Discipline

Before I started Dog Listening, I did not know at all how to discipline any dog. My husband sometimes hit my dog and ones he kicked him out of our bed, so he screamed. These are horrible memories. My husband told me to hit Tov, but I never managed to do it. I have learned that if we are not nice to our dogs, they will not be nice back. Hitting, screaming and yelling or worse do not help at all, however, it can make things a lot worse.

If we are not nice to our dogs, but treat them disrespectfully, they will treat us the same way because they will lose trust in us. In the wild a mean leader is often killed by its pack, however, that leader has to be mean for a long time before the pack decide to do something about it. This can happen to us also. We sometimes hear about it in the news, unfortunately. We then only get one side of the story, we never find out what the dog went through, probably for a long time before the incident.

When I started with Dog Listening, I found the perfect way to discipline any dog. I isolated Tov from myself. As he had separation anxiety, the Time Out became only 5 seconds long. If that did not help, I did it again, but slightly longer. Now, if I have to discipline him, it is often enough with about 15 seconds. I think most dogs need to be isolated for a minute or two to get the message.

I write more about this in my book, that you can find on my first page.

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Tov’s separation anxiety

Especially after my husband's passing, Tov got a very bad separation anxiety. If I went to the bathroom and closed the door for 7 seconds, he threw himself on the door in order to reunite with me. When I was going to go out by myself in order to buy food for example, Tov would hold me with his paws, trying to pull me back into our home again. That how worried he was. That also showed me that he thought that he was the leader with all the responsibility for my safety.

Tony showed me a technique that helped Tov overcome his separation anxiety. I practiced this often, and soon I could go shopping without any problems.

During the time when I was practising this, I noticed that Tov reacted if I was closer to home than 50 metres. It was like he knew that I was there without him being able to actually see me. Tony said that Jan, his mother, had been part of research into dogs that know when their owners are going to come home, before they arrive. There are incredible stories about how much dogs can perceive, something that I do not think mainstream science have a good explanation to yet, at least not as far as I know.

The reason this was a problem for me and Tov was that I had given Tov the job as a pack leader, without me knowing or understanding how it happened. When I had practiced Dog Listening and implemented all four areas, Tov became much calmer all together. I have written about all four areas in my book that I can send you against a donation. Please also let me know what the donation is for so I know to send you the book to your email address too. If you go to my first page, you find links there also.

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