Never punish your dog!

Q: Why not, Annelie? Surely my dog needs to learn what he must and what he must not do!

A: Yes, sure. A dog needs to know how to behave well and be a good dog citizen.

Q: So, why do you say never to punish a pooch?

A: Dogs do not understand punishment and because of this punishing him for something he has done is not only useless but also unkind.

Q: How do you mean dogs don’t understand punishment?

A: The concept of punishment does not exist in nature. It is man made and has nothing to do with nature’s ways of teaching.

Q: So how does mother nature teach?

A: Animals teach their young by being a model. They simply show their offspring how to behave and the kids follow mother’s example.

This is why young dogs learn so much from oder dogs. When you have a dog who behaves well, comes when called, sits and stays your young dog will soon catch the idea.

Q: Blah Blah, Annelie! Not everyone can or should afford a canine teacher for his dog!

A: You are absolutely right.

When a young dog does something his parents don’t want him to do he is stopped right away. They just don’t let him get on with it and punish him afterwards, they just make sure he stops doing whatever he is up to.

That way the dog elders make sure that the youngsters don’t form a habit and don’t receive any benefits from unwanted behavior.

As the youngster does not get a chance to misbehave he does not create the neuronal pathways for that unwanted behavior and the tendency to perform naturally falls away.

Most unwanted behaviors in our dogs start off as something a dog does randomly when playing about OR in his search for the solution to a problem he is facing.

He then finds the behavior rewarding, thus repeating it. Over time he creates neuronal pathways which means he starts to create an auto pilot for this particular behavior.

Punishing him does nothing to dis-create that auto pilot because punishment has no influence on those particular neuronal pathways and links.

The only thing punishment does is this:

* It teaches your dog that you are potentially dangerous
* It causes your dog to go into semi- protection mode when you are around
* It creates an internal conflict between love and fear in the soul of your pooch

In short:

Punishing your dog destroys his trust in you by bringing fear into the equation.

If that is what you want, then punishing your dog would be your choice. If, on the other hand, you wanted your dog to trust you unconditionally, you would find ways of educating him without using punishment.

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Dog Aggression Towards Humans – One Thing You Must Never Do If Your Dog Displays Threatening Behavior

Aggressiveness is a very unpleasant behavioral trait in any dog, regardless of size or breed. The smaller the dog the less threatening his aggression may appear but nevertheless it is still not nice to live with.

When you own an aggressive dog you wonder constantly what you could do to make things better for yourself and your pooch and sometimes you may even minimize the extend of the problem or put the blame on your dog’s victims.

Like my friend Sue who owns an aggressive bitch of the size of a german shepherd. Her canine friend Sandy scares the life out of men by running up to them and attacking them by grabbing their knees.
Sue maintains that Sandy does not mean to hurt them but just does not like men and wants to warn them not to come any closer. She feels victimized by people who reported her dog to the local authorities as well as by those authorities because she now has to prove via temperament test that her dog is non-aggressive towards humans.
Over the years Sue has employed several dog trainers and dog psychologists without success – non of them managed to change her attitude nor her dog’s behavior.

Sandie’s story is a sad one. Her first owners wanted her to become a police dog thus treating her in a way they thought fit for such a purpose. Sandy failed her tests and was sold to someone as a guard dog where she was discarded again after having been more abused in order to make her “sharp”. Being “sharp” is their equivalent to being an aggressive dog.
In that period of her life Sandy was confronted with much human cruelty which taught her to fear and hate men.
My friend Sue somehow got in touch with this highly traumatized dog, giving her all her heart as well as a new and safe home.
You can imagine how unhappy Sue was when she first encountered her new dog’s behavioral pattern. She immediately understood the cause of the problem, emphasizing with Sandy at deep soul level.
Emphasizing too much became Sue’s and Sandies problem because Sue lost the perspective of a responsible dog owner. She knows the reasons which caused her dog’s aggressiveness and hate for men in the first place but never managed to emphasize with the victims of her dog thus feeling like a victim herself.
All she needed to do after the first attack was to put a muzzle over her dog’s mouth when out of the garden as well as walking her on a leash.
Sue found this solution unbearable, continued her story of “Sandy does not mean any harm” thus allowing her to grab hold of the next male human being.

Now Sandy is in serious trouble because she is known by the authorities for bad behavior. Her life is in danger because she will be taken away and put to sleep if she continues to misbehave.

It is not her fault, it is her owner’s responsibility but the poor dog must bear the consequences and pay the price.

Her present problem was caused by the fact that her owner minimized her misbehavior, expecting her fellow human beings to tolerate being seriously mobbed by her 80 pound bitch.

The lesson to be learned from her story is this:

If you own a dog who displays any kind of ugly dog behavior by attacking or frightening humans or other canines, never take a stance of “oh, he does not mean it”.

Take your pooches behavior seriously and make sure he can not harm others.

Walk him on a leash and put a muzzle on him if necessary.

Those two measures may save your friends life in the long run!

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