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What To Do When Your Dog Sees Another Dog: Dog Walk Challenge Day 7
Monday, January 19th, 2009 | Dog Obedience & Behavior, Dog Training Camp San Diego, Dog Training Collars & Leads, Dog Training Video | No Comments
The Walk Your Dog Every Day Challenge continues. Here in San Diego, Temecula (& we have a location in Taos, NM) there is no reason to not be out with your dog. It’s January and 70 degrees! Seriously.
Our last blog talked about he beginning stages of what to do when your dog sees another dog. As always it takes steps to get through these things. Here we go with the next step.
When walking around your own neighborhood you can probably choose times that there aren’t a lot of other dogs out.. and yet again, at the most inopportune moment it can happen… the uppity neighbors see you with the your dog who is really friendly, but you can barely hold back because of the excitement in seeing another dog.
So let’s talk about the next step. Refer to earlier blogs or of course our dog training site for one of the most important beginning steps…. After that, what any dog owner needs to remember is dogs are really unable to multi-task. Given that, with just a little bit of direction you can redirect your dog into ignoring oncoming dogs.. though it seems like an impossible task at this moment in time for the owner who has had their shoulder practically relocated over it in the recent past!
Redirect means that when you see another dog, hopefully just before your dog sees the other dog (in the beginning stages anyway), give your dog a task you’ve been working on before… though now is the best time to start if you haven’t worked on it before. One of the easiest things is to turn your dog in another direction. By this we don’t mean quickly head across the street in avoidance, but instead, do some quick short turns with your dog to keep attention. (And if your REALLY want someone else to take on this part we have the best dog training camp around San Diego, Temecula, CA & Taos, NM
When heeling, or walking with your dog in a “let’s go” you don’t have to always do a 180 degree turn and head the other direction. Law of first mention is hard to get away from… what we mean by this is doing a 90 degree turn, using whatever your command is, take a few steps, then do another quick 90 degree turn… and so on. You can do this right past a dog easily.
Of course there are many training methods you can use to keep your dog’s attention during this process and we are happy to assess what is going to work for you best… all you have to do is ask. Several options are out there from food, to collar and leash to remote collar.. and all can be done in a very kind gentle manner. That’s the only way we recommend you train your dog.
More on “what to do when your dog sees another dog” soon… for now, give these steps above a shot… and we always love to hear from dog people so let us know how it goes.
We have some really great dog photos on Twitter daily so follow us there www.Twitter.com/GoTrainYourDog
We’ve also got a really great Facebook group going you can find by going to Facebook and doing a search on “Go Train Your Dog”.
Whatever you do… get out, have some fun with your dog, get some exercise for yourself & your dog… and you never know, that weight loss program for 2009 may come way easier than you thought it would!