Why do dog owners over stimulate their dog?
This is something that continues to fascinate me, even after 28 years of working with dog owners and see it thousands of times, is the human need to overstimulate, or rather to be a little more precise, the needs of many, not all, people to overstimulate their dog.
This fascinates me so much, several years a go I had a meeting with a Dr. of human psychology on this very subject because I wanted to learn about root decisions, is our need to behave the way we do towards our dogs inbuilt or learned?
I am pretty convinced when we first started working with dogs, we were fairly calm around them, and as we have got used to having dogs a round, that interaction has changed.
Anyway, the session was inconclusive as she complained I had melted her head because everything I had said about how I work and train people, shouldn’t work but made complete sense to her and, in fact, in many ways, contradicted her formal education in psychology!
She never did take me up on my offer of a free home visit to work with her and her boxers! So I never did get a conclusive answer to my question.
I will have to use my 28 years experience and conclude that some people do feel the need to overstimulate their dogs and in some dogs this can cause difficulty in making decisions, because they are too excited!
There has to be a balance and if you want a really well behaved dog, there are sacrifices you will have to make because you will have to put your dogs needs in front of yours and you may have to change your behaviour. It is difficult, but it works.
Not every dog enjoys constant attention, not every dog enjoys constant attention, dogs also need down time and rest time.
Some dogs, however have a strong need for attention, they can be quite demanding and quite insistent and these an be the dogs who become difficult to live with and where we need to change our behaviour.
To fully understand the owner, I have to begin with a home visit, I know whey the dog is behaving how it is, that is because of the people and the best way to convince them that they need to change their behaviour is to show then what happens when that happens.
Every house I go into I want to show, from the outset, what happens when your dog gets attention for good behaviour delivered in a different way. The transformation can be quite remarkable.