PDTE 2010 January Newsletter

PDTE AGM MEETING In Poland 26 – 27 September 2009
making decisions, thinking, solving problems
and doing the right thing at the right
time than we realise. Through the years,
my dogs have saved my life at least three
times — not because I ordered them to do
anything, but because they saw what was
needed and did it. I could do nothing to
help whatsoever to hep the situation, but
they knew exactly what to do. If we control
our dogs all the time, they lose the ability
to think and take the right actions when
needed because we teach them to be passive
and helpless.
what the job description is. For instance, if
I wanted him to be a good tracker, I would
need to start from beginning, letting the
dog discover the wonderful kingdom of
scent. I would let him discover for himself
how wonderful it is to find things and follow
tracks. I would then build up this natural,
completely natural motivation.
We never need to push a dog. If he is able
to do something from the very beginning
and is allowed to do it, there is no limit to
how much he will work later, provided it is
DOGS SHOULD NOT BE MADE TO STAND AGAINST BIG CROWDS;
IT IS PURE CRUELTY. THERE ARE BETTER WEAPONS
TO USE IN SUCH SITUATIONS!
When I was attending an instructor school
in Oslo many years ago, one my fellowstudents
who had a Rottweiler had just got
married to a girl who also had one. After
moving in together, he said that he now
understood how the way you train your
dog can really affect it. When they came
in from a walk his dog would calmly walk
around the home, drink a little water, find a
nice spot, and go to sleep. His wife’s dog,
however, would stop inside the door and
stand there waiting for someone to tell him
what to do. That is the result of control.
When we control dogs all the time they
lose the ability to think for themselves.
That dog would never have survived in the
wild.
One of the worst things we do with dogs
is controlling and taking command all the
time. We are depriving them of the ability
to think, solve problems and survive, all of
which they are very good at.
One thing I have a hard time convincing
people when we are training is to be quiet,
step and trust their dog. In many cases
the dogs know better than we do. We fuss,
control, take command and screw it up
completely.
Of course we need a little control now and
then, but we overdo it. Many people are
afraid or losing control because it makes
them feel uncertain and vulnerable. Perhaps
we should be working on ourselves
instead. We simply have to let go.
BUILDING BLOCKS TO SUCCESS II
— LEARNING TO COPE WITH LIFE
If I were getting a dog that had to do a
certain kind of job, I would need to know
built up correctly. However, this is a process.
A dog that is going to do serious work
should not do it until he is an adult. Many
dogs start too early and things go wrong.
It’s the same with people. You cannot take
a young teenager and imagine him or her
doing a really responsible job. There are
physical reasons for this. The ability to understand
the consequences of our actions
is one of the very last things to develop in
the brain and can develop as late as 21-
25 years. This is also true of dogs. They
have to reach adulthood to understand
the consequences of their actions, which
is probably around two years of age but
nobody knows for certain.
Therefore we have to build up their ability
step by step during the first two years,
until they are adult and mature enough to
carry out responsible hard work. Training
should also be systematic but we also
need to read our dogs, see their emotions,
and make sure that we don’t go too far. If
we push ahead too quickly the dog starts
to fail, may develop negative feelings
about the training, and we could very well
destroy the whole process. It is better
to progress a little too slowly so the dog
always feels encouraged and happy that
he can do what is asked of him. Self-confidence
and the ability to succeed will make
the dog capable of doing almost anything
once he is an adult.
Most of the training is therefore learning to
cope with life and building self-confidence
in what the dog is doing. A self-confident
person can do almost anything. A self-confident
dog will do virtually anything and be
good at it. The training itself is only a small
part. Our attitude is what counts.
BUILDING BLOCKS TO SUCCESS III
— NATURAL MOTIVATION
THE RIGHT DOG FOR THE RIGHT JOB
The best tracker I ever had was a little
Scottish collie. She didn’t do much in the
way of other things but she loved to track.
When she was four months old we were
out in the forest one day when she just
started tracking. I followed her because
she was so small I could do that without a
leash. She stayed on the track for 2 km, all
the way back to the farm. It turned out that
my daughter had taken that exact route in
the forest two days earlier. That was when
I knew that this dog would be a tracker,
and she became one. She could track
anything, no matter how old it was, in any
kind of terrain. On a couple of occasions I
had to take a break because walking on a
track for five hours is more than most people
can do in rough terrain. When I could
no longer walk I had to force her to take a
break. She never gave up. She could find
turtles, bugs, anything.
I tried at some point to see whether she
could do a little obedience work. She didn’t
mind, but it wasn’t anything she was really
happy with. I put her in for a competition
once just for fun and she did it, but I think
she got fewer points than anyone. I didn’t
mind. We then went for another competition
a couple of weeks later because I had
signed her up for two at the same time.
She went into the ring, looked around, realised
she had done it all before, and just
turned around and left. That told me she
was not an obedience dog. And that was it;
we didn’t do it again.
Dogs have talents, things they love to
do, and we have to look out for that. You
cannot just buy a dog and decide that this
dog is going to be in obedience competitions,
because he might be totally uninterested.
Dogs, like people, have talents and
interests and things they really like to do.
Sometimes it may not be that easy to see,
but some dogs show it very clearly.
Some breeds are better at certain tasks
than other breeds, but they also have
other traits. For example, guarding dogs
who become very strong in that task are
also extremely vulnerable, sensitive and
touchy. People think they are tough, but
they are not.
Therefore, whatever you are planning to
do with a dog, you need first to know the
job description, and then whether the dog
is good at this kind of job and whether he
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