Positive Training

I am a person who believes all pets are a part of the family. I call my animals my children, 'the girls' and sometimes I refer to Trinity as 'the baby'. I also believe that, like all children, they need to be raised appropriately. They need to know right from wrong, and for dogs, how to behave politely in public. As the parents we need to teach them this.

"What? Your my parents?"

 When we first adopted Trinity  I was watching a lot of 'The Dog Whisperer' on the National Geographic channel. I was amazed how these dogs reacted to him and the behavioral methods that were done with them. Caesar trains the 'alpha' way and treats dogs as wolves in a pack. I attempted these methods with Trinity and they just did not work. I also re-examined my thoughts on my animals and thought 'if I believe that dogs are a part of our family why am I treating her like a dog'. That may come off as strange to some people, but dogs were trained to work with humans to do human tasks. We breed them to help us do hard tasks to make our daily lives easier and as a result dogs have bonded with us like no other species has. Even monkey's, who are supposed to be our closes species, do not even bond with us the way that dog's do. 'Dog's Decoded' showed us this. I also wanted Trinity to enjoy her training with me and not be scared into doing commands.

"Training's tough!"

I have now gone in a different direction with our training. We are a 'positive training' family, with minimal punishment. She goes in the bathroom for a few seconds (literally) when she's done something wrong, I saw this method on an episode of  'It's me or the dog'. We clicker train and have been doing positive training at Masterpeace. This has advanced our training and she loves positive feed back from us and lots of treats! I have been doing much more bonding with her this way and follow Zak George on You Tube. He has tons of positive training methods that involve bonding with your dog as the primary way to train. I also have subscribed to Pamela Johnson who is also on You Tube. She teaches freestyle methods to have fun with your dog.

"Mommy even made me do a trick before I ate my birthday cake!"

I know that everyone has a different way of training. I believe if we can train our dogs with love and bond with them in the process it makes ours and the dogs lives better. But remember training takes time, consistency, patience, and love!

"My mommy and daddy are the best! I love them!"