Dog Gone Blog - The Dog Blog for Real Dogs

Your dog is not out to get you

I know, it's hard to believe but it's true.  Your dog is not plotting his revenge for when you leave the house.  He's not lying in wait, head on paws, taking an internal inventory of your favorite dress shoes all the while picking his favorite to chew to shreds if you dare as so much walk out the front door.

Dogs are not vindictive.  Bottom line.  End of story.

The casual dog owner has a hard time accepting this concept.  Humans are vengeful, so why aren't dogs?  First of all, they don't have the capacity to think like that.  Dogs are pretty simple animals and once we strip away all the human characteristics that we put upon these poor animals the better our relationships will be. 

But I can see, to the uninformed owner at the end of their rope, how most destructive behavior seems like a personal attack by the dog on them.  Rover pees on the dining room rug.  Owner admonishes dog for peeing and rug, making a big deal out of the incorrect behavior while cleaning up the offensive spot.  As soon as owner is out of eyesight dog pees in the same darn spot on the dining room rug.

Lather, rinse and repeat.

(If you'd like, swap expensive shoe chewing for peeing in the house or, in the case of my rescued dog Lana soon after we brought her home, remote control and cell phone eating.  Each case is fairly similar.)

(Yes, my dog once ate my cell phone.  That's another for another time.)

Let's talk about eliminating in the house.

 

In the peeing on the floor case let's assume that the dog is housebroken and has no medical problems that would force him or her to lose control of their bowels spontaneously.  They've just peed in the house once or twice, for whatever reason (fear, full bladder + slow owner, etc.) and now they continue to do so when the owner is not around.  Also, this is not to be confused with "marking".

Once a dog pees somewhere they can tell by scent exactly where that spot is long after you've cleaned it.  You need a cleaner specifically made for cleaning dog and cat odors (I recommend this product ) to get rid of most of it and even then a dog's sense of smell is so powerful that it tends to linger in their consciousness.  Especially if it gets into your carpet pad.   

My point is, your dog knows where he eliminated.  He's done it once so there's a good chance he'll do it again.  That's what dogs do, they pee and poop in familiar spots - which benefits us when we housetrain them, big I digress.  So restrict his access to that room until you can follow him around constantly waiting to catch him in the act.  Once he's done the deed and moved on you've lost the opportunity to correct that behavior.  Sorry, but rubbing a dog's face in their own filth only makes for a really icky nose and a really unhappy and confused dog.  Prevent the problem before it happens again by confining the dog to one room in the house or a crate when you leave the home or when you can't supervise him.  Give him a chew toy or two, a bit of water, and a comfortable bed.  And make sure you keep him on a regular potty schedule!

But why did he wait until you left the house to pee in that spot on the dining room rug, or worse, in your bed?  Besides the scent it could be because you made a big deal of it while cleaning the spot.  You spoke to him, probably even yelled at him, but you engaged him and you gave him attention.  Any attention, even negative, is still good attention to a dog.   In this case peeing on floor = attention from his favorite person.  You.  Or, possibly, he was anxious that you left and peed in that spot thinking you'd come back to clean it up and, again, pay some attention to him.  Clean up the pee while the dog is not around.

Now, the chewing.  Oy, the chewing!  And the digging and scratching, too.  The destruction, the mayhem, that is sometimes involved in owning a dog is enough to drive a sane person to the looney bin.  I recently had an email correspondence with my online friend Bobita.  In her email about her Labrador puppy she gave me enough ammunition topics to keep this blog going for awhile.   We've covered peeing in the house next we'll talk about chewing and other destructive behaviors.

That's our next post.  Y'all come back now, ya hear?

Look what the cat dragged in

Wow, is this place dusty, or what?  And look at those cobwebs.  It's going to take me forever to get all this cleared away.  But I will.  That is my commitment to... Me, since I'm probably the only one around to read this blawg. 

Yes, I am back. 

I miss sharing my opinions on all things dog with people who didn't ask for it.  My main reason for taking a break from this blog back in January - besides my overall burnout - was that I doubted the commitment of the dog owners that I was meeting, both in my classes and out.  I was tired of people wanting a ten minute fix for their dog's problems, problems that they themselves had caused.  Problems they wanted to get fixed between commercials because that's what what's-his-name does.  And why didn't I work the same way that what's-his-name did?

Other people's doubts made me doubt myself. 

All these doubts, however, finally brought me back to what I know - dogs.  I know dogs.  I get dogs.  I understand them more than I understand people sometimes.  I love their expressive eyes and their simple nature.  A simple nature that belies the complicated relationship that we have with these canine family members we call "Best Friend".

These complicated relationships are the stuff of novels and feature motion pictures.  But it's also the root of where we oftentimes go wrong with our dogs.  We imagine them to be more than they are but we're the ones who fall short.  We fall short of fulfilling the responsibilities that we took on when acquiring one of these amazing creatures.  I'd like to help with that.

When I started this blog I said it would be for "real" dogs and their owners.  Not handbag dogs, designer dogs, or the breed du jour, but for the everyday dog.  The mix down the street.  The purebred pup that your sister and her husband just got.  The dog behind the bars of your local shelter whose eyes spoke to you in a way that you just had to bring him home.  This is my declaration that this blog will once again be for those dogs and others like them.  The imperfect animal living in an imperfect world.  The dog that has potential to complete an important portion of our lives if only we can step up to that challenge.

One of the features that I will be adding to this site, to go along my general lecturing on dog training and product reviews (because the reviews are the sugar that help the lecturing go down), is something I am extremely passionate about but one of those areas where dog owners screw up the most.  It will be called "Tykes and Tails" and this regular feature will address how we raise our kids along with and alongside our dogs.  I hope you'll share your stories and frustrations with me.  Dog Gone Blog at Yahoo dot com.

I welcome any questions you have about dog training - even if you don't have kids - and hope you will allow me to use them on this blog.   I enjoy helping dog owners.  I love talking about dogs.   Sit down, speak to me, let's talk about your dog.

Now that I've stretched my legs, it feels good to be back.