Never forget this if you plan to bring a Dog into your family in the future.
*When you bring a new Dog home you are creating a relationship out of absolutely nothing.*
You have a history which has led you to want to bring a Dog into your life or back into your life and the Dog has nothing. Everything about you is new to them and all details of your routine are foreign to them and to their habits or impulses. They don’t understand why you brought them *home* but I’m sure that they are very happy to be with you. You are not a blank slate and neither is your new Canine Family Member but together your relationship is pretty much a blank slate.
- Will it go well?
- Will it be fun?
- Will you be tested?
- Will your new Dog be tested?
Usually, the answer to all of these questions is a resounding *Yes*!
Just remember that you have so much more control than your Dog does and you need to decide how best to work through the process of defining how your relationship will progress. If your Dog made the rules it would be steak every night and off and on during the day and every day would be spent at the beach or in the woods or maybe with Poochey sitting on your lap while you watch tv and feed them……this is not what life looks like for most of us.
So remember as you walk into your home with your new Best Friend, they are looking to you for all direction. This is a responsability but also a tremendous opportunity and privilege and gift.
As always, Karen is correct.
The two most important aspects to working with your Dog, following eye contact, are body language and tone of voice. I think the best way to explain what I meant when I talked about correction and praise is to outline what A.R.C mean regarding Dog Training.
- *A* stands for *Ask* meaning that you have a behavior in mind and you either work to elicit that behavior from the Dog using body language in a formal training session or that you give the Dog a command using a signal that your Dog already knows either verbal or with hand signals. The moment you *Ask* your dog for a behavior you need to be prepared to *capture* the action of your Dog?s cooperation.
- *R* stands for *Receive* which means that you get the reaction that you wanted from your Dog, whether that be getting out of your way or sitting and staying or leaving the dead animal on the side of the road alone. You have thrown out the command or directed the behavior and when you receive it it?s very exciting!!
- *C* stands for *Celebrate*!! This means that you acknowledge your Dog?s brilliant cooperation with verbal praise or a treat or a happy pat and the level of your excitement should be a reflection of how large an accomplishment you?ve gotten from your Dog. Simply saying *Yay!* in a really happy voice should be enough for some Dogs to feel like they?ve just won the lottery. Sometimes you want to keep the tone of your voice stable if you are working on repetition of the behavior.
We call this cycle of events *Arc-ing* with your Dog. You repeat this pattern of communication with your Dog from the moment you bring your Dog home til the moment your Dog passes away. In the last hour I have gone through the A.R.C. pattern with Bae about 6 times because it is the foundation of how we communicate.
- I *Ask* her to leave the back yard and come with me inside.
- I *Receive* cooperation from her as she drops her Frisbee and comes running to the door.
- We both *Celebrate* by me telling her what a *Fantastic Girl* she is and she wags her tail and gets all excited because Bae loves to win.
And I just realized that I haven?t really touched on tone of voice or body language but I think I?ve said enough for now and that I will run how to best talk about those two training fundamentals because they are so important.
