Why You Must Train Your Dog In Your Home

-- Important reasons to never take your dog to another school or a kennel --

• John, how did your training session at the McDiffy's Kennel go?
• Quite well, Sparky seemed to like it TOO much. Seems like his mind was everywhere.
• So did he actually listen to the instructor?
• I guess that's about the only thing he didn't do. I think it's got to be because it is a new person and there were SO MANY new smells too… But we did manage to get him to sit a few times for an instance or two after 30 minutes or so.
• So does he listen now, after he's home?
• You are really hitting the hard ones, aren't you… I think it'll take quite a few times before he'll get it, but he seems to forget everything the minute we stepped through that door and I took his leash off. He went berserk and ran for his food bowl. I really wish there was some way to actually make him listen here - in my home!

What you just read is not an uncommon conversation we have with our first time callers. Most people don't think of their own home when it comes to training their beloved pet. We know to raise a child in a loving home, and we know to create an environment of safety and love for our canine friend too, but when it comes to education - it is now time to send the darling (human or canine) off to school. Is that really the smartest thing to do?

Let's leave the human school out of it. I went to one, I sent my child to one, and you probably went to a school of your parents' choice as well. But what is important was WHEN it happened. Teaching a dog to Sit, Down, Come, and otherwise mind you is not like teaching advanced skills that call for a specialized facility. It is more like teaching your child to communicate when they first enter this world. Minding you is basic interaction and communication that the dog must learn in your own home. It must start with you, with your house, with your children, if you have them, with respect of your front door, with the toys that were there from day one, and with all the things that your dog already knows, loves, understands, and all the things that create a stress-free environment - not a concrete room, foreign and frightful to the dog.

Rule #1 - Correct mood must ALWAYS be set for the dog to learn, otherwise it is abuse.

The idea behind sending a dog to school is that people do not feel properly equipped or have sufficient facility to perform training. In reality, however, your dog needs to be able to sit in your house with or without a collar - you want that end result, and that is exactly what you should teach and where you should teach it. Kennel does not smell like home and does not look like home. Consider important questions such as: Do you really know if the dog will be fed? Watered? Walked? Treated with love? Abused? Trained in a fair way and a sufficient time? Did that trainer stick your dog in a kennel for a week with food once a day, water once a day, a walk or two if that much, or maybe the pet waste was simply washed from the kennel with a hose, causing a dog that was once perfectly housebroken to become desensitized to the sight and smell of urine in the home, and no longer feels the need to go outside to relieve itself in order to satisfy the animal's instinctive need to keep its den, your home, clean.