As I have said before, walking a dog is not optional; they need to be walked every single day. Living where we do there are not a lot of great places to walk, no sidewalks, no walking trails, just the side of the road. So that is where we walk every morning. One of the things I like about Rottweilers is that they are not high energy dogs and don't therefore require a huge amount of exercise. We normally walk about a half hour a day except on the hottest days of summer when we might cut that back to 20 minutes.
So one of our neighbors had seen me walking the dogs about 4 years ago and was really impressed. I had Zeus at that time and and he had seen me walking Zeus and Lisa together prior to that. So the next thing I know I see this guy playing with 2 little Rottweiler puppies. This guy (I will call him Fernando) lives nearby but speaks no English so we had never had much of a conversation since I speak very little Spanish. As the months went by the dogs grew and grew and since Fernando knew nothing of dog training or discipline, there started to be problems in the neighborhood. He would let them out to pee early in the morning and they began to take advantage of those opportunities to wander a bit. The dogs must have been about a year old by then and were getting pretty big. The first news I heard was from a neighbor who said that someone had been bitten by one of them. Then there was another report of one of them getting into a fight with someone else's dog. One day I was talking to a friend of Fernando and he told me he was afraid of the dogs, who were becoming more and more aggressive. Fernando was a young bachelor and had a nice little house with nice furniture and a big screen TV and apparently the dogs had chewed it all up and chewed through the floor of the house. Because Fernando was now afraid they would get in trouble he had also been letting them out less and less and as a result they had started defecating in the house, which was quickly becoming unlivable.
About this same time Fernando's friend moved to a new house and rented Fernando his old house. When Fernando moved into it he tried bringing the dogs along and putting them in a dog run he had built for them outside but they were having none of that and cried all night long keeping Fernando awake. After a few nights of that he took them back to their old house and that is where they have lived ever since, by themselves. He pays rent on both places and comes by each day to feed them but spends very little time with them. I have told Fernando's friend many times that I would be willing to help train the dogs so that they could come and live with Fernando but he never accepted my offer. So they have been living there by themselves now for nearly 3 years.
Now Fernando is getting married and his wife has told him the dogs must go. Fernando's friend came to me for advice. So I decided that the first thing that needed to be done was an evaluation to determine whether they are even salvageable; aggressive middle-aged Rottweilers are not very adoptable. This morning Fernando and I walked the dogs on leash for about a half hour; they had never been on a leash before. The one I walked was the submissive one of the pair and she became very anxious when separated from the other one by more than a few feet. Neither of them seemed very aggressive and that was a good sign. As expected, they were both filthy (I doubt either has had a bath in years) and their nails , having never been trimmed, must be 2 inches long. One was missing large patches of fur and I suspected mange. The walk went well and I was thinking that they might be quite trainable. I told Fernando through a translator that before we put a lot of effort into training we must first take them to the vet as I am quite concerned about their overall health. An appointment has been made for next week. In the meantime we will be walking the 2 of them each morning, getting them some exercise and getting them used to walking on a leash.
I am forever amazed at how short sighted people are. They view dogs and other pets as objects to be bought and then discarded when the newness wears off. These are not objects, they are beings, and as such they come with the responsibility to tend to them until death does them part. These 2 dogs deserve better than they have gotten.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Changing who a dog is
Like humans, dogs have basic types and personalities and those characteristics are pretty much locked in. It is up to a potential owner to figure out what characteristics he can live with and which one he can't before he jumps in and takes home a dog he will never be happy with. Bringing a hyper dog into a quiet household will cause problems forever, etc. But once that research is done, once a dog of the right temperament is chosen and brought home, the training begins.
I remember the day we brought Diezel home; after I put a collar and a leash on him he seemed to have had no training or discipline at all as he dragged me all over the property, even with a prong collar digging into his neck. I quickly wondered what I had gotten myself into. But then on the ride home he leaned up from the back seat and licked my neck as if to say to me that he was willing to make some changes in his life in exchange for a new home.
Dogs are creatures of routine, and as dog trainers it is up to us to develop routines that we like and discourage those that we do not like. Every night before we go to bed I take Diezel outside to pee. It is very dark out so I always take a flashlight. Now, after months of the same routine, all I have to do in the evening is to pick up the flashlight and even though Diezel might appear to be sound asleep, he will quickly jump up and meet me at the front door. I have encouraged this behavior because it is very preferable to that of my previous dog Zeus who would usually refuse to get up once it was evening. With him I would sometimes have to physically drag him out onto the porch before he would stand up and do what I wanted.
One tool I use a lot with this breed is food; Rottweilers are very food-driven and will do just about anything you want for a cookie. Some people don't like using food as a tool and would like to think that it is preferable that a dog do what they want in exchange for some higher reward like love or something but for me, if food is a driving force, then I use it. I have found dried chicken wafers to be the best for us; they don't make nearly the mess in my pocket as hotdogs! I never thought I would be able to put one on Diezel's nose and get him to wait until I said "go" but it only took a few tries and now we do it every night when we come back in. I try to make my dogs work for everything I give them; they get nothing for free.
The key tool for our training remains our daily walk; we try not to ever miss a day. This is considered a training walk and during the walk I am constantly in charge. Diezel is allowed out the door only when invited by me and he must follow my lead, always. He is not allowed to walk in front of me, he can sniff the ground only when I deem it okay, and he has to pay attention to me, not to the things going on around us. During part of the walk I usually allow him a portion of the time to be a dog but only when I allow it and not at his discretion. Some breeds might be easier than Rottweilers (Golden Retrievers come to mind) but with these bigger more serious breeds, you have to go into it knowing that you can never allow them to take control; the consequences can be just way too serious.
The main thing we have had to overcome with this dog is his extreme dominance. In his mind he has to always be dominant over every other dog around us and this has at times caused big problems. Some people confuse dominance with aggression, but they are two different things. In this case I have had to really watch him and to immediately correct him anytime I see the dominance issue coming to the surface. As long as I catch it early it is fairly easy to correct, but once he has the other dog down and is on top of it, it is much more difficult.
And so the work continues. This summer the main task is socialization using a neighbor's dog and occasional trips to the local dog park. Given Diezel's sweet nature this work has all been rewarding and worthwhile but the big test will be taking him on vacation for three weeks!
I remember the day we brought Diezel home; after I put a collar and a leash on him he seemed to have had no training or discipline at all as he dragged me all over the property, even with a prong collar digging into his neck. I quickly wondered what I had gotten myself into. But then on the ride home he leaned up from the back seat and licked my neck as if to say to me that he was willing to make some changes in his life in exchange for a new home.
Dogs are creatures of routine, and as dog trainers it is up to us to develop routines that we like and discourage those that we do not like. Every night before we go to bed I take Diezel outside to pee. It is very dark out so I always take a flashlight. Now, after months of the same routine, all I have to do in the evening is to pick up the flashlight and even though Diezel might appear to be sound asleep, he will quickly jump up and meet me at the front door. I have encouraged this behavior because it is very preferable to that of my previous dog Zeus who would usually refuse to get up once it was evening. With him I would sometimes have to physically drag him out onto the porch before he would stand up and do what I wanted.
One tool I use a lot with this breed is food; Rottweilers are very food-driven and will do just about anything you want for a cookie. Some people don't like using food as a tool and would like to think that it is preferable that a dog do what they want in exchange for some higher reward like love or something but for me, if food is a driving force, then I use it. I have found dried chicken wafers to be the best for us; they don't make nearly the mess in my pocket as hotdogs! I never thought I would be able to put one on Diezel's nose and get him to wait until I said "go" but it only took a few tries and now we do it every night when we come back in. I try to make my dogs work for everything I give them; they get nothing for free.
The key tool for our training remains our daily walk; we try not to ever miss a day. This is considered a training walk and during the walk I am constantly in charge. Diezel is allowed out the door only when invited by me and he must follow my lead, always. He is not allowed to walk in front of me, he can sniff the ground only when I deem it okay, and he has to pay attention to me, not to the things going on around us. During part of the walk I usually allow him a portion of the time to be a dog but only when I allow it and not at his discretion. Some breeds might be easier than Rottweilers (Golden Retrievers come to mind) but with these bigger more serious breeds, you have to go into it knowing that you can never allow them to take control; the consequences can be just way too serious.
The main thing we have had to overcome with this dog is his extreme dominance. In his mind he has to always be dominant over every other dog around us and this has at times caused big problems. Some people confuse dominance with aggression, but they are two different things. In this case I have had to really watch him and to immediately correct him anytime I see the dominance issue coming to the surface. As long as I catch it early it is fairly easy to correct, but once he has the other dog down and is on top of it, it is much more difficult.
And so the work continues. This summer the main task is socialization using a neighbor's dog and occasional trips to the local dog park. Given Diezel's sweet nature this work has all been rewarding and worthwhile but the big test will be taking him on vacation for three weeks!
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