Pet Therapy
Although I eliminated this class from my program, many are interested in this topic. How does a dog become a therapy dog? Are therapy dogs special? Is it mandatory that I belong to a group? Can a therapy dog get some therapy for himself? read more
The Dog Makeover Shows
"Oh look honey! He's done it again! Every week, The Dog Magician cures another pet. Isn't that remarkable....all those dogs with dangerous aggression toward other dogs are cured..forever."
Yikes.
Everyone loves a happy ending, but not all happy endings are truthful. Edited television shows with carefully selected participants do not represent real people and especially, do not represent real dogs.
Taking the advice of a television dog trainer is the equivalent of taking medical advice from a television doctor. Good television is not good dog training. Good dog training is often small steps toward durable progress, too slow to capture the interest of an audience. Good television requires lots of razzle and dazzle, dramatic (and edited) changes in the dog, and of course, confessions from owners that they have been 'bad owners.'
At the conclusion of each doggie makeover show, we see dramatic and noticable results that apparantly stem from the application of the Dog Magician's mysteriously effective techniques. It helps that we also get initial footage of the hapless owners struggling unsuccessfully with the dog, so the end result is even more marked. However, how is the dog behaving six weeks (really, six minutes..) after the show? Did the magic stick, or was it just a glittering of fairy dust that skitteres away in the first wind?
It's fairy dust. Dog aggressive dogs do not have religious conversions simply because a novel person wielding a choke chain and bucketful of hubris jerks them around by the neck. Dog agression is a serious problem that warrants careful and sometimes slow progress. No dog, represented on the plasma screen, is accurately represented when we see it no longer lunging toward other dogs in just one session.
It would be far more instructive if these dog aggressive dogs were seen at two week intervals, handled by the owner, for the duration of one year. It wouldn't be pretty. To see the real results would force us to confront the reality of dogs. And, we would have to abandon our childlike attitude that every dog aggressive dog can be changed if we just use a choke chain, never let him go out the door ahead of us, teach him that we are his 'alpha,' take control of the walk, exercise him enough, make him wear a backpack full of stones or deny him access to his Ipod.
Many dog aggressive dogs stay that way, and the best we can do is manage. They will never have 'playdates' with the neighbor dog nor will they go to doggie birthday parties. No, you wont be at the dog parks Howl-a-weenie party and no, you won't be going with a group of dogs to Fashion Island. But, you can cope with dog aggressive dogs and live well with them.
Watching the weekly sprinkling of fairy dust on yet another aggressive dog, with the implied understanding that the dog is 'fixed' for good seems to be on the American horizon, for awhile longer. Entertainment is a worthwhile category of television, and provided we see the doggie makeover show as just that and only that, our dogs will be better off.
"Lemme See! Lemme See!
YOu gotta come back tomorrow for this one...then we'll see... | 
