Dog Blog by the Bali Dog Trainer

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How do we form Dog behavior?

Do you know how dog behavior is formed? Dog behavior is formed through patterns and repetition. A dogs perception is very binary, black and white. It's yes or no. So when building a behavior we want to reinforce the behaviors we do want, and not encourage the behaviors we want to discourage. Having a clear and concise communication system with your dog is key to building up patterns in your dog. Keep consistent and calm, and show your dogs what is ok and what is not ok. JK

Emotions and Dogcology

How do our emotions affect our dogs? They do very much. Dogs are sensitive to our emotions and energy. It is important to practice calmness and clarity without being emotional when handling dogs, especially if they are energetically imbalanced. Dogs pick up on our energy, and often times these energies do not match with our behavior, sound intonation and other things that they pick up on. It's like you're saying no, but the dog is understanding yes. Has this happened to you? if so, probably the dog did not understand what your expectation was, or the dog knows that you don't mean it because of lack of follow through. Follow through provides clarity and eliminates confusion. The less emotion goes in the mix, the more clarity the dog senses. Always keep calm, be assertive and consistent. JK

Nose, Eyes, Ears. Why is this so important?

Nose Eyes, Ears. Most of you have probably heard these words before. This is very important to know when we are building communication with our dogs. A dog can smell as soon as it's born, a couple of weeks later, the dog starts to see, weeks later the dog starts to hear. Naturally dogs sense their environment in this order. Nose, Eyes, Ears. This is an important aspect to understand when we are building communication with our dogs. We use the nose as a tool to control the head to lure the dog into positions before ever introducing commands into what we expect the dog to do. Most of the time we use words to give commands, we repeat these until the dog does what we asked, but in actuality the dog has no clarity on what we asked the dog to do. This is because it's confusing to the dog without clarity on what we have asked, and it does not understand the words that have been repeated. In communicating, it is important for the dog to understand what is expected by giving clarity an...

Is Too Much Too Soon?

Yeay, got a new dog, a puppy?! Let's hope for the best that it's going to work without fail and be obedient. :) A few moments later... :( Dogs are not robots and are not programmed to work as dogs do. Well, they do work as dogs do, and dogs live by patterns. They learn to recreate patterns and this is how they form their behavior. With puppies as they grow into their mature size, we like to see them as being big already where they are still pups and still learning and growing. We put too much expectation in what we want them to be able to do such as walking on leash close to us, playing tug and fetch, being able to socialize well. We forget that this is the time where a lot of patterns are being imprinted and too much pressure too soon can diminish the dogs drive. We want to keep the dogs drive as this will help them learning and thriving, when we want to stop certain behaviors we need to look at it from the dogs perspective and see what is driving the behavior. By nurturing t...

My dog doesn't understand me, what am I doing wrong?

My dog doesn't understand me, what am I doing wrong? Your dog probably doesn't understand you because there is a communication breakdown between what you're trying to say and what your dog is trying to signal to you. With dogs, building engagement is the key foundation of building good communication. Having your dogs undivided attention when we communicate with them. One of the main issues we see is that people talk too much while the dog doesn't understand words. The dog doesn't understand us and we talk even more, adding to this confusion. We need to learn to stop talking, and observe more. A dog senses the environment in this pattern. Nose, Eyes, Ears. The nose is the first sense that they have since they are born, then weeks later they start to see, and weeks later they start to hear for the first time. Now we are asking the dog to listen, when it actually needs to listen with it's nose. So top tip today is, speak less or do more. Use leash, luring and shap...

We just moved and our dog won't poop or pee. What about it?

Hi guys, u just moved places and ur dog wont poo or pee, is this something familiar? Let's Dog about it. Most probably this is due to stress of the new environment causing anxiety and uncertainty. Most likely the dog does not have sufficient structure and leadership to be guided into these new situations. As dog owners we sometimes lack the ability to see things from the dogs perspective, and are looking at things only from a human perspective. This is the wrong approach as it just causes misunderstanding and loss of communication between the human and dog. Loss of communication, no direction, and any direction given is misinterpreted by the dog. Can u see the confusion here? Tackling this issue we have to go back and build up basic communication skills in the human on how to interact with the dog. By giving clear direction the dog is able to put trust in it's human and not be stressed out. So please guys, communication is the foundation to any good, balanced and healthy relat...