What is Dog Ownership About?

Here are some things that I have seen and worked with:

Three dogs living in a screened porch area literally saturated with urine and feces.

One dog in the household killed another dog in the household and injured a person trying to stop it.

An owner dragged down brick steps and injured.

A dog ran out the door and was run over by the the neighbor’s car.

Three, 7 week old puppies covered in their own filth.

A husky in a crate for nearly 20 hours per day.

Which is ignorance and which is abuse?

Which is natural occurrence and which is neglect?

I think when you see one sentence, you think it’s neglect and abuse, but these situations are slowly created over time. In each situation, there was a problem. There was a choice to ask for help or to manage it in the most obvious way. And then, there was a lot of time to build dysfunctional behaviors that all lead to a crisis.

You can’t get the dogs housetrained, so we isolate them to keep the problem to a minimum. Now the urine and feces are contained, but the dogs are breathing in fumes and are socially isolated leading to all kinds of other problems, like fighting, barking, destruction and anti-social behaviors. The bill to fix this is a lot bigger than the bill for housetraining!

You don’t have time to walk your dog, so he starts acting up in the house, jumping the fence, chewing your couch. You put him in the crate so that all stops. Now you have a dog doing nothing and when he does get human attention, he is all over you! Cost of leash lessons, versus the aggravation does not match.

You have five dogs. All different ages, breeds and sizes. You can’t walk them or train them, because there are so many. They keep each other entertained! Until one is killed by the others, because their needs were not met and they worked things out with the skills that they had. Now the dogs can’t be trusted to be boarded or out in public. You took on more than you could care for, so the dogs solved the problem themselves.

When we have a problem and avoid finding the answer, we deal with it and it seems ok for awhile. But, in most cases, the problem is still there. The problem is getting bigger and morphing into multiple problems while you avoid dealing with it. Nothing good ever happens by avoiding.

All the owners in the cases described are good people who love their dogs. In most of the crisis cases, the following is true:

You didn’t think dog ownership through.

You got a dog you can’t handle.

You got too many dogs.

You don’t have the time or money to fix your problems.

I have heard that an owner didn’t know where to go for help. I hear this on the call made to me. When the crisis finally came, they found me.

Don’t let a crisis force your hand to call for help. Call now to prevent having one at all. Call to get the information you need to be a great dog owner. Dogs need more than a home and food and affection. Dogs need to feel safe, to have their needs met and to receive the coping skills needed to live in their environment. Calling a trainer is free. Get some info and pricing. Save your money and help your dogs have a better life.

I can prevent a million different dog problems from developing. I can solve lots of problems. I rarely can fix one at the crisis level.