Bark Busters - The truth will be told: Part 2
Once again thanks to all for continuing the discussion. I appreciated the link someone provided to the journal entry where another dog owner, Erin, talks about her own personal experience with Bark Busters. For those of you who are interested here it is as an edited active link: journals.aol.com/erinsjournal[ ...]bark-busters. I must however comment on this journal entry.
Erin writes the following:
"The only downside is that during the 5 week training period, the dogs are not allowed to be on the couch or bed when I am. Part of establishing dominance. We still fight about it at bed time every night."Suzanne Clothier in her book "Bones Would Rain from the Sky" she discusses the absurdity in the notion that to "establish dominance" dogs can not share the couch or bed with you. She points out that the couch or bed is not the issue, the issue is will your dogs willingly give up the location at your request.
Then there is this comment:
"Basically, they teach you how to be the leader of the pack using vocal and body language that my dogs at least, seem to understand."Is she saying here that Bark Busters teaches owners to use vocalizations such as "growls" and "barks" to redirect dogs? Please, someone correct me if I am wrong. Is this what Erin is referring to when she says: "using vocal . . . language that my dogs at least, seem to understand." If spoken commands can be taught and used for many other behaviors than why are unintelligible sounds needed? We are the ones here with the higher intelligence, are we not? I implore any and all "dog owners and lovers" (hopefully these two are synonymous) to read Suzanne's book. Dogs are very intelligent creatures and with loving, fair, dog compassionate leadership they are the best companions anyone could hope for.
6 comments:
Ooh, I always share the couch and bed with my mom. I'll let her have more space if she REALLY wants to, but she has to move me over herself. I'm pretty easy going.
Bark Busters does not require owners to keep their dogs off of the furniture or the bed. In fact, my Bark Busters trainer encouraged me to maintain that aspect of my relationship with my dog. They do however, in cases of extreme aggression, suggest that this priveledge be taken away from the dog until more leadership/dominance is established. Sounds like a better option than euthanasia, which is what most other trainers would suggest.....
And, yes...Bark Busters also helped me get IMMEDIATE results using body language and simple tones - because THAT'S HOW DOG'S COMMUNICATE!!! So, does our higher intelligence mean that humans should be so egotistical and ignorant to think a dog should learn by using our language just because it is of 'lesser' intelligence?????
It is ridiculous to believe that ANY dog would respond to human words more effectively than it would learn/respond to TONE and BODY LANGUAGE.
Here's a challenge for you and your dog training friends...Try speaking human to a deaf dog and see how long it takes you to train it.....GOOD LUCK!!!
More thoughts after much consideration . . .
I don't recall questioning the use of different tones of voice or body language. I personally rely on these two components of language every moment of every day that I interact with my dogs. I simply have noticed that it is much easier to modulate my tone of voice when I use words, different words that over time have come to mean specific things to me and my dogs.
It's interesting to me to see how of all the posts on this site this topic has generated so many comments. I hope that when "Anonymous" is done YELLING their reply they are able to hear what it is I really said.
Here's to keeping the dialogue open and to "never stop learning".
Do you have some free time? Want to see what others have to say? Then click this link to the discussion forum search page at www.sitstay.com and do a search for: Bark Busters. There's plenty being said about them there for those of you looking for answers.
Bark Busters anyone?
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