by Lee Charles Kelley

Created on: February 11, 2009   Last Updated: February 14, 2009

Tuning In to Your Dog's Emotions

One of the most important aspects of dog training and it's one I personally think gets overlooked too often is developing the ability to tune into your dog's emotional wavelength.

What do I mean by this, exactly?

It's pretty simple. Whenever your dog is doing something that stirs up positive emotions in him, even on a minor scale, you simply pretend that you feel the same way about whatever he's doing or experiencing. It has to be something that's not too disgusting, of course. You don't want to make him feel that you share his feelings about raiding the litter box for some tasty "kitty fudge," for example. But if he's happily chewing a bone you might say, "Oh, is that a GOOD BONE? Is that a good TASTY bone? Ooh, you LOVE your bone!"

You have to say it in such a way that he doesn't feel like you're interested in the bone yourself, of course, just that you share his feelings for it.

Many people do this unconsciously, but I think it's an important part of being a good dog owner as well as a good trainer

Another great example is when a dog is out for a walk and he "gets stuck" on a smell. We all have agendas in these situations. Our agenda might be to get somewhere, even if it's the same general agenda our dog has: to get to the dog run or to the park. But when a dog stops walking and keeps sniffing and sniffing and SNIFFING the same damn spot and won't move, our tendency is to tell him to knock if off and get him to keep walking.

My dog Fred was doing this one day, sniffing the same spot over and over. And that's when I discovered this simple secret about dog training. At the time I had decided, as an experiment, to do things backwards to the way I would normally do them, or the opposite to what all the training books say, just to see what would happen. So instead of pulling Freddie away from this "wonderful" smell and getting him to continue our walk, I said, "What do you SMELL?" in an excited tone of voice.

He wagged his tail.

"Oh, is that a GOOD smell?"

He wagged his tail harder.

"Oh, Freddie! You're such a GOOD SNIFFINGdog! You're the best sniffing dog in the WORLD!"

Strangely enough, he decided he'd had enough of that smell and we continued on our walk. (I still use this technique with all of the dogs I work with; it works every time...)

I soon began incorporating this concept into a lot of the little things Freddie did. When he woke up from a nap, for instance, and began to stretch I would stretch my own muscles a bit too (to help me

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