Authors: Dr Hugh Wirth
Intruders will never enter if you have a dog that yaps its head off, so it is not necessary to have a dog that will rip a human limb from limb. The risk of having a dominant dog as a guard dog is that all dominant dogs (unless well controlled and disciplined) make terrible masters. They behave very badly, they’re bad-tempered, and they bite. If you feel insecure in our current social climate and decide to buy a Rottweiler to make yourself feel more secure, the dog will become number one, because it will sense your insecurity.
The fluffy white Samoyed, with its distinctive smiling mouth, was used by the Samoyedes people of Siberia to pull their sleds, herd reindeer and caribou, and to guard them against bears and wolves. The dogs were discovered by fur traders and taken to Europe. They are eager, friendly dogs, and have always loved human company, dating back to the time when they used to share the tents of the Samoyedes people. They are frequent barkers and need a lot of exercise.
The non-sporting group of dogs is a collection of different breeds with few linking characteristics. They include the Bulldog, Chow Chow, Dalmatian, Great Dane, Poodle, and Shih Tzu.
Winston Churchill celebrated the Bulldog as a symbol of British determination in the Second World War. They are tough dogs, but fond of humans. They were bred for bull-baiting, to distract the bull long enough for the hunting party to come up for the kill. The breed now has a lot of genetic faults, including breathing and cardiovascular problems, which have been caused by breeding for appearance, rather than practicality.
The Chow Chow and Shih Tzu are both Chinese dogs. The Chow is also known as the Chinese mutton dog, and was bred from the wild to be eaten. The modern domesticated Chow is not far removed from its wild ancestor, and can be vicious. The Shih Tzu is a tough little dog, like the Pekingese, and it has grown in popularity in recent years.
Dalmatians were bred to guard the old mail coaches by running alongside them, so they have a dominant streak. They are high-spirited, and often highly-strung, and need a lot of exercise to burn off their nervous energy. Great Danes were also used as guard dogs, as well as for hunting, and they are classed as giant dogs, often standing one metre tall. In Australia there is currently a high percentage with poor temperaments, and they are not long-lived, generally not surviving beyond six years of age.
Poodles continue to vie for the title of the most popular breed, as well as the most intelligent. They were first depicted in European art in the 15th century, and the breed may have originated in Germany, crossing into France with German troops. Poodles became the rage with the nobility of the 17th and 18th centuries, and were gradually bred to a smaller size. The dogs are highly responsive to their owners, which is one reason why they have become so popular. On top of all that, they are not expensive to keep. They come in standard, miniature and toy sizes.
Approximately 200 different breeds of dogs are available in Australia. In making the right selection, what you are trying to do is marry the temperament of the dog with your temperament and lifestyle. It is a bit like a marriage: unless you are compatible, problems can arise, which is very wearing on the spirit. However, unlike humans, dogs don’t change their minds or attachments. In all our dealings with humans, there is always that element of doubt, but dogs are always consistent, and they can always be trusted. Even an ill-tempered and badly-behaved dog is always consistent and welcoming, and the same can’t be said of all human beings.
In the same way that Australian dogs resulted from breeders’ efforts to fuse certain instincts and characteristics, so other countries bred dogs with specific characteristics to carry out their own special tasks. With the exception of the toys, which were produced as lapdogs and household companions, none of the breeds was intended to sit alone in a backyard, with nothing to do. Dogs were given noses to sniff, eyes to detect movement, courage to see off hostile animals and intruders, brains to work out problems, and bodies to chase and retrieve. Even though we buy them as pets, and we don’t want them to go out hunting and chasing, the original instincts of the dog still remain.
We must always remember these basic instincts, and the diverse needs of the different breeds, which need to be met through providing the dog with adequate security, activity and entertainment. If you fail to acknowledge them you will get behaviour problems, which are really no more than the animal trying to be itself.
Dogs have a very simple attitude to life: they want to love and obey the boss dog and, in exchange, the boss dog must supply security and certainty. If you do that, and select the right dog, you have got a true companion, and you will derive nothing but pleasure from the relationship. You have found the perfect canine partner.
It’s no good going to the pet shop one Saturday morning, falling in love with a puppy and bringing it home at lunchtime without any infrastructure to support it. Before the dog gets to the house you need to have a basket or kennel, food and water bowls, a suitable lead and collar, grooming equipment, and secure fences round the property, to make sure it is escape-proof. Once the puppy is home, allow it free range of the back yard, so that it imprints the area in its memory, and gets to know that this is its territory. Right from the time you get it home at eight weeks old it is responding to the environment and learning.
From day one establish who’s boss dog. Put a collar on the dog to carry its identification, but also to give you control of its head. From the first minute home, the puppy must be exposed to an unchanging set of rules, about when and where it eats, where it sleeps, and how it is house-trained. Once you have established the rules, stick to them, because dogs need consistency and a regular rhythm to their lives. They are very close observers and they quickly learn these patterns.
The majority of puppies under 12 weeks of age are introverts. Leaving their mother is a shock, so initially they can be quite timid, but they soon realise that there’s so much to learn and do. Around 12 weeks the average puppy will clearly believe it is master of its environment, and it will become quite bold and extroverted. This coincides with the peak of their learning curve, and while the puppy should be encouraged to form its own character, you’ve got to recognise all challenges to your authority, or the race will quickly be lost — even at this tender age.
Everything taught to your puppy between eight and 18 weeks, or everything that you fail to teach, is permanently learnt. After five months it becomes increasingly difficult to get lessons across to a puppy in a short period of time, and from nine months you need absolute patience to educate a dog and a determination never to give up, even though you may have repeated the lesson to the point of despair.
If you take on a pre-owned dog, you will come to understand how difficult it is to eradicate things that were learnt from the former owner, or to introduce things that were not taught. You should understand that you are taking on unexplained behaviour which has everything to do with the previous owner. If the owner did a good job training the dog, all well and good, but if the person allowed the dog free rein, that’s when you can get trouble. The older the dog is, the harder it is to correct its behaviour.
Puppies only learn by experience, and that experience is either pleasant or unpleasant. So you must use a pleasant reward or scolding to teach the animal. If your dog is doing all the things you want it to do, it should receive pleasure, through praise and patting, or an edible reward like a bone or a reward biscuit. You must never forget to praise a job well done.
When you go to pat the dog, you should start by patting its back or chest, and then work up towards its head. It is very threatening to a dog to have an outstretched hand coming towards its head. Dogs also like to be ruffled around the sides of their head and ears, as it simulates their mother’s licking, which can be quite rough.
If the dog is not doing what you want, scold it, through the tone of your voice, by a light tap to the bridge of the nose or with the flat of the hand on the rump. A reinforcing light smack, if it follows a scolding, is all right when the dog is young, but you should have the dog under voice control early on. If you have to hit your dog aggressively, you are admitting that you haven’t got the dog under control. Punishment procedures in dog training have a limited and specific place because the lessons are not willingly learnt if accompanied by punishment, and there is the potential for cruelty.
It is normal for a puppy to play bite, including on human hands, which it will take in its mouth. This ‘mouthing’ is instinctive behaviour, and something the puppy will grow out of, but it may still need some correction so that it does not become a permanent feature. A puppy cannot know that mouthing hurts, unless you teach it that it’s unacceptable. If it continues biting, the animal should be growled at, harshly.
A word of warning:
if you are introducing a new dog to a home with an existing dog which has not been trained properly, you run the risk of having two badly behaved dogs on your hands, because the new one will model itself on the old one.
When you house-train, select an area of the garden where it is acceptable for the dog to urinate and defecate. You must decide this when you bring the puppy home. A young puppy will use its bladder every half hour or so, and it should not be left inside for longer than 30 minutes. Take the dog out, and praise it when it does something, and that way the dog learns very quickly that the ‘boss dog’ is immensely pleased when it urinates and defecates in the one place.
Always supervise the puppy when it eats, and as soon as it has finished, take it outside. If you devote yourself to all of this early on, you will get the message across to the puppy quite quickly, and the length of time it takes to house-train the dog will be shortened considerably. But never think that your puppy is reliably watertight under nine months.
Puppies cannot rationalise, and they cannot connect scolding with urinating unless it’s done while the puppy is urinating. If you find a puddle half an hour after the puppy has urinated, and then rub the dog’s nose in it, the puppy is not going to understand why you’re doing this. The scolding has to be done while the dog is in the act of performing the undesirable action.
Puppies will not easily wet or foul their bedding, so one of the quickest ways to make the puppy hang on is to confine it overnight in a transport cage for six to eight hours. The pup should be taken outside to ‘empty out’ last thing before you retire, and do not give it a drink just before or during confinement. The cage should be just big enough to allow the puppy to stand up, turn around, and lie flat, with a slight amount of room for growth. You might have to allow for a couple of changes of cage during the house-training period, to allow for the puppy’s growth.
In some people’s minds, caging anything is cruel, but you’re only talking about leaving the puppy in the cage overnight while it’s asleep. During the day the puppy should be out and about in the back yard. You can use stakes and chicken wire to construct a puppy pen so the dog doesn’t wander too far. The pen should enclose a kennel which will shelter the animal from the elements. Wherever possible, the kennel should be sited near to the house and as close as possible to the major exit door, and certainly within hearing range of the most lived-in room, which is usually the kitchen. That way the dog can retain some reference to the ‘boss dog’, and the other inhabitants.
Like the overnight cage used for house-training, the kennel should be big enough to allow the dog to stand up and turn around, ‘nest’ with its paws and lie flat. Dogs, unlike humans, do not sleep right through the night, and often they will wake up in the early morning and move around, or change their sleeping positions. Dogs who sleep outside may go roaming in the middle of the night, but when you wake them in the morning they will be back in the kennel as though nothing has happened.
You must make the decision about whether the dog will sleep inside or outside the day it comes home, and stick to it. If you allow the dog to sleep inside as a young puppy, it will always want to sleep inside, and it will cry and perform if you suddenly decide to put it outside. The animal that sleeps inside enjoys protection from the weather, makes the perfect watch dog, and is not distracted by possums or any of the other things that go bump in the night, that might cause it to bark if it’s outside. But if your dog is to sleep inside, it needs to be well-trained to respect furniture, and to accept confinement for long periods, and this may include denial of access to some parts of the house. If you remain concerned about soiling accidents then have a ‘doggy door’ commercially fitted in an external house door to allow the dog an emergency exit to a well-fenced area within the backyard.
It’s important to give your dog a properly designed area in which to sleep. Its basket or sleeping area should contain warm bedding, which can be made of fabric or newspaper. The drawback to using fabric is that flea eggs can remain in the weave of the material, but this doesn’t usually happen with shredded newspaper. You must wash fabric bedding weekly in the flea season to keep it free from flea eggs. Newspaper bedding is easier because it can be thrown away and replaced each week. Dogs should be taught the discipline of having their own sleeping arrangements, and I’m not in favour of them sleeping on furniture or beds, because they bring in dirt and fleas from outside.
You should bath your dog when required, with a soap or shampoo specifically designed for dogs, as human soaps are too strong and can cause dermatitis. I recommend that if your dog has a skin problem, you should select a medicated soap or shampoo that has been designed specifically to help that problem. You will find that large numbers of dogs who love swimming and splashing in the dirtiest duck pond will hate to be bathed, because bathing is owner-inflicted and not done by free choice. Dogs’ general attitude to water depends on how they’ve been introduced to it. It’s very frightening to some of them, and they need to be introduced gently. Some dogs will never accept it. When bathing a dog or allowing it to swim, always check to see that water has not entered the ear canals as moisture sets up a perfect environment for fungal ear infections. Drying drops are available from your vet. I automatically dose my dogs after a bath or a swim to make sure their ears are dry.