Overall Dog Info

When we brought our 9 week old Schnauzer home, I thought how wonderful he is, so intelligent. I could tell he was a very smart dog. He walked beside me on the leash, didn’t pull, didn’t make a fuss about the collar or anything. When talking to him you could see the wheels turning in his head, as if he understood every word. Once introduced to his toys he seemed to understand that those were what he was to chew on and not the table legs, furniture, corner of the walls, or our shoes or socks.

He was very smart in those types of matters, but I couldn’t understand why he was so obnoxious and difficult to get along with about other things. We discovered later, it was when we intruded on his position or authority as the pack leader that he would become very ill-tempered. In his mind, we were totally out of line, out of control and we were not adhering to his rules and he felt it was his job to set the household right again.

It didn’t take us very long to realize that he was actually training and manipulating us in how he wanted us to relate and respond to the rules he was establishing.  How he had managed to manipulate his way into the “CEO’s position” of our household, I will never know, well, yes I do know, we allowed it.  By the the time he was only 13 weeks old, we knew we needed help from a professional dog trainer.

We began attending a regiment of weekly obedience training sessions with a dog trainer for several months. The first session started out OK, until the trainer said that we needed to use a different type of collar on Smokey. The trainer preceded to remove the thin fabric collar, which went OK, but when he started to put the metal choke training collar over his head, Smokey went berserk! He was trying to bite the trainer and throwing his body all around like a tasmanian devil. The trainer went into action, grabbing the skin around the back of his neck and forcing him to the floor, keeping him there until he submitted and calmed down. The squealing, screeching sounds Smokey made was horrifying and if that wasn’t enough he urinated all over the floor.

Then the dog trainer began asking a lot of questions. He wanted to know if Smokey was allowed up on the furniture, to sleep with us on the bed, did I have him on the leash inside the house, was I shouting at him, what was our feeding routine, etc. I thought he was being rather nosey, but soon realized he had a reason for asking.

After all, I wanted a lap dog, so of course, I was allowing him in the recliner with me, on the sofa and on the bed to play. The only good thing we did, was to start him off using the dog crate to sleep in.

The dog trainer explained that in the wild, the pack leader didn’t allow their subordinates into their personal territorial space unless the leader gave his permission. So, first off, to establish ourselves as the leader Smokey could no longer be up on our laps or on the furniture for the first YEAR. We, as the pack leader, could intrude on his territory any time we chose.

This was the most difficult part of the training because I wanted to hold him and have him on my lap all the time. But, it proved disastrous in just the first 4 weeks we had him.

We couldn’t let Smokey violate even the smallest of rules. When he got away with something that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do, he interpreted it as “my leader is weak”…. and since he perceived the pack was being lead by a weak leader he felt he could challenge us for that position.

For those of you who find yourself in this situation with your pet, you MUST establish yourself as the leader. Then, once you have established the rules you MUST be consistent. Keep your chin up, keep smiling and above all, know that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train, it’s the disciplined, well behaved dog you have always dreamed of having!

Tags: dog collar, dog collars, dog obedience, dog trainer, dog training, dog training collar, dog training collars