Treat Your Dog Like a Dog

Forgive me if this gets "rantish" but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I honestly believe that a HUGE number of behavioural problems would be solved if we only treated our dogs like dogs and not like little dogs, or big dogs, or babies, or humans. That's not to say that your dog shouldn't be a part of the family (my dogs certainly are!) but we all need to remember that a dog is a dog and only by treating your dog like a dog will you get anywhere with it.

It is my belief that a huge percentage of small dog owners would have fewer behavioural issues with their pets if they stoppted treating their dogs like little dogs. Your dog doesn't know if it's a chihuahua or a St. Bernard - it just knows it's a dog. Don't pick it up every time a large dog approaches, don't coo to it when it does something wrong because "it's little, so it's cute", don't carry it around in a purse (it has legs for a reason, you know!). Treat your Yorkie like it's a Doberman, your Poodle like it's a Great Dane and you'll prevent your pocket pooch from thinking it owns you, the world, and everything in it. A lot of people think that dogs like pitbulls or Rottweilers or mastiffs are responsible for the greatest amount of dog bites. Untrue. It's actually the pomeranian next door or the pug down the street. It's not cute just because it's little - it just means it does less damage.

My second point focuses on ALL dog owners (I'm not just picking on the little guys). We need to strive to remember that our dogs aren't people. They aren't as smart as people, they don't have the complex emotions that people do, and they won't do something for you just because you said "Please" or "Thank you". Dogs require leadership and they require leadership in a way that they can understand. I'm not telling you to beat your dog (god, no!) but when your golden retriever growls at the neighbour when you're walking down the street, saying "Now, Buddy, that was a mean thing to say to the nice man. You apologize right now or you don't get supper!" isn't going to get the job done. Dogs can't be reasoned with but they can be taught, they can't have things explained to them logically but they can be shown how to behave properly. If we all undertook to remember that our dogs are our dogs and not our children in a literal sense then we'd find that our dogs, our neighbours, and US are a much happier group of people. Because really that's what we're going for, aren't we?