The photo I use for my icon is one of my three dogs so I truly have a pack. I have looked into many ways of training my dogs. I carried treats for rewards which only made my dogs focus on my pockets. I tried to learn the proper command words but I'm menopausal so I was prone to forgetting them in the process. It just seemed like a lot of extra work. I did not want to walk around my house with a misbehaving dog on a leash constantly as one friend suggested. Clicker training got on my nerves.
My dogs weren't too bad. They had no aggression issues. Two out of three walked well on the leash. I have two cats also and we did have the occasional cat chase. There was food begging, or in the case of my daughter, snatching, and trash dumping.
Then I saw the Dog Whisperer show. He demonstrates a natural approach to living with dogs as the pack leader. He confirmed for me that most of what I was doing was good. I consider my dogs to be canine family members, not little people in fur suits and I consider myself to be in charge. Watching Cesar Millan I learned more about the subtleties of dog psychology. He deciphered my dogs' behavior for me and the appropriate natural response. I now practice calm assertive energy with my dogs and have found that it's useful with people too!
My pack is balanced, I am the leader and all those irritating behavior problems disappeared. The biggest transformation was in my high energy Plott hound who I could not let in the house unless I was closely supervising her behavior. If you have a dog, I can't reccomend the Dog Whisperer highly enough!
