Employee of the Month

Are you one of those dog owners who praises a dog for a job well done?  If not, you should.  And if you do, remember to be consistent with your praising.  If you're wondering where we're getting at, of course we're going to explain ourselves! 

You see, one of our owners taught us from a very early age to protect our home and surrounding area.  We learned that if we barked at strangers and/or strange sounds around our home, our owner would praise us and give us a treat.  Being intelligent, dashing canines that we are, we took full advantage of this 'job offer' and barked at strange people who passed our house because that was what our owner taught us. 

Now, you may think that barking at every person who goes by may be going a little overboard, but remember that we are just canines and we do not have logic, so even if the person passing by is not a threat, we do not know this.  All we know is to react, which means we bark.  However, we do have a sense of smell, so when that person who comes by our house and/or up to the door is 'familiar' to us (meaning, we recognize their scent), we probably will not bark, but will become extremely excited (ex: when one of our owners walks up the sidewalk and we recognize them and start wagging our tails excessively and knock over a fan, etc).

We wanted to bring this type of scenario to your attention because last night, we heard strange sounds outside of our house and we sounded the alarm (Rocky howling and Desi barking in high-pitched, short barks).  One of our owners (not the owner who taught us the personal protection/guarding skills) became very agitated with our alarming noises and told us to stop it.  This really confused us...weren't we supposed to alert our owners if unfamiliar sights and sounds approached???  Since our other owner recognizes canine behavior a little better, he calmly proceeded to get our attention, thank us for alerting them, and then practiced our 'down' techniques that we learned with grilled chicken bits a few months earlier.  Once we heard the down command, we immediately laid down and remained calm.

We may not be perfect (even though we think we are), but we are smart, loyal, and passionate towards our owners.  Whether you teach us good habits/tricks/commands or bad habits/tricks/commands, we will always be consistent in our behavior, so please remember this before punishing us and/or reacting in a negative manner after we did something that we more than likely were taught or learned from our owner.  We may just be dogs, but we deserve your respect and to be treated fairly because everything we do, we do in our owner's best interests.