Same Dog, Different Owner

[KurtNYC]

37. Good on you. I cringe when I hear people say "my dog doesn't listen"

or "is stupid" or "is stubborn."

Dogs are pack animals and they are very tuned in to energy and smells. Their vision is generally so-so and hearing is absolutely last. The dog you got was "listening" to body language and learned that a raised hand sometimes means "I am about to hit you."

The burden is on us to communicate effectively with dogs. They may learn 100 words or so but even there, due to their hearing and not being verbal-oriented creatures, they can mistake one word for another pretty easily. Dogs' senses come in the exact opposite order of ours. Humans hear sounds in the womb and our nose is poor. Dogs are born with only their nose to lead them to the mother. Their ears aren't in the equation until 14 days later or so. And many dogs can't hear much at all and they do just fine (with the right owner). When people are speaking complex sentences and, ugh, threats like "if you do X I will do Y to you" they are lost.

I am in love with the work of Bonnie Bergin who rejected alpha dog theory and advanced alternate theories of dog training and behavior. To over simplify a lifetime of work: Establish a good emotional connection with the dog and use methods of communication that the dog understands. Bergin's methods have been used to train thousands of service dogs which alpha dog theory says is impossible. Bergin uses lots of hand signals and I found her work when I had a deaf dog. I now use her methods and hand signals with my hearing dogs because it works so well.

According to alpha dog theory you have to physically intimidate the animal yet paraplegics and others with mobility challenges regularly use service dogs without ever physically intimidating them. Intimidation is just that. It may look like training but the results are usually poor and inconsistent. ADT takes an animal which by nature wants to please us and scares it into some mix of submission and anxiety.

There is a better way, as you obviously know.

http://www.berginu.edu/discover/DrBergin.html