Pawsitive mindset magazine

Do you ever wonder why dogs bark at the fence, door or out the window?   It's a behaviour often coined 'superstitious'  because the dog thinks that a coincidental event occurred because they made it happen.  For example, your dog is looking out the window, and sees the mailman walk towards the door.  Your dog barks, and even though the mailman was going to walk away from the door after dropping off the mail anyway, the dog associates the mailman walking away  with his barking.  Similarly, when a dog sees people walking by at the fence, they bark as they approach, the people walk on and the dog thinks their barking made them walk away.  If this is a recurring pattern of events (the dog sees people approaching and walking by the house daily), it is being reinforced every time it happens.  

Does your dog need an exorcism or exposure therapy to get over their reaction to the vacuum cleaner?   Although not all dogs hate vacuum cleaners, most will react by barking at it and lunging at it as it moves. But by allowing your dog to be in a frantic excited mindset whenever the vacuum comes out, we are also training them to behave that way whenever it appears.  Slowly desensitising them by having the vacuum cleaner switched off, and getting them in a calm mindset, and correcting any intention to move forward towards it and rewarding any attempt to look or turn away from it will teach your dog they do not need to attack it.  Gradually start to move the vaucum cleaner, and when they are able to stay calm in the presence of a moving vacuum, get your dog use to it being switched on.  Associating the vacuum cleaner with a calm mindset is the key to stopping the aggression towards the loud evil monster.

When deciding whether or not to desex your dog, men tend to react badly about the thought of castrating their dog. So much so that they take it very personally, and think about the idea as an injury on the dog's 'manhood'.  Even the term 'manhood' makes it about a human. Of course this is anthromorphising the  idea of desexing, seeing it in the same way as if the procedure was done to a human male.  Thoughts of allowing their dog to have one single sexual interaction first before they are desexed, or feeling their dog is missing out if they never experience a sexual interaction are very human interpretation of sex and manhood.  Dogs don't rationalise, and do not place the same value around sexual interaction as humans, so it's not like they will look back after desexing wondering what it might have been like to lose their virginity or to have sex.  I personally think it's more cruel to let them experience sex, then tell them they can never ever do it again!

What's really making your dog crazy?  It's almost always what the human owner is doing with their dog.  The biggest culprit is giving your dog too much affection at the wrong times.  Affection is a form of reward.  If you give affection when the dog is demonstrating the wrong behaviours or the wrong mindset, you are encouraging the dog to continue to behave that way and be in the wrong mindset.  Giving too much affection whenever your dog is near and never teaching them to be on their own can cause separation anxiety, and similarly giving too much affection whenever they demand attention from you will cause them to become needy and demanding.  It's not about not giving affection, it's about giving affection at the right time.