LLJohnson10
Well-Known Member
I've always been a fan of Leerburg's training, health, and nutritional advice, and many of the products he sells. His puppy DVD is probably the best out there. One of the things that he advocates is not letting strangers pet your puppy. Just about all other trainers i've been around disagree with this policy, but i'm starting to see its merits based on the behavior of my puppy.
Everytime we pass someone when out on a short walk, or I take him to Petsmart, he wants to go up to every stranger to be rubbed and petted. Many times he'll sit mid stride to try and accomplish this instead of walking like he should. I have no problem with him being petted or loved on by strangers, but I also don't want him trying to stop every time we pass someone.
Currently, i'm trying to decide if I want heed this advice and implement the "No pet policy," or if I should do something else to stop this unwanted behavior.
Here are a few exerpts from Leerburg's article if you're not familar with it.
"Reasons for Not Allowing People to Touch Your Dog
I advise people to not allow strangers to touch their dog. This has generated a lot of email questions so I decided to write this article to expand on the reasons and exceptions for this policy.To understand this you must first understand what I expect from a relationship with my dogs. I want a dog that sees me as the center of its universe. I want my dog to focus on me and I want it to ignore other humans (and animals).
I don’t want a dog to look at other people as “PETTING MACHINES or TREAT DISPENSERS.†In other words I don’t want my dog running up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry and expect to engage them. I want my dog to accept people as fixtures in the environment. I want my dog to be aloof to strangers at the same time I don’t want my dog to be suspicious or aggressive to strangers (unless I tell them to be that way).
We carry this concept into our home where we have several dogs that are trained by a different family member.
We expect our personal dogs to completely accept other members of the family as pack members."
Train Your Dog to Ignore Strangers
If I have a puppy or a dog that is leery of people I train the dog that every time it gets into a situation that makes it nervous I feed it very high value food treats. In dog training terms I "engage the dog." This means I connect both mentally and physically with the dog by making myself more interesting than the environmental things that make the dog uncomfortable. The training for this is covered in detail in the first 45 minutes of my DVD titled THE POWER OF TRAINING DOGS WITH FOOD.
The basic concept is that every time I see my puppy or dog act a little nervous I redirect the puppy back to my using an excited tone of voice and I jackpot rewards until I se the dog is totally focused in on me.
Pretty soon the dog will see something that makes his a little uncomfortable and he will look to me for a high value food treat.
Anyone with a dog can practice this work when they are on a walk. If you see another dog coming on a walk with his owner, or a person on a bike coming, or even someone who is out for a walk - you simply stop and engage your dog and start to reward with high value treats. It doesn't take long for the dog to learn that his owner is a lot more interesting than strangers.
When we walk our puppies and people try and pet our dogs we politely but firmly ask them not to touch our dog. If questioned, we simply tell them the dog is being trained as a service dog.
As long as you are not trying to disguise a dog as a service dog and take it places normal pets don't belong, there is nothing wrong with this.
A year ago I had a number of aggressive threatening emails from a disabled attorney who had a dog. She disagreed with this concept. She thought I was breaking the law when I told people this was a service dog in training.
Everytime we pass someone when out on a short walk, or I take him to Petsmart, he wants to go up to every stranger to be rubbed and petted. Many times he'll sit mid stride to try and accomplish this instead of walking like he should. I have no problem with him being petted or loved on by strangers, but I also don't want him trying to stop every time we pass someone.
Currently, i'm trying to decide if I want heed this advice and implement the "No pet policy," or if I should do something else to stop this unwanted behavior.
Here are a few exerpts from Leerburg's article if you're not familar with it.
"Reasons for Not Allowing People to Touch Your Dog
I advise people to not allow strangers to touch their dog. This has generated a lot of email questions so I decided to write this article to expand on the reasons and exceptions for this policy.To understand this you must first understand what I expect from a relationship with my dogs. I want a dog that sees me as the center of its universe. I want my dog to focus on me and I want it to ignore other humans (and animals).
I don’t want a dog to look at other people as “PETTING MACHINES or TREAT DISPENSERS.†In other words I don’t want my dog running up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry and expect to engage them. I want my dog to accept people as fixtures in the environment. I want my dog to be aloof to strangers at the same time I don’t want my dog to be suspicious or aggressive to strangers (unless I tell them to be that way).
We carry this concept into our home where we have several dogs that are trained by a different family member.
We expect our personal dogs to completely accept other members of the family as pack members."
Train Your Dog to Ignore Strangers
If I have a puppy or a dog that is leery of people I train the dog that every time it gets into a situation that makes it nervous I feed it very high value food treats. In dog training terms I "engage the dog." This means I connect both mentally and physically with the dog by making myself more interesting than the environmental things that make the dog uncomfortable. The training for this is covered in detail in the first 45 minutes of my DVD titled THE POWER OF TRAINING DOGS WITH FOOD.
The basic concept is that every time I see my puppy or dog act a little nervous I redirect the puppy back to my using an excited tone of voice and I jackpot rewards until I se the dog is totally focused in on me.
Pretty soon the dog will see something that makes his a little uncomfortable and he will look to me for a high value food treat.
Anyone with a dog can practice this work when they are on a walk. If you see another dog coming on a walk with his owner, or a person on a bike coming, or even someone who is out for a walk - you simply stop and engage your dog and start to reward with high value treats. It doesn't take long for the dog to learn that his owner is a lot more interesting than strangers.
When we walk our puppies and people try and pet our dogs we politely but firmly ask them not to touch our dog. If questioned, we simply tell them the dog is being trained as a service dog.
As long as you are not trying to disguise a dog as a service dog and take it places normal pets don't belong, there is nothing wrong with this.
A year ago I had a number of aggressive threatening emails from a disabled attorney who had a dog. She disagreed with this concept. She thought I was breaking the law when I told people this was a service dog in training.
