Pet Discipline

In her DVD Kitty Flanagan talks about how young children aren't going to understand and see things through your (the parents) eyes when you sternly tell them off for doing wrong. And she's right. The child in question needs to hear "Bad, child! Bad! No desert for you tonight!"

The child has learned not to repeat that bad behaviour through cause and effect.

But that's nothing to some people who use the same "Let's try to reason with the animal when it does wrong" theory, like my housemate.

Whenever the dog something that annoys her and she wants to stop or even just pees on the floor, she asks him to stop because it's annoying and/or he shouldn't be doing. Or when he tries chasing the cats she asks him not to because "the cats don't like that," and she wants them all to get along ... although Josie is slowly teaching the dog to respect her and her personal space.

And there's a very good reason why the cat is making more headway in teaching the dog manners where the dog's owner is failing. The cat doesn't try politely asking the dog to stop because she doesn't like his behaviour. Instead Josie will hiss and use claws to make him see the error of his ways.

None of this "Please desist with your current behaviour, I find it very vexxing." crap.

I guess that's why the dog likes his owner over me and the other guy in the house. We don't try reasoning with the dog when he does something wrong in front of us. Instead he gets a "NO! Bad, dog!" and then gets put outside. Or in the couple of incidents when he came inside and peed on the carpet almost immediately, I rubbed his nose in it before putting him back outside.

Guess who his least favourite person in the house is now?

But guess who gets the best behaviour from the dog (so long as his owner isn't home, because then all bets are off and he ignores everyone)?