When planning to teach an animal to carry out any new response, there are two questions to ask before even getting started.
What is the cost/benefit of teaching the behaviour? Should it even be taught in the first place?
If so, how should it be taught?
Let’s look at the first of those two questions, as it will help decide whether a behaviour should be trained at all, and identify potential situations where we simply shouldn’t bother.
Oh, and I address the question of how to chose the best training method in this blog post.
Training new behaviour could in some cases cause suffering to the animal.
Everybody’s got some valuable knowledge – a “yellow umbrella”. Finding it can be challenging.
Find the yellow umbrella.
We can learn something from every single person.
That’s a conviction that I have.
My challenge to you is to try to find that something in every single pet owner or animal professional that you meet.
What animal-related piece of knowledge can you gain from that person?
Find the yellow umbrella. The nugget of wisdom that will change how you interact with animals.
Ignore the other, black umbrellas: the ideas, techniques and explanations that don’t fit your paradigm. And here’s the challenge: though you might find these black umbrellas appalling – the task in this exercise is to ignore them rather than allow them to flip your lid.
Rather, pick and choose that which resonates with you. What you find might be an animal-related technique, a piece of knowledge, or merely an idea that you can mold to fit your own framework.
I try to approach animal trainers from all camps with an open heart and mind, knowing that they all have some insight that will help me improve my understanding of the world in general, and animals in particular.
So, which nugget of knowledge do I find with the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan?
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had influences from two directions that have caused me to consider the age at which dogs are separated from their litter and mom.
There’s a debate raging in Sweden about whether choke collars are potentially dangerous to dogs.
Pros and cons of choke collars? Photo: Elf, Wikipedia
Several influential dog coaches on TV use and recommend them, other experienced dog professionals argue against them. It’s currently causing all kinds of shock waves to ripple across social media, which inspired me for a blog post.
