In my Behaviour Practice many of my call outs are for dogs that are "out of control" on walks or at the fence or at the door and in 90% of the cases, these dogs arrived as rescue dogs of 2 - 4 years old. When further digging into the dogs history is done, it often emerges that the animal arrived at its original home as a puppy and only ever knew the home, its garden and its immediate family. Then, one day, the humans want to take the dog out for a walk and, well..... This usually happens from about a year old and then the dog rapidly becomes too much and is surrendered to a shelter.
And so it goes, sadly.
So I started asking questions of the more approachable folks coming to surrender their animals at the shelter, and a sad trend began to emerge of a combination of ignorance, inertia and poverty. Ignorance of the need to educate the puppy both in terms of appropriate social interactions and basic good manners. Inertia being the attitude of "Its too much effort to take the dog on a saturday because I work so hard through the week and I am tired on the weekends" or "I don't have time to take the puppy because I've got my own life" or "I got the puppy for my kids and THEY must do the work". Poverty is the sad reality for a few of the folks. They already live a virtually hand-to-mouth existence and simply can't afford the extra R50 or so a week for the puppy classes, never mind the costs of feeding the dog.
And once I'd noticed these trends I began to think about things really hard. And it occurred to me that, while I may not be able to help many of the dogs in shelters here, I may be able to do something about the dogs in my little town. And, of course, so many of the folks here have asked me to start this.
And so, Stanford Puppy School has been started.
As part of my plan for the puppy school, I am also offering 1st phase introduction classes to the "not strictly a puppy" young dogs of the town too, in which the aim is to try and effect low impact supervised and structured introductions of pre- and adolescent dogs to enable the humans & dogs to then join in on the many sociable opportunities available in our town.
And for some very special cases, I am also offering limited exposure young adult dog introductions / socialisation opportunities.
But I am also going to encourage folks to start thinking a bit more about how their lives are impacted by and have impact on their companion animals. To this end, I will be publishing a series of posts of my thoughts and responses to the many, many, many times repeated questions I've been asked.
Well, lets see how this goes, then!
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