Question: Metal Training Collar “I have researched dozens of books and purchased a handful of dog training videos. The one thing I noticed is that many of the obedience training articles and instructions recommend the use of a metal training collar rather than a nylon collar. Can you tell me why? Personally, I own a…
Question: My Samoyed & His Strange Desire For Cow Chasing “I live on a cow farm and my dog is a Samoyed. Every once in a while he gets out and chases the cows and we are afraid that one of the cows will fall and break a leg, or fall and injure the dog.…
Question: Obedience Classes For The Young Puppy “I have a twelve-week old, mixed breed puppy that I want to enroll in obedience training classes. Everyone tells me that my puppy is too young. They say that dogs have to be at least six months old to get into the classes in my town. If I…
Question: Mixed-Breeds & Destructive Behavior “My nine-month old female, all-American dog is very sweet and intelligent, but we have a serious problem on our hands. When we leave her alone in the house, she literally destroys everything in sight. She seems to have a craving for destruction. My mother thinks that the dog does this…
Of all of the problems that dog owners face with raising a pet, the trouble involved in housebreaking stands out as the most common. In fact, of the tens of thousands of dogs that get trained by professional dog trainers in schools, 80 percent of the owners of these dogs complain of housebreaking difficulties upon…
At the first sign that your mature dog is going to eliminate (excessive sniffing of a particular area), the owner should immediately take him outside. The reason is obvious. How can you praise a dog for doing something right if you are not there to see it? The owner should go outside with his dog.…
The personality and thought process of the dog is an extremely complex mechanism. Training, whether for toilet training or teaching to sit on command, is simply a matter of communication. That is, communicating your desires to your pet and requiring that he respond in a certain manner, all the time. But when a normally trained…
There are some isolated cases where the cause of a breakdown in toilet habits in a mature dog starts as a psychological motivation, but results in a problem becoming medically motivated. An example of this would be the dog that suddenly forgets his housebreaking and urinates out of jealousy and spite. A dog of this…
How does a dog owner determine if his dog is getting old? How can he know that the “accident” that just happened is the result of the aging process that the dog is going through? These are difficult questions, since a dog five years of age can be considered old, while a six-year old dog…
There is a certain element of surprise, perhaps even shock, when the owner of a perfectly trained and well-behaved adult dog suddenly steps in a puddle. “No, it can’t be!” He shrieks. The possible alternative, such as a defrosting refrigerator, leaky water pipes, or a spilled cup of coffee give way to the awful truth;…