or dependable working dogs, it might seem unimportant to seek out a breeder who strives to improve the breed with each litter. Actually, it’s vitally important, and ignoring this concern can lead to sad times in your home.

Pushy Dogs

Do you find some dogs pushy? When people use the word “pushy” to describe a dog, it usually means some of that dog’s behavior seems to them to be annoying or even offensive. But what is this quality in a dog? Is it a defect of character? Many dogs were bred to take initiative.

Ramp Training

A small dog jumping off a bed or sofa risks injury at any age. Puppies have undeveloped bones, joints and muscles that put them at risk of injury and permanent damage. Hip dysplasia, knee injuries, back problems, and shoulder issues are some of the conditions that can make either jumping up or jumping down harmful to a dog of any size. A ramp can also spare your back.

Re-Homing a Dog

Much emotion surrounds the issue of re-homing or otherwise giving up a dog. Some people do it casually, while others believe it is always wrong and that any time you get a dog you should be held to a commitment for life. Surely a reasonable way of deciding what to do in any given situation falls somewhere between these two extremes.

Reading Dogs

The dogs who do this job accompany their trained handlers to school and library programs that help children improve their reading skills. With the help of the dogs, reading programs of this kind can build children’s confidence in their own reading ability and help them learn to love reading.

Restricted Activity: How to Keep an Active Dog Calm

Something has happened to your dog. Surgery, injury or illness has made it necessary to keep your dog on restricted activity. What is restricted activity? And how do you manage to do it?

Retracting Lead

A retracting lead is useful for many dog owners, and is a good tool when used appropriately. Used inappropriately, it can endanger your dog and others.

Retriever Field Trials

Thanks to their great popularity, Retriever Field Trials are likely held close enough to your area for you to attend as a spectator. It’s a great way to consider whether you’d like to participate in such events, or perhaps consider a retriever as a hunting companion. Watching the dogs at the work they’ve been selectively bred to perform also greatly helps to understand their day-to-day behavior if you choose to live with a retriever.

Retriever Hunting Tests

Retriever hunting competition calls for more and more refined performances and judging that can distinguish which of the specially bred and superbly trained dogs will take the prize. By contrast, retriever hunting tests do not pit dogs against one another to determine a winner. Instead, dogs are judged by a standard to determine which dogs qualify.

Retrieving in Play

Retrieving is the best game to play with your dog. It’s also both one of the most sophisticated and at the same time valuable things you and your dog can learn together. It’s well worth your time, and it’s fun, too.

Rewards and Motivators for Your Dog

Rewards that one dog finds motivating, another dog may find boring—or even unpleasant. Teaching when your dog feels motivated is easier on both you and the dog. Developing rewards that motivate your dog to learn can be considered the most important part of training.

Roaming Dogs

What happens when a dog roams? A dog running loose will eventually run into trouble, often to the owner’s surprise.

Roughhousing with Dogs

What effect does human roughhousing have on the future behavior of a dog? When is roughhousing a positive thing, and when is it not? What do you want for your own dog?

Safety

To keep the family dog safe requires looking at the world with different eyes. A number of precautions in how you train your dog, train the humans who share your home, and manage the dog’s environment will be lifesavers.

Same Sex Dogs in the Home

When you put two dogs of the same sex together in your home, there is always a risk that they will not be able to get along. Sometimes they will fight, and it can be severe. What can you do to solve problems after they arise, or prevent them from happening in the future?

Scavenging Outdoors

Dogs are scavengers by nature, taking treats where they can find them. It’s impossible to explain to a dog that eating a particular item could cause injury or death. As a result, it has become a human responsibility to protect dogs from foraging instincts that might have been useful in the wild but can be deadly to companion dogs.

Schutzhund

Schutzhund is a competitive sport in which dogs and handlers use skills for obedience, tracking, and protection. Originally designed to test for the best German Shepherd Dogs to breed for police and military work, Schutzhund titles are still valued for this proving ground.

Search and Rescue Dogs

The mission of the search and rescue dog and handler is to find lost people, alive or deceased. The dog and handler function as a team, and spend a great deal of time training together to prepare. In most cases the team is part of a larger team to provide each dog and handler with the necessary help to become and stay mission ready.

Self Mutilation: Dogs Who Chew, Lick or Scratch Themselves to the Point of Harm

Dogs don’t understand why they shouldn’t pick at themselves when they itch or hurt. As a result, many dogs will do damage to themselves. All degrees of damage from self-mutilation in dogs are common.

Senior Dogs

Senior dogs are the best. They know you well, you know them well, they are smart and seasoned and worth their weight in gold. They’re also worth special care to keep them well and happy for as long as possible.

Separation Anxiety

With the right help, most dogs can learn to remain alone calmly for reasonable lengths of time. Conditioning a dog to be able to do this is a real kindness that makes the dog’s life more comfortable.

Settle

The settle exercise calls for the dog to lie down on the cue word and/or signal. It’s easily taught and helps in teaching the dog to stay, as well as helping to establish your leadership without harshness.

Sled Dog Racing

Both professional and amateur dog owners participate in the sport of sled dog racing. Skillful skiers can work with one dog in skijoring. People with less than a team number of dogs can join with other interested hobbyists to make up a mixed team.

Sleeping on the Bed

Dog trainers and behavior specialists usually recommend that dogs should not sleep on beds in most households. Yet more often than not, people take it as a given that the dog will sleep on the bed, and in many cases it’s fine. How do you know which is best for your family and your dog?

Socializing Dogs to People

Ideally every puppy would receive a good foundation of experiences for the ability to cope with all kinds of people as an adult dog. Even if the genetics for temperament in your pup are not the best, or your pup has a bad experience when young, a good foundation of social experiences will give the best chance for a dog to have good social skills. If your puppy comes from two temperamentally-sound parents and is lucky enough to avoid any traumatic experiences with humans during formative months, you might never see problems from lack of good early socialization.

Socializing Dogs to Places

Puppies and dogs who have never been to places other than their homes can become unable to cope with going anyplace. This becomes a serious problem when the dog needs to go to the veterinarian’s office, to a specialist, or out for any other reason. Socializing to places is essential for a dog’s mental health and for physical well-being, too.

Socializing Dogs to Things

Umbrellas, big trucks, kitchen appliances, and reclining chairs are a few of some dogs’ least favorite things. When a dog’s aversion to something creates a problem, such as your getting wet while trying to walk with an umbrella, you see the reason for socializing young dogs to things.

Spay/Neuter Behavior Benefits

Why do we spay female dogs and neuter male dogs? Spay/neuter helps produce healthy and good-tempered purebred dogs. Spay/neuter allows a breeder to remove dogs from breeding who should not be bred . Spay/neuter puts a stop to passing on undesirable genetic traits, while allowing the dog being “culled” to go on and have a great life. A significant reason is that spay/neutered dogs do not produce puppies who join the population of unwanted dogs.

Spoiled Dog

Often people refer to their own dogs or other people’s as being “spoiled.” What does this mean? Of course it depends on who is using the expression. One Miriam-Webster Dictionary definition of “spoil” includes the words “to impair the disposition or character of by overindulgence or excessive praise.”

Sporting Breed Specialties

The most popular breed in America is a sporting breed. That would be the Labrador Retriever. Pointers, retrievers, setters and spaniels make up the sporting-group dogs. These breeds were selectively bred to work in partnership with human hunters. Their work is done off-leash, so the dogs need enough control to do the jobs correctly and to come when called. This control is developed through training, in most cases extensive training.

Stay Training

Teaching the “stay” cue builds your leadership with your dog. It also builds your dog’s composure and ability to cope with a wide variety of situations. Stay training can result in a happier dog with a more people-safe temperament when suitable training methods are used.

Stealing: Is Your Dog a Thief?

What is a thief? In the human sense, is a dog capable of stealing? When something of yours is in jaws of a dog, you want it back! How to get it?

Stress Whining

At training class, at the veterinarian’s office and when walking on leash, some dogs will make a tremendous amount of noise whining. Dogs may also whine when confined to crates or when they are outside and the family is inside. Understanding what the dog is experiencing will help you lower the volume!

Submissive Urination

Submissive urination is often thought of as a housebreaking problem, but it’s really a behaviorial problem. Punishment and harsh training approaches will only make it worse!

Submissiveness

Ironically, submissive behavior in dogs is often misread as dominance. Talk about being 100% wrong, aye? Submissive dogs, especially when mishandled, are often called wimps. Wow, submissive dogs just get no respect! Yet they often make the best family dogs. Let’s take a closer look at submissiveness.

Talking to Your Dog

Do dogs listen better if you yell at them? How much of what you say does your dog understand? What does your tone of voice tell your dog? Is your voice the only way you talk to your dog? Communicating effectively is an art that deepens every relationship.

Temperament Testing Adult Dogs

When adopting a dog, the two qualities people want more than any others are good health and good temperament. Both are heavily influenced by genetics and are also affected by how the dog has been treated. Experiences have had opportunity to alter the temperament of adult dogs.

Temperament Testing Puppies

Puppy temperament testing is both science and art. Much of a dog’s temperament is genetically based. We continue to learn more ways the behavior is shaped by physical traits, including invisible or subtle ones. Dogs have different structures in their eyes that cause them to actually see the world differently, just as one example.

Terrier Traits

The muscular, merry, energetic dogs of the terrier group have great appeal. Their sturdy musculature often carries the day in conformation dog shows, garnering a lot of attention for these breeds.

Therapy Dog Work: Is This the Job for Your Dog?

A therapy dog accompanies a handler, usually a member of the dog’s family acting in a volunteer capacity, on visits to various settings in order to provide emotional benefits to the people there. If you’d like to do therapy work, understand what’s involved.

Thunderstorms

Fear of thunderstorms is common in dogs, and tends to get worse as they age. It is partly genetic. While some aspects of this problem remain a mystery, we know a lot that can make life easier for thunderstorm-phobic dogs and their families. Best of all, you may be able to help your dog avoid developing this fear in the first place.

Tie Out (Tethering) as a Means of Confinement

If you haven’t experienced how tying a dog outside can go wrong, it may surprise you that the United States Department of Agriculture doesn’t allow tie out (they call it tethering) as a permanent method of confinement for dogs under its jurisdiction. The Humane Society of the United States describes tethering as a permanent method of confinement as inhumane. Some localities have laws restricting it.

Timid Dogs - the Best Approach

Timid or shy dogs can become sweet and loving companions. On the other hand, some will be unsuited to life in busy households or with small children, and some may find dog sports too stressful. Sometimes the fearfulness you see in a puppy can turn into aggression as the dog matures.

Toenail Trimming

Veterinary hospitals and professional groomers do a lot of toenail trimming for dogs whose families can’t manage the task. It’s nice to be able to do this task at home, though, not only to save money but also so that you can trim the nails more often.

Touch and How It Affects Your Dog

The dog’s degree of sensitivity to touch is largely inherited, and is included in temperament tests administered to dogs. For homes such as those containing children or for jobs such as therapy dog work, a dog who isn’t very sensitive to touch would be preferred.

Toy Dogs are Tremendous!

The delightful toy dogs are often tougher than they look. Considering the number of steps they have to take to keep up with humans and larger dogs, many of these little ones have incredible stamina.

Toys as Tools for Dogs

Children use toys as tools for mental, emotional and physical development. Toys fill the same functions for dogs. When it comes to your relationship with your dog, toys are your tools as well as the dog’s tools. The way you use toys with your dog has a profound effect on the nature and quality of your relationship.

Tracking

The noncompetitive nature of tracking is ideal for a sport that sparks many people to go into search and rescue or other scent work with dogs. In a real search it takes everyone working cooperatively in order to cover the territory as thoroughly and quickly as possible. Everything that builds esprit de corps among the handlers can save lives, so the AKC is to be applauded for keeping the sport of tracking cooperative rather than competitive.

Training Classes

Training class can get you off to a great start with your puppy, help you achieve specific training goals, and make it possible to manage a rowdy young dog. The class that works for one goal may not be the class that fits another goal, and the class that fits your neighbor’s dog may not fit your dog. How can you tell which class is best for you and your special canine family member?

Training with Food: Yes or No?

People tend to have strong feelings about whether or not to use food in dog training. Actually, whether or not to use food is not just a yes or no proposition. The answer is “sometimes yes, sometimes no.” Best of all; learn how to use food and other motivators effectively in training so that you can choose the best motivator for each task.

Training: What Does Your Dog Need?

Some dogs don’t require a lot of training to keep them out of trouble, but others need homes where training is a way of life. If you have a dog now, which kind of dog do you have? If you’re thinking of getting a dog, which kind is right for your home?

Trash Hounds and How to Live with Them

Trash hounds can be wonderful companions to humans who are as smart as the dogs. Anger and punishment won’t solve the problem and in fact can make it worse. Brains and a sense of humor will keep you one step ahead of your trash hound-most of the time!

Treats: Using Food to Shape Your Dog’s View of the World

Since dogs, like humans, have to eat to live, and generally enjoy the process (some of us too much!), food is a primary motivator you can use with a dog who has no training and doesn’t even know you yet. You can also use food to improve a dog’s opinion of you!

Tug of War

Trainers disagree about whether or not to recommend playing tug of war with dogs. While this game works fine for some, problems result for others. Factors to consider include the temperament of the dog, the temperament(s) of the people who will interact with the dog, the dog’s physique and your lifestyle.

Two Puppies or One?

Are you getting a new dog and thinking of adopting two puppies at once? Would that double the pleasure? Could they be company for each other when you’re not home? Does it seem a good way to settle competition between human partners or the children in the family over who gets to play with the dog? More dogs, more to go around—does that plan work?

Urinating on Beds

People tend to be upset when their dogs urinate on beds. A dog doesn’t mean this as the insult that humans take it to be, and the dog doesn’t see it as disgusting. Some dogs mark their own beds by urinating there.

Urine Marking

Urine marking is not really a housebreaking problem, but can often be cured with the same techniques.

Veterinary Visits: Helping Your Dog Enjoy Them

Your veterinarian and the veterinary hospital staff are vital people in your dog’s life. A dog who copes with veterinary care with no stress about the people, the handling or the place has a huge advantage in life. There’s a great deal you can do to help your dog become this kind of dog.

Visiting Other Homes with Your Dog

“Love me, love my dog” describes how many of us feel. Does this extend to taking your dog along on visits to the homes of friends and family? How do you feel about hosting other people’s dogs in your home? It depends, doesn’t it, on just what having that particular dog and owner in your home entails? Many friendships and family relationships suffer over conflicts about visiting dogs.

Walking with Your Dog

“Want to go for a walk?” At any given moment there are people all over the world asking their dogs this question. Whether for fun or practical needs, going for a walk is surely the top activity dogs and people do together. It’s a misconception, though, that any person and any dog can just snap on a leash and walk out the door in any location and be ready to face the world.

Water and Ways It Affects Dog Behavior

Water is critical to a dog’s survival. Because a dog depends on water for the somewhat inefficient canine body cooling mechanism, a crisis can come quickly. Water is great exercise for dogs with certain orthopedic problems and is sometimes used as part of physical therapy. It’s also a good idea to give your puppy basic baths so that getting into water holds no fear for the dog later.

Water Rescue Dog Tests for Newfoundlands

Other retrieving breeds are related to the Newfoundland and can surely be taught most of these skills (depending on the size and strength of the dog being trained). How many lives might be saved by water rescue dogs, with more of them on the job? Handler and dog work as partners in most of the exercises, though the dog also learns to independently rescue the handler or others.

Weight Pull Competitions

The popular sport of weight pulling is open to all breeds, but especially suits dogs bred for draft work, such as the Saint Bernard, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Alaskan Malamute, and Samoyed. Weight pulling also attracts owners of physically powerful breeds such as the American Pit Bull Terrier and the American Bull Dog.

What Kind of Dog Should I Get?

In considering the differences among dogs, breeds help us understand the physical and behavioral traits typical of the various types of dogs. Choosing a dog with characteristics suited to your family’s care-taking abilities makes a safer and happier experience for the dog as well as the family.

Wild Behavior: How to Help Your Dog Settle Down

Playfulness, high energy and high spirits are qualities we value in dogs. That is, until we realize the dog doesn’t have an “off button,” or a speed setting dial! You can develop these wonderful abilities with your dog, though, with enjoyable training and sensible management.

Working Dog Ways

The dogs in the American Kennel Club’s Working Group have been bred for jobs. Most are large, strong dogs who have historically worked at tasks such as guard work and pulling carts or sleds. Dogs in this group require structured, formal training, whether to perform their traditional work or to succeed as safe companions to humans. Some can be great, dependable family dogs with proper training.

Younger Dog Taking Over the Pack

When it comes to living in a pack with other dogs, dogs are very much the victims of their own instincts. These instincts can be difficult for humans to understand, and often the results of such misunderstandings lead to tragedy for the dogs.

Jumping

Does your dog jump on you or others? It’s easiest to nip this in the bud if your dog is a puppy, but even adult dogs can be taught to keep four on the floor.

Jumping Up On People

How many dogs have been relegated to back-yard living because they jump all over family and guests whenever anyone walks through the door? Then when someone goes out to visit the lonesome dog, the jumping is worse because the dog is even more excited to see someone. Only now the dog is dirty, too. Not good!

Keeping a Dog OFF the Furniture

If you want to keep your dogs off the furniture, your best bet is to start every puppy and new dog in your home with “off the furniture” as the consistent rule.

Killing Animals

What does it mean when a dog kills another animal? While it shocks humans, killing is normal behavior for dogs. When dogs do not kill, it’s due to human management. Without humans, dogs would have to kill to survive. When people are unable, unwilling or unaware of how to manage their dogs, kills to other animals become all too common. Understanding how it happens will help you avoid the problem with your dog.

Kitchen Floors and Other Smooth Walking Surfaces

When a dog looks at the smooth floor and stops short–unwilling to walk there–obviously the dog has learned a fear. If your dog’s first experiences with smooth floors are scary or painful, it may be difficult indeed to change the dog’s mind about these surfaces. By acting quickly, though, you may be successful.

Labrador Retriever Revelations

The Labrador Retriever has for several years surpassed all other breeds in the number of individual puppies registered with the American Kennel Club. Labradors deserve their popularity, but not for the reasons people sometimes think.

Leash Training for Adult Dogs

Leashes are wonderful for dogs. Leashes mean getting to go out of the house and yard to all sorts of interesting places. Leashes mean enjoying the outside world, protected from myriad dangers. With a little training, your dog will happily greet the sight of the leash, and walk along on it easily without pulling.

Leash Training for Puppies

A puppy may refuse to budge while on leash one day, and try to drag you down the street on the same leash the very next day! Dogs who walk well on leash face fewer dangers and have more fun. It’s well worth the time to develop this skill with your puppy.

Livestock Guardian Dogs

Livestock guardian dogs (also called livestock protection dogs) have proven they can work successfully with all kinds of livestock, but perhaps most and best with sheep. Sheep represent easy prey for wolves, coyotes, stray dogs, and other predators.

Long Line: Powerful Low-Tech Management Tool

Chances are if you have done much dog training, you have used a long line. If this piece of equipment is new to you, learning about it can improve your dog-handling skills, as well as your dog’s reliable responses to your cues.

Loose Dogs

You’re out walking with your dog on leash, and uh-oh, there’s a loose dog approaching. Too many people think it’s okay to let their dogs roam loose, not realizing what a danger this presents to other people, especially those out walking with dogs or young children. How can we cope with stray dogs?

Loose-Leash Training

There is a secret to teaching a dog to walk on a loose lead and never pull. Find out this easy and fun method to train your dog!

Lost and Found Dogs

A lost dog is an emergency. People may get complacent when a dog has been out before and come back, but it’s not safe to count on that happening again. Acting quickly can prevent losing your dog, save your dog’s life, and in some cases save you a lot of money. It’s an emergency.

Love and Affection with Your Dog

Words can be wonderful, but they can also cause people to become terribly confused. Nowhere is this truer than in human relationships with dogs.

Lure Coursing for Sighthound Breeds

Keep in mind that coursing if done by humans would qualify in the extreme sport category! The hounds give it their all, with no thought to protecting themselves from injury or overheating. Precautions to protect the dog are the handler’s job, with the strong support of the rules and the other people present.

Man-Trailing Bloodhounds

It might seem then, that using a Bloodhound to find a missing child would risk the child’s safety. Not so. The lost child blessed by early call-out of a man-trailing Bloodhound and handler has a vastly improved chance of rescue. On locating the child, the gentle hound will want only to be the child’s new best friend.

Mixed Breed Dogs and How to Choose One

Mixed breed dogs may turn out quite well, depending on their parents. The first-generation cross of two purebred dogs of different breeds is a hybrid, and may possess superior traits in terms of health and intelligence. The “hybrid vigor” as this is called applies only to the first cross of two purebreds, though. Crossing those hybrid dogs produces unpredictability in the health and temperaments of their pups.

Moving with Your Dog

Animal-shelter workers’ hearts are broken regularly when people give up dogs for the reason “Moving, can’t take dog.” Dogs are highly adaptable. It’s quite possible to meet a dog’s needs and live happily together in a home very different from the home you shared before.

Multiple Dogs: The Pack

Dogs who live together form a pack structure. Often this structure is harmonious, but frequently problems crop up. There are special challenges to training more than one dog, and problems that arise can include disobedience and fighting. Sometimes this fighting is severe.

Multiple Dogs: What is the Right Number for You?

If having one canine family member is great, wouldn’t two be better? How about three when you now have two or four if you now have three? Are there reasons to limit the number of dogs in your family? Let’s look at the advantages of living with multiple dogs along with how things change as you add canine companions.

Naming Your Dog Well

Does it make a difference what name you choose for your dog? Yes, it does. If you know in advance that you will be adopting a dog, take time over the choice of a name. Start using that name when you first meet the dog. Your dog will learn the new name quickly and will more easily learn how things work at your house because the new name signifies a new lifestyle.

No and How Your Dog Understands the Word

The word “no,” like any other word, carries to your dog the meaning it has occupied in the dog’s life, as part of the dog’s history. You might as well say “Gurp” or whatever other odd sound you can spell with letters, for the entire actual meaning no” as a word has to a dog. Whatever sound you utter, the tone of your voice and the body movements you make at the same time will affect how your dog perceives the sound, just as it does with humans.

Non-Sporting Dogs are Good Sports!

Some of the Non-Sporting breeds come from working heritages, while others have been historically bred primarily as companions to humans. Sizes, temperaments and grooming needs vary widely. Like all dogs, they are happiest and most successful in life when well-matched with humans prepared to responsibly train and manage their particular characteristics.

Obedience and Rally Competitions

Obedience and rally training is an excellent structure for learning to train a dog. It gives you a common language with your dog. Whatever you want to do with dogs, obedience training is a great way to start. The trials give you concrete feedback as to how well you are doing at training your dog.

Obsessive Behavior

Do dogs get obsessive-compulsive disorder? We see cases of a dog repeating a behavior over and over, though, with resulting harm either to the dog or to others. We’ll call it “obsessive behavior” here, with the understanding that other terms might also apply. Perhaps the dog becomes addicted to the behavior because of stimulating or soothing chemicals it releases in the body.

Off Leash or On Leash?

Do dogs need to run free? When should a dog be on a leash, and when is it appropriate for the dog to be off the leash?

Old Dogs and Their People Can Learn New Tricks

Old age brings physical changes that can require new skills in order to keep functioning as well as possible. The more you and your dog have learned together in younger days, the easier it is to keep learning throughout life. It’s never too late, though, to create better learning that will improve the quality of life.