Closer to Home (6)

Concluding Thoughts

Experiencing Rustic Living & it's Benefits

Another fading heritage we have is ‘Rustic Living.’ This includes cooking, I do not mean the ability to cook which is rather handy these days, but the type of rustic cooking that includes everything, from hunting, butchering, meat preservation, conserving water, gathering wood for fuel to  preparation etc. Rustic living is a means of reconnecting ourselves to our food sources that involves killing, for most consumers these days have made it possible to think that meat from the grocery does not involve this seeming cruelty. This also involves the kind of comradeship that is embroiled in it, so that as a whole, it nestles not only true art and science but more notable is the purposeful activity and a meaningful experience. Rustic living is filling our life with experiences not filling it with belongings; it is to have stories to tell and not materials to show. This is precisely the reason why many are getting back to camping, hiking, mountain climbing etc. It is the idea to pause and reflect after being in the majority side; it is to go off-the-grid. In essence, it is an attraction of a more evocative environment and not what is the ‘in thing’ or ‘what’s out there’ in our consumer society today. It is to post those long hours just to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ which leaves us with less time for the things that really matter in life like friends, family, or community engaging in an activity to obtain the basic necessities in life like food, clothing and shelter.  Besides, the best way to fix our fragile ecosystems is to stop our sickening hunger of over consumerism, for by and large, everything we consume basically comes from nature itself, and all our consumer wastes will eventually end up there also.  

Hence, for people who love dogs, there is no better retrieve to the charm of rustic living than to go hunting with our dog, to start to train them to recapitulate their instinctive traits. It is also to get involved in this emerging social movement to help our next generation to have a taste of a simpler form of life beyond our consumer culture. A direct life instead of an obscure one. It is to patronize in thought and deed, a more sustainable shift in conservation strategy and the potential viability of a permitted hunting system here in the Philippines rather than advocating to destroy our heritage. Besides, studies have proven over and again that ‘habitat loss’ through industrial innovation and urbanism is responsible for more imperil and extinction of species than hunting itself. In addition, who else would want to care about dog utility, handling the land and its habitat than the very people who want to preserve this legacy? Yes, action matters but it must primarily be a matter of one’s frame of mind and a set of attitudes.

This article is not an advocacy that we become hermits, neither is it masking the potentiality of hunting’s adverse impact towards our environment when abused, but it is endorsing ‘recreational hunting’ as a means of not only a tool kit to make people savor a more viable makeshift against the complexities of our contemporary society in a more expressive manner than any other recreational activity, to thus allow  us to understand how this role has changed, as rural societies become urbanized and so consumer oriented and its down side effect. It also means, hunting not for subsistence, not as commercial harvesting akin to our intensive agricultural practices, or commercial harvesting of wildlife for profit, but facilitating a well-managed habitat as a more doable solution to our depleting forestry in exchange of  the massive land urbanization of our native land.    

 Closer to Home (5)

Concluding Thoughts

Are you a part of our Fading Heritage?

I had a hard time evaluating what might have been the best title to give to that previous article that I posted on ‘pet dogs.’ I am aware that we are still on the same series of ‘closer to home,’ but giving an account of what psyche my reader might be carrying regarding their thoughts about dogs, the prevalent arguments that surround it, and how to decode them, would indicate that I am wrapping up all that I have said about my training principles and how this is primarily tied up to the dog owner’s psychological criterion, or how those issues being circulated is affecting them. However, since that last article ‘pet dog’ scarcely allowed you to uncover what sentiment you carry when it comes to hunting, I hence humored in designating another series of ‘closer to home’ under a subtitle called ‘concluding thoughts.’ This is now seeking to make you evaluate your thoughts on some hindsight issues currently dominating the world of dogs, contradicting disputes on the science behind them, account of moral values and concepts, its tail sayings, and how this will affect a dog’s utility and the corresponding responsibility of its owner.

Speaking about the second highly contested issue after ‘pet dog’ is our hunting heritage, and the first thing up is its abuse. How many have consequently endangered our wild species that help destroy our woodland are exploiting this, is somehow not the issue here? For this relates to the voices of men and women behaving as pioneers to wildlife habitat conservation in transforming public spaces for hunting accessible to people to preserve our hunting heritage. These are active groups that help promote ground conservation and scientific studies to improve, manage and expand our landscape habitat. However, the drawback of this work is the rage and anger that is dominating social media these days on a contested misfortune of the slain or the hunted. This of course does not include the perpetrated cruelty against animals. But this has nonetheless something to do with the basic irony behind these sentiments where the continuous slaughtering of animals day in and out for food, does not bother us at all. Why is this? The unmistakable discrepancy is again no less than the psychological influence of the person towards our popular culture that portrays some animals talking to one another, protecting their entitlements, coddling future dreams, or falling in love just like we humans do. When men’s ethical practice toward animals get wrong, or to carry the false impression that the very reason for this is because the animals themselves have a moral claim to deserve it, this somehow would only radiate the balance towards the moral issues of men instead of simply an issue of men’s decency or civility toward animals. Hence, deformed are those supposed moral arguments that detractors claim which are haled by many to the point where we are somehow losing our hunting heritage and largely utilizing our dog mistakenly. For our hunting heritage and the utilitarian use of a dog are undoubtedly tied to each other.

Consequently, the most sustainable way to bolster critical habitats and our dogs’ declining usefulness from this massive deterioration is no doubt to bring back our lost heritage. For the idea of hunting without a dog is inconceivable, their essential help makes hunting benign since they greatly aid us to find the prey and manage to retrieve the trophy, the bond between the hunter and the dog is magnificently stimulating and inspiring for both men and women, young and old. Yes, this enchanting stimulus carried by our forebears is a legendary heritage that we must not leave behind or let our next generation forsake. Besides, this somehow is also the epitome of all types of sporting activity relating dogs that we have today.  

 

Closer to Home (4)

Concluding Thoughts

Pet Dog 

Read the article “seven reasons why dogs are and always will be man’s best friend.” This was posted some time ago on our group’s messenger but I could not help being bothered by the popular psyche behind the writer’s second point that dogs can connect with their owner deeply. Substituting our relational empathy towards humans has something to do with our influence to that popular culture which portrays that dogs are endowed with human qualities. What’s more, attachment to dogs similar to one’s attachment to a lifeless rag doll only reveals our need for love and companionship that needs to be nurtured and protected. Both dog and a helpless rag doll will only help show us that we have a deep capacity to love and care for others under the right state of affairs; it is simply a means but not the end, for to continue to indulge in that solitude, in that circumstance, instead of being alleviated from what might otherwise have been kept hidden in us, is to misappropriate the dog’s usefulness. Besides, it is easy to deify a dog because of the therapeutic effect it brings; this purported unconditional love that they say dogs have toward humans, since it really can change our brain chemistry. Purported because again, so does a lifeless rag doll. You can also confide your problems to it, and no matter what we tell them, you will never find someone as supportive without judging you, and so it triggers relaxation, and reduces stress, etc. but this is repulsive since it is to say that rag dolls can do just as much as what dogs are doing to us. Yes, dogs have an incredible value as human companions but not as a surrogate to our human needs. Yet, myriads have succumbed to the suspect cultural buildup that puts the true value of our dogs in peril, its usefulness and its suitability in our social order. Many are made to believe that the unconditional love that the dog has towards its master is so compelling since this is a rare commodity in human relationships, when the truth to the matter is, like rag dolls, dogs have zero expectation because they are incapable of linking companionship with the person’s emotional condition. Companionship to them is companionship, it does not matter how hard your day has been, the financial state you are in, what next thing needs to get done, etc., so it wags its tail whenever they see or hear your voice simply since your presence alone excites and entices them. A human relationship however is more intense and intimate because it subsequently involves prospects and expectancies and therefore fitfully rare but more precious, therefore it rests on a higher echelon in our world’s social order.

I hope to make you see the dire consequence when one starts to tinker with this social order, and the devastating effect of the usefulness of dogs when one uses it as an end in and of itself instead of simply a means. It inclines us to prefer dogs like misfit people who would rather have their rag dolls over humans. On the other hand, while the actuality of the befitting role of a live dog against a lifeless rag doll has its purpose, it’s very limited nature to give us the sense of our need of empathy towards others is a means to help us imitate similar social interactions with other human beings. Therefore possessing a flawed companion in our house (a dog) that is indwelt with its very less human capability can occupy an amazing bridge that perfectly meets the needs and purposes that we sometimes require to make us arch over our own blind spots as crossroads to becoming fully human.   

Closer to Home (part 3)

Your Attitude in Training

The Premise behind dissecting a duty of a task one-step at a time has for all times been proven effective and vastly valuable especially in an era where ‘instants’ is unparalleled, instant meal, instant chat, or instant gratification. This is especially valuable to the dog who is mostly clueless of what we want them to do and effective because that is the only way that they can learn. Now, in a world where the milestone of positive training has created better teaching methods than its counterparts (punitive training), the proliferation of snubbing a dog or attrition which often works’ with humans, has become the worst form of pressure to the dog since they do not know how to get out of it, and this is especially true to a dog who is trying hard to please you. Putting pressure comes from the idea that we have to give them pressure to be able to make them do something: that, in and of itself is true and false. Hence, when these sentiments arise directly from us and does not emanate from the dog, the tendency is to put a little too much pressure, which the dog cannot cope, then they lose their trust in us. Then true, because the pressure should never come from us directly, but we can create an acceptable pressure that they themselves can take or where they know how to handle. That is, to calmly repeat an exercise time after time up until they get an indirect form of pressure. When you hold up to this training principle every time you see your dog being confuse at your attempt to teach it something new, then your dog will not only start to trust you, but will eventually learn what you are trying to teach. Besides, holding up to the dog’s learning curve will prove priceless to people who has issues in finding time to train their dog because of work or some other forms of outside chores. While here, you can make use of the short time you have with your dog to focus on those decremental exercises, like fetching for instance that involves many other correlating functions to make a perfect retrieve. And this often is the issue with us today since we want instant results, and as a consequence, we tend to overlook those faulty gestures that our dog makes simply because it was able to fetch anyway. When this becomes your itinerary in training them, another new task that requires the dog to heel adjacent to your side becomes a big hindrance, harder to fix or might as well tolerate those inherited delinquencies and start to articular direct pressure for an end that you want them to do.

Then, after that gradual yet meaningful preparation, you’ll be surprise how advance your dog has become as you integrate all those fragmented exercises as part of a perfect performance. This is how they groom a versatile hunting dog, one who is trained to hunt, retrieve and track wounded games on both land and water. Moreover, while yours might not sign up for those things but instead join other narrower matches or shows, to showcase what you have, or just simply enjoy their enchanting company. What you will one day have is just as valuable us those well celebrated top dogs that its owner is honored to have.

Note, that in whatever activity you want to pursue, never forget the overarching philosophy of training dogs that I’ve taught, which is to play a hunting game with them per se’, or use a hunting game as a reward, in order to wield the dogs energy to radiate intensely where there will not be a dull moment for them even in those mundane exercises.   

Closer to Home (part 2)

Fear Regret more than Failure

Anyone who wants their dog to be a part of their life will spend time with them in the house and run through those routinary things with them instead of just keeping them in the kennel. But other than that, the need to aspire to develop in them special skills that they can perform extensively to make them become more reputable to you and to others is subsequently better than just granting them to be with you. Codify what goes into your mind every time you watch an accomplished dog perform, and instead of simply being overwhelmed, start to make up a notion of the likelihood that who you are watching is now your own dog. Hard to admit but it’s possible if you have the right resources. Remember, time is not a deterrent since you already have that with your dog and you can take that as your advantage. However, the thing you need to learn first is to use two words to keep your dog from being confused once you start to train it. The first is Standards; this means the level of excellence that you are going to accept. The second is Consistency; in order to achieve those standards one must always maintain them. This is often the failure of most so-called professional trainers in requiring a high level of performance when they are seasoning the dog, but when the dog comes home and is in the house, the standard deteriorates to the point where they erode all their field standards, hence the dog ends up puzzled. You cannot afford to do that either. By standards, I do not mean immediate compliance, for our problem is we often envisions the final result at the outset. No, you cannot teach a dog to retrieve by telling the dog to fetch, but you can eventually make it fetch by breaking down the entire process into smaller segments so it can in the course of time, retrieve; more about this is the succeeding discourse. This however is fundamentally what training a dog is all about. Additionally, training should never involve reacting to what the dog is precisely doing or correcting them when they are doing the opposite of what you want them to do. This mistaken notion is again very common because of our tendency to hasten an outcome, instead of reacting to correct that way, you should be asking yourself what am I doing wrong here, what can I break down further to help my dog figure it out for himself or herself? Moreover, in the early stage of teaching your dog something new to them, never use fret to get the dog to do it, you simply need to contrive a way to catch them doing the very thing you want them to do then work it over by assuring your dog for the good behavior. The way to break down the sequence if let us say you want your dog to hold an object in its mouth, is not to force it to its mouth and verbalize a command. But on leash, you can make it play; say a ball, then after a pause start to move and wait until the dog picks up the object to bring with him/her, repeat the pausing until you get the result you want. Some use treats, except that the trouble of giving it over instantaneously takes some time interval, and the dog might have a hard time connecting the treat as its award. You can use an applause as a conduit to the giving out of the final reward, but never to do it all together, one must come first before the other. This is what I mean by breaking down and contriving a way to catch them doing what you want. This also requires repetition to make sure your dog got it under any circumstances, including all types of distractions. Then a periodic repetition to rehearse or recall what it has already learned. That in a nutshell is training and teaching, correcting however must be indirect instead of the usual affront, which means repeating the entire process over and over again to correct the mistake. Once your dog has been taught well and still refuses, then another uncommon scheme is applied, but this has already been dealt in the article about conditioning.  

  

If you get this type of training principle, then you do not need countless hours to train your dog, you only need a few minute to exercise those dissected duties of a task, one-step at a time. 

Closer to Home (Part 1)

Why Train my Dog to Hunt

A member of our group came up with an issue of her five Beagle dogs who hunted and killed all of her neighbors’ chickens. Her remark inferred was what I posted in our news feed on Facebook entitled the ‘playbook’ of using toys to hone the dog’s skill to hunt. This prompted me to respond that the goal in honing dogs to hunt is never to kill their prey but to retrieve or take it to their handler in good condition. After I posted that reply, it then crossed my mind that I just also newly publicized that ‘project preview’ in raising quails for Aubree’s’ hunting activity. Now, there stands an issue that needs to be clarified before decoding further renowned dog trainers’ proficiency in training. You see, the upturn of a hunting activity in our developed world has drastically changed where terms used has to be aptly grasped by new learners. We now have a synonymous word for hunting to mean a true-to-life hunting expedition where the hunter will have to shoot the bird then let the dog retrieve the dead stalked. We also have a ‘Field trial’ which is nothing but allowing each dog to work in the field in an allotted time and be judged in a competitive setting. Criteria varies including which dog has the keenest desire to hunt, their intelligence, ability to find the decoy, style and courage. ‘Hunt test’ on the other hand resulted because most astute trainers saw a disconnect between field trials and real hunting which is non-competitive. Each ‘hunt test club’ developed its own testing systems to provide handlers and their dogs an outstanding preparation for real hunting in general which includes tracking, pointing and flashing in order to startle the bird under a bush to fly and be shot at, in other words, it’s not only retrieving. Now, having seen the broader scope of what is going on in the dog hunting interest will help give you a clearer picture that makes sense of the needful exercises that are set to be practiced or to measure a skill, and the value of drills to teach something by means of repeated exercises known by distinguished handlers as conditioning.     

But surely, the dilemma that most in our group have to wrestle if they intend to train their dog to hunt is to ask the question, up to what extent should I go? Is my inclination up simply to go over those exercises to hone the dog’s instinctive skill to hunt for a narrower end, or is it to prepare the dog to go for a real hunt expedition? If the motive is merely to go over those retrieving exercises, drills, and how it is communicated by the handler, then the use of artificial decoys and toys is more than enough to do the work, and retrieving is its only doable objective. There are however now a lot of other extended matches or competitions associated with any of those narrower exercises in field trials which one can train a dog, like obstacle match wherein training the dog to jump over fences to fetch and retrieve is its objective conditioner, catching Frisbees in the air and giving it back for another toss, and retrieving objects in a body of water, etc. hence one can alternatively go into this instead of going into a field trial competition. In the same manner, one does not have to necessarily stick to those narrower exercises but include tracking skills, pointing skills and flashing skills for the purpose of joining those other associated popularized matches these days. The point I want to make is that each corresponding exercise has a match of the types of sports event being promoted these days where one can either go for it for fun, to join those specific competitions, or make your dog or you as its handler win a certified credential.  

  

My life-long goal and long-term disposition however is to really go for a real hunt expedition here in the Philippines, but this involves a lot of hard work because other than defamers who are intense in propagating half-baked information of our hunting heritage, we also have a weak legislation in enforcing our protected areas, and no effort to engage hunters to manage wildlife populations through sustainable hunting practices. I know that this task is high but I am bent to start somewhere or something that I can pass to the next generation.    

Conditioning Handicap

The term “Functional Conditioning” is actually a utilitarian brush-up of the dog’s natural tendency to be encouraged as well as the avoidance of that adverse consequence when not taking what it has been trained to do. This does not only include the positive and negative reinforcement undertaken during its learning process, the positive and negative punishment imposed to make the dog realize its painful consequence, but also taking into account the dog’s internal capacity to act favorably or indifferently; its lack of inertia; thoughtlessness, etc. In other words, Functional Conditioning does not only involve the behavioral bearing of the dog in taking its chances of the physical reinforcement and the concrete punishments as an outcome of its behavior, but it includes its mental inertia as well. The idea is that task will be performed as taught because the dog also chooses to perform it well and not simply been made as the result of some ‘reflex reaction’ carried through by a stimulus-response. It must take the dog as a whole. This, as compared to the limitation of a maimed schoolwork that we often take to simply mimic the behavior of that sharp tack dog but without the spirit that is behind them. Simply put, you cannot let the dog do a task as quickly as they should by coaching them to do just that, but you can condition it to also want to do it as quickly as it can.

This holistic approach implies redefining a kind of response that is already built in a dog and not largely something that originates from us. It means admitting the reality that they have a very strong instinct to hunt or a craving for prey. You start to condition a dog to get just that and you have in your hands the most powerful patron dog on earth. But to be unaware or neglect this would only mean a costly trade-off, which only stifles the dog’s ability to perform a task with an unflinching energy. It will only make success more difficult to attain and at best, having an inconsistent dog that is oblivious because it is charged to behave in such a way that has become a nagging coercion. Viz., you will then have a handicapped dog despite all its training simply caused by an inert behavior of indifference. 

However, when your method of conditioning is rewarding your dog to be able to hunt or get hold of prey, if you succeed to persuade the dog to deliver what you want because in return it will earn what it really wants as its reward, and this instead of simply phrasing or patting it for a good work. Your conditioning process will excite the dog to play the game with you. Your phrases and patting that accompany that particular task will reinforce their confidence that they are on the right track of getting that reward and so swiftly takes the fastest possible way to get what it really wants.

However, the reality that dogs misjudge or misunderstand your command and even at times get lured by a different enticement or maybe because of exhaustion; not because of an instinctive drift to hunt, but merely a blunder or a misdirection, then you need to make a correction. This is where waves and waves of topics got big nowadays, the victor however, are those that attribute their method of approach is the combination of a positive reinforcement operant conditioning or P.R.O.C. along with the negative punishment approach. It has become so huge and critical that trainers tend to explain it rather than train the dog back to square one. Rather than that, you can instead calmly lead the dog back to where he was before it committed the lapse, to reorient and recondition the dog, then reinforce the verbal command again as you taught it, or using the indirect pressure by utilizing a leash; to have complete control, then see if it has outdone its mistake(s) this time around. To the dog, the recap of the same procedure all over again, is in and of itself, already a form of ‘punishment’, ‘reinforcement’ and ‘pressure,’ that has been polished off, in one short and unsophisticated setting. What’s more, to the dog, the sooner it can self-correct to do what you like it to do, the quicker will you give out its desired reward.  

Functional Conditioning

Scent drives hunting behavior that dogs utilize to both identify and locate prey, though sight and sound also play a very important role. However, what is fundamentally difficult is not so much refining any one of these inherent functions since they are innately capable of utilizing them already. It is how to prompt them to jump-start a tracking task. The key to teaching your dog to learn any command is by respecting the learning process of your dog. Primarily dogs learn from other dogs, but if that is not workable, they can also learn from us through a process called conditioning. Assuming that you have already succeeded in teaching your dog the basic commands: sit, down, and stay. You have already been engaging in what is commonly known as Operant Conditioning. This conditioning leads to a learning process that has something to do with behavior and response, or cause and effect schooling. There is this other conditioning called Classical Conditioning that pairs two stimuli, not two behaviors under the operant conditioning. Since this is carried out by stimuli, it somehow also accomplishes another stimuli; meaning involuntary behavior. To illustrate, when a dog smells, sees or hears prey, its immediate reaction is to hunt it. This has been indicated in my previous article on switching prey with artificial toys by waggling it to catalyze their hunt stimuli instead of just giving it to them like a hand out. 

With these two types of conditioning in mind, you can now break down your scent, sight and sound conditioning suitably. Scent conditioning would mean letting your dog get familiar with the scent of an object, preferably its favorite food or special treat to ooze it to hunt. This exercise must be regularly repeated on a daily basis or until it can adequately associate it as prey. What must take place also is to apply the operant   conditioning every time it succeeds in locating the desired object; through praise or a pat, to express your approval of that behavior. Retrieving nonetheless is conducted in a similar manner except that the goal is how to associate you as their lair, or a place of retreat, or a peace and quiet hideout. Unlike larger hunting animals, lions and bears eat their prey where it falls, smaller animals however, like canines carry their prey back to their lair, where they can eat it safely. Therefore, the best place to start is to determine first where your dog’s lair is. Station yourself where your dog’s lair is then toss an object to let it bring its prey back to its lair. Toss a verbal command shortly thereafter so it can associate it with the task at hand while you slowly move away from the lair, and repeat the exercise until you become its lair. To succeed in conditioning its retrieving instinct, you have already succeeded in ‘sight marking’ after tossing an object to be retrieved, ‘Blind Retrieve’ becomes the next necessary conditioning to enable your dog to take distant cues from you, after it has been sent off. In other words, this is you, who knows where the retrieving object rests and the need to guide your dog; from a distance, to help it locate the object and bring it back to you. This involves sight and sound from a distance where you will need hand signals and a whistle for attention and correction. You can start by making this drill either easier or more difficult by simply shortening the time gap before sending your dog to track and retrieve, and lengthening the distance between you, the dog and the retrieve.     

These conditionings will mean a whole lot if you wish to have complete control in accomplishing any task with your dog outdoors, while off leash, or any sporting activity you wish to engage in.

Nothing but a drill

A dog’s temperament is largely based on its instinctive trait, but for all that, its environment also influences its behavior. Training can help a dog cope with new experiences, but it cannot change its instinctive trait. This in a nutshell is the foundational bedrock of the good, and of course, the partial training methods that is at loggerhead in our modern world of dog training. In other words, incomplete training is customarily the building up of its emotional behavior only, which either leans towards positive or a punitive inducements. However, good training is for the most part, a kind of training to sway a dog to momentarily bridle its prey instinct for better coordination to catch a prey.

A dog’s behavioral aspect primarily rests on stimuli, and since it does not have logic like us; to start with, it is consigned to instinct. Now, the role of stimulus in a dog involves its social interaction, which guides it to action, but the force of its instinct is largely responsible to enable it to make a perfect persuasion or a balanced one. This is what it means to have a forbearing or a coping temperament. It is essentially a dog’s general attitude toward its trainer and as a result of all the other factors that it absorbs while in action. Therefore, what this involves is repeated exercises to gradually shape up its forbearing temperament; it is to condition the dog to mark those appropriate behaviors associated with the cues that the trainer gives while hunting. This training exercise somehow, is similar to the reason why people exercise. Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, it is not a lifestyle in and of itself, but it conditions you to have an aptitude to succeed in whatever daily affairs you have in life. Hence, a dog with a forbearing temperament that has been alerted by those exercises will mean a better behaved dog in the house, a better dog when you walk it in a park, and a better dog in any sporty activity that you want it to engage in.

A good piece of advice when exercising a dog is to first take an account of the kinds of activity that is involved in your hunting expedition with your dog. Next is to break them down into several exercises and associate them with what kind of cues to give to alert your dog to respond appropriately. The whole activity must be broken down into increments and reduced further into smaller increments to make it easier for the dog to get an overly simplified performance. You must use the same verbal expression or cues so that the dog can easily associate this with the previous exercise it was taught to do. However, when you move on to a new exercise, you must spend a few moments working on exercises your dog already understood before beginning to practice a new one. The main reason for this is to ensure that your dog is in an ideal condition to learn the new exercise. It is also very important that you finish your training sessions with one or two of the exercises he enjoys the most, then follow it up with a brief play session. The idea is that dogs tend to associate the pleasure at the end of an exercise as its sweeping deposition. Furthermore, it is very critical to know that it only takes about 1.5 seconds for the dog to accurately associate the cause and effect of an experience. This means that to teach your dog to do anything beyond this period is not only futile, it will also just confuse your dog or make it learn something that is entirely different from the thing that you want it to learn. Consistency and reinforcement given either during or immediately after a good response, must also be given due consideration if you want to send the same message firmly.  Happy training to all. 

Pro-Hunt

When a training program rests on permanently diverting your dog away from its instinct over a prey instead of just briefly turning its attention toward you for proper coordination on a hunting pursuit, you will never get your dog to indulge on its primary disposition which will adversely affect their entire framework. Their misbehavior hinges upon this problem, hence, when they get bored or anxious, they are allured to satiate that restricted instinct by either pillaging whatever is accessible to them, howling or excessive barking. However, coddling to satisfy them on a regular basis with a legitimate hunting treat will then permit them to anticipate another experience with you. On that account, the significance to hunt or indulge in their instinct without the directing, honing and the care of an alpha dog will somewhat be watered-down. They would now, to a greater extent, solicit your company to every hunt they take or whenever that indulgent instinct hits them.  And appropriately so since recent studies show that a dominant characteristic of an Alpha dog is not its prominence over its subordinate. Decades of wildlife observation done by biologists confirm that dogs, like wolves, do not control through aggression; while traveling, they do not take the lead position but stay on the hind end to have a more suitable evaluation; when a subordinate male matures, they do not compete to overthrow the pack leader but simply leave and find a mate to start their own family. What this means, is that the hypothesis that most trainers carry today about a hierarchical model is off base. They have been misled by stories and movies based on an anecdotal premise, not by scientific studies. They liken them with the behavior of horses in a pack that fight for dominance.

Unlike human beings, hierarchal conflict for dominance does not exist among the pack; this is taboo. They do not compete with each other but merely interact by assessing what works and what does not with each interaction. In other words, they simply draw conclusions based on the others’ action. Recall that contrary to human behavior, dogs do not have conscious minds, they do not reason or assume, they simply react to a given circumstance, as noted in our previous article. As a result, the one who knows how to direct them, sharpens their skill and cares for each of them ultimately becomes the Alpha dog. Therefore, to the one that plays that role on a hunting expedition that accompanies the likelihood of gratifying their ingrained impulse to catch prey - earns the title. This is distinct to the cruel and unnatural method of one who dupes a dog with emotional frenzy to permanently divert its prey instinct with an objective of making the dog stay at home politely. Howbeit, in our dog-training world today, the type of training that has been indicated is what is commonly known as positive or modern training, which is distinct to a more severe method known as traditional dominance or punishment-based method. They both differ on the trainer’s leniency and intolerance in meeting the same objective that is to permanently divert the dog’s prey instinct. I however call the method that I am publishing as the ‘Pro-Hunt Training’.     

What does this so-called ‘Pro-Hunt training’ have to do with our modernized world? What does a hunting treat do to man’s ultimate goal in domesticating a dog to live in their home? Well, it is not really far from an objective to keep a pleasant dog in the house, except that the manner that primarily drives them to be orderly is their forbearing temperament and not largely an indulgent sensation. I say that because a hunting treat exposes them to intermittently refrain from enforcing what is due them hastily; a hunting treat makes them use up their intense energy and enthusiasm; and a hunting treat conditions them to treat you as the alpha. More about this in the next article.          

Practical Application

Subjecting a dog not only to be familiar with byway trails but also to nibble the savor of those various elements that it brings, this is the strongest means of rehabilitating their juvenile qualities. Puppies need to rely on their ability to detect odor since they are born blind and deaf in those first 2 helpless weeks of their life. They also need to rely on their ability to move to be warmed and be nourished in the presence of a caring mother but within just a few weeks, despite their vulnerability, they are out exploring their world. Hence, the reason why reconditioning their native instincts is not simply to provide food (as mothers) since this is nothing but simply a subordinate determination for them, but rather, to recondition them in that same manner that they been intrinsically shaped. Therefore, to reformat this construction would then have an overwhelming effect on them. Nevertheless, many these days try hard to domesticate their dogs by killing those impulses and defining it as good manners or a good behavior. Its success however can only mean that whenever the dog earns a more positive bliss than hunting itself, they are bounded by it. Endorphin discharge in the body of dogs while hunting triggers a positive feeling similar to morphine. So like humans who are under the influence of drugs, it can easily be dazzled from reality. In similar manner, dogs too do not necessarily need to go that far to reach that trophy to experience, that self-rewarding rush, because it can produce its own instantaneous dupe anyway. Hence, humans through the medium of emotion like praise, adoration, approval or a pat can easily exploit dogs to their ruin.

Anyhow, if that is how to misuse that strange interference that abrogates a dog’s far-reaching interest which is somehow twice as good, lo and behold, that same median is also employed within the ranks of the dog’s pack life, and the reason why they are so coordinated. Moreover, a good master trainer also has a good reason to emulate that, but the objective must be to make it easier or encourage the dog to masterly control its own hunting instinct for better coordination. In other words, it is pointless to teach them to have self-discipline if they have lost their hunting instincts in the first place. Hence, one should never teach them anything out of their hunting instinct.

However, going back, the value of that strange interference which can either be abused or preserved by man; a result of showing dogs to be obedient which is worthwhile; why despite all the distractions and sensations they get, you are still their pack leader; or why refocusing their hunting instinct on shared activities always works better for everyone. All these same application is workable in both scenarios with the exception that it both carries a different goal. In addition, when used incorrectly, this in essence is really the reason why disorientation to both the owner and the dog emerges every now and then, and why uniformed trainers earn those sugarcoated outcome from their effort. Altogether, this somehow is the explanation why even those practical applications becomes its own handicap.        

In conclusion, teaching a dog to master or resist consistently its own instincts does not just depend on what you know so far, it will also depend on your dog’s experiences that require an appropriate training environment. This must never be overlooked. Besides, though it might take you a lifetime to expand their maximum capacity to excel, the lifelong connection between the two of you is somehow priceless also. Another word of caution is never introduce something new to test your dog’s ability; it should rather be to create short headways first to make them gradually reach your objective, or better still, allow your dog to train themselves to do what you are requiring them to do. Nevertheless, once they have already covered what you want them to do, testing those short headways is necessary to be able to stabilize its performance.