Today what’s grabbing my heart strings are the number of people out there with difficult dogs who think they are on their
own. I mean, if I had £1 for every time I’d said, “don’t worry, you’re not
alone”, I’d be writing for the Majorcan Gazette! Ha-ha, only kidding… you all
know how much I love living in Scotland, especially with this summer heat we’ve been
having (Oh no.. wait.. that's snow..!!).
Anyway, back to the point. There are about
9 million dogs in the UK. How many do
you think have training difficulties or behaviour problems?
A survey back in 2000 studied the
prevalence of dog behaviour issues for dogs rehomed from rescue shelters. They
did have a good response rate of 37%, but sadly mostly all of those dogs were
reported to have behaviour problems including fearfulness, aggression and
excessive barking.
Another more recent North Korean study
reported in the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour, indicated that 84% of owners
reported their dogs to have behaviour problems. We would presume to think that
the rate in the UK would be much less. However aggression problems, in
particular, appear to be on the rise, with over 7000 hospital admissions for
dog bites in England in 2013-14.
It seems difficult to obtain a recent
specific percentage figure for the UK. (If you have access to such research,
please do email me). However, even if we considered only 10% of dogs to have
behaviour problems then that is still very large figure – with lazy arithmetic
- about 1 million dog.
So, really, you are not alone.
But back to my main point. Where would you
get some support? There are certainly many support groups on Facebook and the
likes, and many of them adhere to the modern rewarding and fear free methods of
behaviour and training. These can be a great place to start, but, and apologies
to those excellent groups, they can sometimes lead to a bewildering range of
ideas to choose from. Sadly too, there are support groups out there that share outdated
punishment based and emotionally challenging solutions.
Now, there’s another million $ phrase that
I hear all the time – “I’ve tried everything”.
Maybe I should start an AA equivalent –
Dogs Anonymous! “Hello, my name is John and I have an aggressive dog.” You get
the picture.
Well the first step in that direction has
led me to set up a series of group workshops, starting with reactive dogs.
These small supportive friendly groups start out with a day’s education and are
followed up with private or group support for people and for their dogs. And
hopefully you’ll make some new friends with whom to share your woes. (For those of you out-with the Highlands / Aberdeenshire, I'd recommend looking up a good behaviourist running similar workshops).
The workshop objectives are to essentially
empower you; to help you to believe in the path that you’re taking; to help you
to recognize the good advice from the bad that may come your way from on line
sources, seemingly new books or popular but sadly out of date TV programs. And,
ultimately, to devise your own behaviour modification or training programme.
If you would like the support of new
friends, to know more about why not to pin or role your dog, why it doesn’t
matter who eats first and whether it’s ok to cuddle them when you come home,
then please do have a look at www.pawsability.co.uk/workshop
or give me a call.
(Main article first published in the Northern Times, March 2017)