How often do you praise your dog? was a question posed in the really excellent ‘Bonding with your Dog’ by Victoria Schade. Defensively, my brain jumped to ‘Oh, all the time.’ But when I really thought about it, I started to wonder if I praised my dogs as much as I thought I did.
Yes, I said well-done when Little Bear retrieved a ball, or when Annie sat when asked, but was it enough?
As recommended, I decided to look for as many opportunities to praise Little Bear and Annie as possible. Out for our morning walk, Little Bear trotted sweetly by my side (compared to steam-train Annie, he’s like a mouse on the lead!) so I told him what a lovely walk he was doing then clicked and treated him. Other Half looked confused. “Eh? He didn’t do anything.” he challenged.
In a way he was right. I hadn’t asked Little Bear to heel, but then I hadn’t needed too because he’d already learnt not to pull on the lead and was now doing what he’d been taught. Most people don’t need their boss to remind them to do their work before they get their salary, so why should we not reward our dogs for doing the things they now do automatically?
Like anything, it takes a while to get into the mindset of praising but once you get in some practice it’s quite addictive. It also makes walking so much more fun!
Mad dog woman
I’m teaching Annie to walk on a loose lead after Other Half’s shoulder started wracking up bills at the Chiropractors. It’s a long, often frustrating, sometimes physically exhausting process, but we’re getting there.
Annie loves the praise game too and we very nearly had a party in the street when she not only walked the whole way around the block on a loose lead, but then topped it off by managing to ignore ‘the Collie who must be lunged at’ this week.
It was 7am and assuming there were only dog people around I pulled out all the stops and threw in a little dance as we skipped along. While I’m in confession mode, I might have also sang a few bars of the entirely made up, ‘Annie is a good girl’ as we jiggled up the street too, just for good measure.
She was totally delighted and wagged and wiggled so hard she was in danger of poking out her own eye with her tail, but judging by the odd look and frosty good morning I got from one of my neighbours, I think I might have well and truly cemented my reputation as ‘the mad dog woman’. Like I care.
Seeing my dogs bubbling up with pride as I tell them how clever they are is worth a thousand odd looks.
So my thanks to Victoria Schade for that and the countless other great suggestions and insights in ‘Bonding with your dog.’
Thanks for the mention – keep up the good work!
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