One of the things that I think makes my board and train program successful is the way I live with your dog while it is here, and teach you to live with your dog when it comes home – but anyone can adopt some of these principles to have a happier dog. One of the biggest problems I see in today’s suburban dogs is the dilution of activity states. The dogs are milling around a house, or wandering around a yard by themselves, and live the vast majority of their lives not in a state of extreme action, or extreme socialization, or extreme relaxation. So they are never truly “on” or “off”, but stuck somewhere in between. I think not exploring the potential intensity of the action/inaction leaves a lot of dogs unfulfilled. It’s wrong to me to not have the dogs experience these states daily. As people we can feel the satisfaction/restoration of a really sleepy relaxing day, or the pleasant satisfied feeling after an intense workout, or the invigoration of attending a party or socializing with folks at church or an event, or the totally relaxed feeling we get after a big, fulfilling meal. Dogs crave intensity and they will insert it into their lives in unwanted ways unless we engineer their lives to include it. Many dogs don’t realize how great it feels to really relax either until they are taught how.
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Here at Redeeming Dogs, when we are active we are very active. When the pack is outside together the dogs are running, wrestling, exploring – interacting. We do that for shorter blocks of time throughout each day, not longer than an hour at a time. When I see activity level wane we go back into the dog room and either crate up or lay on beds – then we have an hour or two of complete quiet and “shut down” time. Not wandering around from window to window, not pacing back and forth to see what various family members are doing, but total rest. Later the dog will be pulled for individual training, and we will work on mental and physical skills. The last two thirds generally of board and train entail a field trip daily so the dog will be very stimulated by traveling and seeing new things and people while in a working mode. Again once home we will get in an hour or two of complete rest. In the evenings dogs will work on the place command, hanging out in the main part of the house with all the activity but staying on a cot and relaxing there, learning to be still in busy situations. That is a more advanced skill and comes later in the board and train here. We eat either very light meals through the day while training or just one big meal in the evening depending on the dog, and all dogs get their main volume of food in the evening before bed to create a pleasant full feeling to get through the night.
To me, dogs really respond to being fully on or fully off. Frankly I think people do too.
