{"id":7329,"date":"2018-08-19T12:59:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T10:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/?p=7329"},"modified":"2018-08-19T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T10:59:47","slug":"dogschool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/dogschool\/","title":{"rendered":"dogschool?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dogschool?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When I went to dogschool with Kalle I felt as if we 8 humans had to learn more about \u201edog language\u201c and \u201econsequence\u201c and also the animal\u2019s different \u201cperspective\u201d on the world. When one owner shouted at his puppy to stay sit, I wondered if how we patient we are with our dogs is also mirroring how patient we are with ourselves. How do we deal mistakes? Life is full of them. Can we embrace them or at least forgive ourselves for making them or do we treat ourselves harshly with the \u201cwhip of inner criticism\u201d. I believe that most of us (including me) treat ourselves very harshly. Once my therapist said: \u201cYou should treat yourself like your best friend. That way you are not fighting wars with yourself and you will never be completely lonely.\u201d Now back to that \u201cdog school lesson\u201d and the puppy owner shouting at his dog. When the dog coach noticed the shouting he asked: \u201cDo you want to teach your dog to obey or disobey?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want him to obey, because he already knows the command \u201csit\u201d.\u201d, answered the man.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but he is also still a puppy and puppies have an attention span of 3 seconds. So if you shout at him now, he doesn\u2019t know what to do. And even if you repeat \u201csit\u201d to him, he still can\u2019t obey a command for a longer period of time.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I looked at the man, his lively puppy and his 8 year-old daughter, standing next to him. The man didn\u2019t say anything but you could see that he was still angry. His daughter however, did seem to me like a \u201cminiature adult\u201d. I wondered if it was her dress or her shores but it was neither: It was simply because her facial expression seemed blank to me. And it was at that moment that I understood that she, too, must have been put under the same \u201cover-achievement\u201d pressure the puppy was going to get.\u00a0 I felt sorry for both and went on asking myself, if this puppy owner had become like that because he had only received\u00a0 acknowledgement from his parents in exchange for excellence. Were we all here at dog school, to \u201ctrain our dogs\u201d or was it maybe also that \u201cdog school\u201d was more for the owners to learn how to educate someone in a consequent but also non-violent way?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Those were my thoughts at the time. When only the next day I took Kalle for his evening walk and I saw a white shepherd dog running towards us. Behind it ran a family father with his wife and 10 year old daughter. The dog hid behind me, the father gripped my arm to get hold of the escaping dog. He gave him the command to lie down, but it didn\u2019t and he hit it. \u201cWe have problems with our dog. We didn\u2019t go to dog school when he was a puppy. Now he is 2 years old and doesn\u2019t listen. We can only take him for a walk where there are not many people and we don\u2019t know what to do. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I looked at the girl and I felt sorry for her because it was obvious that she tried to \u201csolve\u201d the problem. I remembered the words of my therapist: \u201cIf you don\u2019t educate the puppy right away you can\u2019t deal with the dog when he gets bigger and weighs 80 pounds. And then it will be the next sad story of a dog who is put into an animal shelter because his owner can\u2019t cope with him anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I looked at the family and told them about the dog school I went to and recommended them to have one-to-one training lessons with the coach and their dog. They nodded but I had the feeling, they wouldn\u2019t follow my advice. It made me sad to see that my therapist had been right: There were many puppies who obviously were allowed everything because they had \u201csuch cute eyes\u201d but when they turned into adult dogs what was once \u201ccute\u201d became dangerous and people decided to get rid of that \u201cdisobedient\u201d dog. My dog trainer once said, that there are no \u201caggressive\u201d dogs by nature. In most cases it is us humans who turn the dogs into aggressive or disobedient dogs. That\u2019s why I believe that dog schools are important for us and the relationship with our dogs.\u00a0 Those are the thoughts I wanted to share with you, dear readers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Renate Weber <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dogschool? When I went to dogschool with Kalle I felt as if we 8 humans had to learn more about \u201edog language\u201c and \u201econsequence\u201c and also the animal\u2019s different \u201cperspective\u201d on the world. When one owner shouted at his puppy to stay sit, I wondered if how we patient we are with our dogs is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7331,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions\/7331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}