I love most animals, but at the end of the day, I’m a dog man through and through. We spend a lot of time with our dogs, taking care to train them well and teach them to be loving and attentive. I’ve been training dogs off-leash for years now, and work to get them trail-trained as early as possible. I don’t know where I’m going with this, just thinking of the dogs today.

So, for Thoughtful Thursday, I’m going to ramble about my dog and my experience training them in the past. We lost my old yellow lab last December after fourteen years, and while I’m at peace with her death, she’s on my mind a lot. Maybe it’s because of the lessons they teach us and the love we share, but as I get older and more mindful, I can’t help but think they know what they’re doing sometimes.

We also have a three-year-old Border Collie/Coon Hound/Huskie/other mix of a mutt who is the best dog I’ve ever raised. No digs to Fannie (our late lab), because she taught Sunnie much of what she knows. Make no mistake, Sunnie (mutt mix) is much smarter than Fannie in a traditional sense, but Fannie had a distinct personality and emotional understanding. She also had the pleasure (misfortune?) of being the first dog that I trained, and when dogs pack up, the dogs learn from each other.

I’m not necessarily on the extreme end of dog training, but what you might call a balance of old school and new school. I believe that every dog should know who its leader is, and have a routine of training, work, exercise, or some combination thereof every single day. We go on a minimum of two half to full mile walks every day, rain or shine. I tell my wife two walks a day, every day, no matter what, and sometimes she throws things at me. 🙂

And I’m a little more physical and correcting of my dogs than many, as I’ve found dogs respond well to situational causations. I never hit or strike my dogs, but I won’t hesitate to wrestle them to the ground or bite their ear in public. Very Snow Dogs (holla Cuba Gooding Jr.), but it does work. Also, those sorts of reprimands are few and far between.

Because positive affirmation is the better first way to train a dog, and it works well in many situations. And when you train your animals with firm boundaries like I do, you can offer another reward that works better than anything else. They earn more freedom. Sunnie is fully trail-trained now, and I’m confident that I could let her roam in some woods by herself for ten minutes and then call her back almost immediately. But she had to learn it and earn it before that became a part of her walking routine.

With an older/previously trained dog, these boundaries are easier to teach, as the younger dog looks for behavioral etiquette direction from its senior instinctively. Sunnie learned these specifics from Fannie: out of the kitchen, sit, leave it, off-leash proximity to owner, better call-back, and what I call anchor shifting. Anchor shifting is when you walk dogs off-leash with a partner or other, and have the dogs shift their proximity to another person either with command or instinctively. This is useful when you need to pick up poop, throw something away, have a chat, avoid some kids, etc.

Start small. My order looks something like this: six-foot leash for a month, twenty-five-foot lead for a month and off-leash at beach, thirty-foot proximity, sixty-foot proximity, 100-foot, and complete freedom. And while Sunnie loves being able to comb the woods, beach, field, and everywhere else we go, she listens so she can maintain that freedom. I think she certainly knows, because on the rare occasion that she ignores command, she loses a freedom level and has to earn it back. She hates it lol.

I also support the use of a training collar, especially if you give your dog a high degree of freedom. Or if they are high energy or maintenance dogs. The “shock-collar” gets a bad rep, which is logically understandable, but it is the most essential piece of my trail/hunt/off-leash training. And it is not inhumane when used appropriately. Metaphorically, imagine being able to give the leash a correcting tug at 500 yards — that’s what the collar does. The good collars (I recommend the Sport Dog lines) have beep and vibe settings, which give the dogs Pavlovian associations when ignoring or disobeying command. If Sunnie doesn’t come on the first call, the second and third are accompanied by a simple beep of her collar. That is ninety-nine percent of what you use the collar for, and Sunnie is a literal Jedi with that thing on.

But my dogs do sleep with us inside, even in bed. She’s not a farm dog lol, but even if she was… I don’t know. I also let my dogs have human food. If we are going to share the emotional connectivity and benefits of evolution, we may as well share the delicious aspects of humanity too. Besides, if she was a farm dog, she’d be eating the tasty scraps. And an essential aspect of training your dog hard is loving them hard too! You gotta spend some time on the floor playing tug, socialize them with other dogs and people both inside and outside the house, and give them a life worth barking about!

Because at the end of the day, having a pet is huge responsibility. You’re not a parent, but you are the caretaker of their life. A LIFE. So, you should take it seriously.

Anyways, love you Fannie, and love you, Sunnie. I feel blessed to have my dogs in my life, and I thank them for teaching me patience, gratitude, and mindfulness. I dare you to watch a dog sprint down the beach, mouth agape with an ecstatic look in their eyes, and not find a kernel of joy stirring in your heart. They teach us how to accept death, and that friendship can transcend those ineffable boundaries.

It’s why we’ve got two hands — so we can pet two dogs at once.

I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Kbat

P.S. Shout out to Baby Girl, my cat and one of my oldest friends. I also adore cats, but they can be hit or miss, and I think even cat people can agree with that. Baby Girl is, of course, an OG.