Many women come to me for help with their dogs. When we broach the inevitable subject of discipline, most women start to shy away. They want better control, but they don’t want to discipline their dogs as a means of getting that control. As I probe to find out why, I find a recurrent answer.
Take a moment and list your life heroes. Whom do you most admire or have been your mentors? What figures have most influenced your life? What bosses or professors or teachers taught you the most? The qualities in each of these people will probably be similar, and they are the qualities of true leaders:
t’s all about rank. Rank is good. Rank is necessary. Clear rank and order puts a dog at peace. I am fond of saying that dogs only want to know two things…
The Leadership Walk – or as many call it, the “Wonder Walk” – addresses the underlying cause of most dog behavior issues: confusion over who make the rules and who’s running the show.
Just the other day, a friend relayed a touching rescue dog story to me. She had been traveling in a popular tourist town and met a shop owner with a new rescue dog. The dog, it turned out, had belonged to a homeless man living on the streets in her well-known city.
Camilla Gray-Nelson: “74% of the time [in most households / families], the woman is in control of the dog. Many times, however, they have a hard time controlling the dog and there are some natural reasons for that. That’s where I step in and try to empower women and try to channel their inner dog trainer and their inner leader…”
I didn’t have any friends with two legs until I was in junior high. But, the advantage of that looking back now, because everything I do in the dog world in training, is based on how animals communicate naturally with each other. And if I didn’t have that background, I wouldn’t know that language.
When we give our dog too much freedom – the freedom to patrol the entire yard or property while we are gone, the freedom to hike off leash without voice control, the freedom to roam about the house and explore with no restrictions, the freedom to sniff, pull, and investigate at will on our walks…we are sending a potentially dangerous message!
Taken to an extreme, you may become a ‘doormat.’ Doormats can’t manage or direct dogs, children, or employees. Doormats don’t often get all of what they want in life, either.
The reason anger and frustration fail to control a dog is that anger and frustration signal to your dog (and to others) that you have lost control.
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