Unleashed Unlimited
THE Dog Training Blog

This article comes to us from Wayne Booth, of Canine Behavior Specialists, a dog training company in Nashville, TN.  Wayne also offers dog training information on his blog at DogTrainingBlogger.com .  I hope you enjoy the article.

This is a question I am asked quite often…. here are my thoughts on the subject.

Bringing home a new family member is an exciting event in anyone’s life. You may thinking - “I don’t want my puppy to be alone. Maybe I should bring home his brother or sister to keep him company.” Is this idea a good one or not? There are several things to consider before bringing home two sibling pups.

To begin with, as you probably know, a single dog is a huge responsibility that should not be taken lightly. Puppies require a lot of time, effort, love and attention that will be a significant part of your life when they come home with you. Two puppies is twice the amount of time, effort, love and attention and twice the responsibility. Be sure that you have the desire and the resources to offer that to two new family members.

Another thing to consider is that when two dogs are raised together, they bond a lot more to their sibling than they do to their human companion. Oftentimes, this affects their capacity to be trained, as they have less a desire to please their human handlers than if they had had time to bond closely and solely with their master. If a dog has his brother or sister to be close to, they may very well wind up too close and pay more attention to their sibling than to you.

Dogs are pack animals and two dogs together are a pack. Remember that packs are powerful things that function away from and outside of human influence and can be tough, if not impossible, to control. When a pack forms, a pack order must be established and this can mean problems for your brother sister team. Fights can break out when the two are bickering for the alpha role. This means that one or both of them could get hurt and that they could easily develop aggression issues, which are very difficult to deal with as a human handler.

If you are considering taking home two puppies from the same litter because of your breeder’s influence, be cautious. Remember that this is the breeder’s business and they may be just trying to make an easy extra sale with you. If your breeder encourages taking home two puppies at once without discussing the difficulties that comes along with having sibling dogs, steer clear and seek out a different breeder.

On the plus side, a brother sister duo may keep each other company and be able to play with one another. This, however, can happen by raising one puppy to adulthood and adopting another after you have the first dog trained. This solution is far less difficult than raising sibling puppies at once.

Remember that dogs don’t have the same emotional bond with their families that humans do and that a dog can be perfectly happy raised far from any of his littermates. The concept “I don’t want to separate them!” is derived from inaccurate assumptions about a dog’s family attachments and can lead to a very difficult situation.

If you must raise two puppies from the same litter at once, be sure to be in contact with a good dog behaviorist and your breeder as your situation will require a lot of work and you’ll need professional and experienced advice!

This article comes to us from Brice Cavanugh, of Team Dog!, a dog training company with locations in Chicago and St. Louis.  Team Dog! prides themselves in providing an educational, entertaining, friendly, functional and innovative experience of uncompromising quality that meets the dog training needs of the entire family, building balanced relationships through clear communication.  Brice has written an excellent article on Halloween tips that will help keep our pets and ourselves safe this Halloween.  Enjoy!

Halloween can be an especially trying time for our furry friends, so Team Dog! has put together a list of 13 tips to help you and yours avoid the common problems associated with the most dangerous holiday for dogs!

1.  Make sure that your dog’s ID tag is up to date and secure on their collar…just in case!

2. Keep candy away from your dog! Many candies can be toxic to dogs as well as being a choking hazard!  Wrappers of eaten candies can be of concern as well!

3.  Supervise! Children and dogs should always be supervised together, and this is especially true during this high energy holiday!

4.  Protect dogs from Jack-O-Lanterns, candles and the like.  Besides the obvious problems of getting into a flame, wagging tails can knock over items that can cause big trouble!

5.  Costumes. Many can be chewing/choking hazards, and some dogs just don’t like the constricting nature that most costumes create.  It may be fun for us, but consider your dog!  Make sure that your dog has good peripheral vision to enable them to fully use their senses…

6.  The eyes have it! Costumes worn by humans can take away a dog’s ability to see strangers as they are accustomed to meeting them (in addition to scent).  Hidden eyes can create insecurity in your dog, which can elicit defensive postures and actions.  Let your dog smell your costumes prior to your putting them on, and ease them into this new phenomena!

7.  Don’t take your dog out Trick or Treating with you! Many dogs are balanced and comfortable with this, but many are not.  It is human nature on this holiday to play pranks and scare fellow holiday goers, but your dog may not understand, and therefore protect his family!  Be aware of this!  It is only one day, he will probably be just as content to sleep through it, which leads us to…

8.  Provide a safe and quiet place for your dog. Many dogs look at their crates as a sanctuary (good training!), or a quiet room will serve the same purpose.  Allowing your dog to avoid the craziness of doorbells, strange costumes and the volume of visitors is an excellent way to help your dog through the evening.

9.  Practice your recall! Dog s should come when called, and practicing this skill can be life-saving!  Door bolting is a huge concern when the door is answered and opened dozens of times within an evening.

10.  Holiday decorations, like Silly String™ are fun to play with, for both you and your pet…but they should only be playing with toys designed for them and under your supervision.

11.  Exercise your dog prior to the festivities kicking off!  Having them mentally and physically spent helps them to relax better!

12.  Help your dog through trying times. Reassurance can be helpful, but make sure that you are not encouraging undesired behavior.  Optimally, refer to #8, but if you want your dog out and about, be aware of their state of mind and reward/discourage accordingly!

13.  Have fun! Our pets can be a wonderful part of our celebration, but if they are overwhelmed, the opposite can be true!  There is no need to create a problem that could take weeks to fix just to have a good time for a couple of hours, but if your dog can handle it, then have a blast!

For more great information, dog training tips, and videos, or if you are looking for Dog Training in Chicago, be sure to visit the website of Team Dog!

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This entry comes from Chris Colt of Cove Mountain Kennels. Cove Mountain Kennels, located in the rural town of Annabella, Utah at the base of Cove Mountain, is a small gun dog training kennel whose purpose is to help people build good relationships with their dogs.  Their philosophy is that a combination of socialization, companionship, behavior and lots of experience on wild birds makes for a quality hunting dog and wonderful full time companion.

There are times when you should not give attention or affection to your dog. It may seem counter intuitive, but when a dog is scared, in pain, or their mind is somehow unstable, you should not give them attention. Turn and move away, or go on with what you were doing like you didn’t know they were there. If you give them attention at this time, it feeds their instability and worst case, can even give the dog an irrational superstition or fear of something associated with the incident.

I learned this principle many years ago from David Bowman, a very knowledgeable VDD dog fancier. A cute young Drahthaar pup he had tried to jump into the back of his truck, it missed and whacked its face on the tailgate and landed on the ground like a sack of flour. I immediately raced over with an, “Aaaaawwwww, poor puppy.” David sharply stopped me with a command like he would give to an errant pup. He pulled me back and we just watched the pup. The pup got up, shook it off and trotted over to us. David explained to me that there were times when you shouldn’t give affection to a dog, or they would develop and unreasonable fear of some object, action, place or other thing they associated with the event. The more anxiety you show in the situation, the more it will feed the instability.

In such a situation you should move on like nothing ever happened. Keep the dogs mind moving forward. Come back later and retry the action. David and I walked over to the other side of the yard for a minute, the pup trotting along. We gave him a few minutes to check out that part of the world and let his mind move on to other things, and then David then circled back to the truck and loaded the pup up without problems.

There are lots of times when you should praise your dog, but also times when you should withhold attention. When the dog’s mind is unstable or fearful, turn and move on like you don’t even know they are there. It is my belief that as a social pack animal, they surrender their fears to you, the pack leader. If you are not afraid of something, they feel that there is no need for them to fear it and they move on.

If you enjoyed this entry, please visit the website of Cove Mountain Kennels for a lot more great dog training articles.