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    Relationships: Life with Dogs: Life With Dogs - A Canine Nation Book
    Relationships: Life with Dogs: Life With Dogs - A Canine Nation Book
    Relationships: Life with Dogs: Life With Dogs - A Canine Nation Book
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Relationships: Life with Dogs: Life With Dogs - A Canine Nation Book

    By Eric A. Brad

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    About this ebook

    Relationships:Life with Dogs is the third in a series of ebooks that present collected essays by author and dog trainer Eric Brad. Previously published for an online magazine, these essays have been been put together on the theme of our daily interactions with our dogs and how that can affect our perceptions of each other. Dogs live with us in many different lifestyles and environments. The demands we place on them, emotionally and physically, can vary greatly. These essays look at the dynamics of our relationships with our dogs from their point of view. From the stresses we can impose on our dogs with unfamiliar routines and haphazard training to how we deal with unwanted behaviors, every interaction with our dogs is potentially teaching them something about us. Can we be trusted? Are we helping them learn to cope or just stressing them out? This volume explores how our dogs learn to live with us and learn about us. There is a lot we can do to make that process easier if we take the time to consider.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDogwise Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9780991699025
    Relationships: Life with Dogs: Life With Dogs - A Canine Nation Book
    Author

    Eric A. Brad

    Eric Brad has been been training and living with dogs for over 25 years. Eric is a certified professional dog trainer, having earned his CPDT-KA certification from the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers in 2012. He is an author of 3 ebooks and more than 200 articles on dogs and training. His writing is regularly featured at the Life As A Human online magazine.

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      Book preview

      Relationships - Eric A. Brad

      Relationships: Life with Dogs

      By Eric Brad

      CPDT-KA

      A Canine Nation book

      Text copyright © 2010-2013 Eric A. Brad

      All Rights Reserved 

      ISBN 978-0-9916990-2-5

      Acknowledgements

      Canine Nation has been a labour of love for over 3 years.  The written articles regularly published at the Life As A Human online magazine and the podcasts continue to be more popular than ever.  The growing support of an online community has connected me to some very smart and talented people.  I'd like to acknowledge the contributions of some of those wonderful people.

      No one has been more important than Petra Wingate, best friend and partner for the last 29 years.  She is an incredible dog trainer and her insights and editorial contributions help to make my writing better, clearer, and more focused.  I feel very lucky to married to her as well.

      There are a few key people who have made significant contributions of time and effort in keeping Canine Nation on track.  Tanya Vivian is a frequent sounding board, tireless editor, and treasured advisor on all things dog and dog training.  This book would not exist but for the support and help she provided.

      Shelly Brosnan and Dana Hicks provide valuable help in keeping Canine Nation on track and moving forward.  Their support has been a great source of inspiration.

      My students and training partners in ScallyWaggs continue to be instrumental in helping me learn and test my ideas.  Thank you to Lydia Wingate, Carol Ray, Lynda Warren, Ann Matteson, Sandra Aitchison, Jean Anderson, Gillian Bass, Georgia Lake, Don McAmmond, Lyn Stinson, Angela Norton for keeping me honest.

      Special thanks to Gil Namur and all of the staff at Life As A Human for providing a supportive and professional environment for publishing and offering this material to the public.

      The online Canine Nation community of supportive readers and listener continues to amaze and challenge me with their insights, comments, and contributions to the dialog about dogs, dog behaviour, and training.

      Finally, special thanks to the dedicated professionals from whom I have learned so much - Jean Donaldson, Kathy Sdao, Pamela Reid, Ken Ramirez, Steve White, Jesus Rosales-Ruiz, Karen Pryor, Patricia McConnell, John Bradshaw, Alexandra Horowitz, Bob Bailey, Ray Coppinger, Melissa Alexander, and many others who have shared their invaluable knowledge. Their work has improved my life with my dogs. I am grateful for the wealth of information they have provided.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      A Million Ways To Love A Dog

      A Balanced Dog: Coping Skills and Stress Management

      A Comfortable Dog

      Frustrated Fido: Understanding People Isn’t Easy

      Maybe It’s Not The Dog That’s The Problem

      Let Sleeping Dogs Lie But Tell Them The Truth

      A Closer Look At Self-Rewarding Behaviour

      The Costs of Correcting Your Dog

      Lessons From Our Dogs - Forgiveness

      What A Dog Can Teach You

      Dogs At Daybreak – An Appreciation

      Epilogue

      Appendix - Hyperlinks

      About the Author

      Introduction 

      Somewhere there is a young married couple with their 2 children (both under 5 years of age) who would like a dog, preferably a Golden Retriever, to complete their family.  Somewhere there is a forty-something athletic woman who is looking for another Border Collie that she can train to play dog agility with her.  Somewhere there is a grateful man in a wheelchair who smiles at his Labrador Retriever service dog as she fetches the phone for him.  And somewhere it's time to take the bowls of food to the kennel runs in the backyard to feed the 6 German Short-haired Pointers who are such excellent hunting dogs.  Such is the variety of ways we fit our dogs into our lives.  We truly have a dog for all reasons and lifestyles.

      What a dog means to an individual or a family is can be complicated.  Dogs come into our lives in such a variety of ways.  Mommy, I want a puppy!, is a phrase that often leads to the addition of a new family member.  There are breeders that keep dogs from their litters to improve the genetics of their breed.  There are the pet stores that always seem to have puppies behind glass on offer.  And there are dogs that find homes through one of the many rescue networks staffed by volunteers while others find homes through community animal shelters.  Whether acquired as puppies or adults, from breeders or through rescue, all of these dogs are chosen to live with families.  We choose to take them in and care for them.

      That's how our relationship with our dogs begins.  It is our choice.  From the outset, we are in control of nearly everything.  Food, water, exercise, affection, play, and safety for the dog are all our responsibility from the start.  How we go about providing for our dogs creates the foundation for our relationship with them.  Surprisingly, it can be as simple or as complicated a relationship as we want to make it.  From the dog's perspective, they are just trying to figure it all out.

      Even among our own kind, we struggle to understand and make sense of our fellow humans.  How much more difficult must it be for an entirely different species to try and figure us and our lifestyle out?  Add to that the fact that dogs have different sensory apparatus and a different and perhaps more limited cognitive ability.  They depend on us for their very survival and yet they don't have a common frame of reference to see the world as we see it.  It's a situation that any of us would find tremendously stressful until we had worked out a successful strategy.

      Fortunately for our dogs, we find them cute and most of us are quick to forgive their mistakes.  But I think recognizing the precarious position of a dog in our human society is important.  One of the most important things we can do for our dogs is to help them to cope with new and unfamiliar things.  By providing our dogs a sense of security and safety we begin to build an important bond of trust.

      Miscommunication is bound to happen.  Unfortunately, much

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