We are sharing our household with five dogs. That can feel like a lot of dogs, I can tell you that, and neither me nor Thomas is very good with tolerating chaos. In order to live a nice life with five active dogs without things turning into turmoil, control is the key thing.
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| Waiting for your turn |
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| Everything is under control. We really needed that hole right there. |
Don't get me wrong, our dogs fool around a lot. Army carries things around in her mouth inside the house and in the garden (the weirder treasure she finds, the better), the dogs play with each other and Amo still tends to bite and hang on my woolen socks growling when ever I'm wearing them. We love to watch our dogs goof around and we have so many good laughs with them. But the key things are that we never allow them to go "over-the-top" and that they have been taught to want to listen to us no matter what. This basically means that it requires only one of us to verbally control our dogs, all of them, at the same time.
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| Who wins? |
How do we make it work then? We have some basic rules which stand in all situations. These rules are something we start to build up the moment the puppy comes home and the work continues throughout the dog's life. First rule, the base for everything else, is that our dogs listen to our recall command in every situation. It doesn't matter if the one being called is playing with a friend or running after a ball, we want our recalls to be so effective that our dogs want to listen no matter what. Our job is to make sure that they never fail with this one, so that their motivation to listen stays high and they don't realize that not-listening is even possible. And this is where we need to be the experts on our own dogs! Working recalls is one of my favorite subjects and I promise to write more about this later on!
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| "You called?" |
Second rule is that our dogs are not allowed to go through any doors or gates that are opened without permission. Same rule applies also to our garden; dogs are not allowed to go out from our gates without our permission. Even if they are with us, if we go through an open gate and keep walking, dogs are expected to stay inside. Third one is that our dogs are not allowed to chase anything. Not birds, not rabbits and not our boys when they are playing (except if the boys ask the dogs to run with them). Naturally our dogs run after each other when they are playing together but neither then they are allowed to bring each other too high up. This means no barking (especially hard for Hipi!), no snapping (Amo struggles with this one) and no benefiting of your bigger size and tackling others (Aaarmyyyy....). Fourth rule actually includes three different commands which all are about "leave it" and calming down and make our life much easier. First one is that the dogs need to stop whatever they are doing when told to (playing, digging, barking etc.). Also"go away" and "lay down" are used quite a bit.
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| "We know! No chasing a kitty-cat!" |
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| "We left it! In many pieces!" |
When all the above mentioned works, life is pretty easy. But none of this comes for free. We have worked countless hours to make things work, and this work actually never ends. We of course still reward our dogs when they are doing good so that their motivation to listen to us would stay as high as it currently is. We always bring some treats (and toys) with us when we are going outside the house with the dogs, and we always try to do short training sessions with them in different places, with different distractions. There's always room for improvement and there's always weak spots to work with, but in the end, what could be more motivating than improving your relationship with your dog and then succeeding together?
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| Having a break during a horse race |
