Staying Positive in 'Real Life' With Your Dog

When I was doing rescue and adopting out dogs to their ‘forever homes’, I monitored their new home environments with the goal of preventing adversarial relationships from developing.   This was always a greater risk with a young, exuberant dog in a new home but every addition to a family can create some problems.                 

It can be challenging to be a dog person when you're having basic communication issues with your dog involving what should be simple, normal tasks for instance how they walk on a leash or how they may jumping on you or your family and friends.  In those situations, among others, it's human nature for annoyance with your dog to seep into your relationship with them *if you are not being proactive*.  When some of your dog's foundation behaviors become a consistent problem your attitude toward your dog can easily begin to include a tinge (or more than a tinge) of irritation and unhappiness.  This will not escape your dog's notice and will do nothing to help you bring your dog closer to having a positive, working relationship with you.   Your dog looks to you for you for direction and if the face looking back at them is tight or guarded or unhappy then you are signaling them with displeasure before they even do anything either rightly or wrongly.  Additionally, when your dog does something to merit discipline you want them to respect your voice and not just hear more negativity from the creature who's rarely happy with them anyway.
 
Please understand that I'm not suggesting your go out and buy a pair of pom poms or write a cheer for your dog.  Truly huge Celebrations should be saved for truly huge accomplishments.  What I am suggesting is that you act to prevent an adversarial relationship from developing between you and your dog based on one or more of their behaviors that you at first find annoying and that you grow to resent.  

I’ve found that naming the two biggest problems you’re having with your dog can go a long way to helping you begin to manage what is going wrong in your household.   After housebreaking a puppy has been accomplished the next two behaviors which cause the most distress are most often the dog jumping up on people and not walking well on a leash.  Both of these behaviors are driven by a dogs inability to control their impulse to use the physical power of their bodies to get closer to what they want.  They are young and they are excited and they really want to seize the day.  Instead of trying to change the behavior I’ve found it useful to take a deep breath and a step back.  Take some time to work with your dog.  Remember that every time you and your dog work cooperatively with each other your training bond becomes stronger and you both learn a bit more about the subtleties that bring out either the best or the worst in both of you.   Learning what gets you a positive result is priceless because you can extend that knowledge forward for the rest of your life with this dog. 

If you do some simple leash walking exercises with your dog in the back yard or somewhere where there are few distractions you may be surprised at the attention you get from them.  And if you start asking your dog to 'sit' at doorways before you enter or exit your home, then add a stay by just waiting til you count to four in your head you've done some wonderful work.    Dogs are not born perfect and remember, neither are humans.  The most important part of the human/dog relationship is learning patience together.