This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 8:33 am and is filed under The Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Dog Training 101
Today is the first day of the rest of an obedient pooch’s life. 
Per Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer, the order of things is Exercise, Discipline, and THEN affection. I can safely say I’ve had these out of sync. Way out of sync. But, in order to take GOOD dogs with me to Africa, I will do my best to get things back in line and become Pack Leader.
So I took the dogs for a walk yesterday. I took them each separately for about 25 minutes each. It went pretty well. Teddy is much better behaved than Theo. Teddy wants to look around a lot. Theo wants to run ahead. Dominate Poodle I call him. Cesar says that when you regularly walk your dog, and control the walk, they will learn you are the leader. So hopefully I can keep this up and they will get the idea.
Then I went on to discipline. Here’s the problem. Theo just does whatever he wants to do. But what he wants to do is usually what I want him to do, i.e. jumping and lying on me. I like it. What can I say? But, per Dog Whisperer, they need rules, boundaries, and limitations. Limitations? My dogs balk at the word! I’m trying though so I don’t let Theo jump up on me now until I invite him. When I tell him to sit he throws his little butt down and stares up at me trembling. This is going to be harder than I thought.
The third on the list is affection. I don’t need help in this area. I’ve got it down pat.
So that was my first day of rehabilitating my dog, training myself. I’ll keep you posted.