Desperate Dogs

Sweet boy Dutton checked out of the ranch this morning after a long summer vacay. Mom bathed him and tucked him in on the couch and he is PASSED out! He’ll sleep for two days in his little burrito. We miss him and his brother Murph Dawg already!

Auntie Kris: “Smile guys!”
Samantha: 😃
Buzzy: 😒

We all have that one friend 😂

“Lemme help you shred that fresh cooked chicken breast Auntie Kris.”

So, I know its been a minute, but I have been trying hard to find my inner Gandhi in times of stress or anger and writing these posts sometimes gets me all fired up.
But after a conversation last Friday, well....I just can't.
Some people are such dicks that they deserve a post of their very own and today I'm going to honor this particular guy's abject stupidity by giving him his very own 'Dick of the Week' crown.
We used to have a beautiful Chocolate Lab come stay often at the Ranch for many, many years. Huge boy with a beautiful 'moon' face, he was, with soft eyes that looked like pools of liquid Lindor truffles. Kris, Pete and I were besotted with him, and broke out the happy dance every time he jumped out the back of his Daddy's car and came racing down to the gate to come stay.
Sadly, last year he died, and we added his pictures to our scrapbook of gorgeous clients that have passed, chatting about what a gentle giant he was and what a joy to have around the place.
On Friday, his owner called Aunty Kris and asked about getting his new dog in for an evaluation. He had a new Labrador puppy and wanted him to enjoy the Ranch like his predecessor had for years.
Aunty Kris got all the details of the dog..age, size, temperament etc and told him to fill out a new application for the puppy so we could book his temperament test and evaluation as soon as possible.
And then she innocently uttered those fatal words..."And of course, you haven't used a pinch, choke or shock collar on him, have you?"
She already knew what the answer was going to be, didn't she? I mean, the guy had been a client for like 8 years or so, and was adamant when we did the evaluation for his previous Chocolate Lab that he would NEVER use any instruments of torture on a dog. Back then he told me only idiots use them, and that he had trained his dog the right way.
So she almost fell off her feet when he said "My neighbor walks him on a pinch collar."
"Uh....what?"
"Yeah, my neighbor walks him and because he pulls so much, she uses a pinch collar."
Kris recovered fairly quickly and said "But you know we don't accept clients who use these things on their dogs, there are so many kinder, gentler and more effective ways you can train your dog not to pull, why on earth did you choose a pinch collar?"
To which he replied "Because they work."
Now all of you who follow us know that we have been on a mission to get people to not use pinch collars. Not just because its a vile instrument of torture, but actually because they DON'T WORK.
They damage the delicate tissue around the neck area causing umpteen structural and soft tissue injury problems in later life.
They pinch and strangulate the neck when tightened, which cuts off the supply of oxygen to the brain and completely eliminates any chance of the dog learning anything. Hence, once you use a pinch collar on a dog to 'train' it not to pull, you will always have to use a pinch collar on a dog to stop it from pulling, compounding physical damage on top of physical damage.
But if they see a rabbit or a dog they want to get to, the overwhelming need to pull comes back into full force and they injure themselves.
Why? Because they were never trained not to pull, they were just tortured every time they did.
Pinch collars and e collars for that matter, are the tool of choice for 'dog trainers' (note I use the term loosely) who never learned properly how to train dogs. Behaviorists and accredited dog trainers would never allow or condone the use of such a tool because its akin to smacking the crap out of your kid for running out into the road instead of teaching him patiently what damage a car can do to a human body.
Dogs are intelligent creatures and like Aunty Kris said, there are far gentler, kinder, more effective ways to teach a dog not to pull. We are always happy to advise on these, but all of our accepted clients know that we will not even allow a dog into the program if its been trained shoddily, with a tool like this.
Why? Because it might cure the symptom but it hasn't addressed the cause, which is impulse control. If the the impulse control hasn't been addressed, the dog's drives are still exactly the same, he just learns that he needs to risk assess how much pain he's going to accept if he wants something bad enough. What an awful position to put your best friend in, and what an appalling thing to do to a puppy.
That's not a situation we want here, with 30 dogs running around off leash together. Dogs with no impulse control are not good playgroup participants and so we turn away any dog who has been trained using one, because we won't put other dogs in the playgroup at risk of a dog who's learned that a stabbing pain in the neck is a part of life to get to what he wants. That training psychology, by the way, is also the basis for how gangs train fighting dogs.
Ya know, just FYI....
And so, to the idiot who hasn't trained his new puppy in the ways he so proudly proclaimed he did with his old gentle boy, and just allowed his neighbor to stab his puppy in the neck every time they take him for a walk, we say "You are Dick of the Week!"