Dogs as Team Players

How to Encourage a Dog to be your Team Mate and Partner 

Washee Thunderfoot 

Learn to love and watch a dog accomplish what they set out to do. Capture that moment that resides in all of us. The moment of accomplishment of though, focus, action and movement in perfect harmony.

This harmony in nature is what brings into creation the art of being able to put in motion a single thought transformed in real life from the joy of the moment.

Dog love to please us, they have proven time and time again throughout history that they will do for us anything we ask or need with tail wagging joy and total commitment.

They learn early on to come to us and ask us to take them for a walk, to feed them and to love them.
They know how to get our attention and we've all heard about how well our dogs train us.

A well trained dog is actually a partnership built on trust and love with its handler. Dogs that are trained to fear being wrong are not working with their handler as a teammate, as a partner. They are reacting from fear of punishment and have learned that the handler will scare them if they do that behavior again.

They have not learned to think of the performance but of the punishment. Even the slightest punishment puts the dog's attention on what you are doing "to" him and not what you are asking them to do at the moment "for" you.

We want your dogs to be thinking of what they can do for you instead of what you might do to them.

Training dogs with food rewards can bring on a similar response as punishment where the dog is only working for the food or for what you will do to them or give them and not with you as a team member.

Food therefore, is only recommended as a way to motivate the dog to begin to pay attention to the handler's clues and once this is established, the food should be withheld and replaced with praise and encouragement that leads to teamwork.

As a team player your dog will be a reliable and trustworthy partner working with you toward a common goal instead of working in response to fear, punishment or food.

2 generations of Search and Rescue Dogs
Akelia and Chaos- mother and son 1997-2009
 Raised by us with the parent dogs, Nikki and Shotgun (1990-2003)

All rights reserved including photo

Amber S Higgins 2015