03/14/2025
Today we worked on doing nothing. I sat in a chair and I had a surprisingly hard time doing exactly that.
See, Venom has an issue with settling, and I haven’t been prioritizing that very important behavior the way that I should. His “go, go, go” energy is exhausting, honestly. Now before you start with “he’s a Malinois,” I’m aware and I researched his breed heavily before getting him almost 3 years ago. I know what he is and I know what kind of owner I have to be to have a happy and healthy dog. Like every other pet owner out there, as much as my dogs are a major component in my everyday life, I enter seasons where I slack in structure.
At the beginning of this session, I had to work myself through the anthropomorphic thoughts that he “just wanted my attention, he just wants to play” and the “guilt” of not giving him that. The reality of it was that by giving into these behaviors to accommodate what I thought was making me a good pet parent I was actually being trained by my dog to “move” when he said move. This is an extremely common occurrence in herding breeds. Rather than moving livestock, my dog has learned how to make me move the way he wants. Because of this, and because I’m not even conscious of every behavior he has been training me to do I started with a no touch, talk, or eye contact approach.
My dog is easily engaged and easy to reinforce. The slightest change in my body language be it eye contact, movement of a foot, or hand, etc grabs his attention for engagement and he perceives this as a reward. Even “punishers” such as a “No,” with a physical bonking is considered a reward by him because all he is seeking is my attention, even if only for a split second.
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