Roger Abrantes: 16 Things You Should Stop Doing In Order To Be Happy With Your Dog

edited August 2012 in Behavior & Training
I think this is a great blog post...

16 Things You Should Stop Doing In Order To Be Happy With Your Dog by Roger Abrantes
Link: http://rogerabrantes.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/16-things-you-should-stop-doing-in-order-to-be-happy-with-your-dog

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Comments

  • I agree! Thank you for that link!

    It is easy to get so wrapped up in Dog-People culture and training politics, etc. This is why I quit all my dog magazines/journals a few years ago, and put most of my dog books away, except for a very short shelf. It made me crazy and guilty and emotional. Its really just me and this dog, here, right now.

    Talking with my sister, telling her all the stuff I had to stop doing with Sage and how it made me sad to 'give up'- she said "You know- he would probably do really well with someone you and I would consider a 'bad' dog owner- someone who didnt take him anywhere or expect anything, who just sat around reading and watching football with him, and took him out to pee 3 x a day." and I thought- I easily can be that for him and still hike with Reilly (and later Juno). Once I quit even *trying* to achieve heroic levels of reform with my reactive dog, we all felt better. Now I just am grateful for a 'pretty good' response when I can get it, and expecting a 'typical' response. Yeah. He barks. He jumps on guests and tries to french-kiss them. Sage just does that. I know he looks scary. But he's my dog, and my daughter and her middle-school girl friends joke that he doesn't have 'attributes' he has 'attri-cutes' ;P so there.

    I once had a contractor at our old house who had two chow-lab mixes, one was very dog-reactive, but he wasnt invested in dog-owner/trainer-culture and he didn't care about all that. His dogs are what they are and he knows it and can even laugh about it: "My black dog- he hates other dogs- Ha Ha! He likes the one he's with but that's IT." He doesnt care that they dont go to dog park, or the things people think of his dog or him. I thought "Why cant I laugh about it?" I wished I could. I can't quite yet, but I'm getting better.

  • great read, thanks for the link!
  • That was good. Thanks Brad!
  • Interesting read. I do think it is important however, not to assume a defeatist attitude about living with/training dogs in regards to certain issues. I guess it just depends on the reasons each of us decide to have dogs in our lives.
  • I thought it was interesting too, and Chrys, you've helped a ton understand how to deal with the dogs I have. It's ok that Bel doesn't want to go anywhere, and there's not much to do with that but live with it.

    I get Lindsay's point, too, about not giving up too easily, but there is also a point where we need to accept the dogs we have. I think that points come at different places depending on the dog and owner.
  • Very nice read, thanks for sharing. It got me thinking how the simpliest of things are often so hard to implement.
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