It’s Me or the Dog: How to have the Perfect Pet

As a leader you must show calm authority. Think of yourself as the managing director of your company. It is much easier for people to follow a boss who is calm and in control. Dogs pick up every nuance of human behavior. When we’re upset, anxious, nervous, or stressed, our moods rub off on our four-legged friends. Projecting a calm, confident, and happy image will speak volumes to your dog.

Attention

Dogs, as social creatures, thrive on attention and are miserable when they are isolated. Attention can be a powerful reward for some dogs, so use it wisely in order to reinforce good behavior. Initiate contact on your terms. In the same way, ignoring your dog can help him to calm down if he is overly boisterous when he greets you. Wait until he has settled himself and then reward his calm with your attention.

Relationship

A good relationship is based on cooperation, not dominance. There is still a big trend in the United States to use more dominant training methods such as leash jerks and choke chains to stop pulling, “Alpha rolls” (where a dog is forcefully put on its side in an attempt to make the dog submissive and correct negative behavior), and other harsh punishments such as hitting and shouting. This kind of training has proven not only to be dangerous (many people get bitten as a result) but psychologically damaging (most negative behavior is due to a dog’s insecurity, not dominance, so using harsh punishment serves to heighten that insecurity and make the negative behavior worse). The real sadness, though, is that dominance training teaches a dog to respond out of fear, damaging that important human-animal bond. Harsh punishment has been shown to be detrimental to a child; the same is true for a dog. Positive training methods are much more effective, as a dog will respond to its owner because it wants to, not because of fear. Instead of numbing a dog’s natural and real emotions, positive methods can change the way a dog feels, promoting a deeper level of understanding in both dog and handler. The results are longer lasting, and this creates a happier dog and a happier owner.

Food

Food is a powerful tool in helping to focus your dog’s attention onto you. If your dog is food-motivated, then food can be used as a reward during training. Some dogs will become very protective when around food, and this can cause problems in a household. Limit and control access – never free feed (i.e., leave the food down all day so your dog can pick at it), and if your dog has stolen food, do not challenge him to give it back unless it poses a hazard to him, as this could illicit an aggressive response. (See also “Scavenging and stealing,” here (#litres_trial_promo).)

Toys

Many dogs are toy-motivated and love playing. There is nothing better than enjoying a game with your dog to increase the bond between you.

The senses

Much of the information the dog learns about the world, he receives through his senses. As human beings, our dominant sense is sight. We live in an intensely visual world. The same is not true of dogs. The richness of experience that we gain through our eyes is gained by the dog chiefly through his spectacular sense of smell.

The only time I came close to understanding what it was like to have a heightened sense of smell was when I was pregnant. For the first few months, a whole new world opened up to me. Even in my delicate state, I could still appreciate how incredible it was that I seemed to be able to smell everything. Of course, there was a downside to that. For a while I went around wearing a face mask in the hope that a certain smell wouldn’t make me run for the bathroom, but unfortunately I could still smell sausages being cooked in the next city. And that is just a fraction of a dog’s capacity. The dog has forty times more scent receptors in his nasal cavities than we do. The part of the dog’s brain that processes scent information is also much more highly developed than our own. And you expect your dog not to want to be close to you when you’re cooking and eating dinner?

Try putting your favorite food on the kitchen counter. Don’t eat for five hours and then walk past without taking a bite. We expect our dogs to have amazing impulse control when we humans often have very little.

The dog has forty times more scent receptors in his nasal cavities than we do.

Smell

In the wild, the dog’s highly developed sense of smell gives the species a great advantage when tracking down prey and identifying fellow pack members. Where we would size up a new situation with our eyes, dogs explore new environments by sniffing them. When they greet or meet other dogs, they will sniff them in what – to our eyes – are the most embarrassing places, places where odor is most concentrated.

Scent passes on an incredible amount of information to a dog. Scent-marking with urine or by leaving deposits from the sweat glands between the toes is the way dogs communicate and establish their territory. Sacs inside the dog’s rectum also produce a scent that coats the feces. When you’re out walking in the park with your dog, he’s using his nose to pick up who’s been there before him – perhaps a dominant dog, a female in heat, an old dog, a sick dog, or a dog he’s already met. Dogs can smell females in heat who are miles away.

Sight

Dogs see very differently than human beings. Our field of vision is about 100 degrees. If we want to see things to the side, we have to turn our heads; if we want to see things behind, we have to turn around. Dogs have a much wider field of vision, which enables them to see to the sides and the rear. In sight hounds, such as Whippets and Greyhounds, the field of vision may be as much as double our own. While the positioning of the eyes in certain breeds may lessen that field of vision to some degree, all dogs have better peripheral vision than humans.

Contrary to popular belief, dogs aren’t color-blind, but they don’t see colors as well as we do, and find it difficult to tell the difference between certain shades such as red and green. In lower light conditions, they see much better than we do, thanks to a reflective layer at the back of their eyes called the tapetum lucidum. In the wild, this enables the dog to hunt at dawn and dusk, when their natural prey is more likely to be out and about.

What dogs are best at seeing, however, is movement. A dog can detect the slightest movement, which also has obvious advantages when it comes to tracking prey. The dog’s extreme sensitivity to movement means that hand signals and gestures are often much more useful in training than spoken commands, especially if you are working at a distance. Close up, dogs don’t see quite so well, and find it difficult to distinguish an object from its surroundings. If you put a treat on the floor right in front of your dog, he might find it hard to see – he’ll rely on his nose to sniff it out.

Hearing

A dog’s hearing is incredibly acute. Because dogs’ ears are large and movable, they can detect where sounds are coming from more accurately than humans. They can also hear sounds over greater distances than we can – nearly five times as far – and they can hear sounds of a higher frequency that are inaudible to us: hence the dog whistle that is silent to human ears. Dogs communicate through many different vocalizations, from barking to whining.

Taste

Dogs are carnivores but will eat almost anything – including what we would not consider to be food! We may not think that dogs have a very sophisticated palate, but they do appreciate variety and get bored when all they encounter are the same tastes and textures. You can make training more pleasurable for your dog by offering food rewards that stimulate his taste buds. Meat treats are always popular, but cheese can also be very effective.

Touch

Dogs can’t pick up and handle new objects to investigate them. Instead, much like human babies, they put them in their mouths. Mouthing is an important part of exploration for a dog, particularly for puppies. Special sensory hairs grow around the dog’s muzzle, under his jaw, and above his eyes. These are called vibrissae, or more commonly, whiskers, and they also help him gather information about his environment through touch.

Human beings express their affection through touch, but this is not necessarily a natural response for a dog. Dogs have to become accustomed to gentle handling and stroking from puppyhood onward.

Play-biting in puppies is an important way that dogs learn how strong their bite is. If a puppy is separated too early from its littermates, as is often the case with pet store puppies, it may not have had the chance to learn what is called an “inhibited bite” and may be more prone to nipping.

Know yourself

Bringing a new puppy or dog into your home should never be an act of impulse. Before you make that decision, you need to ask yourself some searching questions. Dogs, as the slogan goes, are not just for Christmas, they’re for life.

Just as it’s difficult to appreciate before the event how much things will change when you have a baby, bringing a puppy into your life is a significant undertaking. When I got my first puppy, I was living in a fourth-floor apartment with no elevator in the heart of Manhattan. As a trainer, I knew what to expect, but even so it was quite an effort to go up and down those stairs twice a night so the puppy could have a pee. Nor was it particularly pleasant to walk him after dark on 46th Street!

If you have had dogs before, or if you had a dog when you were growing up, you may already have some idea of what’s involved. If you have never owned a dog, think about the following issues:

Will you be able to spend enough time with your dog?

Once they are past the puppy stage, most dogs can be left for between four and six hours without becoming distressed. If you work full-time and there is no one else at home to look after the dog, you are condemning an essentially social creature to a life of anxiety, boredom, and depression, unless you hire a dog-sitter or enroll your dog at a doggy day-care center.

Dogs need regular exercise

That means a couple of walks and a decent run every day. Cats exercise themselves. Dogs, however, should not be left to stray without human supervision.

Dogs need training

Even the most seemingly docile animal can become a monster without basic obedience training. You need time to do this, and plenty of patience.

Dogs need stimulation

Just like us, they get bored without challenges, fun, and games.

Do you have children?

Have you got a dog already, or another pet? Settling a new canine arrival within a family can sometimes be difficult, especially if not everyone in your household is as overjoyed as you are at the prospect.

Which breed to choose?

Once you have satisfied yourself that you are prepared to meet the challenges that a dog will bring into your life, the next question is, which dog? Humans have been selectively breeding dogs for centuries, accentuating certain innate characteristics or aspects of appearance. While all dogs are individuals, each breed tends to have certain traits in common. Some need more exercise than others; some require more grooming. Some breeds are naturally more protective; others are more sensitive to noise.

The great advantage of choosing a purebred dog is that you will know to a certain extent what to expect. Use this to your advantage and do your research thoroughly beforehand. Read books and magazines, talk to breeders, and ask friends about their experiences with their dogs. Don’t choose a dog on the basis of its appearance or because the breed is in fashion. Many people who rushed out to get a cute little Dalmatian after seeing 101 black-and-white spotted puppies cavorting in a Disney film found themselves owning a dog with substantial needs for exercise. Dalmatians were originally bred as “carriage dogs”; that is to say, they were bred to run alongside carriages and scare off footpads and thieves. They need exercise – tons of it – and careful, confident handling.

Choosing the right breed is choosing the breed that is right for your situation. If you want a laid-back, easygoing pet that will be a good companion for your children, a Terrier, which is a particularly active sort of dog, wouldn’t be the most sensible choice. Labradors and Retrievers, on the other hand, are naturally good-tempered and sociable, which makes them ideal for families with children. However, they do need a lot of exercise. If you are not prepared to devote considerable time to training and exercising, don’t choose a working dog such as a Border Collie, who will go crazy without sufficient stimulation. Greyhounds and Whippets, although bred to be very fast, paradoxically don’t require vast amounts of exercise. The guarding breeds, such as German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Chows, and Akitas, are intelligent and loyal, but they can be over-protective and tend to be one-person dogs. It is important to know that while taking breed characteristics into account, every dog within that breed is an individual with his own unique personality and temperament.

Aspects to consider:

Size

How big will the dog grow? And how much will he eat?