Everything I know about humans I learned from dog training.....

In previous blog posts I have explained the connections (at least in my head) to dog training and Dr Phil and Oprah. Does dog training reflect human behavior or does human behavior reflect dog training? Most of the time, in my head it is hard to say where one starts and the other stops? The other day I found myself referring to a person's "default response to stress" (mine is to eat chocolate). I am strongly opposed to automatically assigning human traits and characteristics to dogs. Anthropomorphizing them; to use a fancy word. Unfortunately dogs coexist so well with us that people often do this. If I had a dollar for every time someone insists that their dog "knew what he did" or "had their number".... However the longer I spend working with the beloved four legged animals the more similarities I see between them and humans. So much of what people do is reactive rather than proactive. However I am pretty sure most (normal) people are more prone to drawing parallels from humans to dogs in order to understand certain behaviors. I however usually seem to go in the opposite direction. Perhaps I need to spend a little less time with my dogs...

Anyway I came across this recently posted on Facebook. Excellent point and it totally applies to dog training. A common lecture I give people when they come to me with (dog) problems of all types is to either accept the behavior (allow it), manage it (stop it) or fix it (reinforce a new behavior). Options two and three actually usually work hand in hand.

Unfortunately is is so much more straightforward and easier to APPLY to dog training..... In both cases people have a tendency to continue to bemoan the existence of the behavior without applying any of the three options above. I like this quote because it places the burden for dealing with the behavior in the place where it belongs. Upon the person that objects to the behavior. Just like in dogs, oftentimes the behavior is working just fine for the dog. In fact the behavior even makes sense. It is just not something compatible with living with other humans. I was recently discussing dog training with someone and they asked "well how do you train people". My response was - you don't, or at least not adults. People are who they are, the only person I want to be responsible for training is myself..... I am a big enough training challenge for me!