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ashaki

Living Training

If you're serious about becoming a dog owner, you're in the minority. Unfortunately the world is a place where a dog is sometimes an accessory instead of a lifetime best friend and few people are as serious about becoming owners as they perhaps should be.

Don't be fooled by the looks of these dogs, there are many things Husky owners wished the world knew about the breed. And some of them look back and wish they'd known about them all beforehand. Worldwide the number of people involved in Siberian Husky rescue is enormous and the fact that there is a need for such a large breed-specific rescue group is a reflection of just how demanding these dogs can be.

Huskies are adorable as puppies. But even at twelve weeks they can make you climb the walls with frustration. They are intelligent and independent and don't do what you ask just because you ask it. How will you win the trust and confidence of your puppy before it's too late?

Training is important for a Husky. They are intelligent and enjoy being challenged. A Husky needs to be shown who the leader of the pack is and how to behave properly, but only through positive reinforcement training.

Huskies are active and demand enormous amounts of exercise. A fifteen minute walk each evening isn't enough, in fact a twelve month old Husky might not even think much of a three hour run every day.

Huskies are very social and need to be with people and dogs all the time. A Husky that's always left alone all day will be driven to distraction by boredom and usually turn that frustration towards something destructive. Like finding out what's inside your sofa.

Huskies love to dig and enjoy uprooting up all kinds of grass and plants. A sandpit is the best outlet for the instinct to dig, but no guarantee against the moon craters most owners find in their back yards.

Huskies love to run and if given the chance will keep on running. Never trust a Husky off leash unless it's in a properly fenced area. Their first dash outside the gate and under the wheels of a car could be their last, anywhere.

Huskies are expert climbers and jumpers, some can scale 6 foot fences from a standing start. A Husky's yard needs to have fences at least 6 foot above ground and extending half a foot underground in order to keep them safely inside.

Huskies have a double coat and shed once or twice a year. It's known as blowing coat, which is a much better description of the mountains of hair that can be expected.

Huskies are gregarious and make poor watch dogs. They will watch the burglars come, watch them take your things and watch them leave again.

Caring for a Husky can be expensive. They need good quality food, hard kibble is often the best choice, a draught-free kennel with a roof to sleep in at night and a continuous supply of chewable toys. Almost every Husky owner also knows how much a Husky's curiosity and outgoing nature costs at the vet's.

Huskies have no natural body odour and are easy to keep clean. Any dirt that does stick to them will drop off once their coat dries.

A man was once asked if knew how to take care of a new dog. He replied, "What's to know?"

Training isn't teaching dogs to walk in circles or squares or about getting them to perform endlesss tricks, it's about how to understand them and live with them in every day life. It might sound strange but training a dog to behave nicely in our world is more for their benefit than it is for ours. A dog that might be aggressive or shy or disobedient will only get stressed living with humans that react badly to that behaviour, and the result is a dog that is even more shy or aggressive or more disobedient than ever.

Before you bring a dog into your life and well before you even start thinking of sharing it with a Husky, please consider the lifetime of commitment and responsibility you are asking to be a part of. What's to know? More than can be imagined, and remember training is forever. The few suggestions below may help bridge the first four difficult months with any new dog or puppy:

• Buy and read "Before You Get Your Puppy" and "After you Get Your Puppy" by Ian Dunbar. Whether you have a puppy or not. Actually buy and read everything by Ian Dunbar, and Bruce Fogle and Jean Donaldson. All of them should also be high on the list of must-have authors.
  
  
• Enrol in a 4 week puppy class or training course. It's only four hours of your life that will pay you back for the next 15 years. Only go to classes that use motivational training. Corrective training methods such as choke collars simply don't work, unless of course you decide you want your dog to hate and fear you for the rest of its life.
  
  
• If you're planning on a Siberian Husky, plan to join the Sibernet-L emailing list. You will never look back.

It wasn't that long ago, perhaps a decade or so, that Huskies were thought of as untrainable, or at least one of the most difficult breeds to train properly. Some current books still rate them at the low end of the trainability scale. This simply isn't true, the reality is they're no different to any other breed except that they're somewhat less tolerant to the clumsy or just plain bad training techniques used in the past. Yes, Huskies have a mind of their own and they enjoy using it. It's a wonderful thing. It's sad that humans only very recently came to accept this and adapt to the way dogs learn instead of bending them to some unreal perception we had of them. At least we did make the change, eventually. For the dogs' sake.

Training is fun, not a chore or a burden, in fact for Sam it's a highlight in his day. It's easy to see on his face that it's a fun and enjoyable thing to do. After all it means spending time with his humans, learning together, playing together and just being together. And if not for that, what else is there for a dog?

Many things pass for tricks round here and Sam knows dozens of commands by voice or hand signal. Other training works on shaping automatic responses like bite inhibition or socialisation. These days Sam picks up a new voice command in about 3 minutes, though it takes a few days to shape it properly and a few weeks for it to become conditioned.

Sit, Down, Stay

Most dogs live in a world of Sits. It's command numero uno and hardly a dog alive doesn't know what the word means. Once Sam had a sit going, it was on to Down, Stay and Stand. Later on he mastered the away Sit, away Down and away Stay. Also important was the automatic sit at every kerb and the "please may I" Sit. Somewhere along the line though he picked up the "I'm fed up and not doing anything else for you" Sit. He can be a master of that one at times.

Come

Come is in a class of its own for Husky owners and the word strikes fear into many of their hearts. Come is often the last word said by the owner as their Husky goes bounding over the hill into the distance, sort of like an epitaph. So we won't talk about Sam here. Enough said.

Shake, Speak, Settle

These are a bit more fun. Shake (hands) is so instinctive that a puppy will learn it in two seconds flat. To Sam, Settle means lie flat on his side, as opposed to just lying Down chest on the floor. Although Sam Speaks on cue, one day he'll hopefully learn the meaning of the wonderful word Howl.

Touch, Home, Mat, Find It

A lot of people consider these the more advanced commands, but really they're not. At least Sam didn't think so. Touch is all about targeting, and Sam will now touch nose to the palm of any hand when asked to Touch it. Home and Mat and all the variations are commonly known as station training and ask the dog to move to a particular point in the room. Find It is like hide and seek. It means there's something tasty hidden in the room and he has to seek it out. Ah, dogs will do anything for food.

Go To The Loo

This one is an absolute blast. Some people say 'Empty the Dog', 'Do Your Business' or 'Go Potty' but Sam will always be a 'Go To The Loo' dog. It's hard not to laugh when you can tell your dog to go to the loo mid stride and he does.

When Sam was young many people would tell me to think like a dog in order to understand him properly. Sadly that advice didn't help at all. Mostly I just thought about how if I was Sam I'd be doing things completely differently. Dogs aren't that mysterious though, there are two key things to remember:

• Dogs are situational learners. They don't analyse things and deduce things like we do once the moment has passed. They certainly don't lie about thinking 'Maybe if I'd done this then something else would have happened.' No need to look for reasons beyond what's in the room at the time for why a dog did something.
  
  
• Four things happen in the doggy world. Good or bad things either start or stop. Just work out which is which.

When Sam is a bit older, he'll hopefully be able to complete the Canine Good Citizen program. Paws crossed.